Pizza!

I'm really feeling like crap tonight. Took a nap that turned out to be an hour and a half long and, now that I'm up, I feel like a truck hit me. Chronic fatigue syndrome, the gift that keeps on giving, folks. So, anyway, I'm much too exhausted to cook anything or even heat anything up. So, yes, I've ordered in a large pie with sundried tomatoes, half-broccoli and half-eggplant. The broccoli, at least, will be good for me. Or so I like to tell myself.

Heard today about the little stray kitty that was hanging out in the abandoned building next door, that a neighbor from a few doors down tried to corral into a carrier and only succeeded in freaking out so that she ran away and we didn't know where. I started to mention her to our postal carrier, Ronny, who told me that he'd been the one to find her body on some steps. I'm just so sad about this. And right after he told me, the neighbor who'd wanted to give her a home came out and I told her, too. I'm sorry I did, it didn't occur to me until afterwards that she may feel that she's to blame, but I can't help that, I guess. And in a way, I'm glad I know about Ivy (that's what this neighbor and her young daughters had named her), at least I'm not wondering and worrying about her anymore. I can mourn her and move on.

Someone posted on Echo a link to an article about how pets help people live longer and better lives. As if I didn't already know that. And yet, I immediately thought of my mother and stepfather. For two well-meaning people, it would be hard to find anyone less suited to owning pets, leaving aside deliberately cruel people. It speaks a lot, of course, to the fact that my mother should never have tried to be a parent, but she sucks at the whole care-giving thing and my stepfather is much worse. Of course, she takes care of him and vice-versa...sorta. These are people who, when she had chest pains for three weeks some years back and they finally got bad enough for her to say something to him and it was a Saturday afternoon, they both figured it would be okay if they just waited until Monday and called her doctor. Upon which, of course, the doctor told her to go immediately to the emergency room and she was hospitalized for I don't know how long (I don't know because they didn't even tell me about this until she'd been home for three weeks or so).

Anyway, I'm trying not to think of how poorly they took care of their dogs years ago and their cats. Thankfully, my stepfather recently allowed his last aging, ailing cat to be taken to the vet and, soon thereafter, put to sleep, putting her out of her misery. I don't want to go into details about all her symptoms, I'm sure I don't even know them all, but from what I know, she lived a pretty miserable life. And I'm sure that my stepfather thinks he did the best for her, but in fact, he let her suffer.

I fear that he lets my mother suffer, too. And I have to let that go, because she is his responsibility at this point, not mine.

The neighbor's dog is outside barking again. Sometimes, I hate people.