This was randomly chosen, but just happened to have been taken on January 8, 2021.
I had been quarantining pretty strictly since the first shutdown. At the beginning of the shutdown, I'd invited an old friend to quarantine with me since she was living in a shelter. She ended up breaking my couch, drying out or stealing half of my makeup, leaving the cap off the milk all the time, secretly eating meth (she later said that was a thing??) despite telling me she was sober, inviting her dealer to my apartment and also meeting sex work clients on tinder and then going out to meet them at random parks and stuff (during the worst of the lockdown).
I still feel like a monster for this, but since I was afraid I would be a pushover (I also had seen her violently scream and have a blow up at the methodone clinic when I'd given her a ride, and then came out to tell me that's just what you have to do sometimes to get your way), so my parents helped me find resources to make sure she would have a place to go, and we got her set up with a hotel room via a local shelter that was giving people rooms due to quarantine, and kind of had my dad help me talk to her and ask her to leave. She ended up living in a pretty nice hotel for several months, but still blasts me on facebook to this day for abandoning her during COVID.
Also, at the time, I had many undiagnosed and untreated physical, mental and neurodivergent conditions that were ruining my life and my mental health already anyway, and with all of that combined with the stress of COVID, I lost it a bit.
This image shows a kitty that showed up under my car one day (parked right outside my front door in my apartment complex) in the fall of 2020 when he was a kitten. I already had 2 cats, but I'd started getting these intense intrusive thoughts and they were telling me I needed another cat, so I kept him. He lived outside for a couple weeks until I could get my 2 cats up to date on their vaccines for safety, but he kept trying to run in when he could.
So, I named him D'Artagnan, because I always liked him in The Three Musketeers, and because he was my third cat (even though D'Artagnan was technically a 4th honorary member, I think?) and because he had kept "dartin' in" all of which to this day makes me giggle.
The tank in the background was the beginnings of an intense reptile collecting obsession that took over my life the next few years, while I quarantined and tried not to lose my mind (but very much failed).
Reptiles were fun, but in retrospect, I know it wouldn't have happened if I'd been on the like 10 medications and supplements and been diagnosed with and educated on my half a dozen physical conditions and half a dozen mental/neurodivergent conditions.
Instead, I blew $5k of COVID unemployment payments at PetSmart and MorphMarket.
At the moment, I feel like I need to explain all of this because I'm afraid it implies the worst, but I'll just say for now that I have two cats again, and no other pets. And I also don't live there anymore, this is all story for another time though.
There are many things I would change but also many experiences during that time I will always be grateful for. D'Artagnan was my baby boy with his little white glove paws, he was such a sweetheart. I hope he is happy where he is now, I think about him all the time and feel so guilty for everything. And my soul was so enriched with my experiences with reptiles, I will never regret that either.
But basically my boyfriend who I live with now is (reasonably) reluctant to have a pet "collection" in the house. However, we are 3 years in, and part of me still kind of think he might come around some day.













