*Sheepish look.*  It has been a while, hasn’t it?  I’m not going to apologize for not updating, because clearly all of my readers (all three of them) have managed to continue their lives without reading my blog.  I know.  I’m shocked, too. *grin*

During the last few months, my pet rats have come down with mycoplasmosis.  Before I had rats, I barely knew what it was or how it affected the body.  All I know is that practically every pet rat has it and that it makes people who know far more about raising and breeding rats than me shudder.  In the pet rat, community, saying the word “myco” is like saying “Hamlet” instead of “The Scottish Play.”  It was rough for a while.  There are things that it’s okay to ask a small animal owner with a sick pet.  “You took a rat to the vet?” is definetly not one of them.

After I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of Gir coughing and wheezing, I finally packed up all three of them and drove for an hour to talk to a small animal specialist.

Listening to a rat in the advanced stages of myco will break your heart in half- he was half coughing, and half gasping for air while squeaking with every breath.   It cost me all my extra money for a month to get antibiotics for all three of them, but I think of it as mental health insurance.  I know this is a long shot, but if you live in the Eastern Tennessee/West Georgia area and ever need a good small animal vet, please e-mail me.  I’d love to save someone else the trouble of going to a “cat and dog only” animal hospital.

I am blogging, live, from the quaint, scenic pastures of my grandmother’s living room!  Today is laundry day, and Gran is nice enough to let me do laundry at her house while she’s away.  She & her best friend are in Florida right now, and has already sent me adorable photos of herself trying to learn how to steer a speed boat.  When I’m in my seventies, I hope that I am even half as awesome as she is.

Hanging out at Gran’s house also means that I have access to cable TV.  *Choirs of angels descend and begin to sing.*  Having to watch the presidential debates on youtube can feel a little… limiting. 

I can’t afford cable at my apartment & don’t really have room for a TV, so this is a nice change.  Today, I am watching what I call the “moving furniture around” channel.  It’s all home decorating shows and documentaries about people remodeling their houses.  It’s funny; I’ve never been one of those people who’s obsessed with having “nice” furniture or decorations.  I figure that anyone who’s going to be visiting my apartment already knows me, so why waste money trying to impress my family & close friends?  As long as the place is reasonably clean, I’m not going to worry that my couch is a hand me down and has that ugly blue plaid pattern from the 1980s.  I also live with three pet rats who love to chew anything that isn’t attached to the wall (and a few things that ARE).  For now, cardboard bookshelves will be fine, thanks. 

At the same time, I have a minor obsession with the idea of home decorating.  I’ve spent hours playing The Sims 2 not to make characters interact with one another, but to build & decorate enormous mansions.  I still have a fantasy of owning my own house one day.  I want a little bungalow.  I want to live in the middle of nowhere because I do NOT want to deal with neighbors complaining that my hot pink house will bring down their precious property value. *g* 

Right now, my plan is to stay where I am and try to find a job here.  The upside to living in a small town is that both rent and cost of living are a lot lower.  If I stay put for a few years, I think I can get most of my student loans paid off and even get a little money saved up.  Living in a big city in this economy is probably not the best plan, even though I miss the “anything goes” attitude.

I’m going to switch over to the news.  Hopefully, somebody on CNN can explain to me why our government is going to bail out irresponsible Wall Street businessmen while I still have to pay back money I borrowed to finance my education so that I could get a job in the first place.  If anything, it seems to me like the government should “bail out” the recent graduates.  The people who worked at the lending companies had THEIR chance; give us ours. 

She began her tirade in such a way to let me know that it would be perfectly reasonable to tune out the rest.

“The problem with you liberals,” she drawled. Ah, isn’t that always fun? Gross generalizations, stereotypes, & assumptions always make for intelligent dialogue about politics. “The problem with you liberals is that you’re too wishy-washy. You don’t say what you think.”

This is news to me. My first instinct was to task if she had been on the Internet lately. Then I realized what she meant; the liberals she knows, who live in our small town within a red state, are often evasive when it comes to political discussion. We have this crazy obsession with keeping our jobs & maintaining a reasonable amount of peace among our social circles. She can rant about how abortion represents the end of the world all she wants & people will agree with her. If I were to make an innocuous statement about supporting rights for same-sex couples, I become the “outsider.” That’s just the way it is.

“Saying what you think” is a privilege reserved for the majority. The “majority” can mean different things, depending on the context, but what it means is that not everybody has the luxury of talking about their opinions and beliefs to anyone who happens to be in the same room. This doesn’t mean that I lie about what I think. I think anyone who has spent any amount of time with me knows (or
can guess) my opinion on “the issues.”

I wonder if part of this has to do with the blogging revolution. People have come to see others not as co-workers or fellow students, but as a captive audience, all of whom are dying to know their fascinating opinions about everything from the presidential candidates to bottled water. It doesn’t help that we tend to flock to people (both online and off) who are exactly like us. I know I’m guilty of this- the easiest way to start a conversation circa 2005 was “I can’t believe that President Bush… [insert latest national outrage here]. What a moron!” Immediately, you were surrounded by people who were tripping all over themselves to agree with you.

I think it’s interesting that not only has it become acceptable to broadcast your opinions to anyone within earshot. People have twisted it into some sort of virtue. If you are in a position where you’re forced to be tactful, you’re a wuss, a wimp, or a sell-out.

I decided to start over with a fresh install of wordpress.  I liked cutenews, but I kept getting mobbed by spammers.

This layout features Christina Ricci.  I’ve been in the mood to make something a little darker and spookier lately; it probably has something to do with Halloween being around the corner. *g*