mistressofmuses | (no subject)

I've been pretty extraordinarily bad at keeping up with things here, but I'm still making an effort!

Time management remains my biggest struggle, and biggest frustration. Currently a lot of the issue is that I don't really even have anywhere to pull the time from. Like I'm not doing well with working on WIP creative writing reliably, and am not keeping up with even this type of personal writing, but I'm not really doing anything else either. Haven't had a chance to read in the last couple weeks, haven't been able to play a video game in over a month, so it's not just a matter of spending my free time poorly/differently. I just... don't spend it on anything at all. There's a bit of time spent on social media scrolling, but even that I'm not doing for terribly long, and mostly just when I'm waiting for something else. Still trying to figure it out.

I still feel like I haven't completely adjusted to my new work schedule... it shouldn't be that big a difference, since I still have my two days off in a row, and in theory it should be even easier to manage, since my work week is less broken up. Yet somehow my "weekends" have felt shorter while my work week has felt longer. It may just be that we've been busy running errands basically every day I've been off, so I haven't had a good unbroken string of "DIDN'T DO SHIT TODAY AND IT WAS AWESOME." lol

No big new events. My mom's wrist is healing well. We've been giving her rides to and from work on my days at the same office she's in, since the roads have been bad.

One un-fun thing: Cy was attacked by a dog last week. He is all right! The dog that attacked him is a known issue in the complex. It's always muzzled, which is the only thing that kept this altercation from having a much worse outcome. I wasn't there, but Alex and Cy were in the parking lot, and this other dog charged at them, because it was off-leash (or the owner had dropped the leash, maybe.) It slammed Cy down to the ground, then pinned him and was seriously trying to hurt him. Good thing it was muzzled, because it's way bigger and MEAN. The thing growls every time it gets near other dogs or people. The owner apparently didn't even care much, didn't have any real urgency in getting control over her dog. Alex went down to the police station and filed a report with animal control, as well as reporting it to our management. I can't fathom HOW someone who has a known dangerous dog would just... not have control over it? I assume she's claimed it's an ESA, since we aren't allowed pets. But I would think if you had a potentially dangerous dog that you loved and needed for support, you would be damn careful that you always had control over it if you had it out of your apartment, so nothing like this could happen. And there are so many ways that could have been far worse. A small dog could have been crushed or had its neck broken if it had been hit like Cy was, a kid with a dog could have been hurt, we have a bunch of disabled folks in our apartments who use wheelchairs or canes and have small dogs with them. If this thing had barreled into one of them trying to get at their animal? We're lucky Cy is fine except for a couple very small scrapes where he was shoved into the pavement and some bruising down his back.

In more fun but kind of silly: February is NaMoPaiMo... National Model (Horse) Painting Month. Which is... yes, a month for people who collect/paint or sculpt model horses to paint a model. I was never seriously into model horses as a hobby, beyond collecting some as a kid, but Alex collects them, and we both participated this year. I've never really painted something 3-D; any visual art I've done has been pencil/ink/colored pencil. So it's a first attempt for me, but this is the one thing I've been spending some free time on this month. I am actually pretty happy with my little model, haha.

Fun additional fact! It appears I can no longer post from my laptop; it tells me it can't create a secure connection. But I can post from my phone, so that's... Good?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh no! I'm glad to hear Cy is fine, but that's pretty scary. Whenever I've been in apartments, they've always allowed dogs within a certain weight (unless they were service dogs of some kind), and there were always 'banned breeds' -- pits, dobermans, rottweilers. Granted, some people had them anyway, but as long as they weren't causing problems, no one, not even the office staff, said anything.

I hope you guys can get this sorted and this neighbor doesn't try to retaliate. Eek.

Yeah, I'm glad he's all right too. He doesn't even seem stressed or anything, which is good. (He can be anxiety-prone.)

Our apartments are no pets, but since they're low-income, there's a pretty high proportion of disabled people, meaning a lot of ESAs and service dogs.

That's good that he's not stressed. That could've been a lot for him to have to get over. Poor sweetie.

I thought about registering Tam as an ESA so that Kass and I could get into an apartment once we moved up here to Taylor, but I never did. I had a lot of people getting after me because he wasn't trained and didn't go everywhere with me.

ESAs and Service Animals are totally different things, though! No one should have hassled you over it!
ESAs SHOULDN'T go anywhere a "regular" pet wouldn't. Their only "job" is to emotionally support and comfort you in your own space, which is why they're federally protected when it comes to housing (you can't be forced to pay pet fees/pet rent/deal with pet or breed or weight restrictions, etc.) but they aren't granted public access.

A service dog performs specific tasks to help their handler cope with certain things. (Cy performs grounding techniques for Alex when he has panic attacks and soothes anxiety.) But they also have to be trained so that they aren't dangerous or disruptive in public.

If it came down to it, I would definitely say that a dog is an ESA for you. If you wind up in a situation where you're looking at an apartment that doesn't allow any animals, or say, only one per apartment and you couldn't bring both Darj and Aerin, then you just need a signed letter from a doctor stating the animal performs the function of emotional support.

(YOU probably knew all of that already, but if people were giving you shit over it, they clearly didn't.)

Huh. That's good to know. I kept hearing all this shit from people with service animals that it was an insult and that people shouldn't just get to say their dogs or cats were ESAs because that made it more difficult for people who needed service animals. I don't know. I started to feel guilty at the idea of trying to register Tam as an ESA, but now I don't. Fuck 'em. I'm pretty sure I could get a doctor to say even Darji's an ESA. Yes, you're right. Dogs are that for me (as are cats) -- animals in general that want to cuddle.