a murky storm of shit

in the past week:
my good friend from work wrote me a rather nasty note, accusing me of having shat upon him, that he will need time to be able to hang out with me again. i miss him a lot. though i was always completely honest about my platonic intentions (which, overtly, they were and are), i am guiltily aware that he felt a bit differently.
T and i conflicted over the exact same fucking things. "why do you seek out and invent drama?" i asked. communication has been much better overall, at least from my end, until tonight, which i will have to rectify later to assuage my, again, guilt. fucking guilt, everywhere, always. it does not need to be like this. life is supposed to be easy, dammit.
i finally saw my grandfather today, hence my sour and uncommunicative mood. i met my mother at my grandparent's house in puyallup. he is much improved from his initial stroke-state but there is definitely a major change in his entire demeanor. he is sullen, forgetful, spacey. he demanded my mother take him to the store, even though my uncle had taken him yesterday. i got to visit with my oma, who is sentient enough to break my heart. "when i first met him i thought, this is great, he'll be able to take care of me when i'm old," she said (she is 90, he is 75- go oma!). "i never thought it would be like this." we all went to his doctor's appointment. his mouth hangs open now, his features slack. he couldn't figure out how to open the car door or fasten his seat belt. he'd forgotten the shopping list and therefore half the groceries. we all went, per their suggestion, to cattin's, a denny's-esque diner, where i pretended not to notice him putting copious amounts of syrup on his eggs instead of his pancakes (though he may have intended to; he ate it all). "we have to go back to the supermarket" he insisted afterwards; i stayed outside and morosely smoked. throughout my mother was being far more patient than usual; it wasn't until the five-hour mark of the visit that she became snappy. they are finally accepting of a retirement home. it especially bothers my grandmother, who is reluctant to even have neighbors help mow the lawn. we got back to the house and he went into another room and shut the door. "you're leaving now?" he said, more as a statement, so my mother and i left and went our seperate ways, she to meet my father at a New Brewpub in olympia, me to drive back to seattle through rush-hour traffic, chain-smoking, blaring music but not bothering to sing along.
i am so afraid of growing old. not old as much as... compromised. that is why the ms spectre terrifies me so. at the restaurant i was the only person with non-grey hair and healthy posture. i felt somehow brittle by proxy, as if youth and health is somehow a fallacy, a delusion that lasts for a few decades to no real end.
in happier news: it was very slow at work yesterday. someone had brought in a great horned owl that had fallen from a tree in their yard. after a few hours of monitoring and realizing it wasn't going to improve, i euthanized it (22g through the heart) and the doctor dissected it for us. it was fucking fascinating. their trachea is bivalved. they only have one ovary, on the left. ("llamas are like that too" said the doctor. "they only carry in the left branch of their uterus. most animals favor the left.") their skulls are completely overtaken by their optic orbs and ear canals (which you could easily fit a nickel inside, if you were wont), their brains very small as a result. afterwards the doctor cut off the head to add to her skull collection. i thought she was kidding at first. "how do you get the meat off?" i asked. "do you boil it?" i had this creepy image of her smiling over a cauldron. apparently she puts it in a barrel of horse manure with some worms. "they do a good job" she said. veterinary medicine is a surreal vocation indeed.
as i was walking downtown tonight i felt that hypocritical, familiar pang of loneliness. then i remembered how i, inadvertantly or otherwise, pushed everyone away. "i don't deserve friends" i said aloud. somehow the alas!ness of that, the laughable self-pity, made me feel a small bit better.