Back for good this time? in Diary

I’m back from my sudden hiatus earlier this year. A lot was going on in my life at the time, and writing about it was too much for me. But now I’m living somewhere new, and things have settled down quite a bit. Also, I’m now a reluctant African grey parrot owner. My mom had to move somewhere temporarily where she was unable to take her bird and she had no plans for anyone else to take it, and so rather than risk the bird ending up at the pound or worse I decided to take it. The bird really loves me, more so than he does my mom or anyone else, so I guess it’s for the best that I’m taking care of him.

Grey is a wild-caught parrot from Africa who was brought over to the U.S. to be a breeder bird. An old friend of my mom’s, who already had an African grey parrot at the time, adopted Grey, who later on fell in love with my mom and became her bird. He’s pretty sweet, but he can’t be held or touched much. Grey lets me touch his tail sometimes, or his toes if he’s inside his cage. He talks some, but is generally on the shy side unless I am out of the room. When he starts to get tired he often has meltdowns (which involve him screaming repeatedly and me leaving the room) but I am starting to learn how to manage and/or avoid those.

A few days ago I gave up drinking alcohol, finally. I had sort of weaned myself off over the course of a week because I was feeling especially sick and hungover one morning and I decided I was tired of feeling like crap every day. I’m not committing myself to giving it up completely for the rest of my life or anything like that, but I am done drinking it every day, or even every week. If I had known it would be this easy, I’d have quit years ago.

The last time I stopped drinking I think I may have written about it here. I was living at my grandparents’ house, acting as a caretaker. I think it was winter, but I can’t remember, and anyway the season doesn’t matter. The withdrawal symptoms became increasingly severe over the course of about three days, to the point where I felt like I needed to start drinking again in order to be on the safe side and avoid potential seizures, etc. So that was that until about a week ago.

I’m needing to start looking for a job again, soon, and this time I need to find one that allows me to work from home. Because of the situation with the bird, I feel like I can’t leave him locked up in a room in his cage with nothing but a television to keep him company for ten hours a day while I commute and work in some office building somewhere. That would only leave him with two hours of time outside of his cage when he needs at least twice that much. I could work part-time, but I kind of need full-time money. I’ve got internet, satellite TV, phone, water, electricity, insurance, and gas bills. Also, there are other expenses.

It’s really late at night (2:46 AM) so my mind is kind of all over the place right now. Sorry about that. I’m just trying to lightly touch on what’s been going on. I’ll write more coherently tomorrow, I hope. Au revoir, for now.