Couch 157: Fair Value

This is currently how I feel about No. 3 and her stupid letter.

Are you actually communicating with her?

Oh that sweet lil face!!!

He has such interesting coloring!

People of PC, I am very much wanting a cat.

Issues:

I have a dog. He loves cats, but gets overly excited, so it needs to be a cat that will lay down the law immediately with him or he will run after them. How do I know the cat I adopt will be able to do this without disemboweling my dog?

I live on a busy street and the cat would need to be an indoor cat. How do I know if the cat I adopt can tolerate that kind of life? I know if they're wanting to go outside, and are used to that, they will be miserable and loud about it.

Is it better to get a kitten, or is that asking for trouble?

Knowing absolutely nothing about cats or dogs:

1. Could you take your dog along when you go cat searching and kinda check out mutual compatibility before bringing a cat home? So, maybe a cat would love your dog to run after him / her / (gender-queer cat version) and all will be well? And, you wouldn't need the cat to lay down the law as much as feign total disinterest in your dog while actively encouraging the aforesaid running-after? Which of course would hopefully make the dog chase the cat all the more and so on and so forth?

2. In my utter ignorance, I assume folks with the cats / kittens would know if they'd be okay being indoors vs. not?

On a totally unrelated note -- I've been seeing that people can basically disappear for weekends / evenings / even actual weekdays after delivering something that's full of mistakes because they feel they need the time off and so, aren't available to fix their mistakes? I don't know if my expectations are out of whack (cue my generally miserable mental state) but if someone comes back to me and says that there's a problem with my work, I drop everything (and if it involves dealing with expensive air tickets, I've done my best to work my way around that) and try to fix it. But, now I feel like I have a problem with setting boundaries at work while others don't? Argh.

AY--about your unrelated note, I am the same way. I get right on something if it's an issue I need to fix. And I tear my hair out when others go radio silent over their own eff ups.

On the cat front: I have been hoping for months that a stray cat would show up and announce itself to me.

For cats: my youngest miss Penelope was a ferel rescue, she seems to have adapted fine to being an indoor cat. She LOVES to look out the window, but she has never tried to escape out the door when someone goes out, happily. I think she likes knowing where her next meal is coming from... I've had cats my whole adult life, so far maybe I've just been lucky, but they've been pretty adaptable for all that cats ALSO think they rule the world.... we had a dog when I was a kid, but I so much prefer cats.

My son was actually home last night, so we went out to breakfast this morning, we see so little of him it's great when he's here and we can go out for a family breakfast on the weekend! Plus we had a coupon for buy one get one free AND a $25 gift card that we got from switching to DishTV recently so we didn't even have to pay that much.

Our son shared with us some cool stuff. He's still in this program through his high school that's part of the college scholarship he's on, he just got asked at work if he would go visit his high school manufacturing class to do the machine set-ups for the parts that the class runs for his company. (the teacher of the class is friends with the owner and as part of his class, the students run some very simple parts.) He's excited to get to do that! They trust him a lot.

Well it's the weekend again, so I just put in a load of laundry, need to go load the dishwasher cuz I was too lazy to do it last night, and then get some studying done. I'll be popping in from time to time when I break from studying. Happy Saturday, all!

Make sure to give the cat plenty of space above where the dog can reach, or baby gates to go underneath . That is good for the litterbox place anyway bc yes dogs will snack on that( blech). Jackson Galaxy on the My Cat From Hell tv show actually has good ideas about how to "catify" a place that is shared with a dog. In my house, my one 9 lb kitty rules the school over the three 70 lbs dogs, and they all love one another and nap together. I agree with keeping the cat indoors bc they are so vulnerable.

That's a really good point about preparing above dog space. I see that I have more work to do. I also just went on fb and realized I know people who live, breathe and write about this kind of stuff, so I need to tap that resource as well. It's not a good sign when I forget about real life people.

rr—look for cats that have been fostered? Often the foster parent has a good idea of their habits, and has babies and other animals and will know how the cat interacts with them. Most shelters have foster programs.

Or, you could foster yourself and then make it permanent.

ETA: “babies and other animals”

I am trying to figure out if this will make me more rageful (in current T's lingo) or not.

Current T has asked to see my wood-work stuff a couple of times -- latest was right before I did some very basic pyrography last weekend.

I am a tad pleased with the results of that (instructor showed it around etc) although I can point to all the many flaws in it.

Am considering taking it along to session (it's a rather small piece) but not sure if current T's no-doubt super enthusiastic (I can't believe they're totally authentic) responses will make me....I dunno....more rageful or something.

I'm screwed up, I know.

If my experiences with showing them my writing are any tell, yes, they will be super-enthusiastic, and no, it won’t feel sincere. I explained this to CW once as “it’s like your parents oohing and aahing over your three-year-old drawings and putting them on the fridge.” Even though three-year-olds—me, anyway—know the response is disproportionate to the quality of the work.

Perhaps you could use it as practice in dealing non-ragefully with possible insincerity? (Pro tip: I just stare blankly at them when they compliment me.)

Awk - why not let your inner three year old enjoy the experience? Who is this crabby critical person anyway? Maybe miss crabby is the inauthentic one, and the sunny faced proud little creative artist with no shame is the real you. Why do we cling so tightly to these crabby personae???!!! We want THEIR approval? The unconditional positive regard isn't worth the soft cozy toilet paper it's excremented upon?

I don't know if any of you will find this amusing or not... But I was just at the supermarket and went through the self-checkout line. Behind me was a handsome man with only 3 items and he was going to have to wait for me to bag all of my stuff. I smiled at him and told him that he could get started with his groceries even though I knew that our groceries would get intermingled. He gladly took me up on my offer and we bagged our groceries together. That's probably the closest that I'll get to a date for a while.

Computer question. Anyone using Firefox (mine's for Mac, if that makes a difference) and have the most recent update where all the tabs are black with gray text? Is there a way to change the color of them? It's driving me crazy because it's more difficult for me to read. (I tried looking in a few locations, like View and Preferences, but am not finding an option to change it.)

ETA: Also, the little thing you could click on in the toolbar to refresh or stop loading seems to have gone away. Why do they have to keep changing stuff???

My writing workshop teacher informs me that my work is “dark.”

I wonder where he got that idea?

The black font on black background?

Just had a look around (I'm on PC) and can't find any way to do it from within Firefox, but there is this addon...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/colorfultabs/

Might see if you can get it to play ball that way.

EDIT: No, don't do that. I've just tried it, and it makes the problem even worse...

Just found this, which fixes the problem: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1184572

And it's unaluna for the win!

I completely agree. Besides, AY, if you are not hating what you've done, why not celebrate that fact and let Blondie rejoice as only she can? Because you know she's going to be as excited that you showed her something as she is about the quality of the thing itself. I think it's not a bad thing to let go of the critic now and then. I wouldn't be able to create a thing if it were all critic and no three year old.

Informal couch poll: has anyone ever felt like PC has made their mental health worse?

I've been reading a very triggering thread throughout the day, and it's been hard for me to keep it together. It's been a month (tomorrow) since I've SH, I'm proud, and want to keep that record going. It's been a struggle today, though.

This isn't me saying goodbye, for I'm sure I'll be back. But I may not post for a while. Hugs and other forms of appropriate comfort to all who want or need it.

I have it--just updated itself the other day--and I hate it. I'm not sure where you change those settings. Maybe google the question?

Oh--and LT, the refresh button is now in the upper left, next to the home icon and back/forward buttons.

I know, right?

So, I think it'll be extra worse in terms of current T's responses to me because I blabbed to her (cue violins, I know) that the typical three-year-old praise stuff didn't happen for me (my mom obsessively collected every piece of scrap my brother made and would go over it with me even many years later while pointedly saying how she couldn't be bothered to collect any of my stuff......straight-out-of-the-womb-ugly-whiny kid that I was [all her words]). As for my father, nothing less than straight-up Shakespeare level quality even as a 5 year old would be considered.

Current T brings up this stuff at times and so, I feel like she does her best -- much as it makes me cringe -- to sort of, kind of, compensate for it. Except I'm not sure it'll help but I do appreciate her efforts.

True that, Una -- it's like growing a new skin though, isn't it? I wouldn't know who I am if I took in any of it.

(Oh gawd, now I'm beginning to sound like current T -- one of her oft-repeated complaints is that I 'can't take her in'.)

Oh gawd....I'm sooooo going to call her Blondie from now on

True, true, rr -- about not being able to create if it were critic all the time!