both sides of bankruptcy

My day job is becoming more and more difficult to handle.
Everyone here seems to have given up hope that the company will last another year…
People are getting laid off every week and everyone is walking around whispering conspiracy theories about what they think that they heard the head honchos talk about.
It’s not in my nature to give up though.
I always trudge on…Most times much longer then I should.
I am an Account Specialist for a packaging company that I will be referring to as The Box.
All that Account Specialist means is that I’m a collection agent. I do other things…but my main job function is to call up all of the customers that owe us money and attempt to collect the debt.
All day long I hear the sob stories of small business owners across the country that are unable to pay their debt to us…
The irony is that I began my own personal bankruptcy proceedings last September…and provided that there are no snags, I will be absolved of my debt on February 17th.
I stopped using my credit cards when I was 26…
It was two years after that…throwing minimum payments at my cards month after month, before my father finally sat me down and explained to me that filing for bankruptcy is a tool.
It doesn’t mean that I’m a bad person…
It means that I made mistakes…and in order to correct my error, I have to somehow obtain a clean slate…
I feel a bit victimized by the credit card companies…
By the time I was 20, I all ready had 11 credit cards…I never maxed a single card out…but that was mostly because I had so many cards that I was able to juggle things around.

So all day long, I badger people to give me their credit card numbers and send in checks for payment…and a lot of the people are nasty to me.
And I am nasty to a lot of people…
But it’s my job to collect money…so that’s what I try to do.
It bothers me at night though…a lot…when I recount the days conversations in my head before I go to sleep.
I think it’s all part of the penance in order to be absolved of the debt.

Meet the Pussy Kittens

These are my kittens.




The orange bundle of fluff is Master Tiggy Poo and the grey and white one is Princess is Gabriel. Gabriel is the biggest attention whore of a cat you've ever met...When new people walk into my studio, she immediately pulls out the cute card and starts rolling around on her back, begging for her belly to be rubbed...
Gabriel is 13 or so and Tiggs is about 11...My family adopted them when I was in highschool...I was once evicted from the apartment that I was living in because of them...they were my super secret Kittens in the Attic.



She's a good old lady...In December of 07, she ran out my front door when the Chinese man came to deliver food...we ended up loosing her for about 6 months...then miraculously this girl I grew up with visited an animal shelter and recognized Gabriel as my cat...It took a couple phone calls for her to be able to get in touch with me and 2 days later, my special kitty returned home...for a fee and a whole bunch of grief...but whatever...the ladies at the shelter still email me all the time...I don't mind being a crazy cat lady...I just don't really see any reason in joining their crazy cat lady club.

it's a virtue

I watch patiently for things to happen
For moves to be made
Sometimes I think that I wait too much for things to happen.
I’m not enough of an action person…
I’d rather ride the wave of someone else’s beginning in order to make my own ending…
Does that make me a leach?
I think that it might.
I’m not sure though.
I guess I’m just an opportunist.

open wide

I forgot to close all my windows last night before I went to sleep.
The unseasonably warm air never made me shiver last night.
I woke up to loud loud birds squawking...
my cats are both enjoying the windows being open...
I hope the snow is done for the season...
Spring can not come fast enough.

Fighting Demons

I feel like somewhere there is a creative outlet for me...
Somewhere.
Somehow...
I feel like I can DO so many things...
But none of them WELL...
and one day I will give up on trying to adhear to the standards that I set upon myself...
and I will
Just
Let
Go...
Someday...
Not today, but possibly soon.

Rotton Coloured Eggs

Family feuds and obligations have made Easter 2008 the first, of many to be sure, holiday that I have spent alone...
I never understood when I was younger how it happened that people spent holidays alone...
My family has always been the cornerstone of my existence...
Then, it gradually over the years started happening...
Back a few years ago, my sister moved 2 hours away because the man that she was dating told her to do so...
My brother became immersed in the Skin Head culture (he's not a racist, but more importantly I am not a racist...it is not a family value that he was taught from birth...it's a culture that he's decided accepts him...I'm not getting into all of that right now) and has allowed violence, drugs and alcohol to take over his life...It's more that I'm frightened to spend time with him then anything else...He has a baby, and an ex wife at the ripe age of 25 and is spending the holiday with them...
I usually do spend Easter out in Lancaster PA with my mother, but the fact that my step father and I currently dislike each other has put a damper on my plans.
And my dad...
Well, my dad is spending time with his wife and their kids...
I feel like a stranger when that part of the family unit is together...so I try to let them have their space...
What I'd really like right now is to call up my father and ask him why he didn't invite me to dinner...
He'll just say that of course I'm always welcome at his house...
and then I'll totally chicken out and NOT tell him that I was raised to only come over to someone's house when invited.
and then I wouldn't tell him that his wife skeives me out...
and that her son is a creeper
and that their son is also more then a bit odd and dorky...
and that I'd just rather be by myself...

Only the thing is that I really DON'T want to be by myself.
I'd so much rather be with people who love me.
and right now I'm just going to throw a pity party and grovel in my self deprecating nonsense of an existence.

And I'm trying so hard not to get down on myself.
Not to think bad thoughts...

and my face is breaking out...
and this cuban sandwich that I am eating that is leftover from last night's midnight snack at the Tick Tock
just isn't as satisfying as a spiral ham and boring family conversation would be.