Hooplah.Org A Story of Graceful Stumbles

Trip down memory lanes

I'm relieved to finally accept that there's no chance that I will be dieing of rabies anytime soon. Since a mouse bit me sometime back in early October, I had been so paranoid of the freak chance that it could have given me something fatal that I was looking up every odd pain or flinch I've had since then. Since rabies incubation period is usually a max of 8 weeks for people, I should be in the clear by now, since it's quickly approaching 12 weeks since it happened. I'm relieved, in that "how could I be so silly" way.

And how did a mouse come to bite me, you ask? Well, to make a long story somewhat short: one was loose in the house and my mother put a sticky trap in my room behind my TV to catch it. While on a Sidi raid in DAoC I happened to look to my right and the mouse had indeed walked across it and gotten stuck. I had never thought of what to do with the mouse once it was caught until I saw it trying to crawl away using only it's front feet. I won't go into the graphic details of how much he had hurt himself trying to free himself from the plastic, but it was nearly enough to make me cry just looking at him. I decided I would try to remove it from the very sticky plastic outside on the porch, because it was simply too cruel to leave it that way to die. The only way to do that was, as gently as possible, to try to pull the mouse off. While I was trying, he turned around and bit my finger. When I went back inside and told my father what happened, while blood made a constant drip down my finger, he did nothing but continue to lay there and called me stupid and said I would get rabies. Not in a concerned way, but with a continuing "you're so stupid" theme. I finally convinced him to help me remove the mouse from the sticky pad while I tended to my finger. He ended up using a shovel to remove the mouse, and then flinging it under the porch still covered in the sticky goo... as if that was worth the effort at all. I flushed out the wound as much as I could and tried to go on without worrying about it. It was very sore, but it healed quickly.

There was alot that happened in October that I never felt the real urge to sit down and write about. Like seeing School of Rock with Stephen instead of filling out employment applications at the department stores like I had intended to do. We ended up eating at Wendy's, I chickened out, and we went across the street to see the movie instead. I also forgot to write about walking around downtown Fredericksburg with Michelle while the weather was still in the warm 70s and the leaves were still green. Her and I and gone into the birdshop there, and a tiny parrot that was on top of a cage tried frantically lick the leftover salt from lunch out from under my fingernails. Michelle also spent a large portion of time petting the tummy of this very large white and pink bird. We didn't go into many other stores, but mostly walked around and talked.

I really did have a good time with Michelle that day, and had not wanted her to leave that night. Now that she's back in Roanoke, I'll have even less of a chance to see her than I did while she was living just an hour away. Why I kept forgetting to return her calls in her last week of living in northern VA, I have no idea. Dave IMed me and told me that he had already run into Michelle by chance somewhere, and she had only been living at her father's for roughly 2 weeks or so then.

I'd really like to see Dave again, and to see Radford as well. It would probably be painful as hell to take it all in, to actually see the ghosts of my past walking around... but what's the point of hiding. I really did fall in love with the place... and after all, it wasn't it who left me. Deep down it was I that made the conscious decision to leave, because I knew I didn't belong there. I know I don't belong there now, which is why I would keep my visit short. If for nothing else than to keep myself from getting any wild ideas of going back. It was the time, it was the people, it was the moment that I miss... not the consequences of hard work and commitment.

Sometimes I think of what it would be like to see Sarita again, as Michelle had always mentioned that we could take the metro if we ever wanted to visit her. We left off on such bad terms, and it's been so long since I've seen her... I don't know if I'd be able to be friendly with her. Not in an upset or angry way, but that I just wouldn't know how to begin to. Everything's so different now, I don't know if I would be friends with someone like her.

Sometimes I miss my friends from high school that I've lost touch with (which has totally been my fault), and I'm sure whatever bond I had with them has suffered the same fate as the one I had with Sarita. It is a very odd thought that I have not seen Carl in person for 2 years... nearly 10 years ago I would have rather died than to have gone that long without seeing him. Someone from his house had called me on Thanksgiving while Matt and I were still asleep, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that he had. Though, at the time I figured he must have dialed the wrong number, and never attempted to call him back. For all I know, it would have been Lindsay calling in anger over some compromising pictures she found... so I just let it be. By the time I was in good enough shape to call, they would have been deep into their holiday festivities, and I saw no real point in interrupting that.

Though I have become more "calm" in the past two years, I have also become much more shy. Not in a self conscious way, but just in fear that I'll do something I regret. There's been so many pointless, careless, selfish things I have done for no real reason that I would give anything to remove from the record, and I've become so afraid of just adding to the list. Example: I'm completely comfortable with my body and my appearance, but heaven forbid someone say something to me and expect a witty or clever response back. I instantly become stunned when it seems like something is being expected of me that I just cannot provide while not on my own terms.

Ehh... Enough of that for a while.