girlofprey

Things that happened to me today:

• I was walking the dog on one of those leashes that retracts or gives out depending on whether you push a button. Then it broke, and wouldn't retract anymore. While I was trying to figure out what to do with it, the loose leash hanging from my hands dragged through some dry dogmuck on the pavement, and my dog wandered off into someone's front garden.



• My dog did his business up the field, which is his job when we take him on a walk, and then - possibly because of the broken leash I was trying to manage, possibly just because of nothing at all - I got dogmuck all over my hands when I was picking it up with a bag.

Sometimes I just get the feeling that it just isn't my week.

The dog is better, by the way. He was never quite as bad as he was that one day he was really out of sorts, but now he's had all the medicine - sometimes under extreme duress - he seems to be back on form. All eating and regular and whatnot. I was a little worried for a while, because while I was looking after him, at one point he was off the lead and had a huge feather in his mouth. It's size might be a little exaggerated to me compared to what it was actually like, but it was definitely a whole feather, quill and all. And I walked up to him to get him to drop it, and he just swallowed the whole thing before I could get to him. So, we were a bit concerned it was that causing a blockage, because I never saw it come out the other side. The internet was also super unhelpful about whether feathers are indigestible or not - I think not, but dogs in the wild would probably eat them if they ate a bird? So idk. But anyway, if it was causing a blockage, it's obviously stopped now, so as long as he doesn't have a problem I guess there's no point worrying about it.

He's going to my sister's on Wednesday, when my parents are going away. That was their solution to me thinking I would probably find it difficult to look after him and the house while working. Which I think was probably the right decision, because I slept in until 11:05am this morning, and I have to leave for my train at 12pm, and I needed to have a shower. Hopefully that won't be a recurring situation. But I would always worry it might be if I knew I also had a living thing depending on me. Apparently my sister said "yeah, that's fine" when mum suggested it, and we are very much taking her at her word. She looked after him for long enough when she first had him. Although it might be a little confusing for him.

I'm sort of on edge about mum and dad going away - like, I keep forgetting it's happening, and then remembering that no, I will have to go food shopping on Saturday, and the Saturday after, and I won't have any back-up if I'm running late to go for my train and stuff. But I'm sure it'll be fine, and they do deserve it. I just have to remember I have more to do for the next couple of weeks.

A situation is happening in the Let's Play community, and it's kind of gotten me thinking. I'm sure everyone on the internet, particularly people anywhere near Tumblr, knows who Pewdiepie is and that he's kind of a shithead - last week, he used the n-word while streaming a video game, and in response a different company issued a DMCA to take down his old Let's Play of their game, because they didn't want to be associated with him anymore. Which I think is fair enough, but a lot of people think it's going Too Far, and it's kind of reminded everyone who does Let's Plays that they're only allowed to do it - sometimes for a career - by the grace of the game-makers who own the copyrights. And it's just sort of super weird, because I really don't think they're going to stop Let's Plays, any more than they've stopped fanfiction and fanvids (although the content breach is obviously different) - but whether people should be allowed to make money from Let's Plays, and do it officially in that way is another matter. And the money aspect is absolutely part of the reason for the Pewdiepie takedown - the game producer said they were sick of their content helping make him money, especially given he's now a millionaire. And it's sort of brought home to me just how entitled people seem to feel to make money off of, and make a career out of, Let's Plays and other people's copyrighted games. Like, I genuinely think it affects how much a thing is fair use, whether or not you're making money out of it. And the issue has even come up with paid mods and stuff, and how people 'should really be paid for their work' - but being paid or monetising things is literally not an issue with fanfiction, nor is it even really a discussion. And it just seems super-weird, now that I think about it, the way people seem to think 'yeah, this is my take on this game, and it was hard work to make, so I should get paid for it', and literally no-one thinks that about fanfiction, either inside or outside the community - I think Let's Players would be pretty surprised if anyone suggested to them people should get paid for writing fanfiction.

And I know it probably basically comes down to the same old thing - that fanfiction is largely done by women, and Let's Plays are largely done by men, and people automatically see men's work as more creative and valuable than women's. And men are more likely to ask for a reward for their work, and women are probably more likely to be community-minded and do things for free. But it just seems so odd now that this conversation is happening, and literally none of the Let's Players are asking "do we actually deserve to make money off this?". Strange how different views can be to different types of fanworks. Idk. I kind of experience Let's Plays for free anyway, because I have adblocker, and I subscribe to Rooster Teeth mostly for their original content, so I never really thought about it as a monetary thing. But it's interesting. I'll be interested to see how the situation with DMCAs and stuff plays out.

Well. I had a whole day of chilling planned out. Going into town to pick up some stuff, playing some video games. It's my sister's birthday, but my mum was working all day, and I don't tend to go do anything even when the family's all here. But not so much. My sister called around 12pm, asking if mum was around. She went away when I said mum was working, but then called back. Would I watch my YN for a few hours? Like, just 4 hours? Because she had something very important to do, and he was going to a party. Dad had already left a note asking me to maybe take the dog for a walk - which is fine, the walking, but not the poo collecting - so I was pretty thrown by all the sudden requests. But I eventually agreed to both things, since it is her birthday. I went into town - she needed to borrow £3 for the taxi she'd taken, and luckily for her I had it, because she asked me literally 2 minutes before her taxi came - and picked up my YN. My ON was also there, and ended up asking if he could come with us, rather than stay with his mum because he didn't know what she was doing. So that was 2 kids. I had a thought that maybe we could go have lunch together, me and the YN, but both of them had only just had their breakfast, so they weren't hungry. It was raining. I hated it.

I came back and argued with my YN for a short while about whether he could go out unsupervised on his bike rather than waiting 5 minutes for me to have lunch, and then my dad got home from taking my MN to football as I passed them off to him.

Also the dog, who I walked and picked up after this morning, apparently wasn't done and pooed in the living room while my dad was out. So now he's in dog jail. I literally have no idea why, except that my dad wasn't sure if he'd been fed this morning, so suggested I feed him just in case, so maybe he had too much food. But he didn't make a noise or anything about wanting to go out. So it's something else for me to worry about if I have to look after him for 2 weeks on my own.

And that was my Saturday. Also too much chocolate and Youtube videos.

So. It's my last night of it just being me in the house, with Frank and the cat (Kell, short for Keller). I'm currently keeping him out of my room with a wastepaper basket of paper recycling, in an attempt to teach him that it's not okay to be in my bedroom unless I'm there. Jury's out on how effective the lesson is. But anyway. It's been fine, even nice sometimes, but mostly it's made me wonder just how I'm going to do this when my parents go away in a few weeks for a fortnight. I did genuinely find it difficult picking up his poo, although it got better as the week went on. Although some of that might have been to do with the fact we were getting closer to my parents being back, and me not having to do it anymore. But what I mostly learned from the times I put the evening walk off too late is that it's a nightmare trying to take him for a walk in the dark, and especially trying to pick up after him. Never mind how nervous I do get being out in isolated areas when it's dark out. And at the moment, it's getting dark around 8 o'clock - in a few weeks, it'll be getting dark even earlier, and I don't get home till around 8, and later if my train's late. And if he doesn't get enough walks in a day, he does sometimes poo in the kitchen, which is something else to clean up, and I don't know if I can handle the stress.

And I'm not even that sure I'll be able to do the walks in a morning regularly - I do have a tendency to sleep in, and I have showers on some mornings, which is going to give me less time. And even apart from all that, I'm out of the house for 8 hours a day on a weekday. I'm sure he'd be fine, but it's not really fair on him. I could take another week off, but it's very late notice for my boss now, and I only have one week left I think, and that would only cover one of the weeks and it'd be all my holiday for the rest of the year used up.

So I don't know. I think I'm going to have to ask mum and dad to put him in a kennel. It sounds ridiculous when I will be here, but I just don't know that I can do it. Or maybe my sister can have him back, for 2 weeks. I don't know. I'm going to have to discuss it with my parents when they get back.

I'm going to let him back in now. Hopefully one of us has gotten something out of it.

I always remember when I go to the cinema, but then forget when I come back home, but: in May I went to see Jen and Alice, and I jokingly/depressedly asked what they thought people were going to remake next. Turns out it was far beyond anything I imagined, because there's a Mary Poppins 2 on the way - for real - and they're remaking Flatliners. Flatliners. Of all the things.

Salma Hayek is amazing, and they should give her her own buddy movie, with Eva Mendes.

If you want to know what the rest of my life is like, picture me in a field, playing an endless game of "is it dog poo or is it a slug, I wish it was neither". Also my cat made the new move yesterday of apparently bringing us a dead bird as a gift, thinking better of it and deciding to eat the bird instead, and then getting sick and throwing it's innards up on the patio. Which I also had to clean up. So there's that.

My mum got a call on Sunday night from my sister's neighbours. My nephews were apparently in the garden yelling and throwing stones and throwing stones at cars that passed, and my sister was coming out occasionally to call them morons but not do much else. Apparently, my nephews have been doing plenty to these neighbours, such as weeing in a bottle and throwing it over their fence, and throwing stuff over the fence in general, and throwing large amounts of stuff from their bedroom windows into the garden, or into a gap between their garden fence and their conservatory. The woman who lives their used to teach my ON at his school, and they're very sympathetic to the kids and my sister, but they say they've been living in that house for 42 years, and now it's just like being in hell.

So that's nice.

The thing of it is, it's not even like the kids had been in all weekend and were going stir-crazy. My parents had my MN on Friday night, as they usually do, and he slept over, even though there was no football the next morning. Instead he had a presentation, and all of the kids went to that, even though my ON was a bit weird apparently. Then they came back to our house for a few hours. And on Sunday their dad had them, and took them out for the day. So what else can be done? Frankly?

Based on that, my sister/mother called a meeting with my sister's social worker, which went...okay, apparently. The neighbours, on my mother's advice, reported the kids to the police for anti-social behaviour, and now they're not sure how far that's going to go. But it sounded like there was stuff the social worker didn't know, like genuinely how often my parents have the kids. So maybe something will come of it? But who knows. At the moment we're mostly preparing to have their dog, Frank. I wish I was more excited, because I do want a dog, but again I wanted it to be my dog. And all I can think about is how this is going to disrupt things for the cat, if they never get familiar with each other, and how we can never have the doors open when it's hot in summer again, and we're going to have to have a walk schedule and someone's going to have to pick up after him, and etc. But apparently she's still forgetting to feed him, and she hasn't had his coat clipped in months, so I don't know if there's much else we can do. In good conscience. Other than call the RSPCA or send him to the pound. I'm sure it'll be lovely. He's a lovely dog. But it is basically just cleaning up after my sister, again.

I called the doctor's yesterday, to see about talking to someone about my mental health stuff. Apparently I can't book an appointment, because all the pre-booked ones are now taken until the middle of August. The best I can do is call them in the morning to try to get a same day appointment. Which means getting up to call them at 8am, just to see if I can get through, and if I can get a suitable appointment, and at the moment rushing around to change my routine at short notice isn't going to be good for my stress levels, to be honest. But it is the best shot I'm going to have apparently, so I'll probably try to do it later in the week, or next week or something. I also looked into one of the helplines my mother recommended, and it was closed down, but I told my mum and she said she'd just spoken to them a few days ago, and it turned out I had the name slightly wrong. So there's always that if things get bad.

But still. You've got to laugh, haven't you?

Cute internet video of the weekend: a puppy reacting to the sound of wolves howling.

Sometimes it seems like it's just okay for people to be casually racist and sexist and everything nowadays. I saw a bit of Have I Got News For You last night. Did anyone else see it? ( Slight spoiler )

On a related, but not quite as awful note, today on the Adam and Joe show ( Another slight spoiler )

But in slightly better personal news, our dog was having some problems yesterday, but seems a bit better today.( Cut in case people find pets having physical difficulties distressing )

And now it's nearly time for the So You Think You Can Dance finale. I got the result I wanted last week anyway. Well, sort of. ( Spoilers for the outcome )