The Vine: March 27, 2003
Dear Sars,
About six weeks ago, my very elderly and very wonderful cat died. She had a
long and fairly happy life (18 years of it), even if the beginning wasn’t
too wonderful. She was an orphaned kitten who just about survived on the
streets until she was rescued, starving and traumatised. I spent about six
months lying on the floor, coaxing her out from under/behind furniture when
we first got her (I was a child — I had nothing better to do). Eventually I
gained her trust. I was the only one who could pick her up. She waited for
me to come home in the evenings. She talked to me constantly. If I sat down,
she sat on my knee. If she couldn’t get on my knee, she got as close as she
could and purred, loudly. Essentially, this was one of the all-time great
owner-feline dependent relationships.
Leaving aside the final illness and the unbearable sorrow of holding her
while the vet did his stuff (which was the right thing to do, but just
awful), I gained a huge amount from having her in my life. But I am still in
mourning. I don’t think I can cope with bonding with another cat. On the
other hand, the vet is keen to re-home a pair of kittens/cats with my family,
and my dad is missing feline companionship, and I am guilty about having a
perfectly cat-friendly home and leaving it empty when there are cats going
to the wall in shelters every day.
You know how cats can break your heart. Should I encourage my parents to
restock with cats and try not to bond with them too much, or should I ask
them to wait until the woe has lessened?
Cat-haunted
Dear Haunted,
My family got another kitten about two months after the cat I’d pretty much grown up with had died. I loved Ding more than anything, and I still missed her, but Dusty is so different from Ding (a brown tabby, not white; a fiesty kitten and not an old lady) that it ended up working out fine. Once you’ve gotten used to having felines around, I think it’s harder in some ways to get on with things after they die when you don’t have any cats around at all.
I can’t say if that’s true for you, and it’s not like Dusty made us forget all about Ding or anything. Maybe you should ask your parents to wait a bit longer if you don’t feel ready to bond with another cat yet. But it’s possible to make new friends without forgetting about the old ones.
Sars —
Okay, so this is random, but I don’t know where else to find the answer.
I have a red down vest that I just adore. It’s polar fleece inside and nylon outside. Of course, like all outerwear, after months of rain and sleet and snow, it starts to get a little funky. I read the directions on the tag and it said it could be washed and dried like any other garment — only it had to be put in the dryer with tennis balls.
No, I’m not kidding.
So I did it. I put the tennis balls in the dryer, threw the vest in (after it had been washed) and figured that would do it.
The problem is, the vest has now been through four dryer cycles (in a fairly high quality dryer) and it’s still not dry. Also, it smells. Really, really bad.
I don’t understand! I followed the directions, I even put the freaking tennis balls in the dryer, but it’s just gross! Did I mess it up somehow? Were the directions totally wrong? Is there any way to save my warm, wonderful vest?
Help!
Cold and Vestless
Dear Cold,
Hmm. I assume you used new tennis balls…? Otherwise I can’t explain why it would smell. In any case, find an 800 number or a website for the retailer; many of them have hotlines for garment-care questions. Phone them up and find out what you can do to save the situation.
Dear Sars:
I wonder if you can give me a little of your famed
insight regarding a problem I have. A few months ago,
I decided to quit grad school. I did quite well
grades-wise, but the program wasn’t what I anticipated
or wanted. To be frank, while I was well suited to
graduate work in an academic sense, I wasn’t able to
emotionally handle the level of stress it involved. I
know that sounds incredibly wimpy, and I plan on
dealing with my low-stress-tolerance issues, but at
the time, it was a matter of keeping my sanity and
health intact, so I quit.
Now, I’m not normally the quitting type. In fact, I
think it’s safe to say that I usually stick things
out, even when it might be better to cut my losses and
leave a situation. I don’t regret my choice to quit
school, although quitting has bruised my pride and
self-esteem a fair bit. But that’s life, and I’ll get
over the emotional fallout eventually. My real problem
is more concrete, and that’s what I’m hoping you can
give me some advice about.
Basically, I don’t know how to explain this three-year-long mistake to potential employers. I can’t leave my
time in grad school off my résumé, because that would
leave a huge gap of unexplained time. However, leaving
it on there looks really bad, since it’s obvious I
never completed my degree. And that’s just my résumé —
I can’t think of a good way to explain in interviews
why I quit, without getting into the “I couldn’t
handle the stress” thing, which is never what a
potential employer wants to hear.
I realize I can’t
avoid the consequences of quitting school altogether,
but I want to minimize the damage in this regard as
much as possible, since I really do want and need to
work. So, I’d be very grateful for any suggestions you
might have.
Not Really A Quitter
Dear Not Really,
Why do you have to bring up the “couldn’t handle the stress” thing at all? Just say that you recognized after a time that the program wasn’t what you wanted, so you withdrew. If anything, quitting when you did is a choice you could actually spin to your advantage in interviews — it means you can assess a situation realistically and make tough decisions based on that assessment.
You can answer questions about that period of your life truthfully without getting into the less flattering details. Saying that you and grad school weren’t a good fit after all should cover it.
Dear Sars,
I am starting a Stitch ‘n’ Bitch group that will meet regularly to knit and
chat and help one another. The group will be made up of people of various
ages and experiences, most of whom are strangers to one another, but all
of whom knit. It’s an informal group, with no dues or agenda or anything
like that. But I’m scared.
This group will really fill a niche, as there are no other knitting groups
like it in my area, and many people have emailed me with comments like
“this is just what I need” or “where have you been?” Our first meeting is scheduled for next week. I’ve been
overwhelmed with the organizational aspects of the group — publicity,
scheduling, et cetera — and I haven’t thought very much about the interpersonal
dynamics.
I started a salon/discussion group a few years ago that didn’t work out.
It was too small, and the group “vibe” was never right. Eventually, the
group died out as people lost interest. I’m worried that the Stitch ‘n’
Bitch will meet the same fate.
Do you have any suggestions for how to help a small group like this
succeed? I’ve got the people, now I need to think about how the meetings
will work. How can I make it interesting enough to keep people coming
back to meetings?
Sincerely,
Knitting Warrior Woman
Dear Woman,
You can’t overmanage gatherings; every assortment of people has its own chemistry, so put out snacks and let it pop if it’s going to pop. You might have a general agenda you want to follow, but keep any formal meeting-y stuff under twenty minutes and keep the structure of the evenings flexible.
Members might come and go, so let that happen — welcome new people and see how they fit in with the group, and let the ones who don’t really mesh wash out, which they generally do. And don’t overthink it. Either a group works or it doesn’t, and there’s not much you can do either way except to bring everyone together and take it from there.
Sars,
Love TN, love you, hope you can help. I’m just not sure what to do here at
all.
I have a friend, let’s call her “Mary.” Mary and I have known each other since
the first day of high school (we’re over 30 now). Over the years we’ve had
tons of adventures together as best friends do. We’ve travelled together,
gone through the loss of our virginity (not together, but you know what I
mean), been there for each other when break-ups occur, and on and on. She’s
my oldest friend and I care about her, but for the last year or so she’s
driving me up a tree and I’m not sure how much more I can take.
Mary’s been diagnosed as bipolar. I hooked her up with a great therapist,
who she’s working with when she can (money issues prevent her from getting
as much therapy as she needs, and her insurance is lousy), but it’s really
not enough to stabalize her. She also “self-medicates” using a variety of
street drugs. Until a year or so ago, I’d join her in smoking a little pot
now and then, but nothing else. I dropped that when her mood swings became
something that was clearly problematic, and she started using a lot of crank
and would call me several times a day to chat about nothing at all. She’d
call my cell phone, then my house, then my work, until she got hold of me —
then go on and on about nothing while I was at work. I finally had to put my
foot down and refuse to talk to her at all when I knew she was high — it
wasn’t like she hid it well.
She stopped the crank use (or stopped calling me when she was high, anyway),
and I haven’t smoked with her in a long time. I sort of feel like I should
be a good example and not participate in her self-destruction. She often
calls to tell me she’s got “something to share,” but I tell her no, not
interested.
Mary also has huge self-esteem problems which result in her telling stories that
simply aren’t true, just to make herself out to be more wanted, more loved,
more needed than she actually is. Her home life is a disaster (still living
at home with an overbearing mom and a bitchy stepfather) and there’s no
indication that she’ll ever be able to move out.
The basic fact is that Mary and I have precious little in common anymore
beyond our history. I’m trying to distance myself a bit, which makes me feel
like an asshole — she’s going through tons of problems with her mental state
and her life in general, and I feel I should be a good friend and be there
for her. On the other hand, “being there” is absolutely draining and I don’t
have the patience to listen to her drone on for hours about her mood swings.
I feel I’ve done what I can by giving her over to a competent therapist. But
when she says she thinks about killing herself because she doesn’t know how
much more she can take, I know I have to take her seriously — on the other
hand, she’s said it hundreds of times now and it feels like she only says it
for the attention it gets her (which is likely true).
I don’t want to lose her friendship, because she can be a doll and a lot of
fun. Given that she’s bipolar, I’m sort of friends with two people — the
person she is when she’s stable, and the person she is when she’s cycling. I
know I can’t demand that she stop cycling, but I don’t know how to deal with
her when she is, so I’m not sure what to do.
Sign me,
Bipolar’s friend on the fence
Dear Fence,
Subtract her illness from the equation. It’s difficult, but try to leave it aside and look at the friendship without that overlay. What’s left once you remove the bipolar issue? Why have you remained friends with her — history? A sense of obligation?
I know you don’t want to turn your back on an old friend simply because her problems have become too much for you to deal with — or to think of yourself as the kind of person who would do that. Nobody does; it seems really selfish. But if you still enjoyed Mary’s company at all, or still had a lot in common with her, you’d probably feel differently about the whole thing, right? Like, she’s got a lot of difficult issues, but you still have a lot of laughs together, and if you needed anything, you could call her?
You don’t feel that way about Mary, at least not anymore. You feel like you do all the heavy lifting, and you feel terribly guilty about not wanting the job anymore — but would you feel as guilty if she weren’t sick? “Well, but she is sick.” Yes, I know, but she has to take responsibility for managing her disease in the end, and if she’s unwilling or unable to do that, and if she isn’t someone you’d have much to say to without that shared history tying you together…you see where I’m going with this.
You do have a lot of history together as friends, and I don’t doubt that she’s still got her moments, so I wouldn’t suggest anything drastic like cutting her off, but maybe it’s time for you to reduce your exposure to her across the board — the way you would with any other friend you’d grown apart from. Mary does have a lot of legitimate problems, but pitying her and/or resenting her for forcing you to deal with them all the time isn’t friendship. It’s pity and resentment. Start loosening the moorings.
Tags: cats friendships rando workplace
