Shaking My Fist At God

Arwen is still alive. That's close to the end of the good news, Arwen-wise. It's very hard to tell, with cats, how much pain they're in. I feel quite confident in saying that the amount is not zero. But I am unsure of anything other than that. She is having trouble breathing. I suspect the tumor is occluding her airway. She makes raspy exhalation noises, like she's trying to clear her throat. She is still able to move around, get up and down stairs, get on the bed. She is still drinking water, and occasionally getting into small fights with her waterer. She lets everyone but me pet her.

I think she's angry with me. A couple of times, she's given me that meaningful look that she has, and made a complaint noise. She walks away from me if I approach, and will not let me pet her. I think she blames me for all this. And, really, why shouldn't she? For almost her entire life, I've been responsible for making her life happy and comfortable. I've been responsible for food and water and petting and putting step stools in places that let her get to where she wants to go. When things weren't right, she'd complain, and if I could figure out what she was on about, I'd fix it. Well, this is not right. So, why am I not fixing it? I'm pissed off at God for the current situation, and I don't even think he exists, so why should my cat not be pissed off at me? (In case you were wondering, no, I don't feel guilty. I just feel awful. I don't feel responsible. I just feel miserable.)

She continues to try to do things that she likes, or finds comforting. But increasingly, they aren't sufficient. She will get up on David's shoulder, but doesn't stay for long. She will let Pamela or Raphael pet her. Occasionally, she looks at food a bit wistfully, but no one's seen her eat in many days, and she's very, very skinny. She appears uncomfortable, but not in great distress. But as I said, it's always hard to tell.

If God existed, and I could get him to talk to me, man would I give him an earful about better design. Seriously, graceful failure is a fucking thing.

More Cheerfully -- I have questions -- but don't laugh!

So, I downloaded Pokemon GO. Also Ingress, because, seriously, why not? They are both pretty damn opaque to me.

So, first off, Ingress, which doesn't crash nearly as often. Which is a plus. On the down side, what the fuck? Seriously, what am I doing and why am I doing it? I did the training missions, but I am finding myself with a severe lack of motivation to do anything. Why am I hacking portals? Why am I linking portals? Why am I attacking portals? Why should I hack versus attack versus... I suppose if I'd paid more attention to the "briefings" I'd have a better idea, but honestly, WTF? I do not have any emotional resonance with the idea of being an "agent." The sides are opaque, so I chose blue because it's a prettier color than green. And I'm a bit baffled by the game mechanics. I'm not sure I understand the controls, or anything else, really. But over all, I am desperately looking for a reason to care. I know some of you play this, and at least one person (hello, Patricia) is passionate about it. Could you please explain both the raison d'être, and also the game mechanics, please?

Onto Pokemon GO. The very beginning is considerably more accessible, I'll give you that. I've never played any previous iteration of Pokemon, so I have no idea what's going on or why, but there are cute little animals, and if I throw balls at them, I get to add them to my Pokedex, so that's kind of cool. It crashes all the fucking time, which is irritating. I had to ask a very nice stranger how to get Pokeballs out of the Pokestops (never occurred to me to spin the fuckers), and I am currently a level 4 for no apparent reason. There are gyms, and I guess I battle my Pokemons? (Insert look of quizzical disbelief, here.) There's something about powering them up, which I suppose has to do with the gym battles, and evolving, and I have no idea what that is, and there's a bar under my game name which I guess has to do with...power? Not even sure. And I have a back pack, so I can carry things? Are my pokeballs in the backpack? So very confused. And why do I want to battle my Pokemons? Wouldn't I rather just be friends with them? They're cute, even the stinging bug ones. Again, can someone explain both the back story and the game mechanics to me? I mean, I tried googling "how do I get pokeballs" and the articles very kindly told me to go to the Pokestops, but didn't tell me I had to spin them, so I visited a bunch of Pokestops before the nice young woman explained things to me. How do I get coins? What is a Pokestop module? Why would I want one? Arghhhh.

I've also had my first Pokeinjury, I tripped over a curb and went sprawling. My left pinky finger is a little sore, and my phone is fine, so I guess that's ok. And I walked about a kilometer, so that's a good thing. The very little information I've found suggests that you can just hold the phone, not look at it, while you're walking, but I find that mine shuts itself off, and when it does that, Pokemon Go doesn't wake it up to tell me about Pokemons, so that doesn't work. Possible I need to adjust a phone setting? So very confused.

Of the two, Pokemon Go is so far more fun, and offers more reasons to stop, which is nice for a very out of shape 54 year old like me. My, but I'm easily winded. I have no idea if I'm going to play this obsessively, or not. And it's possible that Pokemon is more fun initially, but Ingress more fun over time. No idea.

So many questions.