Today sucked.

I had an awful day today. I had to work excessively hard on a task that didn't need to be done, but I was not made aware of it until after I had finished. Then, I had to run around from building to building with nobody explaining to me what exactly I was supposed to be doing, and ended up getting shots that I didn't need. Then I had to work outside in the cold for several more hours. The day just wouldn't end.

The day started off great, but quickly went downhill. This morning I was doing heel-hooks on the pull-up bars and kicked a guy in the face. It was awesome, but after that, pure aggrivation.

During a forty minute period when I could relax, I thought about how I got to be here and how I wouldn't change a thing. I could have finished grad school. I could have been in my second year of teaching (Where I would have been miserable, but I'll save that for a later entry because I have some long rants about the failures of the education system and why I don't want any part of it). Nope, instead I'm here. Aggrivated by stupid people.

January 2010, I returned to my house in Norfolk after a trip to visit my grandfather in South Carolina. I didn't pick up my cat, Dicken, from the kennell like usual because I wanted to get back to Norfolk to hang out with some people before school started. My mother called me that evening to tell me the vet noticed some disturbing behavior from my cat during his stay there. He didn't eat much and he vomitted several times. Dicken had already become pretty skinny in his old age, and now the vet suspected he might have some sort of cancer. I of course was saddened by this news and actually got a little choked up after the phone call. Very few things ever elicit an emotional response from me, but that was one of them.

I prayed that, whenever it was Dicken's time to go, I would be there with him.

A few months later, I quit grad school. I wasn't happy and wanted to pursue something I wanted to do, not something I was doing because I felt I had to do something. I moved back home to my famiy and my kitty. Being back home clearly made Dicken happy. From March until August, he started eating more, put on weight, and was more active.

In August, he started to decline. We didnt' notice at first, but he stopped eating dry food. Eventually he stopped eating canned food. At some point, I noticed that it had been forever since I heard him purr. He had an overactive salivary gland that caused him to drool whenever he was really happy. He hadn't drooled in a long time either. Something was wrong, and eventually we took him to the vet on September 11, 2010. Dicken didn't come back from the vet.

Like I said, I don't get emotional over anything. I hadn't cried since one of the younger elementary school years (I just realized that coincidentally, we adopted Dicken early in my second grade year). I cried that day though. I cried a lot. There was a good hour in that room at the vet's where I had difficulty formulating words, much less a coherent sentence. The next two days, I'd just lose it out of nowhere too.

But I remembered praying that God would let me be there with Dicken at the end. If I had been teaching, I would have been somewhere else in the country. The school year would have just started, and it would have been uncertain that I could make it home. God answered me in a wierd way, but it was worth it.

Whenever I have bad days out here, and I think of all the stupid shit I have to put up with sometimes, and I think of easier things I could be doing, I remember being there for a friend. Totally worth it.