demakat

So after another lovely day where I said hi to the guy I like while I was scuttling around trying to do my job (he actually said hi rather loudly first...) INSTEAD of trying to talk with him about things.

I drew this lunch bag for a display and he was telling me how he likes it and thought it was a lunch bag. I said it was a lunch bag...yeah he knew that. Then I realize and say "oh, like you wished it was a real lunch bag so you could buy it" yeah he likes it. I said how I liked it because I drew pink dinosaurs on it and its funny. He just kept saying how he really liked it. Later that day we had a passing joke about how the hard part of my day was already done for me, the ream of paper I needed was already partially unwrapped. Then he mentioned something about me making beautiful signs being the other hard part of my job, and I joked that no that was the easy part, getting the paper out was the tough bit.

so... Is he just really in love with art. with the lunch bag thing I felt the whole time like he wanted to say he liked it because I made it. I don't think dave's art garners this much attention and he does at least similar quality work if not better.

BUT what I don't want is to be making things up that aren't there, and he never seems to seek me out ever, just pointedly says hi to me. I randomly blurted this out to my mom when I got home today and she pointed out that if he's new then he might be focusing on his job, which is the assistant manager of his department. This is possible. Still feel conflicted though.

I just want to hug him really really badly and then kind of melt everywhere.

I want to not feel this way because I also feel vulnerable, and like someone is going to pop out from behind a display and start making fun of me for liking someone, because I am stupid or something equally untrue.
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So I am feeling like that. I go out to my car to go home and I notice while unlocking my door that this guy walking in seems to be walking like he is avoiding something that is advancing at him as well. I walk over and see on the ground a baby squirrel. Its got fur and its eyes are open but its still to small to be doing much of anything for itself. I walk back to the door of my car trying to think of what I can do for it, when I realize now its following me.

It was cute, but I am not getting rabies because of a baby squirrel. It didn't look sick, but I have heard many stories on how painful it is to get rid of rabies once you've been bitten and I wasn't going to take that risk. I got the snow brush out of my car and tried to shoo it away into the trees and things next to my parking spot. It wouldn't move, too weak or too young to scamper.

Then I figured I could pick it up with the brush, and that mostly worked because of its natural clutching motions. I set it down in the grasses and flowers (wild flowers and small saplings, its not landscaped there and the urban wildlife kind of own it) and I went back to my car...where it followed me again! Then a noise scared it and it crawled under my car. So I walk away from my car and it keeps following me and I finally get it back on the brush.

This time I manage to get it to transfer the clutching to a tiny tree and it just clings there and starts to fall sleep in the sun. I was finally able to get in the car and back out of the spot without the added issue of wondering if I was running over baby squirrel.

I didn't take it home with me or to a nature center because I know how this goes. As cute as they are squirrels really are just tree rats, and a rehab place is not going to spend dwindling resources on a squirrel when it could otherwise go to an endangered species, of which there are many. And I have no way of properly caring for it at home myself.

I brought that starling chick home one time which was wrong, and I didn't want to do something like that again.

Of course I cried on the way home because of this guy and my stupid feels and because I had to leave behind a baby thing! It sounds sort of cruel, but I kind of hope a bird of prey gets it (I didn't see any other squirrels around at the time, but maybe a parent will come get it, hopefully...if it even works like that) because then at least something is living from this. Instead of what is likely to happen, that a car hits it without even realizing in the parking lot.