I want to write so much, but ... gotta work. I'm super-PMSy stressed about stuff, and I just want to cry, but for no real reason. It's PMS, I'm sure, but I can't help but worry. *sigh*

Okay, so the past week:

I know stuff went on before Valentine's Day, but at this point, I can't remember what was going on. So... starting with Valentine's Day:

Saturday I bought a kitten. She's a brat, and she's adorable, and she has health issues right now that are making me want to cry, because I don't know what's causing it and it makes me worry. This is the stuff that I think must be tied into PMS, because usually I'm certain I could handle this stuff, but... I don't know. Scary.

At this point, I still haven't settled on a name for her, but I keep leaning towards Valentine, with Tiny being her nickname. She was probably about 6 weeks old when I got her, which explains some of her behavioural things; she bites a fair bit (which Mommy doesn't like, especially not at 3 in the morning) and she doesn't wash a lot, but I seem to recall kittens aren't big groomers, at least not when they're young. She also likes to knead her paws on my face and try to stick her nose up mine, or check out my nose... I keep trying to explain to her that my face doesn't produce milk, regardless of how hard she tries, but... she still tries.

She gets grumpy at me when I wake her or move her when she's sleeping, and she meows at me, but because she's a kitten, her meow is far from impressive, and she sounds like she's been smoking. Sometimes no noise comes out -- I just get the face and the open mouth, and I know that I've been told. She makes me laugh.

What else to tell about her? She likes to nuzzle under my chin, and walk around my neck, and she turns up underfoot when I least expect it. Her coat is grey, and my carpets are blue-grey, so she blends quite well into the decor, as it were. She comes when I make tongue-clicking noises, and when I go out I shut her in my bedroom, 'cause I don't know yet if she'll try to rush out the front door when I come in, so it's a precaution until we know each other better. When I come home, I'll click my tongue to let her know I'm home, and I can hear her start meowing or scratching at the door. I'm taking this as a sign that she likes Mom okay.

I took her to the vet for just a health check-up on Friday of this week, and everyone was commenting on how confident of a kitty she is, keeping her tail sticking straight up in the air like she does (it's about the size of my pinky, which is also cute). It's one thing I've noticed, is that she's really getting her legs under her now, and she's starting to learn she rules the apartment, and consequently Mom. Mom's feet are good for attacking, as are Mom's hands and fingers, her clothes (she helped me sort laundry the other day, ensuring that all my socks were dead before I put them in the wash), and anything else that needs killing. She likes to knead her paws on my head, eat my hair, and so forth.

She's started braving the bathroom now -- at this point she can smush herself under one corner of the door, even when it's shut (part of it has been cut away to allow the door to open fully -- have I mentioned that I have crooked floors?), and she's hilarious when she's in the bathroom. See, it's the only part of my apartment that's tiled (yes, that includes my kitchen), so that combined with the crooked floors puts kitty in super-funny mode. She bounces around with her back arched, hopping sideways like kittens do. The first few times she was in there, she got startled easily and would race away, but skid on the floor and fall (like that toilet paper commercial with the puppy), before getting up and running out onto the carpet.

Now she likes to go in and lick the water off Mom's toes after I've had a shower. It tickles.

The funny thing is, she drives me nuts when I'm at home, attacking me and being aggressive and keeping me awake... but when I'm at work, I miss her. I think I'm going to have to keep her.

Pictures of her can be seen here and here. It's hard to get a real idea of how small she is from those (although the one where she's washing her feet in my hand kinda demonstrates it a bit), and her coat is lighter than some of the pictures indicate, but you can see that she is damn cute. She's got grey-blue eyes (and it seems to depend on lighting and her mood which way they appear), and her coat is a light grey with some faint grey tabby markings. Some of the photos in the second album are badly out of focus, but I was just trying to get them up in a hurry; I'll clean the albums up later.

So after getting the kitten and showing her to Mom (I bought her at a store near Mom's work; I wanted to get a humane society kitten, but they didn't have any), I drove her downtown and got her somewhat settled in. I cleaned her up a little (she had to go in the carrier, and when you have to go, you have to go), and she did what I call "good kitty": the nuzzling, the cuddling, the purring and kneading her paws at turbo speed while I laid on my back on the couch and laughed and cried and felt good about having taken her home. Then I ran the car back to Mom, got dropped off at the bus station and while I was waiting for my bus, ran into Mark and his gf.

Isn't it always fun running into an ex- when you have crap, crap hair, look like shit and potentially smell like kitten poo?

We said hi and then they went on their way, and I got on my bus and went home. The kitten and I hung out and I fed her and had some dinner, and let her wander around the place a bit and attack things. I called up Big A and my friend E, and we all gathered at my apartment in preparation for our own little Valentine's Day celebration.

I got all dolled up, with the hair and the eyes and the makeup and such, and we hit up the candy store to stock up on gimmicks, then headed off to the bar. E and I picked up a candy necklace apiece, a roll of candies apiece (the ones with the messages written on them), and I bought a bunch of chocolate Kisses; my intention, after a few drinks, would be to give away a kiss for a kiss. After a few drinks, of course. :)

The bar itself was pretty quiet for awhile; we didn't get there until 11ish, and there were only maybe two dozen people on our floor. We grabbed ourselves a prime table, right at the end of one counter, near the bar and the washrooms. Things were pretty slow for awhile, but we enjoyed chatting a lot, and watching the yummy bouncers, and I snacked on Kisses and fed them to Big A -- who kissed me everytime I gave him one. :)

After awhile I got up the courage/stopped caring and started approaching boys and handing out Kisses. Most of them were surprised, but thanked me, and I'd smile and wander back to our table. Later in the evening, guys would chat with me, or a few pecked me on the cheek in return, and fun was had.

A few guys stood out: Mr. Corduroy, who asked E and I about five times in a 2-minute conversation if we were having a good time, and he pecked me on the cheek and forehead. Then there was the brunet and the blond together, and it was the (unattractive) brunet who hung around to chat me up. The fun part (I say fun 'cause I'm a bitch) was turning over my shoulder to make faces at E and Big A every now and then before turning back to the conversation. Drunk people are fantastic, 'cause you can do shit like that.

He wandered off at one point, then came back and said his friend wanted to talk to me, but was afraid to 'cause he didn't know my name. I gave it, and then off he went.

After all of that wrapped up, I caught the eye of a guy standing nearby with a glass of beer in one hand and a pitcher in the other. He asked if he could put the pitcher on our table, and since we weren't using it, I said to go ahead. Then I handed him a candy, saying that since he had a hand free I could now hand one over. I expected him to wander off at that point (after all, cute guys don't bother to talk to me much), but he stayed around and chatted with me. We talked about inconsequential stuff, basically where we went to school, where we worked, so on and so forth. A drunk guy that he knew came by at one point and insisted that he and I went to school together; I figured it was possible until he insisted that my high school was in North Bay, which it wasn't.

I turned to E and Big A at one point and apologized to them for ignoring them for so long, but they told me not to worry about it, saying they were enjoying the show and doing the play-by-play.

Somewhere in this whole talk, I'd told the boy about our plan to collect phone numbers, and he told me that he didn't want to give me his number, but he wanted mine. We kept talking, and sometime later I asked him where he'd gone to high school -- something we'd already covered, but that my sleep-lacking brain hadn't caught. So he started mocking me, saying that he didn't trust me with his number, that I'd probably lose it and so on and so forth, and that he didn't want to be a part of my list.

I showed him my list, with its whole 0 list of phone numbers, and turned to write down my number for him -- when E handed over one of her cards with my name and both of my phone numbers written on it. As they said earlier in the conversation and again as we were leaving the bar, they approved. :)

So that was entertaining and funny.

Sunday I slept in (as much as the kitten would let me) and played with her for awhile before going to work. I saw the boy before work and we made tentative plans for the next night. Monday night we went out and talked a lot and had a pretty good time.

The rest of the week was pretty quiet (aside from my contracting the plague), until Thursday when Ben threw his soiree. There was a fair number of people who turned up at the place, and I had a decent time. In a way there were a few too many people, and the focus was on video games, which really works better with small groups, I find. Plus, some of the people who were playing were really not wanting to share, so if you hadn't grabbed a controller right off the bat, you were kinda shit outta luck.

I got back to my place a little later than I'd planned, and had to get up early the next day to fill in for my coworker. This past week I've been stupid from my cold, exhausted from both my cold and not having a full night's sleep all week, and I was really fucked up Friday morning. I pulled through and went home, and even decided to stretch out on the bed for a catnap, but I got woken up by the kitten after about 15 minutes. Ironic, no?

Ah well. Friday morning I was woken up around 3:30 by the kitty, so for the second night in a row I gave up and shut her in the bedroom and crashed out on the couch. During that time, I had a dream, highlights of which I posted a little while ago; namely, I dreamt that I had cancer, the same cancer that my neighbour has -- the difference is, they had no hopes of treating mine, they knew nothing could possibly work. I dreamt that I was 23 years old and limited to a few months to live, and I wasn't ready to go. I felt healthy, I felt mostly good, and I felt that there was so much I wanted to do. In my dream I decided to live as much as I could, which meant getting out and meeting people and not being shy.

However, before I made that decision, I decided I wanted to end things before I started to really suffer. For some reason my dad and I were somewhere that had a lot of debris, so I handed him a stake (who watches too much Buffy/Angel? Not I!) and he pressed it against me. I realized that was going to be really painful, so we picked up an axe and he had it pressed against my throat enough to make a thin cut that bled. Somehow from there I ended up in a hospital I think; I think I'd changed my mind and decided I did actually want to live.

I had a whole bunch of mini-dreams that I can no longer properly link, but I do remember that they were all coloured by the fact that I knew I was dying, and no one else did: I dreamt that my friend N came on to me (and that I finally decided to take him up on his offer); I dreamt that I was in my high school's cafetorium and it was on fire and I was with people trying to escape; I dreamt that I saw my twin best friends from high school (I think I was trying to save them from the fire); I dreamt that I was transcribing short Ministerial speeches that had nothing to do with our department, or in fact much of anything at all; I dreamt that I shared an apartment with Ben (I think), and that someone had spilled coffee in the bathroom and I was really upset about that; and that I or someone stole a helicoptor. Or something -- the details about all of it are pretty fuzzy by now.

Friday night I got together with the boy again, and we watched Runaway Jury, which was good but a little slow at parts. I took advantage of Saturday to sleep in, but I had my alarm set for noon because I'd been told that someone was coming by to show my building/apartment between 1-3p.m. I had originally planned to be out of the place, but then decided I wanted to be there in case the kitten got loose, plus I was sick and didn't feel like going away. No one ever showed, so I was vaguely annoyed, but didn't care too much.

I went out to my folks' place for dinner and D came out to get me. We'd planned to go out to a movie, but wound up just staying at my place for awhile before heading out for a drink at a nearby bar. Afterwards, we returned to my place and watched episodes of Family Guy while the Litte Bit jumped around and I kept poking her to keep her awake (something I did the night before, too). After D left, I went to bed and she jumped on my head for awhile, and then I fell asleep.

I woke up early this morning, and lounged about my place today, watching episodes of Angel season 3. She ran around and played, including one psychotic episode that had her racing back and forth across the couch with no real purpose in mind. I took a short nap that didn't really feel like a nap, then got up and got ready to head off to work.

So that's my week in short. Like I said, I wanted to write earlier, but I've just not been feeling it lately. I don't know what it is, but somehow my schedule is sucking my will to live/write somewhat. I think once I move fully into doing the speech coordination (which is supposed to happen Monday, but they have yet to find someone to do my job, so it's not happening yet) -- which also needs to be formalized by someone higher up than my boss -- I'll be moving into working real people hours, which is a plus and a minus. I kinda like being done by 3, but I'm not too huge on the getting up at 5:30 thing. :P

So yeah, lately there's been a bunch of emotional stuff, some more nostalgia stuff, some excitement, some hopefulness, some interesting developments, some kitten fun... it's been interesting. *sigh* In honesty, I don't know what I feel, except that I'm semi-stressed and semi-worried about the kitten, and so that has me sad. I just hope everything's okay and that things resolve themselves soon, 'cause I worry about her. It's different having someone totally dependent on you, instead of on you and two or three other people, like my kitties back home (who, incidentally have gotten fat; even Digger's filled out again, which is a shame 'cause he was a good weight).

I just want to make everyone healthy and happy and whole; my parents, my grandparents, my friends, my kitties, myself... Being emotional-PMSy kinda sucks. :P