My typical weekday
Eat. Art. Work (maybe). Eat. Work. Eat. Art. Crash. Not literally speaking, of course, but basically what happens. Not to mention that in the last week and a half, I've become crazy psycho LA driver trying to fight post-rush hour traffic getting to Pasadena almost every day.
And then there's today, which I have done absolutely nothing productive with. Except sleep. A lot. Planning on going skating in a bit, at least that'll be slightly productive. And then work on more art when I get back.
There's a glimmer of hope on the horizon though. Gayle, my life drawing instructor, loved my self-portrait midterm assignment (even though I thought it was kinda meh), and everyone really liked it. Some little fixes here and there and it would be a good portfolio piece, methinks. I love it when you devote yourself to something you're not sure if you'll succeed in, and then making that little bit of leeway through the mire. It's then when you can actually think, "I can
do this!"
I swear...
I'm getting relatively stupider every year.Makes me glad I got into Pomona when I did, LOL...
*chortle*
The funniest thing I've heard all week - listening to my illustration teacher complain about being "old" constantly, but not looking a day over 30, maybe. Later, after class, I ask him how old he actually is, and apparently he's going to be 40 this year. After telling him that he really didn't look it, he cringed and said, "Yeah, I know."
Apparently when he was in 10th grade, a family friend asked him how school was, and he answered all right - taking classes in trigonometry and chemistry and the like. This family friend (who was obviously behind the times) looked at him incredulously, prompting a "What?" from my teacher and an appropriate reply: "I thought you were 9!"
And imagine, when I was the same age, people assumed I was in my 20's and working at a computer company. (Hopefully this will stop when I'm 30..)
Redemption!
Moved back to Pomona yesterday afternoon. Mom chatted with Aunt about me being a nuisance (LOL) and then Aunt mentioned that when I lived with them, they saved $100 in electricity. All due to me turning the thermostat up to 74 whenever I saw that Cousin had yanked it down to 60. I have one thing to say: BOOYAH!
Life lessons
Everything does happen for a reason. Says my personal quasi-spiritual system, at least.
I learned this weekend that the greatest gift you could offer a dying creature is to make sure their last experience on earth is feeling loved. I felt I was able to do that for Dot, and death doesn't seem so frightening to me now. Death is so scary for some people, for those who can't stand being in the same room with someone or something dead or close to dying. But at that point, I think it's not about you and your fears - it has to be about the person who's passing on. (Face it, they're really getting the short end of the stick compared to you.) And making sure that all of the loose ends are tied because there won't ever be another chance.
I buried Dot on Friday afternoon, the same day that she passed. I figured that if my aunt didn't want a sick animal in the house, a dead animal would be out of the question. And leaving her in the car didn't really strike me as a good option either. I put her in a cell phone box, made her some origami flowers and cranes, and wrote her a message. When I told my cousin what happened, she wrote Dot a message too and gave me some snowman wrapping paper to wrap the box in. Dot has obviously never seen snow, and had she encountered it, might have thought it either a lot of fun or really really strange. Either way, it makes me chuckle.
I went out and buried her on Art Center's Hillside Campus, off in some brush where I don't think anyone frequents. Pomona, to me, was not really an option because I was sure that
somebody would catch me digging or that the campus gardeners would dig up the box while planting more pretty flowers. Overmaintaining the campus is sometimes not a good thing. Art Center, on the contrary, is literally in the woods, save for some service roads, a large parking lot, and the building. Mountain lions and rattlesnakes were sighted recently, so I figured not many people would be wandering off the roads anyway, LOL. I had a hard enough time finding a suitable place (I actually doubt I'd be able to find it again even if I wanted to), and got out of it with lots of pointy plant parts attacking my pants and socks. God, I hope they don't mind...She has a kickass view though. The campus is on the side of the hill (what a concept!) overlooking the city of Pasadena. Quite a sight.
I didn't cry. At that point, what I was burying was a shell of what she was, not the pet that I knew. Rigor mortis has that effect, I think. It was more devestating when I was holding her and realized she had passed on when she went limp and her heart stopped beating. After I left, a weight seemed to be lifted off my heart, for I felt that I had set her free.
RIP Dot
Dot died today. When I drove over to Pomona yesterday, Julia told me that Dot suddenly stopped eating and moving around sometime the night before. I took her back and caused mucho complications in the process because my mom promised my paranoid aunt that I wouldn't be bringing the guinea pigs back after I returned during the July 4 weekend. (She was convinced they needed to be "sanitized" beforehand and kept calling my mom to tell me - but you don't
sanitize a guinea pig!)
So I had to leave Dot overnight in the car after mucho force-feeding. Last night I would have given you a much more entertaining rant about that but I'm too exhausted and upset to do that now.
I got up at 6:15 to see how she was doing and try and feed her some more. She wouldn't open her mouth to swallow and didn't appear to be blinking. The vet's office didn't open for another half hour so I didn't know what else to do but hold her until she went limp. :(
I spent the next half hour crying and talking to my mom. She said that at least Dot got to be with me in her last moments, so she was probably happy. Now it's a question of seeing what I can do with her body and hoping that Squee didn't catch whatever Dot might have had...
(((London)))
"I seek the means to fight injustice, to turn fear against those who prey on the fearful."This is one of the times I wish we really did have someone like that, someone to beat some compassion/sense into the people who did
this.I hope everyone studying abroad at Pomona is back now and safe. Horrible, especially the day after they were awarded the 2012 Olympics.
