lenora_rose | (no subject)

1) This is NOT crossposting to LJ. I think I may simply abandon my LJ and not delete, since deleting requires me to agree t the new terms long enough to get in. I am hoping to retrieve comments. I do intend to contact two people I see there and check if/how they plan to post in future, but otherwise, anyone I know who was posting there either crossposts here or has effectively abandoned this style of blogging.

2) This is a repeat of my last facebook post, so no new content for anyone who sees me post there.

Two in a row "why I suck as a person". Took Elise to the vet today because 2 claws had overgrown so far they were cutting into her paw, deep enough one of them left a bit of necrotizing tissue. (Cue all my freaking out about how none of us noticed sooner even though she cuddles up in peoples laps and gets petted still - but within the weekend alone me, Colin and my mother all held her and missed seeing it. It was a friend who finally said he saw something wrong with her paw.)

She's fine, home and stuck in a cone for a week while it heals. And pills, yay.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

So the litter boxes were a disgrace and with an injured cat, I was bound and determined to clean them up. The day was cool but nice enough I cracked a window for the upstairs box. Normal so far.

The downstairs boxes have no convenient window, so I popped the front door open.

Shortly thereafter Joseph appears at my side, first commenting on what I'm doing (I already had to stop him "helping" once while upstairs) then stepping out onto the porch. I grab him ag once and bring him inside, telling him both it's not time for a walk and it's too cold to be out barefoot. He heads around the corner and plonks at the piano for a while. Colin, incidentally, is well within earshot and attention, or would be if he weren't worn out and sick . So he misses all of this. And stupidly, I don’t point it out.

So neither of us sees Joseph quietly slip right behind me and back out the door. And up the alley barefoot.

So after a dpuble check of the house I grab my phone and shoes and head off. Colin calls 911.

Two streets down, a woman, leaving her parents' house, sees a barefoot boy in a light shirt cross the street, and brings him over to their house. They get his name out of him (kinda, he says Joseph Patrick but he also adds something they interpret as David, which was probably "Dave and Ava") and also call 911. (The mom also recognizes a child with some kind of developmental delay, and seems quite taken with him, both further points in her favour if "sheltering lost child" isn't enough.)

So a minimal amount of panic later we're reunited. But I am left feeling like a horrible person all around.

(Let me make clear; nobody else did or said anything to make me feel that way and I am not looking for reassurances about my own nature. Just recognizing my own fragile emotional state, itself a reasonable reaction.)