#190 - cat sitting

i find this hilarious and i know a few who will too. i am cat sitting!! there are no dogs involved. since when do i take care of cats?! this is very strange. so far i play with the cat, feed it, give it water, medication, and even empty the kitty litter. OMG this is weird. now don't get too excited, i'm not gonna go out and get a cat just yet. while they are easy to care for and interesting creatures, i am still a dog person. i want a dog, specifically a chihuahua. but this is not about dogs.

the cat KAI is old and has hyperthoroidism so he gets a pill twice a day, which i have to sit and hold him while i pry his mouth (with sharp teeth) open and shove this pill-giving syringe to the back of his throat and pop it in. it's dangerous! he is not an aggressive cat but i am still wary of his teeth and claws. rawr.

in other news, the new house i just moved into has a cat also. it is a reclusive little thing and no one has seen it in weeks. they put food and water out for it and it poos so it has to be there, but no one sees it. strange but true. so while i won't be really caring for this cat, i will be living with it. i will be the one to refill his/her food/water and do the litter thing maybe. yuck, that is so disgusting! oh yeah, i moved again. this time to a place a little farther out but am living there for a few months until we can clean it up. it is my friend's grandma's house and she is living in assisted living but has this gigantic house with tons of stuff. so in exchange for a place to live, i am helping go through the stuff and put it into boxes for goodwill or the trash.

these are things i need to do with my own stuff. i tried and got a few boxes to give away but i still moved 2 1/2 truckloads. one was my bed so not too bad but still, i think i had like 40 boxes/items. maybe 4-5 was food, 4-5 was clothes, 2 kitchen stuff, a couple office boxes, bedroom, bathroom, oh and 3 boxes of books. i have a box of textbooks that i probably will never look at again. i sold some but why do i keep the others? i did recycle a lot of paperwork and other random junk i was keeping. i just feel so weighed down by my things. my goal is that the next time i move it is only 1 truckload of stuff plus my bed. too much stuff!!!

#181 - housing situation

once again i am thinking about moving. my 6-month lease is up on may 5. my landlord wanted me to sign a one-year lease once this one was up, so she wouldn't have to look for a tenant in november again. i am not quite ready to move, don't have time to look for places, and don't have money to put down for deposits. so i want to propose a 3-month lease (which would be done august, which is perfect for moving) or a month-to-month deal. she is kind of old and i could see where she would be unwilling to budge, but it is also a good idea on my part. the biggest problem is that she is somewhere far away in her RV without a cell phone, until may. i'm assuming she's coming back to take care of my lease and/or moving. i wasn't able to talk to her and so i don't know what to do. she didn't even tell me she was going on this trip in the first place. lame. so i inteded to talk to her before a 30-day notice would be appropriate. i called her, she was not there. does this mean she doesn't need 30 days notice?

i hate the physical and mental strain of moving. i hate putting all my crap (it's mostly crap) into boxes and shuttling them from one temporary place to another. i knew moving in that this place would not be my last, mostly because it's got no "real" kitchen. that bothers me but for now i deal with it because it's a good deal. eventually i want to live in a place that feels like HOME and that i will not think of as temporary. for the last 4 years that i've lived in portland i think i've lived in 7 or 8 places. my mom hates it because she has to change her address book so much. i don't do it on purpose but certain places just get old after awhile. call it what you want. i get antsy after awhile.

also i want a dog. i can't have one at my current place. :(

thinking of moving always makes me think of simplifying. i have way too much stuff, yet i really don't have much. it's all junk. if i died and there was an estate sale (or even a yard sale), there would be nothing of interest. i've got too much stuff yet nothing sellable. i probably couldn't even give my things away. there are two boxes full of junk headed for goodwill, probably is, they have been parked there in the corner for almost 6 months now, since i moved in. how lame am i? it's mostly clothes i don't seem to want/need/like anymore. i don't even like fashion so why do i have all these clothes?! ridiculous.

#131 - cleaning schedule

my roommate has been trying to get a house meeting together for some time now. we've all got different schedules and i think i'm out of the house most. the others are night jobbers so we're on different sleeping schedules. so he thought it best he just talk to us individually. i don't know if this is a dictatorship but he said that we're changing the cleaning schedule to have "incentives" although i am not sure that is the right word. basically, if you don't do your chores by sunday you pay $15. $10 to the person behind you on the list and $5 to a house fund. there is no way i can afford this and there is no way i can get my chores done every week. there are 4 rotating chores: kitchen (worst and hardest), bathroom (2nd most), living room/laundry (lame and easy), garbage (once a week, easy). most of the time i do not even know what day it is so being on a cleaning schedule really doesn't work for me.

sure, cleaning the house is important but when i clean, it's a deep clean that you can tell the difference afterwards. i don't think it's necessary every week. if you've seen my room you know i am not even a neat person. i don't consider myself "dirty" but i'm in no way neat. i do have anal tendencies when cleaning and organizing but it doesn't bug me that my room looks like a hurricane just went through. i have better things to do than upkeep the visual aesthetics of my living space. i don't mind stepping over things to get to my bed, then throwing random things on the floor that have been occupying that space. my room is about 8x12 so there isn't much room. i have too much stuff and i know this. i'm working on it. my new place will be smaller.

speaking of, i'm going to move out. i can't deal with cleaning schedules and such. especially cleaning schedules with "disincentives", if there is such a word. two gals from work want to find a house to live in together. it's gonna happen at the end of september. one of them is in eugene till i find a place and the other is at her mom's and wants to wait till she pays off her credit card. so far i haven't found much that will fit our needs and wants but there is still a month so even if i found something it wouldn't work out. we don't want to pay more than $1200 for a 3 BR which is actually kind of hard to find in a good location. so i'll keep looking cause i need to move out!