clementine | Entries tagged with lying

Mirrored from Oh Clementine. You can leave any comments there.

I'm back from my holiday! Overall it was excellent¹, but something happened today that's really upset me.

During our trips, we need someone to take care of the cats. Usually we get one of my school friends to do it; she lives two blocks away, and she works at a vet clinic, so she obviously loves animals. Last time, she spent hours with Jet just because she loves him that much.

Unfortunately, she was in Mexico for part of our trip, so we had to find someone else. I asked someone who I went to middle school with and who I sometimes meet for coffee (about once every 2-3 months). We're not great friends; she usually comes along because she goes to school with one of my best friends. But anyway, she also lives close by, so we thought it would be fine.

APPARENTLY NOT.

I asked her how the cats were on Christmas, 3 days after we got to my aunt and uncle's house. She said they were "divine".

We came back today to find the food and water dishes COMPLETELY empty. Like, COMPLETELY. The water dish was bone dry, not one drop of water left in it. The food dishes? Absolutely nothing in them. And out of the 8 tins of wet food we left on the table, there were 7 left. Wow! Good job NOT feeding my cats!

This REALLY makes me mad. Like, maybe more than it should, but it REALLY makes me mad, to the point where I really don't want to associate with her at all anymore. First, it's such an easy job. You walk two blocks and scoop out some food – and it's only for a week. Seriously. NOT HARD. I get paid $50 for 6 hours of doing ACTUAL WORK. And, I mean, they're just helpless little cats. I don't think they're going to die without food (since she did come in once, so it was probably 3-4 days that they were without), but STILL! It's not like they can do anything other than walk around hungrily. And to let the water dish become empty is really unacceptable.

My mother, for some inexplicable reason, still feels that we should pay her $50. I really don't think someone should be paid a lot of money for NOT doing an easy job.

Maybe this is all a big misunderstanding, but I doubt it. If she had some reason not to come, it's not like we were unreachable. I left her my cell phone number and my uncle's number, and there's always Facebook! Like I said, I even asked her how things were over Facebook. Anyway, I really can't see myself talking to her again in the near future. Overreaction? Maybe. I just don't want to talk to someone who treats my cats as if they're worthless.

if you don't include the part where I STILL had my horrible cough and my horrible sore throat and my horrible headache [↩]

On a happier¹ note, I was able to see my cousin's cats again. Last year, they were adorable little kittens, and now they're full-grown cats². Here is some kitty spam:

Rosie really grew into her looks!

She's adorable, although I don't necessarily appreciate the fact that she was using my slippers as a pillow! My feet were cold.

I still think Snow is adorable, if a little goofy-looking.

He's also MASSIVE – my legs weren't particularly happy with his chosen resting place.

See? Silly-looking!

(And because this entry wasn't mish-mash enough, my cousin's friend was lovely, sweet, and adorable, and I was so happy to have met her. She loved all her presents; after opening the stuffed sheepdog I picked out for her, she never put it down. She even brought it bowling!)

though still cat-related [↩]
though still pretty cute [↩]

Mirrored from Oh Clementine. You can leave any comments there.

I have not been having a great week. I won't go into details about much, but I will mention that I am having huge problems with a certain teacher. I have mentioned him before; I had him last year for two courses, and was a little on the dismayed side to find that I had him again for World Religions this year. Last year, he made a point of pushing his beliefs on us by saying things like (and I quote), "I'm not going to tell you to not eat meat – no, wait, I am. DON'T EAT MEAT," showing us videos about a slaughter house, and generally ignoring the curriculum in favour of these things; this year, he has insulted people who don't care about religion either way by saying that they are "ignorant, boring, and uninformed" and that he "hopes to change their opinions by the end of the year", as well as creationists, saying that they "don't display a sophisticated level of thinking". This makes me extremely uncomfortable to be in his class. If any class should be a safe space, it should be World Religions. It isn't a class about his personal opinion; it is a class where we're supposed to be learning about, you know, the religions of the world.

Yesterday, we had presentations. One group was missing a member due to H1N1; he said that they would have to present anyway. That's fair enough… what isn't fair is the fact that he told them that he expected them to present their partners' information. Apparently, we should all memorise every group member's part on the off chance that they're away. That definitely is not how a group project works; the point of doing it in a group is to split up the work.

That was the last straw for a friend and me. We decided to see the guidance counsellor about switching or dropping the class. Unfortunately, it's too late in the year to do anything about it. We can't even enroll for an online course instead. The guidance counsellor did allow us to voice our concerns, and she advised us to talk to the principal about him.

Today, I was helping out a grade 9 class. (They were learning to make websites, and I'm the head of the web team at my school.) My World Religions teacher came into the room and asked if he could see me after school. I immediately got freaked out, although I told him yes. The teacher whose class I was in¹ asked me what he was talking to me about. I told him most of what I told the guidance counsellor, and he said that he understood and that if I had any problems I should definitely talk to him. I think it's interesting that none of the other teachers seem to be very fond of my World Religions teacher, and are not quick to defend him.

Anyway, I was already having a really bad day, so my best friend ended up finding the World Religions teacher and telling him that I was sick and needed to go home right away. He probably didn't buy it, but I don't think it's appropriate to corner a student and ask to speak to them about something that you had discussed in confidence with someone else.

This entry has gone completely off base from where I was originally going, which was to discuss how people hold back emotions. Because of the way this week has been so far, I've had a lot of strong emotions. My natural reaction to strong emotions? Crying. It's embarrassing, and I don't like it, but that's just how I apparently have to deal with my emotions. This is especially a problem when I'm mad. When I'm angry with someone and trying to express that, the last thing I need is to cry.

When I was about 10, I read Ender's Game. I remember virtually nothing about the book, but one thing that has stuck with me was the brief description of what Ender does when he feels like he is going to cry: he starts at 1, then doubles it, then doubles that.

Since then, that's always what I've done when I'm feeling upset. It helps me concentrate on something else, and it's also a good way to gauge how upset I'm feeling. I've memorised a lot of the sequence, so if it gets so bad that I actually have to do math in my head to figure out what the next number will be, I know that I am extremely close to tears.

Now I'm curious: do you try to hold back your emotions? If you do, how?

(And, because this post wasn't already all over the place, I'm doing NaNoWriMo! I've made a lot of progress so far, and I can afford to take around 2 days off since I'm so ahead.)

who is in charge of the tech group, and who is awesome [↩]

je voudrais être un yeti

i am clem

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