It's been one of those days. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night and I've been worried all day about the neuter appointment tomorrow, powered my way through work today on one sugar high after another, and had finally gotten to bed early, to ease my heart & mind with a good night's sleep.
I had been asleep about a half an hour when I heard a huge shattering sound. It came through my closed door and my loud, noise-canceling fan from across the other side of the house. I was disoriented and scared for a bit - got up, turned on the lights. At first I didn't notice anything but then in my dining room under the bar that leads into the kitchen was this:
That's about 2/3 of the champagne glass collection that I started more than 5 years ago, in pieces on the floor. I let out a wail like I had just heard the news of someone's death.
I chased the cats into the bedroom and shut the door, and proceeded to walk around my living room/dining room in shock, looking at the mess, try to figure out how I was going to clean it up, just crying, weeping, in utter, absolutely shock.
It's just GLASS. Some of those glasses were cheap, and a couple were ugly.
But they're my glasses, my collection. They are gifts, they are souvenirs, they are thrift store finds. Things I can't replace. Memories. One was engraved with my initials. Two were housewarming gifts. Many more were birthday and Christmas gifts from friends who looked in very special places to find me beautiful glass.
I did stupidly leave them out because I hadn't figured out a place to store them. They were sitting, sort of lined up, on the top of the bar between the dining room & kitchen. That jump is four and a half feet, though, a foot higher than my counters, and the cats have never cleared anything that high. They did this time, though, to spectacular results.
I live alone. There was no one but me to pick up the broken pieces of glass, no one but me to spend an hour doing it, crying over nearly every single piece, every warm memory of drinking from the glasses, or my smile when I got the long, slim bag or box and knew what was waiting inside.
I've experienced a lot of things in my life, a lot of pain, death of family members, death of a best friend when we were both 16. I know this is a little pain, a small grief. I know it's just glass, and that the memories aren't inextricable from the physical object. It's just so hard to process - such a shock, and such surprisingly wild grief.
I can't handle the kittens right now. They are wild, picking up on my intense emotions, I know. They're running from one corner of the house to the other and I just can't face them or hold them feeling the way I do. It's not their fault. I was the idiot who left a window's worth of glass just sitting around. I was the one who decided to unwrap them after I moved in even though I didn't have a place to put them. They're babies - they were after my necklace, which months of behavior redirection hasn't taught them to leave alone. I took it off earlier and put it on that high bar - how they knew it was up there, I'll never know, but I found it in a knotted pile by the broken glass. To them, everything is a toy, and they get worked up when they play and bounce around like they're on springs. They didn't mean to, and I'm not angry with them. I just can't be around them right now feeling like this. And I hate the timing of this, that they are leaving tomorrow for the vet's and will have had such a wild night.
If you can believe it, this is me much more calm and collected than I was an hour and a half ago. And I did check paws, bodies, and eyes for cuts or small shards of glass, and vacuumed the entire house three times - I'm sure I'll wake up to a noise complaint, but oh well.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far. I feel very pathetic and small, being so upset over something like this. I hope I haven't offended anyone.
I'm off to take a hot shower and get back in the bed. Good night.
I had been asleep about a half an hour when I heard a huge shattering sound. It came through my closed door and my loud, noise-canceling fan from across the other side of the house. I was disoriented and scared for a bit - got up, turned on the lights. At first I didn't notice anything but then in my dining room under the bar that leads into the kitchen was this:
That's about 2/3 of the champagne glass collection that I started more than 5 years ago, in pieces on the floor. I let out a wail like I had just heard the news of someone's death.
I chased the cats into the bedroom and shut the door, and proceeded to walk around my living room/dining room in shock, looking at the mess, try to figure out how I was going to clean it up, just crying, weeping, in utter, absolutely shock.
It's just GLASS. Some of those glasses were cheap, and a couple were ugly.
But they're my glasses, my collection. They are gifts, they are souvenirs, they are thrift store finds. Things I can't replace. Memories. One was engraved with my initials. Two were housewarming gifts. Many more were birthday and Christmas gifts from friends who looked in very special places to find me beautiful glass.
I did stupidly leave them out because I hadn't figured out a place to store them. They were sitting, sort of lined up, on the top of the bar between the dining room & kitchen. That jump is four and a half feet, though, a foot higher than my counters, and the cats have never cleared anything that high. They did this time, though, to spectacular results.
I live alone. There was no one but me to pick up the broken pieces of glass, no one but me to spend an hour doing it, crying over nearly every single piece, every warm memory of drinking from the glasses, or my smile when I got the long, slim bag or box and knew what was waiting inside.
I've experienced a lot of things in my life, a lot of pain, death of family members, death of a best friend when we were both 16. I know this is a little pain, a small grief. I know it's just glass, and that the memories aren't inextricable from the physical object. It's just so hard to process - such a shock, and such surprisingly wild grief.
I can't handle the kittens right now. They are wild, picking up on my intense emotions, I know. They're running from one corner of the house to the other and I just can't face them or hold them feeling the way I do. It's not their fault. I was the idiot who left a window's worth of glass just sitting around. I was the one who decided to unwrap them after I moved in even though I didn't have a place to put them. They're babies - they were after my necklace, which months of behavior redirection hasn't taught them to leave alone. I took it off earlier and put it on that high bar - how they knew it was up there, I'll never know, but I found it in a knotted pile by the broken glass. To them, everything is a toy, and they get worked up when they play and bounce around like they're on springs. They didn't mean to, and I'm not angry with them. I just can't be around them right now feeling like this. And I hate the timing of this, that they are leaving tomorrow for the vet's and will have had such a wild night.
If you can believe it, this is me much more calm and collected than I was an hour and a half ago. And I did check paws, bodies, and eyes for cuts or small shards of glass, and vacuumed the entire house three times - I'm sure I'll wake up to a noise complaint, but oh well.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far. I feel very pathetic and small, being so upset over something like this. I hope I haven't offended anyone.
I'm off to take a hot shower and get back in the bed. Good night.
