Hey There

wastes crazy amounts of space and water

soul-crushingly boring

extremely frustrating to all but the highest level of players (most golfers will never even shoot par)

prohibitively expensive (golf clubs are very costly and one round of golf can cost $100+)

mini golf:

18 holes will fit into an area the size of a small park; most courses use astroturf, which doesn't even require water

a fun game of skill to challenge your friends to

easy to get into, but difficult to master

cheap (you and your friends can probably play for like, $20)

I feel a cough coming on, because I work in a drug store, and all of my customers are sick. I always feel a little bit sick, now. I can’t afford to eat well enough to keep my body healthy. Cough medicine is worth two hours and 20 minutes of work. Our store probably bought a case of cough medicine for they price we’re selling one box. If this cough gets worse, I might have to call out, which will cost me more than the medicine in the long run- but that doesn’t give me the money to buy the medicine right now. I stock a case onto the shelf. I don’t buy any.

A mom wrangling three crying, sick kids enters my line and sets two types of children’s medicine down, says they’re both on sale and thank god for that. I ring her up, and she gets very quiet, because she misread the sign, and her total is twice as high as she was expecting. Her youngest screams in the cart, because she’s burning up with fever. Her mother very quietly asks, please, she’s so sorry, if I could please take the more expensive one off her total.

I agree, I move the box below the counter, and when she’s not looking, I slip it into her bag. I pray as hard as I can that if she notices the “mistake” she says nothing, because I so desperately want her to have that medicine. The store has lost profit at the cost of a child’s health. I don’t bat an eye. This is a terminable offense. If I’m presented with the same situation tonight, I’ll do it in a heartbeat.

The myth of evil employees stealing from the company falls apart the second you realize the company would shoot you dead to make a profit. This isn’t two equal players, one of whom is stealing from the other. This is someone fighting for survival versus someone fighting to make an extra million. It’s not equal.

At this point, it’s been three months. It takes another two to set up the surgery and get in and fight with my insurance about paying for it.

This person is my new best friend

I befriended a feral cat once who had spent her life in the forest without human interaction. I was worried about her because she had a paw damaged from an old injury and was emaciated but obviously nursing kittens that were hidden away somewhere. It took me weeks of putting out food and sitting across the yard every evening for her to trust me even a little and when she decided we were friends and she expected dinner every night she started coming to my door and trying to call for me in the evening, but she didn’t meow. Why would she? Cats only meow naturally as kittens when their vocal chords/ears aren’t fully developed, adult cats communicate with vocalizations that aren’t audible to humans. She probably tried making noises I couldn’t hear to call me but ended up sticking to the one I always responded to- a horrible yowling growl that she had made at me when we first encountered each other in the forest. Except once we were friends she would make this noise while purring and rubbing affectionately against a nearby tree or the porch railing (because she didn’t want to touch me yet). This understandably freaked my family members out but I was touched that she had taken the time to find a way to basically yell FUCK OFF in an affectionate way.

Fast forward to when she finally trusts me enough to bring her hidden kittens out of the forest to me, long story short I gained their trust and put them in this big pen, that I had previously used to keep chickens in, so they’d be safe and to keep her from having another litter. Except she was already secretly pregnant again! (Fix your pets, guys, they make SO many babies) and ended up having her new babies in this pen. I kept my distance, sitting on the outside once they were born until she seemed comfortable enough to let me come inside. The kittens were a bit wild, hissing viscously at me as soon as they opened their eyes, but they warmed up to me. There were four of them and soon they all wanted to be the center of attention during the twice daily play sessions. I’d be playing with one and another would meow insistently behind me and I’d immediately answer them and give them love, teaching them that humans could be friends that answer their needs- making them adoptable once they were weaned. Mama cat (Artie) would just watch me play with them, and I guess she was doing some thinking because one day when they were about a month old I was playing with them and one meowed behind me. I was confused because I hadn’t realized there was a kitten behind me and when I turned, there wasn’t. The only cat there was Artie looking at me really intensely. I turned back around to the kittens and I heard the meow again, I turned back to Artie and responded in the way I always did with the kittens “yes baby?” And she meowed again in an exact imitation of her kittens! After that she would.not.shut.up. It was like she had cracked some kind of code, meowing for attention and snacks and just to say hi. Her two older kittens, the ones she’d had in the forest, had never meowed at me either but started to once they saw how I responded to their mom. and I find it endlessly fascinating because before that it had never occurred to me that cats only meow at humans because they were taught by other cats to keep meowing past kittenhood because that’s the best way to get a human’s attention.