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gymnastics in the early morning rain

It's 4:44 now, and I spent almost 1.5hrs outside in the playground not far away from my flat. It's been raining for several hours, but rain never ever managed to keep me from being happy outside. On the contrary - the more it rains, the more happy I get, the more time I spend outside.

Usually, there's people out there. People. Kids and children are playing there during the days, and I have never ever even gotten closer to this mysterious playground-of-children than just carefully crossing the street, glancing at it. Until now - well, not "now" specifically. Earlier.

Dark, night, nobody around. And if there had been anyone around - wouldn't have cared. What followed were almost two hours of me happily playing around with the available stuff, mostly focusing on the arm-and-leg-things. I have no idea what these things are called, and I am drunk enough to not know what they are called in German either and not care. But I had lots of fun, if "doing things with your legs and arms" can be considered 'fun'. Climbing up and down the ladder with only my legs, same thing with only arms (way more difficult!), trying a combination thereof, falling down onto the ground, singing whilst doing the leg-stuff, hanging onto the metal things with one leg wrapped around the top bit and waving around the rest of my limbs rhythmically to a song mocking the place I grew up and learned these things at. 

There's only two people around who know me and have been to the place where I grew up in  - Max (TimTimmäääh!), Martin, this is for you, because you are the only people I know who can actually understand -- remember M-Hofen-ov-Doom: 

Almost two hours in the rain. With me singing along to this, because I AM NOT IN THE PLACE OF HORROR! Incredibly enjoyable. Hooking myself into children's playground thingies with my legs and realising that I am actually able to keep myself up with just that. Making me into a proper adult figure hanging onto this playground thing by her legs and wobbling around a bit. I could be more scary if I wanted to, but this was not a night to do that. 
So I spent the rainy time outside, with the phone music blaring Alligatoah and K.I.Z. into the darkness. Five people moved past the area in these two hours, and none of them appeared to actively notice that there was a) awesome music, b) me doing awesome things and c) being almost naked at times around the torso due to hanging down, legs wrapped around the metal bars and my (slightly soggy) Dissection shirt tendentially hanging down into my face. 

It's been fucking years since I did something like that. I am going to do it again tomorrow - night, calm, happy, plus autumn time. I am still excited from this little exercise! Maybe I could take the cats outside as well, I suspect that would be a lot of fun. Well. "fun". My idea of fun sometimes doesn't really correspond to that of 'normal' people. Or so they say. Heh. *hides the evil chuckle of doom*

I did ponder whether I should try and break the window of fucking GFdtR, but I have decided that that would be a ...not-good idea. For I am sane. *nods*

 Let's see how I'm going to deal with this over the next remaining month. I am definitely going to go out at night and enjoy myself and the felines at this playground though, because it's fucking awesome, makes me oddly happy, and I enjoy spending time there without kids, adults or related humans around. Yay for the beautiful solitude of an adult in a playground at night doing the hanging-down-equivalent of sit-ups, hopefully accompanied by two crazy cats. And I haven't been doing anything there for the entire time I've been living here now. So now that I know that I'm leaving I need to use this shit. Otherwise I'll be pissed off at myself.

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Edit:
Besides for repeating myself over and over and over again - Asqui just threw up a shitload of food, and I'm a bit worried. I did feed the felines an additional third time today, to celebrate, but obviously this was a bad idea. I do have to say that he is very artistic with where he deposits the vomit though - it's a path winding from one part of the flat to the opposite side, including a small circle in the middle. Just because he's a cat.

the joys of planning my escape

Welp. After yet another breakdown I had the pleasure to entertain a good friend on Monday (officially "best friend in the UK"), whom I opened up to about my plans to run with the speed of light from this prison island. Emboldened by both my horrible mood and the fact that that means that there will be an end to this uncomfortable situation (uncomfortable for everybody involved, really), he began helping me making plans to get me out of here as soon as possible. 

Once again, it's the feline companions that will be the biggest problem I'm going to face. Travel via airplane is ridiculously expensive (D. looked at various offers, and the cheapest quote he got was £933...), so the two possibilities "cats via road" or "take cats and everything myself and go by ferry and train" remain. 

Whilst I enjoy going by train, it would probably lead to quite a few problems. I am at the moment nothing but a bundle of nerves in a steadily deteriorating shell, and a lengthy ferry-and-train journey poses several problems:

• how on earth am I going to carry around a huge kennel (7.5kg) with two nervous cats (together ~ 9kg)?

• how on earth am I going to carry the little bit of stuff that I can take with me around in addition to that? 
• how am I going to store the freakishly huge kennel in the trains? That thing doesn't fit into a train. Going by Austrian train standards, it's impossible to even carry it through the trains. 
• considering these issues of merely dragging my stuff around - how am I going to get from one train to the next without having a nervous breakdown? 
• train waiting times - I am carrying around two nervous cats. Cats need to occasionally piss. I can't let them do that anywhere on a journey via ferry-and-train.
• the cats themselves - they're going to be paralysed with fear, particularly the nuffse. She's naturally more wary than the möffz, and hates being surrounded by more than 2-3 people, one of them should ideally be me. And when she's nervous, her asthma gets worse. Which would probably lead to me becoming hysterical. 
• potential problems/delays with the papers - again, nerves. 

So yeah, in my mind I'm pretty much sold on the "cats by road via a pet transport thingie"-idea. They get fed in there, have enough water, no hordes of strangers around them, there are stops for letting them use the litterbox, and the people doing this are professionals. They deal with the authorities and take care of the animal, which would leave me to be less nervous on my own. I've already gotten one quote (£180/cat, can use my own kennel - which is good, because I paid a shitload of money for it when we moved here, and I frankly don't want to sell it if possible). I trust this idea. 

Let's see how much the other two companies I wrote to charge for the same service. 

So now I just need to know if there's someone in Vienna where I can crash with my cats in order to be able to book the transport. Ok, wrong - first I need money, then I can do the rest. Including getting them vaccinated, microchips checked and passports updated. And then later, at most 10 days before the actual relocation, have them checked by the money grubbing thieves from the vet again, because they suck you dry of all funds you may or may not possess, knowing fully well that you're helpless without them. Grrrrrrr. 

So yeah. It's a bit more stressful than I expected, which is mostly due to my already frazzled nerves thanks to the past year(s). It's times like this when I want to kick myself in the head for not having decided to do my PhD in Germany, rather than to endure my previous employer and then this kafkaesque nightmare/comedy of bureaucratic failure and existential limbo.