I don't know what happened. I got up on time. Everything was cool. Drive in was smooth. Even made it to work on time.

And now? Now I feel like I'm swimming upstream to spawn, and I am missing a couple of flippers. Lots of flopping around, gasping, and not a whole lot being accomplished.

So fuck it. Today is over.

On another note, I've been trying to examine some events that may or may not have spawned issues.

The only reason I'm even thinking about it is because my mind is hesitant to go there, like a child going downstairs into the dark, it resists and hems and haws, but never really seems to dwell there, on these events.

This causes me to believe that, like an untended garden, it will develop weeds, so to speak.

And people keep trying to drag me back to the day of today. But no. Will not happen, chief. Today is DONE. Stick a fork in it. I'm OUT.

Except I kinda' have to stay here. Well, every plan has its strong and weak points. The key is to focus logistics and strategies to emphasize strengths and compensate for the weaker parts of the plan.

Yeah.

So anyway, I'm looking at these things that bother me because I don't dwell on them, yet when I attempt to focus on these memories my thoughts seem to run from the topic.

Now, I've always said my thoughts are like the wind...they go everywhere and they're pretty much empty.

No...that's not it. They blow hither and yon, and no one can control which direction they go.

But really, I should be able to call these up, take a good cold hard look at them, resolve it all(or re-iterate whatever I had previously deduced), and move on.

But no.

First is the history of all my pets. I'm getting the sinking feeling I drove them all to suicide.

Every pet I've owned has bit the big one. Every single one. None of those fuckers made it. It makes me feel like the Anti-Christ.

I've had three dogs. Sam (the beagle), Wings (i didn't name this one), and Sam (the cockerspaniel). All dead.

Sam the beagle died most strangely. We built a kennel for her, so she could relax w/o a chain during the day, because she was not a house dog, and its gotta' suck being tethered all the time. I know, I used to have a pager and be on call 24/7. It sucks. So Sam tried digging out, got her head stuck, and strangled in the night. I got the feeling Sam never liked me. She ran me down more than once, and never really responded to me. I'm sure, being that I was like three or four, I aggravated the shit out of her. Dead.

Wings. Wings was a spaniel mix that we got from some friends of my folks. Smart dog. I alway tried to do right by that dog. We used to sit in mudpuddles together. Then I started basketball season(third grade). We had a game on Sunday. I came back from church, and saw red snow on the road. We asked dad about it, and he kinda' glossed over it. Like it was an opossum, raccoon, squirrel, or something. It may have variously been all of those as we peppered him with questions.

Anyway, the sermon that day(when I still listened to sermons) had been about letting people know things, even bad news, when they ask. Otherwise it was a sin and you burned in Hell forever for it.(or something like that)

So before the big game, my mom told me about what had happened. It didn't affect my game. I've always been able to compartmentalize like a mofo.

And while I'm on the topic, my mom is about worst person to deliver bad news I've ever encountered in my life. I didn't have to look very far. ex: I've had several friends die for various reasons, and each time the pitch was the same.

"Did you know so-and-so?"

"Yeah, we're pretty good friends."

"Oh. You WERE good friends. They died."

Then usually, she starts to go into details while my mind reels. It was particularly bad when I had a friend get murdered. She leapt right into the details. Bummer.

I think wings and I might not have been getting along too well at the point she took the dirt nap.

And finally, Sam, the blonde cockerspaniel. Sam was truly my dog. I went and picked her from the litter. She crawled right into my lap, and just sat there and whimpered a little puppy whimper.

She was smart as hell. We used to play hide and go seek. If I'd move her food dish, she'd go to where it used to be, look at the space, look at me, bark one bark only, look down at the space...etc. until I got the point. To get out, she'd walk up to the door, and just touch it with her paw. She could balance a treat on her nose until I said, "Okay." and then she'd flip it up and catch it in her maw. She was cool. God I loved that dog.

I used to sleep with her when she was a puppy. When I wouldn't, she'd sleep on the floor. And if I didn't let her sleep on the floor, she'd sleep right outside my door. After awhile, I made her sleep in the utility room. Nigga's gotta' get laid, ya know what'm sayin' 'G'. Just kidding.

And back to what I was saying a while ago, I've noticied that dogs SO take on the personalities of their owners. Its strange, but a good thing to know. If you're with a girl, and her pets blow...Get Out.

So most noticeble about Sam was that as she grew up, she didn't like to be fucked with, she liked to do her own thing, usually, and she never backed down. Even when I took her to the vet, this thirty pound little bit of nothing would yap at the St. Bernard waiting in line.

So I went to college. About six weeks in, I got a call from mom, relaying the news that sammy had been hit on the road in front of the house. Before, she had said she'd been acting a 'little depressed' after I left. It took her awhile to start eating again. And she never went out to the road when I was home. So, really, I think she killed herself. That dog was way too smart for something like that to be an accident. She knew, and in my heart of hearts I know that she knew to stay away from the road. It was one of the central lessons I taught her, and you'll understand why in a minute. Dead.

I've had a shit-ton of cats. Pretty much all have died. Most on the road. Some were killed by sam (the beagle) one day. A few ran away as the fallout of that day.

Somehow, we had a lot of fuckin' cats at one point. Just a ridiculous amount. And they lived in our shed like a gang. One day, when momndad were gone, my brother and I let Sam out to play. Sam made a beeline for the gang of cats, and just went at them. I think she was pissed, 'cause every once in a while, I'd see the cats taunting her, just outside the chain radius, and run away. Well, Sam got her revenge in spades that day. I think she dusted three of them and chased the rest off when we finally got control of her. I have very dim memories of the incident. I can barely see Sam charging into the feline gang, chomping down on one, there was some fleeing and a swarm, I think, a snap of Sam's neck, one of the cats being tossed head over heels, Sam chasing a cat around and around, chomping down again, and a lot of consternation on our part, 'cause this took no time whatsoever and we're already three cats down.

But yeah, lotta' cat corpses in my past. I really can't guess, but I'm pretty sure its less than ten. We had quite a string of cats get hit on the road.

I just asked my brother. He 'ballparked' it at six cats.

So...six cats, three dogs, and a hamster makes it an even ten pets driven to the grave by me and my family. The hamster got pneumonia. That was totally my fault. It got really hot, and I thought he'd like to be in the basement. Its cooler down in the basement. Well, It didn't take too long for the spectre of death to lay its hand upon my small animal.

So yeah, after all the cat-death on the road, I made sure to teach Sam, ever since being a puppy, to stay way the fuck away from the road. I think she was depressed by my leaving. At least, that's what I like to think. It either that, or she picked up my personality, and this drove her to neuroses, psychosis, and suicide. I prefer to think the first.

'Cause that's something I've been idly thinking about. I check out diaries here in d-land, and I'm surprised at the collection of neurotics and deopressives I find. It makes me feel at home, like the advanced classes in high school, or most of my friends since college. And I'd really be hard pressed to say why I feel so comfortable in a mix like that.

Like in high school, I roved between a lot of cliques.(I was class president every year I ran, which was three). And always, the cliques that people seemed popularly to think were fucked up seemed the most down to earth and 'normal', and the 'jocks' and 'popular' kids seemed to be, at least to me, way more neurotic and hung up than any other group on average.

So lots and lots of inexplicable pet death in my life. I want to get another dog at some point, but not for awhile. I don't want to be one of those guys that always hangs with his dog, while his house gets dirty, and girls go away. You've seen them. They take their dog everywhere, and spend way too much time with the animal kingdom.

"Going out tonight?"

"Naw. I'm staying here with Red. Ain't that right, buddy?"

Or:

"Wanna go to the bar with us?"

"Do they allow dogs? If not, I'm stayin' here."