For most of the Holiday Season I was exhausted from finals and work, depressed and ill. I had become ill when I got the flu and it put me in the ER. It was both a traumatic and expensive experience. I had gotten so sick and regurgitated so many times I ruptured my duodenum which caused internal bleeding and dehydration. It was extremely painful and I didn't sleep all night or all day in the ER until they gave me some morphine. I got a prescription for some pain killers and some stomach acid reducers after three bags of ice cold saline IV and an anti-anemic.
I didn't start to feel better until a small raggedy kitten followed me home from the laundromat. It walked up to my mate and I as we were about to go inside, and I snatched it up and snuggled it to my sweater at which point it immediately purred until its bones shook. I took it into my apartment and feed it a plate of cream, a plate of turkey, two cat food pouches, and some dry food before giving it a thorough bath. During the bath I found out it was a she and that she had ear mites, but was otherwise fine accept for malnourished. Over the Holiday Season we tried calling her many names but didn't get much of a response. We finally settled on Patchouli Maple, since she looks like a patch of the forest floor littered with maple leaves and patchouli plants.
Patchouli is a very hyper kitten and drives our other cat Nova insane. Patchouli loves to play and cuddle, and is almost always purring about something. Nova on the other hand is relaxed and more interested in window watching and exploring gardens. Initially Nova hated Patchouli and wouldn't even sit in the same room with her. Now they can sit on the bed together without clawing and hissing.
For Christmas I went home to see my family. During winter solstice, we painted glass potpourri pillars with holly and spruce to give to our families. For Christmas and my Birthday I received many useful gifts: a red dragon and black peony embroidered tapestry, a candle and a silver candlestick with a snowflake on the stem, a string of multi-colored pine cone shaped lights, a pair of cat socks and a a pair of white socks, candy, a clock with a moving water picture of a cove on it, a pair of jeans that don't quite fit since I lost so much weight being ill, and enough money from relatives to pay my bills and buy groceries for December and January while my mate tries to get a consistent schedule for the new semester between his two jobs. As a special birthday gift my mom is going to take my mate and I to Ojo Caliente, a natural hot springs and spa resort upstate. For Christmas my mate got an awesome new jacket, soft blanket, gloves, and a hoodie. He also got candy, books, and money from relatives to help us through the season. His parents were going to buy him a full sized mattress, but since our apartment is so infested with cockroaches they decided to wait until we move sometime this spring. For my mates birthday his family took us out to dinner, unfortunately he was tense, depressed, and had a headache since he had just gotten off of a nine hour shift and walked home. Dinner was less than pleasant, and at the end he broke down crying in the car while I explained to his bewildered family how much working 7 days a week is making his body hurt, and about the rude managers that change his schedule every other week and take no consideration for the days he said he could work and days he reserved for school, the struggle trying to pay for and make time to go to college, and getting ends to meet.
Lately I've just been trying to get all my financial aide and materials in order for my full time classes this spring. I've been cleaning my house, organizing drawers and cupboards, throwing things out, etc. I want to be able to move this semester, my parents are going to pay the deposit and offer some money towards rent so I can move to a nicer place and wont have to live in such a condemnable apartment. This is my 5th semester going to college for two associates degrees, one in Business Graphics, and one in Crossmedia Production. So far I have been doing well, I have 38 credits of the 70 or so I need.
I have to renew my FAFSA sometime soon this month. I pay for school with subsidized federal student loans. I can only have $2,500 a year because I am under 24. I had qualified for several scholarships, but due to office error my application wasn't processed until nine days after the registration deadline and I lost eligibility for all my scholarships. I think this is my mate's 7th semester going for an A.S. in computer programming, however he is considering taking a few extra classes and getting a degree in computer animation as well. I think its a good idea, it is what I am doing. He will finish this year and be able to get a much better job, provided he can stay caught up with his classes while working full time. He receives less financial aide than I do and I often have to pay for some of his books.
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Lately I have been working for a small restaurant near my college. We are doing business on the basis of service exchange: I get to send my mate over there to eat when I don't feel like cooking over the winter. I get store credit equal to the amount of cash I would have charged for my services. So far I've made a small website and a new Menu, for which I charged 65$ altogether. I know it is very under-priced, but I guess I have personal motives for the success of the business, or at least I do now. As I've worked with the mostly technically illiterate staff, except for the 15 year old who has the business computer running as a Halo and chat station, we've become quite friendly. Also, I try to spend my money and time on local businesses to keep them in the community instead of them trickling away through all the corporations that come to Albuquerque for the cheapest minimum wage in the country.
On the 30th of November the owner called me and said, "I need a new Menu, you can have it done yesterday or the day before." I replied that I would start on it right away so she could examine the rough draft tomorrow morning before business hours and we could discuss printing options. The person who was previously working on the desktop publishing needs of the business was fired and left. I've inherited the files he left behind. All of them contained impossible fonts, spelling, and typographical errors. The menu he had was also hard to read and over cluttered with template-like promotional cut outs. Why would you want the customer to cut apart the menu? Those sorts of things really out to printed separate from the menu. To correct these problems and make the revisions and additions that the owner requested, I ended up starting over.
First I made all the corrections, additions, and revisions to the asset file for the menu, then I decided that it would be easiest to work in Illustrator. Illustrator has several useful features for print layout, even though it is used mostly for making vector graphics. Since it was such a small project I could use the features Illustrator offered, and not have to break out InDesign. InDesign is desktop publishing software of excellent quality, however, I have less experience with that program than Illustrator. I decided on an elegant Palintino Linotype for the main font, and an optically kerned brush script for the title. The previous title was done in an impossible bold and italic script that wasn't kerned at all. I updated the web page with the new fonts after I added the title. The rest of the menu fell into place with ease, and I made some small attractive graphics for the footers. After reading a few articles on good menu layout from restaurant.com I decided to put the best selling items (breakfast) in the front and cash cows (catering) in the back. Most people don't read menus, they scan them. So you have to analyze your menu from the perspective of how the eye travels through it.
The next morning I went to the FedExKinko's on Central near Girard to get some price estimations on printing costs, and to print some business cards I designed for my mate. The staff were slow to be of assistance, and the computer rentals only offered 56k modems with which to retrieve your files for printing. At a charge of .20 cents a minute it took 5 dollars to retrieve and print a 700kb PDF. There was one computer, a wintel design station with more capabilities, however it was crowded with Scrap Book Moms trying to learn Photoshop Elements. The staff were quite willing to assist them for .20 cents a minute, for what seemed like hours. When I asked if I could get the cards printed on perforated card stock, the staff ignored me and told me that they need me to pay an extra fee to print the cards from a color printed sheet on regular paper, so they could scan it and print it on the cards stock. After I did as requested, I decided I was only going to buy 1 sheet of business cards and get out of there. The cards I got looked pretty bad, one of them was illegible. By forcing a print from a low DPI printer and then making a scan to reprint on the card stock, they had completely degraded my design. I had made the file a PDF specifically so they could use it on their computers to print from. It looked pixelated and rough, even though I used no bitmaps whate-so-ever for that reason (and costs of course). The they told me that I could feel free to use the self-service station to cut them myself. That took 20 minutes, and it was a good thing I am quite good with a cutter from my experience matting my art pieces.
I went to check price estimations in their desk catalog I found that they only cater to large businesses and their lowest document order was 1000 prints, b&w, for 550$. They of course, offered design services for like (these are ballpark) 75$/an-hour 25$ minimum, and 10$ and hour for any typesetting that needed to be fixed taking longer than 10 minutes. I gasped thinking about the 10$ an hour I was expected to receive being an entry-level ink plate cleaner when I graduated with my two degrees in business graphics and cross-media production so far with, and hopefully continued, 4.0. That information was provided by a pamphlet from my college.
Later, due to a lack of anything resembling a print house within walking distance of the business, and my apartment, I had to go back. I decided we would print some test color copies and see if the owner liked them. I went with an employee and representative of the owner. This time I couldn't retrieve my documents at all because their whole Internet was down, and all the staff were busy working on a machine that wasn't charging people to use the computer. Nice priorities. I tried to get assistance three times. I was there for an hour trying to get help. We ended up just leaving, and decided to try again somewhere else tomorrow. I had never been so embarrassed in front of a client.
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"Once upon a time there was a friendly, little black cat with seven toes on each front foot and a small voice; her name was Thumbs. Before a particularly dreadful winter she became pregnant from a delightful tryst with a large tom of mysterious demeanor. Her human sponsors did not look kindly to her sudden new requirements for shelter and food for a litter of kittens, and they shut her out from their home and hearts.
Desolate and forlorn, she wandered alleys and scrap bins until coming upon a quaint, unkempt apartment building with an open basement. The basement ran under the entire building and was filled with dirt, refuse, spiders, pesticides, and most importantly darkness. It was here she made nest for her soon approaching brood.
The tenants were cheered by her strong will to live and brought her what they could spare of their meager means. She birthed two kittens at the end of that fall. One was a blue-eyed, coal black mischief maker, and the other was shy, with a lightly dappled tabby coat and long soft fur. The tenants were pleased with the kittens, and didn't mind their occupation of building (since it was so old it already smelt of cat piss and cockroaches between walls and in the basement.) They prided themselves on glimpses of the offspring and related them to each other when sharing food or necessities. The kittens grew healthy and prepared for the winter from the hearty scraps of food and blankets the tenants left by the basement openings. Thumbs, who had previous experience with humans, often enjoyed strokings from the tenants, but her kittens remained elusive from human contact.
A tom cat named Spot, a brisk fellow of siamese and grey tabby heritage, took to associating with Thumbs and her brood, bringing them hunted food, and teaching the kittens to hunt in the overgrown garden behind the rotten wooden fence of the apartment grounds. Despite his vagabond ways, he had human sponsorship from a family living in the apartment building.
Nova, a tonkinese she-cat living in one of the apartments often mused down upon the tribe outside her windows. On several occasions she displeased her human friends by prying boards from the walls with her delicate paws as to go and socialize in the basement. The kittens gained worldly knowledge and useful wisdom from her visits.
Soon the harsh, frost bearing winds of November swept from over the mountains, and Thumb's new home came into question from the ruthless landlord of the building. He was plump man ruled by tempers, and very displeased from the city inspector's demand for him to finish building the roof of one of the buildings. He told the oldest of tenants, a disabled women, his plan to trap and poison the kittens and Thumbs. This news brought much distress to the tenants of the building who checked their local laws to discover that the poisoning of feral animals was illegal. They did not hold confidence that the landlord would see reason and let the animal shelter trap the family and take them to the local humane association for medical treatment and adoption. The tenants also could not afford to rent a trap themselves to take in the family and get them the necessary medical treatments from a low income veterinary surgery program.
Thanksgiving passed, and no action was taken, soon the tenants hoped that the kittens might leave the nest and go to their adventures then Thumbs would take leave soon after. They started to think it would be for the best if the family was to disperse and avoid an untimely fate they felt powerless to prevent."
As yet, nothing has come to pass, and I wait with stifled hope for the future of the Family of Thumbs.
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cutesnowkitty's journal
drained
annoyed
melancholy