Blindsided

June 29 

This has been kind of funny in that macabre way I always seem to enjoy. I got a phone call from my father, 1000 miles away in Philadelphia. The family dog, Cookie (she was a good one, and I have many happy memories), died overnight in her sleep. She had not been in pain and apparently had not suffered--which makes us all feel a lot better. That dog was a joke to the end, and she had the last laugh on us. The trip here is my younger sister. I should mention that she is a very neat, cosmetic person. Well, Cookie's passing gave her her first real face-to-face with death--can you see the doll--"My First Corpse"? Cookie had taken to sleeping in my sister’s room, and so she was there during the overnight she passed. My sister looked across the room at Cookie, wondering why the dog was just staring out into space. When she tried moving the dog's stiff leg, she understood. 

July 1 

I'm a closet astronaut. The Space Coast of Florida--Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, Titusville--is about a half hour drive from where I live, and it is my favorite place on the planet. From this place mankind has left the earth on what have so far been the only manned missions to another planet, namely our moon. It's still alive with the enthusiasm I can only imagine pervaded the area during the glory days of the Apollo program (as I was born in late 1971, I kind of came in at the tail end of things, but my parents were always very excited). It's been a while since I've seen a space shuttle launch. The last one I went out to watch was just after dawn, a combination night and day launch, if you will. At any rate, it was spectacular, but these launches are the REAL greatest show on earth anyway. Now I can watch them from my backyard, but there's nothing like huddling with a crowd of people at the intersection of route 50 and US 1, directly across from both launch pads and the best vantage point short of having priority seating in NASA's viewing stands. Sometimes when I've been out there, I've taken a look around me and thought how while the crowd is certainly a healthy size, it probably would seem very paltry to someone who had watched, for example, the historical launch of Apollo 11 (the mission that took Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, into space). What's important, I feel, is the esprit du corps. Maybe the crowds are smaller, but the dynamic enthusiasm--the total thrill and enthrallment to be watching this miracle at humanity's own hands--is probably no less than in the Apollo heyday. After all, if you've bothered to get there, and you're standing there, sometimes in weather that's not your typical Florida pleasant, there's a good chance you've got space fever just like I do. 

July 9 

Today I took a spin down to Winter Haven to see Craig the Tao Te Chinchilla master, from whom my Groot came to me last November. Nominally I was there to pick up special pellets (it's a chin thing) but we ended up chatting away four or five hours about the animals, our relationships with them, his quality system of breeding and selling records. I got to meet Groot's parents (it seems she's distinctly herself and not either her mom's or her dad's kid). Well anyway, Craig really knows his stuff, and he quickly became one of my favorite people. After all, chinchilla love is a strong bond. If it's possible to get hit with a head cold in July in Central Florida, I've got one. Hence, this night's entry is short. My pillow beckons. 

July 18 

Things are beginning to break up and move again--I can feel it. As I know by now, this is the beginning of a breaking depression and not the conclusion of it. Sleeping helps a lot, as does playing with the chinnies. The real indicator that my depression is lifting was the new plot germ for a novel I got. That usually indicates my brain is able to function again (if it can create, that is). Here's to continuously lifting spirits 

July 20 

You know...it's really not some bit of goofball philosophical rhetoric. We really are all one being. Holding a nine foot indigo snake brought that home to me. I realized that my secret with animals is that I allow no barrier between the animal and myself--I make it so that we are in essence one creature. The indigo was so comfortable with me that he tried to fall asleep in my hair. That seems to be a popular thing with critters these days. I also procured an actual rattlesnake fang--it looks like an eastern diamondback's, but I can't be certain. What is amazing is to hold the fang in my hand and feel the power within it. There was some good news in it for me today, too. The man who operates the serpentarium (imagine--over 400 university labs are getting their experimental venom from him now) told me that the number of eastern diamondbacks is up here in Osceola County. That means my snake awareness campaigns and my drives to end rattlesnake roundups are beginning to produce noticeable results. Well, maybe this isn't great if you don't like snakes, but I love them, and I'm happy the diamondbacks are on the rise. 

July 25 

You've got to excuse me but I have been having the strangest uterine problems the past few days. The damn thing's been keeping me dog sick and barely up and out of bed. What's worse, and don't gross out on me, is that I was expelling these THINGS that were way too much like my miscarriages for my own comfort (no, they weren't miscarriages, just gynecological hell). I'm finally feeling kind of human again...at least well enough to pull myself out to the computer, anyway. I think what hurts the most is how I go through all this and The Husband never seems to care or even notice. It probably just seems that way from the viewpoint of the person experiencing the problem, but that doesn't make it any easier on me. Maybe I've done too good a job of hiding my fears and terrors under a veneer of self-confidence--the knowledgeable healer woman. Ah, well, if I can't make him understand the horror, or why it would be horrifying, then I just can't. 

July 26 

Do you know what I found out today? I can't believe this. The Husband is STILL holding my little fling with infidelity (let me point out that I was in a severe manic swing at the time and NEVER actually had intercourse with the person) from 1994 against me! He still can't deal with it. For one thing, for all I can remember that time (like I said, I was manic), I thought I had his consent and his permission--I never knowingly did anything to hurt him, or against him, or any of the other games married people having affairs play. Oh no. Not only is he still affected by it, but he claims (and I think this is really weak) that the experience blew out his ability to have an "empathic" relationship with me. Right. I don't think he'd know empathy from a sheep's rear. Essentially he's telling me we've been married for eight years, and for seven of those, I've been a closed book so to speak. How did this come about? I had no idea that The Husband NEVER got it through his thick skull how much getting taken out of graduate school by the illness and all the subsequent fun affected me--killed me, even. What does he know about watching your life-long dreams and expectations die a slow death before your very eyes? I cannot believe he never caught on to this, was never able to put himself in my place. I don't have a husband. I have a useful slab of meat. 

July 28 

Well, this is it, my last journal entry. The Husband has more or less thrown me out of our house and my folks are working on getting me a plane ticket home as I write. I could go off on the ingrate ad nauseam here, except that I think this is the best thing that could have happened. The old me is dead, and I'm looking forward to getting to know the new me.