It was my second photography trip for work and I have another one lined up later next month.

I was sent to Baltimore, MD to shoot a Civic Type R for a project that we are doing for Honda.

Again, I’m only a backup backup photographer for the agency and it seems that everyone was unavailable due to it being a holiday weekend and I was the only one who didn’t have plans. I usually don’t plan anything around this time anyway, but yes, I was available to do it.

At first, I was gung ho about it and then I was a little hesitant because I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with Relish. She stayed at ASEC for medical boarding for a price I was willing to pay.

Pickles was Pickles. He’s a pro at being boarded at Center Sinai now. He’s comfortable with it and I’m okay with it.

So, I went.

* * *

Thursday was a long day of traveling. Bright and early to late night on EST. It was only 6:30 on PST, but it felt like 9:30 to me.

By the time I landed, there wasn’t a shot list. It didn’t come until past midnight on the East Coast. Good thing I don’t sleep well and I looked it over and planned on doing most of the shots anyway. I was to treat the photoshoot like an auto show and for the most part, that’s what I did.

They had a narrative and a story that they wanted to tell, but given the area and the environment, I couldn’t make that happen. There were no shipping containers anywhere near this port.

There were just cars and cars and more cars. Cars.

The photoshoot went well. I got all the shots I needed, or at least I think I did and a lot more.

There was a mishap and it was my fault. I should have seen it. I should have anticipated it. It was during the exterior 360 shoot with the Theta. It was windy and the low-profile tripod, was more a monopod than anything else.

Wind and no balance doesn’t lend well for photography, especially the camera. One of the lenses got scratched up bad. I have a replacement Theta on order and should get it tonight.

Fucking piece of shit. It is what it is.

I got the shots and hauled ass back to the hotel room where I selected a few jpgs for upload.

It was a long full workday for me even though most people got out at 2. I wasn’t fortunate. It’s part of the job and it is what it is.

I got a job and I got more insight into the advertising aspect of the agency and see how the meat of the work is produced. It is truly interesting and fascinating to see that part process. I never been included before.

They picked their shots and I got them the pictures.

There was a mishap in terms of getting pictures which I don’t know what happened. It must be a permission setting or something.

I just tried it with a “view only” perms that I set for users and they could login without any problems.

I’ll have to test with Nick.

But they got the files and I am done with this project. Onto the next one.

Onto the next one.

* * *

Exploring Baltimore.

Well, I didn’t have a good chance to explore Baltimore.

I left work, or my hotel room a little after 5 and went to the hotel bar to grab a drink and then I went back to the hotel to put the files on the shuttle since some users were having issues.

After, I went to dinner. It was about 2 miles away and I decided to drive instead. I thought of walking after I was well on my way. There was a moment I thought about driving back, parking, and then walking, but then decided not to.

The plan was seafood. It’s the Northeast, so seafood was the thing to go for. I found the Thames St. Oyster Bar on Yelp and that’s where I went.

I had the grilled octopus and the lobster roll. I’ve had better of each, but still good.

I was sitting at the bar and I met and had an interesting conversation with a girl that was sitting next to me.

She is a science teacher in high school and from North Carolina. She moved to Baltimore back in 2008 for the teaching gig and she seems cool.

Everything felt so organic in how we started to chat and what not and I’m sure the copious amount of alcohol that we both consumed helped ease whatever inhibitions that we had.

She is envious about my fearlessness and my sense of adventure and for the most part it seems that she needs someone to give her the confidence and to be with her and to live their life with her. She wants a companion.

I’m sure if I was a local in Baltimore, something probably would have happened or continue to happen and since I’m not, nothing much happened other than an exchange of numbers.

I haven’t heard from her yet.

But, I was still trying to make it work, in terms of hooking up. I’m not going to lie about that.

If it happened, great. If it didn’t, fine.

But it was a great experience, a great moment in this life of moment that I’m able to connect and have a moment with a total stranger like that. I’m not as hopeless as I think I am.

I just need to put myself in a situation like that and allow it to happen.

It was good. I know that I’m capable of it and I like the confirmation that I can. Sure I got rejected, but again, what’s new.

Next time.

When things are out of control, the only control you have is how you process and deal with it.

It’s the only way one can keep sane.

Take control of your emotions when things get out of hand.

It’s the only control you have.

It’s important.

Take control of what you can.

Some light broke through last week and now everything is bright.

Sometime early last week I decided to let Relish out of her crate and roam the living room under supervision. She seemed so much happier now that she has some freedom and out of her crate.

She’s able to cat again. She’ll groom herself and explore the limited space that she has access to.

Light.

Sunshine.

The darkness lifted.

Relish will have surgery on Tuesday to close her wound. They’ll have to take skin from somewhere else and graft it on to the open wound. She’s on the mend.

She’s eating on her own. She’s moving around on her own. I was directed to stop her pain medication.

Progress.

Light.

Relish.

* * *

Mother’s Day was Sunday.

I called mom and the first thing she asked was about Relish. I told her she’s doing fine and how it happened with me rescuing Chutney and everything.

She then asked how much money I spent on her.

I told her I didn’t want to talk about it. I know what her response would be. She started from thousands to tens-of-thousands and believe me, she wasn’t happy.

I knew her response.

She would have just let her died. Why would I spend that much money of a fucking cat?

Typical.

It is what it is.

Money isn’t that important to me. My conscience and my heart matters more. Money is money. It doesn’t buy me my happiness.

My clear conscience that I did everything to protect this cat and to save this cat makes me feel better about myself. That’s what’s important.

My responsibility as a pet owner and as a fur-parent.

That matters.

But, overall, it was a good call after we moved on from Relish.

Even though I knew her response, it still pissed me off.

* * *

As people find out what happened to Relish and see pictures of the damage, they all feel bad.

Those who were encouraging me to get Chutney feel guilty about it.

It’s not their fault and it’s not something that they should apologize for. I’ve pretty much had it in my mind and heart that I needed to rescue Chutney anyway.

It is what it is.

No one could have foreseen what happened. I certainly didn’t when I met him and rescued him. I thought that he would just fit in based on Chutney’s personality when I met him.

He’s sweet and just wants attention.

It is what it is.

Time to move on.

We all can’t change the past, we just have to come to terms with it.

* * *

My life is unbalanced and I’m slowly trying to find that balance again. I trying to find the status quo that I had before everything that happened in the past month or so.

It is staking its time.

Slowly.

Slowly getting back to cooking again.

Slowly getting back to baking bread.

Slowly finding my routine.

Work is busy and that’s not helping. I’m in the thick of a big company project for my department and I’m pulled in so many directions while trying to manage and project manage things on my side.

For the most part, I have things all under control, but it’s a lot.

It’s the new normal.

It’s the new status quo.

I just have to adapt.

Adapt or die.

Evolution, right?

Adapt.

Live.

* * *

Quiet.

Silence.

I keep my weekends quiet and alone.

It’s how I recharge.

I stay home and take care of my charges and that’s all that matters. It’s their time. I make it up to them for being at work during the week and they get to be home with me.

I don’t like to go out.

I don’t like to do things.

I just like to chill.

I like to Zen out and unwind.

Cooking helps.

Bread making helps.

Sometimes, not always, cleaning helps.

Alcohol helps.

I’ve been drinking a lot recently and it’s mostly because of the upheaval in my life. Things are slowing down as stated above. There’s light, but things are still unbalanced.

It’ll take some time to adjust, but I’m getting there.

The pressure is off.

I’m adapting.

* * *

Carbs.

I’ve been eating a lot of carbs…like, a shit ton of carbs.

Pizza. Pizza. Pasta. Pasta.

Now, bread bread.

Experimenting with bread.

I started to venture out from the regular sourdough boules that I’ve been making and adding other things to it.

My first experiment? Sundried tomatoes and basil sourdough.

How do I think it’ll come out? Like shit. It’s way too hydrated.

I fucked it up. There probably wouldn’t be any oven spring.

It’s just a wet mess.

I’ll cook the fucked up one tonight and leave the other three for tomorrow.

Hopefully at least one of those loaves will turnout okay. I just want something to turn out okay.

There’s some light at the end of the tunnel. There’s some breathing room where I don’t feel the whole world crushing down on me.

Relish is on the rebound. Her wounds and new tissue are looking healthier and healthier each time that she’s getting her bandage changed. It’ll still be a long road to recovery, but there’s progress.

It’s only been a week, but I think I have worked out a schedule and a routine in when to feed her, her meds, and dropping her off to get her bandage changed.

It’s tough and requires a lot of patience and care and at times a strong stomach cleaning up after her, but as long as she makes a recovery, I’m all for it. I’ll put in the time. I’ll put in the work, and heaven knows I’ve put in the money.

Relish is impatient and just wants to get out from her crate and explore the apartment, to find her old hiding places and just be. She wants to go to her litter box and do her business there and scoffs at the make-shift one of newspaper that I made for her.

I have to be more diligent about cleaning that out. If it’s dirty with pee, she’ll just shit on the towel. Disgusting.

Patience.

It’ll definitely be like this if I ever have kids. It’ll be a lot of patience and a lot of work.

So tired. I can feel my body giving up, I can feel the cold coming down on me. I just need to rest. I need to sleep. I need to catch up on sleep.

I haven’t been sleeping well since all of this started and it’s not like my normal sleeping was that great to begin with.

I slept better while I was on the Whole30 Cleanse. Might have to just adjust my diet again. Who knows?

But, now, Relish is alive. Relish is on the mend. Relish is recovering and I am so fucking grateful for it.

She’s my kid, my responsibility and I was the one that got her in the mess. If she has any chance of staying alive, then I’m taking it. That’s what being a parent and an owner/guardian of a pet or a child means. You be responsibility for everything.

Sigh.

Of course, I wish this never happened and that I wonder if I made the right decision, but it’s way too fucking late now.

Everything is temporary. Everything will be okay.

Everything, Everything.

Everything.

What is the lesson in all of this?

What am I supposed to learn in all of this? How to deal with this stress better? How to not think about things that I don’t have control over or mull over how things could have turned out differently if I did one thing differently?

What is it?

2017, what are you trying to teach me? 38, what are you trying to teach me?

You know, I was fine with most of the things that happened in 2017 prior to turning 38, but everything after, fuck that shit.

What am I supposed to learn?

Is it that I am not alone and that I can’t do everything myself? That I need to learn how to reach out and ask for help? Is that it?

I do ask for help. I know there are parts of me that don’t ask, out of pride and responsibility, but when push comes to shove, I know that I can and will need to ask for help and that I do.

So, what the fuck am I supposed to learn from this? What?

* * *

My girl is back. Relish is back home.

I picked her up and my heart skipped a beat when I saw her. It was rough. Her wounds are bad and I can’t stop from feeling so guilty that that horror happened to her.

It’s going to be a long recovery at home and we are hoping that everything will go smoothly. She’ll have her daily bandage changes and checkups to see if the medication that she’s on kills the infection.

It’s a long and arduous process in feeding her medication and food. Once I get a routine down in terms of waking up early, getting everything ready and getting her food ready, it should be better.

Everything is new right now and seems so daunting. There was a lot to take in during discharge and I hope that I remembered everything.

I hope.

But, Ms. Relish is back. My girl is back and that is a relief but seeing how much of a mess she is, I wonder if I made the right decision.

Is she suffering? How much is she suffering? Would it have been better if I didn’t try to save her?

I don’t know, but she’s home, she’s alive and being feisty.

She’s a strong woman who takes no bullshit and that’s how I like them.

Relish…fight on.

The thing that I feared the most with Chutney happened. The thing that helped me conclude that Chutney needs to be an only dog and needs to be re-homed happened.

Chutney attacked Relish and left her for dead.

It happened two Tuesdays ago, April 25th.

It was the first day that Chutney had his cone off after being neutered. Before, he never gave any inkling that he would open the door. Everything was the same in terms of routine. I put Pickles and Relish in the bedroom and Chutney was king of the living room. I left for work, to DTLA for the MS Teams conference.

I don’t know exactly the time that it happened, but I came home to the mess. I knew something was wrong when I opened the front door and saw that the living room door to the bedroom area was open. I saw Pickles looking at me like he would when I come home.

Then the smell hit me, then the black fur. I didn’t really comprehend what was happening, but then I put my bag down on the crate like I normally would and saw Relish lying there, calm, sleeping, not moving.

Chutney was there, excited that I’m home, excited to show me what he’s done.

I carefully carried Relish out of the crate and put her in her own crate. I needed to take her to the Emergency hospital. I crated Chutney and took Pickles out for a pee and I was gone. I was at home for no longer than 5-10 minutes.

I took her to ASEC, the same place that I took her last year when she had that weird asthma attack. She’s still there.

The damage was extensive. Chutney tore into her hind legs and possible soft regions. Relish was in shock when I brought her in and the first night was just trying to get her out of shock and stabilize her. Once she was in the clear, the doctors cleaned out the wound and went into surgery to investigate and repair.

Chutney tore the muscles from her bones. They had to cut out the dead flesh since there was no blood running into it and sew her up.

Thankfully the major veins, nerves, and arteries were still intact. There were no broken bones. The shock and the look of the whole thing was worse than what was expected.

Since she’s still in the hospital, scheduled to be released today, her recovery is slow and still requires a lot of care.

Her blood proteins were stabilizing nor her blood pressure, but after a week or so, things started to get back to normal levels.

Since then, it was just fucking stressful for me.

I knew everything that happened was because me. I made the decision to rescue Chutney. I brought him into our good and peaceful home. Albeit it was on good intentions, but I knew there were possibilities that things weren’t going to work out. I had forewarning, but I tried.

I was the one that didn’t lock Chutney up in his crate when I was gone, even though I know that Relish would be safer. I just assumed that he wouldn’t be able to open the doors, even though Pickles didn’t have a problem. It was my fault.

I did a good thing in saving Chutney and the Universe had other plans to fuck with me…and so It did. I paid dearly for it and still am paying for it. Not only for the emotional pain and stress that I was/am going through, but financially. Thank goodness, I had a good amount in savings to cover the expense, but otherwise, I would probably have had to make that decision or be in debt.

I’m not happy about it, but again, my responsibility, and it’s my debt to pay. I own it. My fault, but I’m still blaming the Universe. Shit happens.

So, while Relish was in recovery, I had to find a home for Chutney. I drafted out a flier and reached out to people that could help and they shared and forwarded the information and hopefully I could get interested parties in adopting Chutney.

I reached out to all the partners for NKLA asking if they could help re-home Chutney and a few reached out looking for information and helping me do courtesy posts.

One rescue helped and said that I should go to their adoption event last weekend at the VegFest 2017. It’s a vegan festival and I did. Chutney and I was there and we did have a few interested parties, but most of those who are interested didn’t have a place for him or already had other dogs or even cats.

Chutney had to be an only pet. I couldn’t consciously say that he gets a long great with other pets and animals. I can’t consciously do that at all.

I told them the story of how I rescued him and tried to integrate him, etc. etc. etc. and many were moved and thanked me for rescuing Chutney, but WE came home together.

Thankfully Carel was interested in taking him but in a sense, he had to clear it with his landlord and neighbor first. Carel came out to the adoption event and met Chutney and they seemed to get along well.

One thing about Chutney that I love is that he’s pretty chill with people. He’s loving to people, affectionate. He just wants to be able to be loyal to someone.

So, after that event, Carel decided that he did want to adopt him and so we came up with a plan and he would pick Chutney up since I was anticipating getting Relish back mid-week.

Unfortunately, even though Ms. Relish’s spirit was back and great, her wound can’t fight an infection. That’s why her stay in the hospital is so long, this infection.

Carel picked Chutney up Tuesday night after his date and the Agency meeting.

Maybe I was drunk, ’cause I planned on getting shitfaced at the event from the stress that I was going through, but after I got home and Carel was on his way and me packing up Chutney’s things, I broke down.

I was emotional about a fucking dog that I’ve only had for 2 weeks and that only killed my fucking cat. I fucking cried, sobbed, that Chutney was going to go. I held him, hugged him, and cried on him and I’m not sure what the hell was happening.

I’m sure that emotional outbreak wasn’t all just about Chutney, but about EVERYTHING that I was going through. It was some sort of release and relief from the heavy burden and stress that I was going through.

I found him a good home and I didn’t have to make the decision to dump him at a shelter, ’cause I would have done that. When push came to shove, if I couldn’t find a home for Chutney, I would have dropped him off at the WLA Animal Shelter.

I went there to ask what would happen if I dropped him off and he wouldn’t get adopted and they told me that he’ll still be there. They have a high adoption rate vs kill rate and the main reason why they would put a dog down is because of their health and not behavior or anything else. That made me feel a lot better and comfortable enough for me to drop him off.

Again, Chutney is a great dog. He’s very sweet and affectionate. He just needs to be an only dog and I will definitely make those notes during drop-off.

Even though one part of this stress is over, my worries turned to Relish. Again, she’s recovering miraculously, but her infection won’t go away. The surgeons went back to clean up the wound and put her on antibiotics.

On Thursday, I was expecting the call that I don’t want, the call to tell me that the infection wasn’t going away and they’ve exhausted everything that they can do to help her and that I would have to make the decision to put her down.

I did get a call, but it wasn’t that. Yes, her infection wasn’t going away, but she’s recovering great. The doctors decided that they would try to send her home for recovery instead.

They put a medicine and feeding tube in her so I can easily feed her the medication without having to fight with her. They also believe that it might be a better healing place because there wouldn’t be as much bacteria that might be causing the infection because it isn’t a hospital.

That’s the hope and plan and TODAY, I will pick her up.

Here’s to a good and quick recovery at home. The next phase of getting back to normal starts today.