Here it is. The entire month of December for the year 1999. Don't you just feel like a part of my life? Doesn't it make you all warm & fuzzy inside to know that I'm sharing a part of myself with you? I know it does. Read on, starting from the bottom.
December the 30th, 1999: I hate MTV. I mean, really. The station was a really good idea, & I'm sure someone had great intentions, but I just really despise MTV. I'm on a few mailing lists. One of them is devoted to alternative rock music. Yesterday, I read a message from the list telling everyone to go to the MTV site to vote for the artists & albums of the millenium. I thought I would go there, choose some Beatles stuff, maybe a little silverchair if I felt like it. I figured I could even get some Black Lab in for one of the categories. I was wrong. I arrived at the MTV Millenium Countdown 2 Large Poll page. I think the words "2 Large" should have made me turn off the computer right there, but I wanted to see what kind of questions MTV is asking. They're decent questions - What is your absolute favourite album of the millenium?, What is your favourite movie of the millenium?, etc. So, I clicked on the links to check out the choices. Under the absolute favourite album of the millenium, I found bands like 98°, Blink 182, TLC, & Britney Spears. I was horrified. The worst part, though, is the fact that MTV had the audacity to mix in one or two artists like Led Zeppelin & Pink Floyd just to make it seem like the poll was credible at all. As if Christina Aguilera should even be allowed to have her name written anywhere near The Beatles' or even the Beastie Boys'. All of the other questions are exactly the same way. My personal favourite was seeing "Ruff Ryders: Ryde or Die Vol. 1" wedged in between Santana & the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the favourite album of '99 question. MTV disgusts me. Not only do they force bad music on kids who don't know any better but to listen to whatever everyone else is listening to, but they don't even provide a nice, little space for me to write in my own choices in the categories. Ahh, if only I could vote for the Backstreet Boys & feel okay about myself in the morning.
December the 29th, 1999: Christmas. I love Christmas. I love Christmas break. Much to my surprise, this Christmas was just like any other. On our last week of school, during Spanish class, my cousin Lindsey told me that she & her boyfriend, Josh, had broken up. I didn't really ask any questions about the break-up, because I imagined that she was kind of (i.e. extremely) hurt by it. Her mom confirmed my suspicions a few days later. She said that Josh wanted to remain friends but Lindsey wasn't so sure that she wanted to. Her main concern was what to do with the Christmas gifts she had bought for him. On Christmas Eve, my family all met at my grandparents' house for a gift exchange like we do every year. I like the way things work up there. We draw names at Thanksgiving & make out lists of gift ideas to give to the people who got our names. It's supposed to be this big secretive thing, but everyone knows who got everyone else by the time Thanksgiving dinner is done. The kids never know what we got each other, because our parents do all of the shopping, but hey, we're kids. So, as soon as everyone was settled, we got ready for dinner as we always do. There isn't enough room for everyone around Grandma's big kitchen table, so the kids always eat at our own table in another room. This year, however, the kids sat in the kitchen while the adults ate in the other room. It was odd. I don't like change. Plus, my cousin Jamie got married, so now she's considered an adult, & there really wasn't any need for the kids to sit at such a big table when there were only seven of us, including Josh, who was playing grandkid for a night. Holidays are the only time I wonder why I'm a vegetarian. As if it's not bad enough that the entire table was covered in turkey, ham, & the like, any available space was filled in by gelatin products, which happen to be made from horses' hoofs or the lining of cows' stomachs. I think I ate a roll. It was a good roll, though. I was really surprised to have Josh eating with us. He wasn't talking to Lindsey or anything, but he never talks, so I just assumed that they were dating again. After dinner, we went into my grandparents' living room & just sat for a while. Josh & my little cousin Alex chose to have a pillow fight while I beat on my little cousin Will for a while. Josh & Alex knocked a shelf off of the wall & 100 miniature figurine things fell behind the couch, so I dove behind it to pick them up before Grandma had a heart attack. After the adults were all done eating, Grandma called all of the kids into the kitchen & handed Will & Alex a cake to carry into the living room, where all of the adults were waiting to open gifts. The cake said "Jesus" on top in green icing. It scared me. Of course I realize that Christmas celebrates Jesus' birth, but what kind of psycho bakes him a cake? Well, it was our job to walk into the living room with the cake while singing "Happy Birthday". Josh got behind me & said that he wasn't going to sing. I told him that he was going to sing. He kept saying that he wasn't, & I kept saying that he was. Finally, he said with a smile, "I don't care what you say. I'm not singing, Katie." At that moment, I remember thinking that I've never heard him say my name. It was kind of a weird feeling. Not really a bad one, but weird all the same. We went into the living room, singing, & I looked over at Josh from across the room to see if he was singing. I really don't hate him at all anymore. We finally got to the gift-opening segment of the program, & all was well. We always start with the youngest opening a gift first & work up to the oldest until everyone's opened something. Then, we repeat, with my Aunt Glenna passing out all gifts. It's a really nice system. My little cousin Callen went first, only being 3 years old. Callen is absolutely in love with Josh, so everyone made sure that he got her name in the exchange. Everyone was asking her who her gift was from & she would smile shyly & whisper "Josh" in her lisp-y little kids' voice. She quite possibly could be the only thing that would make me ever want to have kids. Josh bought her the cutest gifts like a princess playset & Teletubbie pajamas. I'm sure Lindsey went shopping with him, but still. I noticed that Josh & Lindsey didn't sit by each other during the whole gift exchanging thing, but I was glad to see that Lindsey wasn't all over him. Josh got some horrible R & B CD that I promptly beat him for asking for, but he just smiled & said nothing to defend himself. While we're somewhat on the topic of Teletubbie pajamas, let's discuss something. Callen was so excited with her gift from Josh & her new purple slippers from Grandma that she took them into another room & put them on. When she came back into the living room, she modeled them for everyone & then walked over to my mom to have her picture taken. As she was standing in front of Mom, Aunt Glenna reached up & patted Callen's butt. Then, she patted it again. Then, she just went crazy patting her butt. I couldn't deal with it. What's with old people & butts? So weird. Anyway, after all of the gift exchanging was done, I went into another room to play Sorry! with Alex & Will. Josh came in to watch us play, but he didn't say anything. After a while, I asked him if he was planning on going to college, because I had been wondering for a while. He said that he was applying to the University of Cincinnati over Christmas break. I asked what he wanted to major in. He said, "I'm thinking about something with music or maybe Spanish." Yes, that's right. Spanish. I asked him what he wanted to do with music, asked if he wanted to produce or something, but he didn't know. Oh, well. He'll go far with the Spanish thing I'm sure. (Sarcasm, sarcasm.) After Josh left, Lindsey came in to watch for a minute & said, "So, can you tell that Josh & I are still broken up?" Then, it hit me. That's why he wasn't talking to her at dinner. That's why he had sat across the room from her while we were opening presents. I asked her why he had come if he wasn't with her, & she said that he wanted to be there for Callen. Now, how much do you love Josh? Here he is, a high school senior who just broke up with his girlfriend, & he's concerned about being there for a 3 year-old. It's too bad he has bad teeth. Haha.
December the 1st, 1999: Let's talk about cat dissection, shall we? I'm dissecting a cat at the moment in my anatomy class at school. When my teacher first showed us the cats at the beginning of the year, I was utterly freaked out by them, & I thought that taking the class might have been a mistake. They were shoved into huge plastic bags, their top paws stretched out above their heads & their bottom paws spread open. They were stiff & covered in some fluid with a weird name (not formaldehyde, thanks) that was supposed to keep them from rotting but could be smelled thru the bags. I stayed in the class, though, hoping to be rid of my dissection woes by the time the kitties were ready to be cut. I was. Actually, on Dissection Day #1, I was totally ready to start cutting. About a month ago, Sheena asked me if I wanted to be her dissecting partner on the way into English class, because she thinks I'm the biggest perfectionist she knows. (Yes, she actually said that, Mike. I told you so.) I readily agreed, if only to make sure I didn't end up agreeing to be Angela's partner later. About two weeks ago, our teacher told us to find a dissection partner & sit at a table with that person. I saw Angela look over at me out of the corner of my eye, but I just ignored her & walked over to an empty table with Sheena, feeling really bad about what I was doing. Nick & his friend Mike came & sat on the other side of the table, leaving Angela seatless & partnerless. She ended up with a girl she refers to as "The Antichrist" at a table with people who she doesn't know or like. Later, she said, "Hey, it's too bad we couldn't be dissection partners", as if it wasn't my choice to not work with her or something. I would be pissed at me if I was her. I felt really bad about leaving her to fend for herself, but at the same time, I was really happy to be working with someone who I felt confident would do a good job & who I knew I would have fun with. Plus, with Sheena comes Nick & Mike, & that can never be a bad thing. So, Monday was Get to Know Your Kitty Day. Sheena & I wanted a cat with orange fur, but there were none left by the time we decided on that, so we stole Nick & Mike's & gave them our little, black one. Our cat is a beast. I mean, the thing is massive. When we took it out of the bag, it was dripping with fluid, & it was just plain scary. Its head was the first thing to come out, & let me tell you, there's nothing that freaks me out more than having a dead cat stare at me with one sunken-in, half-closed eye. We layed it on our dissecting tray, & it hung over the edges like 5 or 6 inches on each end. Fluid was running off the tail onto the table, & the thing smelled like chloroseptic. There was lots of screaming on the part of the weak-stomached chicks in my class, but Sheena & I just took a couple of deep breaths & grabbed our scalpels. The first day, we spent all of class cutting the skin around the neck & paws so we could begin our skinning the next day. It wasn't really all that gross, but the anti-rotting crap made everyone's eyes water & noses burn. After a while, I think that I just forgot that it was a cat & dug in. The skin was really tough, so we didn't get much done on Monday, but we got to know our cat well enough to name it Boots. Perfect, eh?
Dissection Day #2:
Dissection Day #3:
I got to class 15 minutes late, so Sheena was already up to her elbows in cat juice. We made an incision all the way down the cat's stomach, & we started our skinning. It was really nowhere as disgusting as I had imagined. In fact, I was pretty much in awe of how well-defined the cat's muscles are. We took our scalpels & cut all of the connective tissue holding all of Boots' skin on until we could peel back some of the skin. That took quite a while, so that's really all that was accomplished on Day #2. I had to have people brush cat fur off of me when we were done, though, & well, that's never good.
Today was the ultimate skinning day. The belly of the cat is completely exposed right now, one of the legs is bare, & we're working on an arm at the time. I can't believe how much fat is in our little Boots. The adipose (that's fat tissue - cool, eh?) is yellow with a consistency that kind of reminds me of really thick cottage cheese. It's so gross. Sheena thinks that our cat must have been someone's pet, because it was obviously very well-fed. We also think that Nick & Mike's cat must have been a stray, because the thing is fat-free. We cut some of our fat off & threw it on their cat to make them feel better today. A chick from another table cut off her male cat's . . . umm . . . yeah . . . by accident today, but alas, she wasn't allowed to bring them home to show off. In fact, none of us are allowed to have cat souvenirs, & it makes me mad. I don't necessarily want cat parts laying around my house, but Mike (my Mike, not Nick's Mike) is so freaked out by the mere thought of dissection that I promised to cut off an ear & thumbtack it to his bedroom wall sometime soon. Ahh, what a way to end the day.
