and those white lines on the streets, they are merely a suggestion for some.

let me start this with i am not an animal person.



when i say animal, i mean person place and things.



i don't keep plants alive. i don't like living breathing things. you know. dogs. cats. rats. children.



i used to think it was because i was mauled by a dog as a 3 year old child.



i think now it's because they are just icky. they sniff my crotch. they lick the lotion off my legs. note to dogs. it SMELLS like limes, but there is no LIME in my lotion. not the brightest creatures which is another reason i'm not a big fan of dogs.



i do like dogs better than cats. i will never ever own a cat because A) my daughter is allergic. and B) you have to have them POOP in a BOX, then scoop said POOP up, and dispose of it. I didn't even do that for my children. So no cats.



My children are dying for a dog. They have a dog at daddys. Actually they had 2 and one ran off. His name was Charlie and Trinity calls him "Chawwee" and just the sheer cuteness alone makes me ready to go run out tomorrow and buy her a damn dog and name it Chawwee. And then give her ice cream. Then commend her for pooping in the proper receptacle.

We do not have a dog. We do, however, have turtles. Miniature turtles. 2 of them. One is named Cotton Candy and the other one I don't know.

We keep them in the bathroom because they smell like, well, like shit. So you can take a dump and not know if it's your poop or the turtles stinking. FUnnily enough, their food smells like poop too. It's a real treat to me the germaphobe with a super sensitive sense of smell.

My dumbass brother gave them to my girls last summer. I'm not sure why. He had 3. He gave 2 to us and one to my niece. Since we got 2, we got the little plasticy cage/aquarium thing. Since my niece didn't get one, she used a bowl and 24 hours later, that turtle was OUTTA there. Gone.

So a year later my girls still have both of theirs. I seriously think I'm only keeping them to earn brownie points with my children. ("See, girls, mommy is so cool I let you keep the poopy smelling pets that we can forget to feed for a few days or week and they somehow survive.") Somehow I thought this would be a lesson to learn how to take care of pets. If these turtles were dogs their corpses would have started stinking up my bathroom 6 months ago because we almost never feed them. The data I have found suggests they need fed twice a day.

But see, feeding them makes them go poop. So I feed them every other day to cut back on stink. Call PETA now.

All that was to tell you I'm not a big animal lover. I wear rubber gloves when I clean their poopy cage up, and I will not, will NOT touch them. I hate animals. Living things. THings that breathe. So I use a fish scoopy net thing to get them out.

What do I hate worse than living things? DEAD USED to be living things. I've had a few dead mice thrown in my face growing up and dead stuff SKEEVES me out. BIG TIME.

So last week, I walk by the bathroom and notice the floor is all wet. This is the downstairs bathroom that never flushes right and after having to leave a toilet full of poop for my husband to deal with one morning at 6 am, I haven't used it since because well, I poop alot. Sometimes I need aids to do so, and then we have a real multiple flusher. So I need the reliable toilet.

I walk by the bathroom that I never use, and therefore have forgotten about Cotton Candy and whatever the other one is, so who knows how their lives have been going. And the floor is wet.

Huh. Weird. I turn the light on, and the tank is usually on the toilet, and there it is, flipped upside down on the toilet seat. Thank GOD the lid was down or they might have just found a nice new shit smelling home.

I pick up the aquarium and was terrified to look. Neither one is moving. I holler for the person I married for this precise reason because even though I can do anything a boy can do but better and my superpowers are awesomeness and red hair and ass kicker extroidinaire, well, shit. I cannot look in this cage to see the dead used to be living creatures. This is why women marry men. That and emptying the mice traps.

He comes in and one is moving. K. The other one is not.

I'm torn. I can't keep one and not the other. The only reason I have them is becuase there are 2 and I always figured if one died, I'd just hire the mutant ninja turtle guys to come whack the other. At this point I don't know which one belongs to Arielle, which one belongs to Chandler, or why neither child is helping with the monthly feedings...

Finally that lazy sumbitch starts moving around. So the 2 things that I thought were dead used to be living creatures, are both still alive. THANK GOD! Thankyou God for saving these turtles lives. Thankyou God for not dissapointing my little girls. Thankyou God for not making me have to face dead smelly things that smelled bad enough alive, for not having to have a turtle funeral, and for not having to decide who's turtle it was we were burying.

The one who didn't move had a shell as white as snow. I'm not sure how long they sat there without water. Could have been a full 24 hours. I know I put water and a crapload of food in the tank for them, shit be damned! EAT AND BE MERRY SWEET TURTLES!!! I hate you less now than I did a month ago!! I'm sorry I contemplated leaving you behind in our apartment in Seymour, leaving you as orphans and lying to my girls, your mommies.

Sometimes, you think you hate something. And then you give it half a chance, and you wind up liking it. I thought I was going to hate Indy and was pretty much calling it "temporary" even though that meant 3 years while I go to college.

I had a nightmare the other night that my husband was killed. I know, stupid right. Well, there has been alot of activity in the area with police officers getting injured/killed. And as horrified as I was to wake up and realize that was a horrible dream, it occurred to me, without him I have no home here. My home is because of him. I lose him, I lose Indy. Through my nightmare I realized I actually like it here. It takes me 30 minutes to get through the city in the mornings, just to get to Greenwood and I LIKE IT. I like passing the yahoos doing 50 downtown. AS IF.

5 weeks ago, that was me. 5 weeks ago I'm doing 30 in a 45, 40 in a 50 where everyone is doing 70. I'm not so scared anymore. I was planning out how to pass semi trucks miles in advance. I was having severe anxiety attacks. The thought of having to go back to my old shitty life in Seymour, and my old shitty go nowhere job in a go nowhere town made me appreciate the potential I'm sitting on here.

look out Indy. I'm here. I have arrived. I am home.