June in a Nutshell - (Long)
I got a little behind in posting, due to the nature of summer college courses.
On those, I did get A's in all three (yay!). I'm already onto the next half of my summer courses. Only two grades, but three courses (yay conjoined labs!).
The first chunk of June was brutal.
TLDR? Here's the summary, with the brutality after the break.
June was harsh. I got bullied in public, Mom was in the hospital, Rook cut her foot open and needed constant maintenance, Shane was at drill for two week. I did catch up on some Star Trek movies, some reading, ran three times a week, ran all of a 5k trail run. Yea. Take that crappy month. I'm awesome.
I got bullied at the dog park by a grown man, seriously. He's passively intimidated me before, but usually I just ignored him and kept my distance. How does someone passively intimidate one, you ask? Well. I initiated the interaction, really. He would tie his dog leash around the dog-fountain button so as to keep it permanently dispensing water (though I've never seen his dog approach it). At some point in May I decided I'd had enough of the water wasting and filled a bucket with the water, setting it next to the fountain, and removing his leash. That's how I "started it"; by setting out water for all the dogs, checking it often, and removing his leash. So, he began doing things like simply reapplying the leash, emptying the bucket, hiding the bucket (seriously, it stayed at the park because I didn't bring it initially and knew others used it). I'd find it behind trees on the other side of the enclosure. I simply kept refilling it and taking his leash down. Rook (my dog) drops her ball willy-nilly after I throw it, and I end up doing some retrieving before I can throw it again. He would go stand by the ball. That's kind of scary, since he's like 6'3" and heavy-set, so I'd ignore the ball for a while until he got bored of pacing back and forth over it. So, on this penultimate occasion, I removed the leash, filled the bucket, and got about 30 feet away when I heard him dump the bucket (for the second time that day) and turned to see him try to throw it over the fence into someone's yard. I yelled! "Hey! That's not your bucket to throw away!" So, here, you could say I started it, too. I was so tired of this! He started yelling back that I keep touching his leash and he "don't say nuttin". I wasn't about to mention all the intimidation (or the ball that just missed me the last time I was there, but I couldn't prove anything). After about two minutes it came down to him saying I was lucky that I don't leave stuff "layin around" (some people hang their leashes at the gate, I carry mine) because he'd "throw that away too". By this time I was three shades of furious, so I just collected up Rook and left. I was embarrassed, because I'd yelled in public in view of the other people, because of course it was packed that day. No one said anything either way, but I know some of the regulars were more on his side (think about it, they never said anything about the water either) and at least one lady didn't hold it against me because she said goodbye to me as cordially as she ever does. The bully tried to top off the situation by following me to the gate and calling me a slut, with a "fat [epithet for butt] for no reason". This guy seriously has the mental capacity of a 10-year old with bad manners. Stupidly, the whole thing upset me a lot. Shane wanted to go back and have words with him, but I begged him to go home with me (interrupting his run). No good could come from it, and no good came from my saying anything in the first place, but there just seemed to be a limit to the crap I was willing to take from that guy.
We'd previously seen a park ranger and asked about the water fountain. The ranger told us to report it if we saw him doing it again, but on this occasion I couldn't even reach anyone to report the incident anyway. I left messages, sent email, and got nothing.
I haven't been back to that dog park. I slightly feel like I tucked tail and ran, but in real life there are no teachers to tell. There's no one to punish him for being wasteful or mean to me. There's no repercussions for threatening my personal property or making me feel bad. If it's shameful to let the bully win, I consider it smarter than going back and letting him continue to bully me, now bolstered by his "win" over me the first time. So yea. June started out crappy.
The next day my mom ended up in the hospital. (She's fine; was there a week or so and is now back to complaining) [wink].
In an attempt to "throw" Rook I took her to the grassy area by the house. We use it sometimes because it's basically a little park with benches and it's big enough to use the Chuck-It for a short distance. Well, there was a broken bottle in the middle that I didn't see and she ran right through it, slicing about a centimeter into the muscle of her index claw. She endured three weeks of cleaning, wrapping, and rewrapping. To make matters worse, it poured for the first two weeks (yay Florida) so she wore a rubber boot that only half-worked and had to be constantly adjusted to her annoyance, and resulted in more wound-redressing. AND she had to wear a soft-cone while I was gone. AND Shane was at drill during these two weeks, so I had no one to help me with the whole mess.
AAAND the new neighbor had the landlord put a fence up between us and the rest of the yard where Rook usually plays. So her yard was essentially cut down to a third of the space she usually has. She spent those first two weeks laying next to the fence as if waiting for me to remove it. If she'd chase the ball in the small space left to her (which she couldn't do well because of the boot and the mangogeddon) she'd take it to the fence and sit there, waiting for me to throw it down the narrow but long strip she was used to.
Minor inconveniences at the beginning of all this was having to get four new tires on my car (expensive) to fix the bad wobble, then coming out to find the car battery completely dead. Shane had to pull the battery, in the rain, take it to the Napa to get the last one they had, then put it in my car, in the rain. Thankfully, he was only minorly electrocuted.
During this whole time I was still attending my classes, which spanned the whole day, and running, and trying to field family matters in Shane's absence. I was about three shades of nuts. I wasn't sleeping, bombed my Botany midterm (but it turns out so did the rest of the class) and was just generally stressed out. I was so relieved when Shane got home, but still had to try to catch up in my classes.
After my finals Shane took me to see Star Trek: Into Darkness ('cause he's a good sport). I loved it. I won't go reviewing it or anything, I think this entry is long enough. We went out to dinner with friends and just generally tried to relax for the two days between semesters. I did finish Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths; I really enjoyed it in a penny-dreadful kind of way. I like that I second-guessed my conclusions a couple times when trying to "figure it out" and look forward to reading the second. I need to find time to finish the last 20% of Anne Karenina though. I'm just being lazy. The storylines are fine, I like them, but I dislike the interweaving. I feel like it should have been several books instead of one. Meh.
So. On some level, I still win. Take that June.
On those, I did get A's in all three (yay!). I'm already onto the next half of my summer courses. Only two grades, but three courses (yay conjoined labs!).
The first chunk of June was brutal.
TLDR? Here's the summary, with the brutality after the break.
June was harsh. I got bullied in public, Mom was in the hospital, Rook cut her foot open and needed constant maintenance, Shane was at drill for two week. I did catch up on some Star Trek movies, some reading, ran three times a week, ran all of a 5k trail run. Yea. Take that crappy month. I'm awesome.
I got bullied at the dog park by a grown man, seriously. He's passively intimidated me before, but usually I just ignored him and kept my distance. How does someone passively intimidate one, you ask? Well. I initiated the interaction, really. He would tie his dog leash around the dog-fountain button so as to keep it permanently dispensing water (though I've never seen his dog approach it). At some point in May I decided I'd had enough of the water wasting and filled a bucket with the water, setting it next to the fountain, and removing his leash. That's how I "started it"; by setting out water for all the dogs, checking it often, and removing his leash. So, he began doing things like simply reapplying the leash, emptying the bucket, hiding the bucket (seriously, it stayed at the park because I didn't bring it initially and knew others used it). I'd find it behind trees on the other side of the enclosure. I simply kept refilling it and taking his leash down. Rook (my dog) drops her ball willy-nilly after I throw it, and I end up doing some retrieving before I can throw it again. He would go stand by the ball. That's kind of scary, since he's like 6'3" and heavy-set, so I'd ignore the ball for a while until he got bored of pacing back and forth over it. So, on this penultimate occasion, I removed the leash, filled the bucket, and got about 30 feet away when I heard him dump the bucket (for the second time that day) and turned to see him try to throw it over the fence into someone's yard. I yelled! "Hey! That's not your bucket to throw away!" So, here, you could say I started it, too. I was so tired of this! He started yelling back that I keep touching his leash and he "don't say nuttin". I wasn't about to mention all the intimidation (or the ball that just missed me the last time I was there, but I couldn't prove anything). After about two minutes it came down to him saying I was lucky that I don't leave stuff "layin around" (some people hang their leashes at the gate, I carry mine) because he'd "throw that away too". By this time I was three shades of furious, so I just collected up Rook and left. I was embarrassed, because I'd yelled in public in view of the other people, because of course it was packed that day. No one said anything either way, but I know some of the regulars were more on his side (think about it, they never said anything about the water either) and at least one lady didn't hold it against me because she said goodbye to me as cordially as she ever does. The bully tried to top off the situation by following me to the gate and calling me a slut, with a "fat [epithet for butt] for no reason". This guy seriously has the mental capacity of a 10-year old with bad manners. Stupidly, the whole thing upset me a lot. Shane wanted to go back and have words with him, but I begged him to go home with me (interrupting his run). No good could come from it, and no good came from my saying anything in the first place, but there just seemed to be a limit to the crap I was willing to take from that guy.
We'd previously seen a park ranger and asked about the water fountain. The ranger told us to report it if we saw him doing it again, but on this occasion I couldn't even reach anyone to report the incident anyway. I left messages, sent email, and got nothing.
I haven't been back to that dog park. I slightly feel like I tucked tail and ran, but in real life there are no teachers to tell. There's no one to punish him for being wasteful or mean to me. There's no repercussions for threatening my personal property or making me feel bad. If it's shameful to let the bully win, I consider it smarter than going back and letting him continue to bully me, now bolstered by his "win" over me the first time. So yea. June started out crappy.
The next day my mom ended up in the hospital. (She's fine; was there a week or so and is now back to complaining) [wink].
In an attempt to "throw" Rook I took her to the grassy area by the house. We use it sometimes because it's basically a little park with benches and it's big enough to use the Chuck-It for a short distance. Well, there was a broken bottle in the middle that I didn't see and she ran right through it, slicing about a centimeter into the muscle of her index claw. She endured three weeks of cleaning, wrapping, and rewrapping. To make matters worse, it poured for the first two weeks (yay Florida) so she wore a rubber boot that only half-worked and had to be constantly adjusted to her annoyance, and resulted in more wound-redressing. AND she had to wear a soft-cone while I was gone. AND Shane was at drill during these two weeks, so I had no one to help me with the whole mess.
AAAND the new neighbor had the landlord put a fence up between us and the rest of the yard where Rook usually plays. So her yard was essentially cut down to a third of the space she usually has. She spent those first two weeks laying next to the fence as if waiting for me to remove it. If she'd chase the ball in the small space left to her (which she couldn't do well because of the boot and the mangogeddon) she'd take it to the fence and sit there, waiting for me to throw it down the narrow but long strip she was used to.
Minor inconveniences at the beginning of all this was having to get four new tires on my car (expensive) to fix the bad wobble, then coming out to find the car battery completely dead. Shane had to pull the battery, in the rain, take it to the Napa to get the last one they had, then put it in my car, in the rain. Thankfully, he was only minorly electrocuted.
During this whole time I was still attending my classes, which spanned the whole day, and running, and trying to field family matters in Shane's absence. I was about three shades of nuts. I wasn't sleeping, bombed my Botany midterm (but it turns out so did the rest of the class) and was just generally stressed out. I was so relieved when Shane got home, but still had to try to catch up in my classes.
After my finals Shane took me to see Star Trek: Into Darkness ('cause he's a good sport). I loved it. I won't go reviewing it or anything, I think this entry is long enough. We went out to dinner with friends and just generally tried to relax for the two days between semesters. I did finish Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths; I really enjoyed it in a penny-dreadful kind of way. I like that I second-guessed my conclusions a couple times when trying to "figure it out" and look forward to reading the second. I need to find time to finish the last 20% of Anne Karenina though. I'm just being lazy. The storylines are fine, I like them, but I dislike the interweaving. I feel like it should have been several books instead of one. Meh.
So. On some level, I still win. Take that June.
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