I’d really, really hoped to keep this a private matter between myself, Lucca and Mikey, but at this point I have to speak and let my side of the story be known.

Right around 5:00pm today, Lucca texts me out of the blue and says Mikey is breaking up with her. I’d had no warning there was any trouble between them, and even their tweets up to that moment suggesting nothing was other than hunky-dory.

After I spent about an hour trying to process that, then Lucca asked me if I would help pay for her hotel bill, because apparently she — and perhaps even more importantly, her toddler son — was getting kicked out of Mikey’s apartment effective immediately.

Now from my point of view, she’s only asking something like that because she has no choice, it’s either that or she’s sleeping on the streets tonight.

So maybe, just maybe, you can understand why I got just a little bit pissed and made it clear to Mikey — again in private — that I rather strongly felt that he was doing her and her child wrong?

Well now apparently I’m expected to apologize for that. And I’m not even sure how, because as I was told, sorry won’t cut it. And I’m still not quite clear for what, apart from saying what seemed clearly needed to be said at someone not prepared to hear it.

I just want to put all this behind me now. I just wish it didn’t have to leave such a bad taste in my mouth.

Over the course the time we knew each other, our relationship evolved quite a lot. In the last year or so, I found myself in the position of being the father figure in his life he'd never had. I didn't know the first thing about being a father figure, and I'm still not terribly sure that's changed any, in spite of his assurances that I was doing just fine.

But all that seems of relatively little importance now, because in my heart and in my memories, he will forever be my big brother, Sesame Cied Bun.

Up until I met Sesame, my relationship with the fandom was that of an outsider, having an identity but mostly just an alias with which to interact with this strange new world that had attracted my curiosity. Even though before I had met him I'd come to know and become friends with Toddlergirl, Chris Fox, and of course Tavi and Ozzie, I still really didn't yet feel included, not sure that I was where I belonged.

Sesame changed all that, and my life will never be the same again.

I'm really not sure exactly what it was he did or said. Maybe it was just him being him. For some reason he'd had an inherent ability to draw out my emotions in a way no one else ever has. One day I was saying no, I didn't want to go to FWA, I just wasn't the convention-going type, the next I found myself asking myself why not, what do I have to lose, it's not like I would be there alone. Sesame would be there, and so would Lucca, and several friends of theirs I didn't yet know but soon would. I was in the group and I belonged, and it wouldn't have happened without him.

I know I haven't been around here for a while, and after the responses to this journal quiet down it may be another while before I ever come back. But today I need to be here, to the place where my big brother Sesame made me feel truly welcome.

If not for Sesame I would never have hooked up with Lucca, and even though that ended up not working out I still wouldn't trade that experience for anything.

And if not for Sesame I probably would never have taken Tavi and Ozzie into my home, and all of our lives would have been much less for it.

Sesame was enthusiastic and infectiously optimistic. He always seemed to have a dream, and even though few of them ever worked out, it always felt good to see someone reach for the stars the way he did.

Thanks for everything, big brother. Your life may have been too short, but your impact on the world will last on and on.

Well, another Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I can at least be thankful it wasn't worse.

I journeyed on Wednesday to the apartment of Sesame (he doesn't go by that name much anymore, but it is how I know him in my heart), and my ex-mate Lucca. The game plan was to enjoy a home-cooked Thanksgiving feast at Sesame's mom's house just across the complex.

Sesame's mom has a couple of dogs. Dogs which frighten the hell out of Sesame, and, given how large a person he is, is saying something. But his mom insisted things would be all right and it would be good for them to get to know someone new.

Well the one dog is a slobberer and a hyper runner. He had that annoying habit of planting licks right on the lips, which always makes them tingle in an off-putting way, especially just before I'm about to eat.

Then there was Cookie. Retriever of some kind, and quite a barker. I tried not to show favoritism between them, and split my petting attention. This, apparently, was a mistake, but I was not to find that out until after the fact.

For a while Cookie barked at me with bare lips. Then the teeth came out and the growling started. I backed off but remained calm, after all I trusted the owner to know how to control her dogs.

I soon found out that control was not as full as I had thought, as Cookie lunged for my face.

It was over in just a few seconds but the damage was done. A slight fat lip was a prelude to the main wound, right where Uno's diamond-shape birthmark is near the top of my nose. And it was a bleeder, one that took a good 10-15 minutes to get under control.

When we came back from getting first aid (Sesame's mom had nothing along those lines at her place, amazingly enough), she had Cookie in a harness but that seemed a little tenuous and Sesame just flat out walked out on his mom, with Lucca following in tow. I was in the kitchen getting food and eyeing the back door myself, when sense finally had a small victory and Cookie was confined to quarters.

But again, the damage was done. I ate in quick and awkward silence, and I took plates of food out to Sesame and Lucca if for no other reason than to keep all that hard work cooking go to waste.

Sesame's mom was reasonably apologetic, but I think Sesame took it by far the hardest. Here he had all these plans to let me have a grand old time for the holiday weekend and it was ruined in an instant.

It's sad because Sesame deserves no blame whatsoever. He knew the dogs were a potential hazard and had begged his mom to confine them in advance but she refused to listen.

And now he's back to not speaking to his mom, all because of what happened to me.

Yesterday I bid them farewell, and travelled on to Ozzie's house to meet his family, which is an interesting story in itself but not one I'm up to telling right now.

I hope I get to see Sesame, his mom, and Lucca again under better circumstances, but given all the health issues you just never know. I'd hate for it to end the way that it did.

It's probably going to hit me in a week or so just how expensive the past few days have been, but for now I'm on the proverbial Cloud Nine and there's no way to put a price on that.

So Gem and Paul, Marina and her boyfriend, Amethyst and Seaweed (I think that was everyone we got to meet, I know Kenny Kitsune had come and went before we arrive), joined the three of us for three awesome days in Atlanta.

The only thing to really mar the experience for me was my failure to pack a charging cable for my iPhone. This led me to roaming the streets of midtown in a futile search for a replacement, in the vain hope of being able to revive its spent battery. That experience was topped off by a CVS that was fresh out of the necessary cable, and a T-Mobile store that had them in stock… but for some reason their sale system would not accept the scan code, and so incredibly they could not sell me one.

This was quite a pity as it left me camera-less during our trip to the Georgia Aquarium, an absolutely breathtaking collection of sea life. From the collection of jack fish that seemed to be going nowhere in a big hurry, to the inherently awesome otters, to the albino alligators that seemed to give Gem quite a fright, to the massive whale sharks, to nearly as massive manta rays that gave me flashbacks to a certain level of Mario Sunshine, it was an experience and a half. The only problem besides the lack of camera was the lengthy foot trip in search of a cable had left my back and legs in quite a bit of pain, so after several hours of tromping around the exhibits I just had nothing left for the dolphin show, and we had to regretfully bow out of that.

Friday saw Marina and Gem and cohorts head off to Babyland General Hospital in northeastern Georgia, which from reports a) turned out to be quite a bit further out there than it looks on the map, and b) is really quite a creepy place, and when you consider this is in the words of a certified babyfur that is saying something.

While they were away the three of us toured the World of Coca-Cola, which seems to want covet Disneyworld's title of the World's Happiest Place. I'm not 100% sure they got there, but it was quite an affordable way spend the afternoon (certainly relative to the aquarium next door), and an easy way to get an inadvertent sugar rush from the tasting room, just from taking small samples of everything they had to offer.

After that we spent the evening at Dave and Buster's, a place we DESPERATELY need one of here in Birmingham. Bland food but who cares because that's not what you go there for.

We spent both Wednesday and Thursday nights in a pub along the well-named Ponce De Leon Avenue, where I discovered there's a sharp divide between drinkers and non-drinkers in the cub community. At least it got the conversation flowing a bit better, and I discovered a brew called Dragon's Milk that I need to acquire more of soon.

It was late Friday night when we finally had the key experience that finally put it all over the top, as Gem and Paul made their way up to our room and we finally had the little intimate group we'd wanted for so long. I'd like to think we made the most of it, though there were a few things I regretted leaving behind. At least Gem got to squeeze my tail :D. Finally Paul started in on a bedtime story and even I couldn't help but slip into kid mode for that. Though after the fact it did occur that the author's decision to include a Kafka reference was a bit unusual.

It was exhilarating, it was painful, it was emotional, it was exhausting, and I wouldn't trade the whole experience for anything. 15 years ago I took a trip to London with my mom, and now I have incentive to return someday.

Thank you, Gem and Paul, for arranging this gathering. You are incredible people I can only hope to be able to pull off anything like this someday.

Well that summer went by in a hurry! Guess the plans I laid out in my last journal didn't exactly come off. Oh well, it was still a good summer.

Anyway... so much happening and about to happen here. Kage paid a quick visit on his way elsewhere, and now Ash has come back with Chris Fox, and I'm even told a certain balloon-loving bunny named Jimmy may be lurking in one of the rooms in my house on HIS was to that big meet-up at the northwest corner of Mississippi...

Oh and apparently I have a bunch of art featuring me to catch up on. People keep surprising me with this kind of thing, which is kinda amazing given how invisible I've been so much of the time.

And then just over a month away is another meet-up that I'm just sooo nervous about... but that's another story.

...and with summer comes a bunch of nights off that I didn't have before, which means maybe finally I can get back up to speed on all my fur friends.

It's still quite a balancing act keeping everyone supported that I have to, but so far I'm managing to keep all the balls in the air. Just have to hold out long enough for the good news my West Coast family is waiting so desperately for.

Meanwhile, I am always amazed by the many talents of The Munk. I would not have guessed he had talent as a landscaper, but I guess a front yard is just another canvas for him. I am so lucky to have the people I do have in my life.

It still took a few more days in coming but I think my prayers are starting to get an answer. For the first time in a long time I feel like I am not the only one who both cares about the people I care about, and was in a position to help.

I want to give big big thanks to everyone who contacted me either directly or indirectly to lend their support. But especially I want to thank a person I only know as YooMe, for knowing things I did not know and offering a kind of help that I could not offer myself.

A lot of work remains, but tonight I will go to bed with more hope than I have had in a while. And for that I am so very grateful.

ETA I'm told a lady names Sara is also very significantly to help. Sara will likely never read this journal but I still felt I should mention her.

This is a very hard thing for me to write. As modest an image as I project to the world, even I have my inner pride. And yet the time eventually comes when I have to face facts.

I am not Superwolf. I cannot save the day all the time.

Two people who are very dear to me are, not entirely through their own fault, simply crushing me. I thought I was strong enough to keep them up, but I’m not. It’s not a matter of if, but when, I will be forced to let go.

I feel so ashamed. The few people I have dared to share my troubles with tell me I’ve done more than any other person would have in my situation, and while my mind tells me it’s true, in my heart I can never feel like I’ve done enough.

What’s worse is that those two people are going to read this and probably react very badly. One of them will probably have a medical attack just out of guilt or something like that. And it will all be my fault for having said any of this in the first place.

But I cannot hold it in any longer. I am staring my breaking point in the face and I have not the strength to overcome it. I need help, and yet I dare not ask for fear of having to confess what I have done to put myself in this situation.

Six months. If somehow I could skip the next six months I could come back to a world where my life was right-side up again and I could go back to helping others the way I feel I was meant to do. But there is no such magic that would allow me to do that, not in the real world.

I have taken on more than I can handle and I am losing the fight. But what hurts more than anything else will be what I will be eventually forced to do.

Heck of a time to finally update but I have to talk this out.

So let me backtrack a bit. TFF was awesome trip down memory lane for me as I got to revisit my old stomping grounds. It actually kind of overwhelmed the actual convention experience but hey, to each their own agendas.

FWA was just a good solid time all around. Yeah, there were a couple things I’d do differently; playing the MTG draft format and what turned out to be Omaha Hi-Lo Pot Limit Poker (complete with 20 minute Powerpoint presentation on how to play it) turned out to be suboptimal on both counts. But all in all it was a fine time. I don’t know if the elevators were as much an issue this year for everyone as we took the precaution of staying at the Doubletree across the street. The hotel staff there was a lot friendlier than the Westin was last year too.

But all good things come to an end, as the cliche goes, and here I am at home with just a little bit of gloom settling in even as the weather turns a lot more favorable.

Part of it is financial, but I don’t want to dwell on that, I’ve talked more than enough about it with those affected.

No, I’m actually starting to worry about my mental state. My mom’s father had Alzheimer’s and my mom now has what is so far a fairly mild but still noticeable form of dementia. And now I’m starting to feel like I’m beginning to lose it. Like I will completely forget that I packed something and be absolutely certain I left it behind only to discover when I open my luggage, there it is. I keep misplacing my phone and while I can always find it thanks to the wonder that is modern location technology, it’s always a bit embarrassing when I have to use it.

As you may remember a few months ago I got help for some severe sleep apnia that had become seriously dangerous, to the point where even the simple 15 minute drive home from work was a struggle to stay alert. I had thought that might just be the treatments losing their effectiveness, but now I don’t think that’s the case. I went home thinking I could just use a nap, but when I got home I found I wasn’t really sleepy at all. Just… a bit foggy. Maybe some of the day’s frustrations got my adrenaline going and staved off the sleepiness but it’s just one more thing to worry me. One more thing I don’t need. One more thing I may not be able to do anything about.

Even now I can’t shake the feeling that I was going to go somewhere else with this but now I can’t think of it. It’s all a little scary really.

So a lot of my time away from FA is spent thinking, I *could* get caught up on some of my stacks! but I can always do it tomorrow. Today I had a gentle reminder that one day, tomorrow doesn't come, and you can never be sure when that day will be.

So at lunch today I hit the freeway headed for her local mall food court. I hadn't gone half a mile when I saw a couple things fly off the back of the flat bed tow truck a couple hundred yards ahead. That got my attention but didn't prepare me for what happened next: the ENTIRE RIGHT SIDE of the tow truck's load ripping right off.

In hindsight I'm not completely sure whether the wall came completely loose. All I knew in that moment was there a huge load of debris flying straight my way.

Thankfully, I had enough distance that I had time to react, and hit the brakes. That allowed all but the lightest of debris to fall to the road in front of me. At that point I had to decide whether to swerve into the next lane. Even though the freeway was relatively empty I didn't have time to check he mirrors to see if it was clear, so I ended up driving into the debris field,

At that point I'm thinking, great, there goes another tire, but somehow I managed to dodge everything. Then I passed the tow truck, which had pulled over, and noticed that its load was this thoroughly rusted out camping trailer. Not a speck of paint or unrusted metal to be seen on the thing. I gave some thought to pulling over myself to assess the scene but hunger got the better of me and so I moved on. It was clear that if I wasn't hurt nobody else was either.

In the end I lucked out, not even a scratch on the car. But it was definitely a reminder that you just never know when the worst can happen. Today I came away with nothing more than a story to tell. Next time, who can say?

Lesson learned.

So this morning I woke up to a countdown showing 2+ days to Christmas. And I'm like What? Already?

It's kinda weird this season, somehow it just doesn't quite feel like it should. I haven't spent hardly any time listening to seasonal music. Most of my time has been spent concentrating on Handel's Messiah, which went off just fine last night, but even that wasn't enough to really get me feeling it.

I don't know, maybe I'm caught up too much in what's happening at work. Basically, I drew the short straw and as a result, I get no vacation time this week (I do get Christmas Day off), which means, for literally the first time in my life I don't get to spend Christmas with any blood family. In fact, were it not for AshlyCoon I'd be spending the day literally all alone.

Anyway, right now I don't know if something's gonna break me out of this funk or it's something I'm just gonna have to ride out and hold on for better days ahead.

Good a time as any to get caught up on things, what with Gem finishing that awesome PvZ commission. It's been too long since I did anything like that, and it really feels good to have helped contribute again to the art community.

Anyway, as for my trip to Klamath Falls, it was great to see my fur siblings again. But oh dear, that town is not much of a place to live I'm afraid. Now I'm just praying they eventually find a way out of there, and that's all I'm gonna say about that.

And now for the main topic. The good news is, the CPAP treatments seem to be working. It's... a little creepy putting on a mask and tube every night, and I'm still trying to get it to fit just right, but there's little doubt I've been a lot more alert the past few days. Of course that means that instead of being too tired to do anything, I'm back to my mind racing a mile a minute and getting distracted by this and that. I guess sometimes there's just no way to win. Oh well!

And so it is that tomorrow I will journey through Airline Hell and hopefully come out of it unscathed in Nowhere, Oregon where my big bro and little sis are anticipating my arrival. I'm a little apprehensive I have to admit. Apart from a very enthusiastic welcome at the beginning and a tearful goodbye at the end I really don't know what to expect. But I guess I just have to know what's become of my dear fur family and so here I go to see for myself.

In other news it's starting to look very much like I have a sleeping problem of some sort. I mean that in the sense that I've almost always snored, but in recent months things have gotten worse. At least the doctor acted like I'm a case he's seen hundreds of times before, so there's some comfort in that.

But that is a matter that I will have to deal with when I get back. For now I have a long road, or flight path, ahead of me...

As much as I love a challenge, with my continued problems keeping my energy level up* I've just gone ahead and done a big nuke job and am starting over with following submissions and journals and whatnot. I'm sorry that I'm missing a good six months of material but as things stand there's just no other way.

THAT SAID: If there was a piece of art intended for me that I've missed PLEASE send me a shout or note or something to let me know.

And I do still intend to catch up on a certain webcomic.

*Even taking an extra vacation day didn't seem to help much. I was playing cards online just today with my hand poised on the mouse waiting my turn and the next thing I know I've had a momentary blackout and clicked the mouse... fortunately to no harm but still, it's very unnerving whenever that happens.

I was hoping the title of this journal would be more answer than question but honestly I'm just at a loss right now. I'm just all over the map and no idea what is going on with me half the time.

The biggest thing I guess is that I'm just ridiculously fatigued so much of the time. A lot of that I chalk up to my brain being totally disengaged during slow periods at work. Somehow I'm just not able to keep myself discretely entertained even when the boss is out sick, and instead I usually come practically brain-dead and needing to lie down for at least an hour if not two before I can rejoin the world.

But then on the flipside just the other night I pulled off an all-nighter like I might have 20 years ago, and within a day got my sleep schedule right back on track like it was nothing. There just seems to be no rhyme or reason to my energy surges and drains and I don't know what to do about it.

Tentatively I'm blaming the cat. I don't know how much Tavi and Ozzie mention their little pet but she's taken quite a liking to me since she's apparently detected that I'm available. She especially likes crawling all over me, which is amusing sometimes but really annoying other times as you might imagine. Anyway the first time she did that my eyes got all puffy, but since then that hasn't happened again, and I'm thinking my body may be expressing an allergy to her in another way, in the form of the strange cycles of fatigue I was just talking about. But that's just a wild guess.

Anyway I got a lot of stuff I got to get done and I'm running out of time to do it. I need to get mom's taxes filed, I need to make sure all those stray one-off bills get paid, and I need to let a certain someone know that I will be needing their services for an epic Halloween commission I've been sitting on for almost two years now...

Well it wasn't EXACTLY the group we had originally planned on going, but you go with who you're with, and so this afternoon the four residents of the Party Cub Hub are taking the "secret interstate" (because it doesn't quite hook up with anything else just yet so you actually have to search for an entrance to it) northwesterly for Mephit Fur Meet!

I'm sure I'll see many of you there, and I hear the weather will be great (if HOT...) Northern Mississippi is new ground for me so I look forward a lot of new and exciting sights as well.

Oh and you never know, you might find me minding the store at Tavi's location in the Dealer's Den. (Yes, the little munk that could has been bumped into the big room! Good for him!)

Over/under on how many times I get mistakenly called Ozzie: 3.

It was the only way Hollywood would have let it end.

Spoiler alert, but the next time you see a movie based around the classic love triangle, just find the wealthiest person in the group and you've identified one who will be the odd person out when all is said and done.

And so it is that real life imitates art. Today, Lucca joins Lem in Oregon and a chapter in our respective lives comes to an end.

I come out of this with my head held high, however, knowing that I did everything I possibly could have done, many would say far more than I should have, to try and make Lucca happy here. But it just was not to be.

My biggest mistake was taking a poor, vulnerable woman like Lucca out of her native culture to begin with. I always thought America was America all the way through but now I see that regional differences are far larger than I had imagined. She just could not be happy here, and all the money in the world wouldn't change that. (Well, okay, maybe if I'd had enough money to support everyone permanently, with enough left over to hire a personal driver for her. But let's stay within reality here.)

Even so, I'd like to think I'm leaving Lucca a better, stronger person than when she first got here. Certainly she's developed quite the following as an artist in the past year. There's still so much I'd hoped to do, such as getting her off her paranoid feelings that people are always talking about her behind her back. But maybe that will require this step first.

Lucca, you were before and remain my very dear sister, and I will always be there for you even across the miles.

Lem, dear big brother, I know you love Lucca with all of your being. May it ever remain thus.

As for me I have a wrong to right in terms of my participation or lack thereof in the furry community. I know there are many out there who miss me and I need to catch up with.

But not quite yet. First, I need some rest.

This weekend the Party Cub Crew made its way down to the Gulf Coast for a much-needed weekend. Well, most of the Crew I should say. For reasons I'm not clear on, Lem felt he had to stay behind, and that led Lucca to want to stay behind as well. So it ended up me, Tavi, Ozzie and Ash having a pleasant weekend down in Pensacola including a nice dip in the gulf combined with the surprise of front row seats to a Blue Angels air show being staged all along the beach.

About a half an hour before we got home I got a phone call from Lem with news: he'd been offered a job starting Friday... in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

Driving across country will take all week so he has to leave tomorrow.

Even as I write this I'm trying to come to grips with what seems to be the end of an era in the Party Cub Hub.

Lem launched the idea of a sort of group home for furries down on their luck, and the house will bear the name he has chosen for it, the Party Cub Hub, for as long as we remain here. Without him none of this would have happened.

But Lem knows as badly as anyone else he needs a job in the worst way, and if that means crossing the country he's going to do just that.

In a way Lem is fulfilling what just I hoped for those who entered here, coming out better than he came in. So in that sense, his time here was an unqualified success.

We had our ups and downs but that is life. Godspeed, big brother. I can only hope we do not drift apart, but I know that I will never forget you.

Think it was more a panic attack than anything else. He did take an extra dose of his medication and at the dosage level he takes that's potentially hazardous, but it's been almost six hours since then so we figured if anything bad was going to happen it would have by now. So we basically just walked out of the emergency waiting room and went home.

Anyway so... as for me... it's been a real bad month for my cubby side. Today was more or less the first time in quite a long time where I just let it take over for a while. Then this whole business had to happen... oh well. There's always tomorrow.

Ruminations while I await the completion of whatever overwrought production number the family is going to make out of tomorrow...

So is now and is three years older because, as she put it, too many artists think "6 years old = baby". And is now and may or may not be male again.

At least is still Ozzie and is not only still Tavi but going above and beyond in keeping me sane.

I'm not sure, what, if anything, is going to happen to Uno going forward. I've toyed with everything from tweaking his color scheme, to letting him turn seven and having it stick, to to tweaking his colors, to putting him on the back burner for a while and going with my alt instead, to just coming up with something completely different... to just doing nothing and letting everyone else's neuroses wash past me.

Have I mentioned I like inertia?

At least tomorrow I finally get to go see Iron Man 3 and stop having to dodge all mentions of it. That alone should be enough to make it a good day even if everything else somehow misfires. Not that I'm expecting it to but you know, that's how life goes sometimes.

So I got invited to something of a whirlwind weekend with my relatives back in Dallas, specifically, my cousin's son's third birthday, followed the next day by his baby sister's baptism.

I have to admit it was unlike any third birthday party I ever thought I would see. I guess there were really only two "big" items, a junior-sized bouncy castle (way too small for me to even think of invading, alas), and a one-hour rental of a travelling petting zoo, featuring, yes, a small pony for the little ones to be led around on.

It kind of got me contrasting my experience with that which my fur-family is having out in Yakima.

People talk about there being two worlds, but the world is a lot broader than that really. There's a million worlds out there. Some unquestionably better than others. But oh so much is relative. There's much bigger houses than my cousin's just across the street. And as sorry as Lucca's mom's state of affairs is, I know there are many places in the world where everyone is worse off than that.

But enough of the philosophical stuff.

It was an enjoyable trip enough if way too brief. I only barely got to update people on my new life here in Alabama and the people I've met and live with, and I certainly didn't get anywhere near to talking about the challenges I've had to face as a result. Maybe all that's for the best anyway. Why force things together that seem to want to remain separated?

So life goes on, and somehow I've fallen behind on FA again. Some things never change.

I think it says a lot that when I just asked Sesame when Ryudo's bus was leaving, the answer turned out to be "eight hours ago".

The week-long experiment ended with not even so much as a goodbye between myself and him, nor most likely between anyone else besides Sesame and him. And while I doubt it will be completely forgotten, it won't exactly be memorable either.

What can I say about Ryudo. A young man stuck in his shell worse than I have ever been, and that is saying something. I'm not ashamed of our efforts to include him; but somehow some things just aren't meant to be.

I suppose I should at least allude to some of the things I heard about how he really wasn't what he represented himself to be. If he was a hard worker by nature, we never saw it. If he had an enjoyment of cooking, it never seemed to be in evidence. But I don't want to dwell on it all either. Call me a pollyanna but I think Ryudo is a better person than he was able to show us.

When Ryudo arrived I was actually fairly optimistic. Sesame was in a place where she badly needed someone to have a relationship with, and despite the unplanned nature of it, the timing seemed like it couldn't be better. And I guess that even though it didn't work out, Sesame does seem to have come out of it stronger.

Ryudo Fox spent a week in my house, and yet somehow it feels like we barely even met. I can only hope his next adventure in life turns out better.

If I looked at it objectively, I've probably put myself through a lot of needless grief opening up the Party Cub Hub. The sense of purpose of it is great and all, but is it making up for what I'm doing to myself? The question is debatable.

But the point has always been, for better or for worse, it's been my decision to make, my mistake to make if indeed it is a mistake, and in the end, my responsibility for the results.

This week that all has changed.

Meet  ryudofox9, the sixth resident of the Party Cub Hub

Ready or not.

I... know precious little about my new housemate. I know he seems to get along great with Sesame, which is very important, as Sesame has sorely needed someone in her life.

I also know that in the past few weeks he has a) quit his job, b) bought a non-refundable set of bus tickets for Alabama, and c) planned to turn up in the city bus station this Sunday evening.

What I don't know is when he was planning on getting around to telling me, the owner of the house he intends to move into, about all this. Or, you know, introduce himself to me?!

It was only by happenstance, someone stumbling across this journal, that any of us even learned what was going on.

I tried to talk him out of coming. But apparently he's just bound and determined to get away from his mother by any means necessary, and besides, non-refundable ticket.

So whether I like it or not, suddenly this person I've never met and barely know anything about, is my problem.

Why me.

Like I said, it's arguable that I've been getting taken advantage of all along here. But at least it's been by my choice and with my eyes wide open as to what was going on, so that at the bottom line I have no one to blame but myself if it all goes wrong.

But now, this.

I want to give Ryudo a chance since he seems to want to earn his spot, but if he had bothered to even ask me about the viability of moving in here it probably would have come out that his lack of a driver's license is a severe handicap in this very automobile-dependent neighborhood in which the Party Cub Hub is located.

I just don't know if I can deal with this right now. Certainly my coping skills feel very weak right now. I have work I need to get done but I can't get my mind off what I'm being put through here.

Help?

Thanks for all the support everyone offered yesterday. Once I got in to see the doctor things went just about as well as I could've hoped. Couple of muscle relaxant injections of the type that held up for seven months, and a nice little prescription for some good stuff.

Not only is it helping deal with the pain, it's also making me more mellow that is usual even for me. Which is a good thing because moods are not great in the Hub these days. Sesame is having a horrible time finding work for the first time in her life, which is really getting her down big time, and Lucca is... well, being Grumpy Cat again. What can you do.

Tonight we're doing some family bonding over old Disney live action movies of all things. Whatever works I guess.

I'm sure there's a bunch of troubles I'm forgetting right now but all things considered it's best that way. They're not going anywhere and right now I just need some time.

It was just the slightest of bends, and yet it did something. Now less than 24 hours later I'm in agony. At this hour on a Sunday, Lucca is all the help I have, so I still have to struggle to the car with her help and find an urgent care place that's even open.

Anyway somehow I got here, and I wait with all the patience I can manage. Besides the physical pain this is just not a place I'm used to being, dependent on the help of others, even if hopefully it's just for the moment.

Oddly, it's mentally a little freeing. For once I can say without guilt, "no I can't" and no amount of whining can change the answer. Ironically, a herniated disc has helped give me a backbone, so to speak.

But I know it's gotta get fixed and soon. Four other people depend on me to varying degrees and staying down just isn't an option. Hopefully what worked last fall will still have its magic today.