My favourite picture of Nibbler, in her space pod. <3

Nibbler enjoying her therapeutic yogourt!
 

Update on Nibbler:

The vet says that she is definitely on her way out, but certainly seems to be not suffering and wanting to continue. She has some kind of abdominal tumour, which doesn't surprise me because her upper body has gotten thinner in recent months but her belly is a bit bulbous, slightly more on the right than the left side. After some discussion with the vet, I decided to take her offer of medication and see how she does. Since the antibiotic I've been using has been helping her, the vet gave me a stronger one to keep her on. She also prescribed a pain killer in case she's feeling any discomfort.

She's 100g, so somewhat underweight but not wasting away yet. I need to weigh her regularly and make sure she's not dropping a lot of weight suddenly. If she stops eating or shows any other major signs of distress, I can take her back at that point and it will only cost me $30 to have her put down. Today's appointment, including drugs, cost $117. Still not money I can really spare, but it's far better than paying $130 to have some stranger steal her into the cold and put her down without examination.

The vet was great, and told me I was doing all the right things.

I figure Nibbler is a little old lady, had a good long life. If she stops eating, she's telling me she's ready to go. I'll be ok with it when I know she's ready. For now, she's eating like a pig! She's 2 1/2 years old, which is like 80 for a hamster.

I am sitting here very frustrated in my thoughts. The Animal Control officer today was just doing his job, and he was polite and listened to me when he came over. I have no complaints about that. However, he made some very serious mistakes that concern me about his performance of his job.

1. He showed up with a cat cage to transport a hamster in. The holes in the cage were big enough that she could have crawled through. However, in her condition she likely would have gotten her head through ad then not been able to push her body through because one foot is not working properly. She could have strangled in transport.

2. He didn't see any problem with transporting a tiny animal without any insulation around her, in weather well below freezing. Even if his truck was warm already, the shock of the icy air hitting her directly as he walked across the parking lot could be enough to kill her. He clearly isn't aware that not only can her tiny body not hold heat, but hamsters are from Syria, and are suited only to warm temperatures. They can suffer if they have a draft in their cage indoors. Transporting her as he intended would have been as cruel as me leaving her on my back step to freeze.

3. As he was leaving, I suggested he wash his hands in my sink. He declined, saying he had hand sanitiser in the truck. I guess he's one of those people that believes alcohol gel will remove any traces of faeces, urine, blood, saliva, and hair that may have been on his hands from handling Nibbler. Knowing this upsets me, because he not only handled Nibbler and could easily have infected her with something, but he also touched Rocket as he came in the door, because Rocket was trying to escape into the hallway. I know Rocket is healthy, but who knows what stray and sick animals he's been handling throughout the day?

Unfortunately I didn't think to note his name, so I can't report him anonymously. I feel strongly that this needs to be reported, but I also don't want the Humane Society getting on my back when I just got them off my back.

I e-mailed a friend who works for the Humane Society but is on maternity leave right now. She responded:

"If you are concerned voice your concerns definitely. Do it diplomatically. Don't make it about complaining make it about having concerns and there shouldn't be any problems. They keep record of what officers go where so that's not a problem. Good luck and I'm glad nibbler is doing well."

I'll write a letter, mostly cut and paste of my above post.

My mom is SUCH A BITCH. We've been getting along so well for so long, and then her obsession with control and death and "punishing" me for not doing what she wants just came back out of the blue and totally blindsided me. Shin's out of town for a couple of days, so I woke Leslie and she kept me from having a full-on panic attack.

My mom was here 2 nights ago and Nibbler was bleeding badly from her bum again. She pooped out a big blood clot, but then pooped solid poos after and was OK. I gave her antibiotics and yogourt, and she's been better. This treatment has been very effective for these recurring issues over the last few months. I think this time it was caused by giving her a fresh carrot the night before. It seems to cause inflammation or something, so I won't give her carrots any more. Just the veggie puff treats and regular food. However Mom has been obsessed with trying to convince me to drown her since she saw the blood the other night.

At 2PM today Mom called me and said she reported me to the Humane Society for animal cruelty. I've been volunteering there for several years, and the last thing I want is for them to believe I'm an animal abuser!

I called the HS to explain, and the woman wouldn't let me get a word in edgeways. I finally broke in, explained that I have been caring for her and she's better, she's eating voraciously and drinking lots, walking around and cuddly. She demanded I take her in by 4PM for euthanasia, and I'd be billed $130! I said I didn't take her to the vet because it's $85 and I can't afford it. She said "Don't worry, we'll give you 35 days to pay it." As if that's any better!

So then I was trying to call my mom to demand she pay for it, but she was on the phone with her fucking asshole child molester brother for ages. Meanwhile, the HS called me again and was harassing me to take her in, saying they will just do it and I'll pay later.

I finally reached Mom, and she was yelling at me, and I yelled at her, and she said she wouldn't pay. "I can't afford it," she said, even though her income is more than mine and Shin's combined, and she recently spent several hundred dollars on catalogue orders (she gave them my e-mail address, so I get all these messages when she's ordering crap) and also just bought herself YET ANOTHER new coat, plus a had, gloves and purse to match, and then she bought two handbags because she liked the cats pictures on them and appliqued the pictures on to her coat. Yeah, bitch, don't tell me you can't pay when you're wasting your money on this shit.

I woke Leslie up and she was helping me call vets to see what could be done. All the time Nibbler was wiggling around snuggling into my bra, and I was crying all over her.

So there's the Farley Fund here, where they pay for vet care if you don't have money. However, they only pay a certain amount per vet clinic per year, and there are hardly any hamster vets around here. I reached one in Preston and they said they could see her on Monday afternoon, and they'd find out if they have any funding left to cover it.

So I made appointment, and then animal control showed up at my door. The guy had a kitten cage with him. _To take a hamster in. _ Holes big enough for her to walk through.

He asked to see Nibbler, and I reached into my boobs and pulled her out. She was freaked out and pooping all over me, solid, bloodless poops. He held her, looked at her, I showed him she ate. She wanted treats so badly she bit me when I pulled them away for a second!

I put her on the table, showed she was able to walk, although she has a draggy foot so she walked in circles. He called the vet clinic to confirm the appointment. He decided I know more about hamsters than he does (he thought they live 5 years, when it's really 2-3) and said since she doesn't look to be suffering and I have an appointment, he'd leave her with me.

I told him if I really truly thought she might be suffering, I'd put her down in a heartbeat, but she's not.

So I called my mom and had another fight with her, and all she wanted to talk about was her broken TV. She has no empathy for the distress she put me through.

Nibbler wouldn't have made it there, I don't think. Putting her in that big cage and carrying her out to the truck would have frozen her. She may have died from the cold before she got back to the shelter. Hamsters are from Syria, and they can't handle cold. If I have to transport her, I carry her inside my clothes. I do lots of research on hamster care, and also consult with a friend who has had hamsters for years.

My friends who have only known my mom since she got better are baffled. They are used to her being nice to me. I keep telling them she's bipolar, obsessive, and a control freak. She also has an obsession with euthanasia. A couple years ago, her cat was sick and she couldn't afford treatment, so she tried to have her put down. The vet and I worked hard to convince her to surrender Maria to the vet's care, and eventually she did. Maria took 5 months to get better (major GI condition) and was adopted by a responsible family who take excellent care of her, according the the vet's report. Mom still says she wishes Maria had been put down so she didn't wonder what happened to her.

She also tried to convince my uncle to pull the plug on their dad while he was in a medically-induced coma. She didn't understand that he was recovering. She's just totally obsessed with everything being disposable.

She's been obsessed with death for years. When someone talks about a deceased spouse, she asks "How old was he when he died?" She calls me from her seniors' home and reports on who died today. In Newmarket, one of her pastimes was going to funerals of people she only vaguely knew. When my dad died, she immediately threw out all his clothes, took his neatly-arranged drawer of financial documents and dumped them out of their envelopes into the recycling bin, and started cashing in her RRSPs. She couldn't wait to erase the sum of his life. The day Mom was here, she was updating her will (something she's wanted to to do for months) and also asked me to do Power of Attorney forms for her. When I asked her how she wanted the POA forms filled out (who to give POA to, whether Gilly and I should be jointly or severally responsible) Mom just said "Just divide everything evenly." When I told her that's not what POA was for, she said "Just don't keep me alive. If something happens, let me go." Those kinds of answers are typical for someone with her type of brain damage, because she doesn't fully process the question.

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Called Mom this morning, and she's in excruciating pain with her shoulder. She woke up at 5AM from the pain. Although the doctor told her to alternate heat and cold, the home won't offer her a cold pack. I've asked Gilly to go down and take her to hospital this morning as there may be further damage from the fall, or the attempts to pick her up.

I asked Mom what happened with breakfast this morning, and she said when she went to the dining room they had put out the wheeled chair I explicitly told them not to use. Mom keeps saying "It was fine, I sat in those chairs for years with no problem." She simply doesn't understand that she no longer has the balance to use that type of chair, and she is very likely to injure herself again.

I tried to call Nancy, but she hadn't arrived yet. I left her a voice mail asking her to call me.

I've also asked Gilly to go to the dining room and take away the chair when she goes to take Mom to hospital, but Gilly is reluctant because she doesn't want to fight with anyone. I get that she's tired, but really, we're talking about our ...mother's safety. All she has to do is go in and take the chair and leave the building. It's Mom's property, so there's not a whole hell of a lot they can do about that. I think her safety is more important than an aversion to confrontation, and I would also feel less like a single parent if it wasn't all up to me to deal with this shit.

My mom phoned me at 9AM this morning, quite confused and upset. She was calling to ask my advice.

She had just come from breakfast. Because she is so fat, she has a special designated chair in the dining room. It has no arms, as her bum can't fit in chairs that do have arms. She was sitting eating breakfast, and suddenly her chair just collapsed underneath her. She was lying on the floor, struggling but unable to get up. Her shoulder has been painful for weeks and her knees are bad. The staff were trying to figure out how to pick her up, but given those complications they had no idea what to do. Mom pushed her LifeSign button on her necklace, because she wanted an ambulance. However, she doesn't understand that you have to be in the same room as the phone unit. Mom said the LifeSign operator said to just call an ambulance, which I guess means that one of the staff went to her room to speak with the operator. And ambulance was called, and the EMTs checked her over and determined she was not seriously injured. At some point one of the nurses gave her a pillow for under her head, but I don't know how long it was before they did that.

Mom says the way they eventually got her off the floor was they got a long sheet and somehow wrapped it around her body and another one around her ankles, and lifted her that way. I can't picture how it was done. Anyway, it worked.

So after all this, the staff had the nerve to say that since that was the only armless chair they had in the home, that Mom was responsible for buying her own chair! When Mom told me this, I just about hit the roof. While my mom is very obese and exceptionally wide, she doesn't actually weigh much more than me. The reasons she's so fat with that weight are that she's 7 inches shorter than me, and he weight is made up of fat. I'm tall, and my weight is largely made up of dense bone and muscle. It is not at all unreasonable to expect the home to have a chair sturdy enough to support up to 300 pounds. You know, not all sick old people are skinny!

So I told Mom my opinion, and advised that she see a doctor to document any bruising. She said the EMTs had done a check and determined she was OK, so at least there will be documentation there from outside the home. Mom had a mobility bus booked to take her to and from church today, but she said she was feeling too shaky to go and was worried that if she skipped it she would be penalised for not showing up for the bus. I told her not to worry, the staff should tell the driver she had a bad fall and wasn't p to going out today, and if there was any problem with GRT I would explain things to them. After all, there is nobody at the mobility bus booking office on weekends, so there's no way she can call and lt them know.

Tomorrow morning, I'll be calling Nancy, the manager of the home. I'll also call CCAC and report my concerns, and possibly a lawyer if Nancy doesn't apologise for Mom's treatment and agree to get a new, stronger chair.

I hope Nancy sees it my way, or Mom may end up having to move again. She was NEVER treated this badly in the other two homes!

Merry Christmas, all. Mom and I went to Gilly and Al's house today, and I'm so glad to be out of there. I could have killed Allan! He was so rude all day, and when I finally snapped on him, Gilly told me off.

I put up one string of lights in their front window, which is in their dining room. Gilly had liked this idea when I suggested it in advance. It's the only set of Christmas lights in the entire house. So I plugged them in for a while, and he unplugged them. When we were setting the table, I plugged them back in as it was getting dark out. A few minutes later he asked who plugged them in, and started yelling at me that he unplugged them because they cost a fortune to run. I said no, it's Christmas, and we're eating in the room, they're pretty, and they cost MAYBE a quarter to run for a whole day. Not even. Meanwhile, he refuses to use CFL light bulbs, and keeps all the lights in every room in the house on all the time, wasting loads of electricity.

After dinner, I turned on my laptop to watch the Queen's speech on Youtube. Al got angry that I was streaming a video and stealing HIS bandwidth. Never mind that Gilly pays for half of it, and he's been coming over and eating our bandwidth for 2 1/2 years now. Eventually Gilly told me they have internet light, which has very limited bandwidth. Why couldn't they have said "Hey Ali, we only have light internet, can you please go easy on our bandwith?" No, of course not. That would have been polite. Instead, I got a yelled lecture from Gilly about how I was a guest, and I reminded her that Al had been a significant douchebag in our home for all this time and he was being *actively* obnoxious. (I can't find an old entry about it that I'm sure I wrote, but one night he followed me around my apartment as I turned off all the lights he had left on, and he flicked them all back on again. I turned around and told him where to go! He got all sucky about it and Gilly took him into the bedroom to make sucky baby feel better.)

At some point, Al walked down the hallway and called out that Teffy had peed on the carpet. Gilly was busy, so he called it out twice. I said he should just mop it up himself. "I will not clean it up myself!" Gilly said she'd be there in a minute, and I muttered that they'd better never have children. But you know, he'll be pissed off when his carpet is ruined because he didn't mop it up while it was still pooled on the surface instead of letting it sink down to the underpad.

I went to make tea, and I pulled out the expensive Paderno kettle Mom had bought them. I was filling it, and Al groaned and asked me to use the electric kettle. I said that since this expensive kettle was a gift from the woman I was making tea for, I was going to use it. He rolled his eyes and walked away.

 Oh, I also got a free turkey from the food bank, which I have nowhere to store for a week until I can cook it.  Last night I asked them to store it for the week, as they have their kitchen freezer, plus a chest freezer and the standup freezer, which they are working toward emptying so it can be disposed of, but it certainly won't be tossed in the next 10 days. They acted like I was asking them to let me move in. I said to Gilly that either they woud take it for me for a week, or it would go bad before anybody got to eat it. She sighed and took it, saying if I left it too long they'd eat it themselves. Fair enough, as I honestly don't plan to leave it there indefinitely. I said I'd pick it up next Sunday, and Al kept shouting "No, Friday!" I said if I take it before Sunday, I'll have to cook it when there is nobody else around to help me eat it. It's not like I went out and BOUGHT a turkey I clearly didn't have room for. I was given a turkey and had to pick it up by a set date, and am unable to cook it immediately. If I had only been asking Gilly, she would have done it for me as a favour, but because he was involved it became a Big Deal. He doesn't think of me or our mother as family, and treats any request like a huge hardship. Never mind that I was dropping off milk for them as they were almost out, and I had driven way out of my way to deliver it.

This afternoon, they asked me to get my presents out of the living room so there would be room to move around. I took them down the stairs and placed them by the door, which was a struggle as I threw my back out a couple of days ago and it's also causing muscle spasms in my right thigh and calf. However, the living room was very congested and cleanup was necessary so I agreed it was a good idea.  After I packed up and carried the presents to the door, Al started yelling at me to take them out to the car. Well, it's down another set of stairs in the cold, and I was already having pain problems without that. Cold air and stairs are not good for muscle spasms! And why was he ordering me to do this? He wanted to move furniture! I mean, why not wait until after we were gone? Gilly and Al decided to move her wardrobe up from the basement, and it was large and heavy. They got stuck on the stairs, and I suggested that maybe Ed and Paul could help when they visit tomorrow. "No they can't help me!" He shouted. Uh, OK. Whatever. At least wait until you don't have guests sitting in your living room.

The only nice thing Al said to me the whole day was when I asked if I should take some of the flattened boxes with me for recycling at my building. He thanked me for the offer, but said it wasn't necessary as he would bundle it for the curb.

On the positive side, Mom was really well-behaved this year. We had a good time with presents, and she was thrilled with her new slippers and her Coronation Street 50th Anniversary book, which she hadn't heard about before. The meal was excellent, and Mom didn't choke or spit food from talking with her mouth full. We had the richest, fruitiest, booziest Christmas pudding I've ever had. We spent half an hour talking with our cousin Andrew on Skype video chat, which was a first for us. He's in England, so we normally phone and have trouble hearing him because Mom yells into the phone and won't let anyone else get a word in edgeways. We ended up having trouble with the sound, so we made faces at each other and got laughing pretty hard.

Since my last blog entry: I went to Barbados with Bishop for a week in late August, and had a blast. Came home to face reality with my financial situation, and determined I had to move somewhere less expensive. Gilly found me a Kijiji ad that said "One of us is gay and works all the time, and the other is a nerd who studies all the time." I wrote and said all my friends are gay or nerds or both so we'd probably get along great. Well, Rob is 23 and flaming, and Cole is 27 and just last week finished nursing school, and we get along great. It's like having brothers. I moved in here over the course of September.

Right after I announced the move, Al got a move-on with his house shopping, and a week later put a bid on a brand new house in the south of Kitchener. He was nervous about telling his parents Gilly was moving in, so he waited until a couple weeks before he got the house, then said "Gillian asked to move in with me." (I see a very big problem with this, as does everyone else I've asked, but Gilly doesn't see an issue. Doormat much?) So his parents, who liked Gilly before, were not happy. However, Al's sister-in-law Kathy laughed and said "Don't worry Gilly, Ed married a slut!" They got the house on November 22, and had a "key party" in the empty house that same night.

The official big moving day was last weekend, and lots of people showed up to help. We filled the UHaul truck TWICE. Eep! Apartment was still not empty after that, but the big stuff was gone. Have been goin back daily to clean, toss garbage, and remove more stuff.

Mom and I went to Florida and the Bahamas in early November. We were there 12 days total, and it was brutal. Mom had gotten conned into yet another time-share thing, and she convinced me to go. She had been planning to drive down there alone, but evetually she asked if I would go with her if she bought plane tickets. I reluctantly agreed. Well, chunks of the trip were good, like snorkelling and dolphin swimming in Bahamas. A lot of stuff was really, really bad, causing me to feel ill and anxious and angry, and at times leaving me in tears. The time share people screwed us at every turn, putting us up in the worst hotels they could find in Fort Lauderdale and Orlando. The rooms weren't disabled accessible, and when I complained about it one manager threatened to call the police. The overnight cruise ship was great on the way out to the Bahamas, and shitty on the way back, although I did meet a cute young guy from Kansas City and made out with him on the ouside deck of the ship at 4:30AM. Don't know his name, as I forgot it not long after meeting him, but it was a fun time. The Bahamas resort was great, but the service in the restaurant crappy. A 50-year-old taxi driver named Woody propositioned me on the beach, and Mom was oblivious until I told her, at which point she claimed she knew all along that he was taking her jokes about finding me a husband far too seriously.

Teffy and Waffles now live with Gilly and Al.Waffles was terrified the first couple of days, but Teffy settled in quickly. We had been worried about her with the move, as she had lost a lot of weight and had a major kidney infection a month earlier. She's 15 years old now, and she only recently started looking her age. Twice in the last 48 hours, we thought we were going to have to put her down, but she has bounced back again so we're taking it day by day. She's not likely to last a lot longer, but if she still get some joy and is not suffering, we'll keep her with us a little longer.

Alright, nough for now. Time for bed. Merry Christmas!

Went camping on the weekend. We left Wednesday and came back Sunday, spending the five days at Point Farms Provincial Park in Goderich.

I have a friend who claims she has camped a fair bit with her family. Nobody else has ever bothered to take her camping, as she has a physcial disability and uses a wheelchair to get around most of the time. Being the kind of person I am, I have gone out of my way to make sure she is able to participate in trips and activities, and I bring her manual chair along. When we go out with a group, we take turns pushing the chair, and everything is fine. She always comments that she has never before had friends who didn't make a big deal out of her disability.

May 24 weekend, she joined us camping for the first time. When I picked her up, she had a whole carload worth of gear packed. She'd packed her hairdryer and straightening iron, and bags of food even though we'd done shoping as a group and were also going to a place with plenty of stores nearby. I told her we didn't have enough space in the car, especially with her wheelchair in there, and started pulling things out. Well, when I made the 4 or 5 trips to the car with all her stuff, she took all the things I'd pulled out and put them back in. I had a hell of a time fitting everything in the car, as there was also my gear and someone else's in there. We ended up strapping stuff to the roof. Keep in mind I drive an extra-long station wagon with seats that fold down to extend the trunk space.

That weekend, she went for a shower and spent a total of 2 hours preening herself. She was very upset that her hair dryer ended up not working so she couldn't dry her hair. She spent over an hour in front of the mirror putting on pancake makeup, which not only wasn't necessary, but actually looks bad as clumps of makeup on your face is simply not flattering on anyone. I fell asleep waiting for her, and had no idea how long she took until we got back to site and everyone asked where the hell we'd been.

We cut her an awful lot of slack, given that it was really her first time camping for real. We expressed our frustration at her behaviour, then let it drop.

So this camp, we figured it would be better. We have taken lots of princesses camping and they very quickly learn to relax, be a little dirty, and stop worrying about how they look.

When I picked her up, She had packed a lot less than before, although still more than most. I had to give her credit for that. She brought no appliances and no food. For the first time, we took apart her electric wheelchair and had her superintendant help us put it in the car. Again, nobody had ever done this, but I figured it would be worth it so she could be more independant. We set off to camp, three of us in a car that was bursting at the seams.

Two hours later we arrived in Goderich, just in time to see the fireworks. Al and Gilly has already set up the tents on site, so when we got back we made a campfire and had some s'mores. Good times.

In the morning, Princess took off for a shower. I said she needed to aim for half an hour, because we wanted to get out and do things. She instantly became defensive and said she would be as fast as she could, but it would take longer than half an hour. I said it had better be a lot shorter than two hours, because that's just wasting all our time. She huffed at me and went in.

I returned to site and had breakfast, and after 45 minutes Gilly, Natalie and I went to the washroom to urge Princess to pack up and get back to site. She said she still had to do her makeup, and she couldn't leave he washroom with her face bare. All three of us tried to convince her otherwise, but she became very agitated and insisted that she could not POSSIBLY be seen au naturel. We left, and 15 minutes later I returned. She was still staring into the mirror, and when I asked her to hurry up she threw a fit. She claims that she must cover her face because she has a physical disability, therefore she must make herself pretty, or some crap like that. She insisted that nobody would ever accept her without makeup, and that nobody could possibly ever have self-esteem issues like hers because they don't have disabilities.

Seriously, this girl is gorgeous as she is. From her own accounts, guys get tired of her quickly because she is high-maintenance. So realistically, much of the rejection she experiences is due to her own refusal to work on her self-esteem issues.

The subsequent 3 days, she got up early and showered, but still kept complaining about not liking the way her hair looked. She also kept telling me I was wasting time sleeping in the morning. She knows full well I have narcolepsy. For me, sleep is not only a biological need but a requirement of a physical disability. That is HUGELY different than choosing to hide out in the bathroom. Aside from that, every time we wanted to go somewhere, she took ages to be ready to go. In my case, I would wake up at 10AM, except for the one day I woke up paralysed and slept until 11AM), threw my clothes on immediately and grabbed some food. I didn't keep people waiting around. For that matter, in five days I was unable to get to the shower even ONCE, because the park was full and they had 4 shower stalls fo about 400 people, and we were in the radio-free area with all the families where germophobic mothers were herding all their kids to the bathroom to was their already-clean bodies. On Saturday I got to the point of being filthy beyond even my own tolerance level. Ten girls and women were lined up for showers, so I went in the laundry room, stripped naked, and washed my hair and body in the laundry basin. My clothes were foul and soaked with sweat and anything I had spilled on myself, so I hung them on the clothesline on site rather than stinking out the tent by stuffing them in my bag. That took about 20 minutes altogether, and I did it while the rest of the group was having a sit and a drink by the fire pit.

I was a space cadet for parts of the weekend, which is not unusual for me but it was harder to manage this time. I recently switched my medication to one that is supposed to last longer, but as a result I haven't figured out my new nap schedule. I would just get to a point of uncontrollable yawning, but we'd be out somewhere. By the time we got back to site, we had to make dinner, so I'd sit in my haze but not fall asleep because I knew we'd be eating in just a few minutes. I only had one nap all weekend, and I spent much of my waking time confused and having trouble saying what I was trying to say.

So yesterday we packed up, got things clean and put away, but Princess was nowhere to be seen when we went to pack my car. We couldn't put anything in the car until her chair was in, and I needed Al's help. He was packed and wanted to go, and was trying to convince me I dind't need his help. However, I was the largest girl there, and I had needed a lot of help from the guy who helpd me put it in in the first place. Princess had indicated to someone that she was going to the washroom, but had then headed off in the opposite direction. It turned out she had gone down to the beach. She didn't spend long there, but again, she kept us waiting and didn't tell anyone where she was going. It was brutally hot and we were tired and just wanted to get going.

When she returned, Al put the chair in the car and left. We packed everything else in the car, made a washroom run, and got in to go. Then Princess said "I just want to take some pictures of the site. I wanted some while we were set up, but I didn't have time." Gee, maybe she would have had time if she hadn't been staring in the mirror so long! So she grabbed her camera and started taking pictures. Not one or two, but lots. Snap snap, walk a few steps, snap snap snap. I called out that it was time to go, and she said she was coming but kept on taking pictures of the empty campsite. Waited another couple of minutes, then started the engine. She gave me a dirty look, then started yelling at me. I told her to get in the car and argue, because we were leaving and that was that. She was furious, but sat in the back and stewed. Natalie and I changed the subject and chatted about whatever we could think of.

We stopped in Clinton for some lunch, at a diner/bakery that I knew of. We were all intentionally avoiding anything that might lead back to The Argument, as we all just wanted to get home and be finished with it. However, Princess couldn't let it lie. While I was eating my dessert, the other two girls got up to pay their bills. Princess decided to "try to smooth things over" by telling me I needed to be more understanding. The nerve!

I told her no, I had bent over backward for her, and that we were all annoyed by her behaviour. She kept saying what a good friend I am and that she had a good time, but then still went right back to saying I needed to cut her some slack. I told her I'd been camping with many a princess and not one had been so rude and wasted my time like she had. She kept trying to push, and I said that she had to make some changes in her own attitude. I then put an end to it by stating that I was finished talking about it, I was tired and the topic was closed. She didn't say much for the rest of the ride home. I dropped her off first, put her wheelchair together and Natalie and I piled up her stuff by the door to her building and left her to fend for herself. She asked for a hug and I did hug her, but didn't say much. I just wanted the hell out of there.

Surprisingly, Natalie expressed her annoyance with Princess to me several times, including when we got back in the car. Natalie is the most easygoing person I know, and never complains about anything or anyone. It speaks volumes when she expresses annoyance!

So here I am, still pissed off about it because I know Princess is going to open this up next time I see her. I don't want to end the friendship, but I'm not willing to put up with bullshit, either. She was talking on the weekend about coming camping with us on Labour Day, but honestly, I have no interest in taking her camping ever again.