Companions

Merry Christmas.

After spending too much time knitting while watching movies and not enough time digging through the crap in my office or doing actual work, I went over and hung out at the apartment of my friend who has or had a crush on me. Not James Spader (who sent me a really sweet text message this afternoon from Christmas at his parents house in Florida...), but another boy who makes his awkward feelings known. Another Boy in my flock of "gentlemen callers." My minions. And why exactly am I not attracted to this Boy? I have no fucking clue. We had a really nice time last night, but I left his place feeling like a lesbian for the total lack of attraction I felt.

My dog is staying with Neighbor Guy while I'm in New York. I flat out refused yesterday and this utterly and completely terrified me this morning, but Neighbor Guy has been pretty much wonderful about the whole thing and even humoring and placating my nervousness. We had a trial day today, and when I left, my dog was growling and snapping and trying to bite NG's dog, who is a puppy and at least 100 lbs bigger and took the snarls to be just the most fun new game in the world. I feared the worst. NG wasn't even going to be home all day; his upstairs neighbor comes by to walk his dog when he's at work, and NG doesn't have a phone. I was going to board my dog at the kennel, but apparently they require one of his vaccinations to be done every 6 months instead of every 12 like the vet recommends, and it has to be 48 hours or more before his stay, and I didn't learn any of this until yesterday afternoon after everything closed until Saturday, a mere 24 hours before I need to drop him off.
But this may all be for the best. Neighbor Guy is reminding me why we're friends, and when I came to get my dog tonight, he was very unhappy to see NG, but seemed perfectly find with the other dog, and considering how many hours NG will be at work anyway, that's what really matters.

Now, I go snuggle with my favorite little guy. He's had a rough day.

Olive Eeew

Clear, sharp pain. Welcome back. Imagine balancing a dictionary on my head when Migraine violently thrusts a jagged sword through my left eye and up through the left side of my skull to lance me and the book like a couple of olives in a martini glass. Migraine twitches and jerks, nervous and angry, waiting for someone or something to happen and clanking my skewered olive brain against the rim of the glass. At least today I'm not soaked in gin. Clear as a bell, pain being my only distraction. Get things done, Annabell, you can do it.

Too Much Frankincense

I don't know where I've been all day. I know physically, and I even managed to accomplish the things that had to be accomplished, but it's been a day for feeling slow and zombiesque.
Maybe I ate too much Trader Joe's polenta.
Sunday was a zombie day, too, but I managed to get my butt out the door and run errands with Aural Girl. JoAnn's and Target and Trader Joe's, oh my. I would like to discuss Possible Boy's Christmas present in here, but that is something I will censor due to his possibly reading this.
Aural Girl's gift, on the other hand, is both harder and easier. My brilliant Plan A is too expensive, and I could get her the cheaper version but I'm not so sure it's worth it. Plan A1 was to get her vintage fabrics from an estate sale, since the one time she came estate saling she got an old sewing machine - the kind build into its own sewing table - with all the table's contents, the matching chair, and the contents of that chair's flip-up seat. Grand total: $25. Even before the sewing machine find, we'd talked about taking sewing classes together, so I've been on the look-out for fabric at every sale ever since. No luck. I can't tell you how many times over the summer and fall I passed up bags and boxes and piles of amazing vintage fabric because I didn't want to start hoarding fabric for myself. Now that I'm looking for it, no luck. I found some scarves that I bought, but they may be better to sell than to gift.

I think Neighbor Guy is an alcoholic.
He told me what he wants me to give him; he wants the vintage maps I got at a garage sale with him this summer. Or at least some of them. Over the summer I tried to give him the one of Camaroon/Viet Nam/that whole mess circa 1970, but he left it here. I thought about getting it framed, but he's the person who looks at the only artwork I've had professionally framed and says "The picture is nice but that cheap frame is hiddeous. It ruins the piece." So I'll get him a Jane Austen novel or something. He loves Jane Austen.

I had to lay down tonight at 7 PM. The zombie weirdness was getting sharp, like a thick hazy cloud rolling around in my head, bouncing off the sides all day that began to turn dark and thundery. I set my alarm for 8 so I wouldn't ruin my chances at falling back asleep for the night, but of course I managed to kill my alarm and wake up at 9:30 with my dog whining at me. At that point, I figured I'd be better off if I could just sleep through the night, but my dog wouldn't stop fussing so I figured he needed to go out. Coat and shoes on, I'm ready to go out the door, and he crawls back into bed. Bastard. I spent half an hour trying to go through and organize some of the crap in my office, popped my bedtime pills, again tried the perky-voiced suggestion of "out?" to Mr. Fuzzlump, and now I'm back in my office, coat and shoes on, creeping up on midnight and feeling the clearest I've felt since Friday. Still, I know my best bet is to go back to bed. I'm going shopping tomorrow with Possible Boy to get a "thank you for hosting" present for Aural Girl's parents.
Which reminds me. I freaked myself out a bit when he called. I didn't realize quite how creepy-out-of-it I was, and I'm pretty sure I sounded normal, but I was on my way to the kitchen for food when the phone rang, and when PB asked about ideas for gifts, it was all too much for my mind to handle. It was like I was still stuck in the tar and sludge of walking down my hallway towards the kitchen while thinking about what to eat (a complicated multitask in my clouded state) and then going from there to a ringing telephone and human contac gave me quite a jolt. Too many stimuli. We'd already hung up before it dawned on me that PB spent the weekend in his home town with his own parents. That I could have just agreed to join to NAMBLA by the time my brain caught up with my mouth's auto-pilot function. Is it the drugs I'm on? The migraines themselves? Something that's causing the migraines? Something totally different? I know I said I'd sit back, relax, and accept my unintentional stonerism. Then again, I say a lot of things.

Be A Part Of It

Next Sunday I'm flying to New York. Possible Boy will have already driven Aural Girl and her dog to her parents' house and experienced a big bustling family Christmas. Birdie and NBF are both in New York. So are lots of other swell people I know. And I like visiting New York. I used to want to live there, but now it feels too crowded, too nonstop, too type-A to make it my permanent residence. The Annabell who wanted to live in New York had no children, a string of not-so-seriuos boyfriends, lived in an apartment the size of a closet, wrote for a major publication, and wore spiky heals and feather boas right through menopause.
I'm not that Annabell anymore. The spiky heals and feather boas perhaps, but current Annabell craves something concrete, grounded, stable to hold onto.
Speaking of which, I need to clean up again. The Mess is back on all available surfaces. I'm finishing projects. trying to see things to absolute completion. Right now, my life is the sum of my projects. Everything is a project. Photograph things, list things online, mail things, fix this chandelier, fix and clean up those shoes, find a way to wash the lace, photograph the things that are now fixed and clean, do online promotion things, go to stores and try to sell them things, make cards, make envelopes, buy more things to sell, buy basic life necessities, make food, eat food, tidy things, clean things, call to straighten out a doctor billing issue (because at any given moment in my life, there's always at least one), pay the bills, balance the checkbook, turn a ceramic nativity into a menorah, etc. etc. etc.
My life is juggling bubbles, and since I'm the juggler, I have a huge amount of influence and control, but since I'm not a very good juggler, I get frazzled and punch myself instead of catching any bubbles.

Last night Aural Girl brought over a bottle of wine and we got silly and went to the bar. I had on a sweater dress I'd gotten from my parents for Chanukah and she was trying out her new stretch belt with satiny shirt thing and jeans. I didn't think my outfit was anything particularly special, but one of the bar regulars who has repeatedly made it clear he wants to do me (and I've repeatedly made it clear I have zero interest) thought this dress was the hottest thing ever and kept telling me so. As I flitted about the bar, talking to a few of the people I like talking to, Aural Girl stayed glued to her seat. When I noticed she hadn't moved and wasn't talking to anyone, I made my way back to her corner.
If I had my entire life on film, internal monologue included, I could find all the scenes where I was in AG's place. As we talked, I recognized that feeling and space in the universe: feeling inferior, jealous in a way that you don't wish the other person had less but just wished you could do or be what they do or are. I want so badly for AG to see that she is every bit as shiny as I am, that it's her turn to be the Pretty One, too. We're both so used to being The Smart One or The Friend. She's actually done far better than I have pulling relationships out of nerd status. I tried to remind her that for all the random boys who like me when I'm smiling, the one I was interested in wanted her. But I of all people should know, when you don't think you're pretty, you just don't believe the people who say otherwise.

Dog is warm. Night is late. Tummy is hungry again.
Until next time

Unconscious Connection

Yesterday, in real life, I couldn't find the cable to connect my camera to my computer to upload photos.

This morning, in dream, I found the cable in my desk drawer where I'd already looked. Realizing I was asleep, I grabbed onto the cable as tight as I could and tried to pull it with me into wakefulness. I did, for once, manage to wake myself up, but of course I didn't have the cable.

Back in real life, I went to check the drawer. The cable was visibly sitting on the shelf under the drawer.

Un-Cycling

Icky Lady Time again. I can't say "that time of the month" anymore because it's no longer such a standardized monthly thing, thank you progesterone-only pill that's supposed to make things better not worse. I spent insane amounts of yesterday and today in coma-mode. Dreams about being on a cruise with my family that turned into a submarine, dreams about doing things and saying things that I then wished I hadn't done or said and couldn't undo or take back, dreams about all my everyday life events so when I wake up I have to double-check my memory bank to make sure I did something and didn't just dream it. Possible Boy and Aural Girl came over to eat leftovers from Sunday night's Indian Food Extravaganza (there's a draft of a post about that night but I never managed to properly verbalize everything so in Blogland it never existed...there's just so much that never makes it into writing...too many infinite factors making up life and I want to express them all and I can't). Aural Girl has a cold. I need to go to the grocery store and thought I'd make her some mazzoh ball soup today. I went to the grocery store in at least one of my dreams. I think I did my Christmas shopping, too. Then I wake up and it's hours and hours later and I never left my bed, never changed my clothes or brushed my teeth.

To be honest, I don't entirely hate it. I hate it when there was something I had to do and missed. Today, I had enough food in the house to put off going to the grocery store. I almost finished rewiring another chandelier. I read the rest of A Wrinkle In Time. And I danced between the realities un, sub, and mostly consciousness. No fighting it, just drift and play with the wonder of wakefulness.

In bed. Left my book in the car. Dog thrown out of bar without doing anything. I want to hurry up & be ok with possible boy as just friend. And go to new york.

Good Ideas, brought to you by Technology

At 1-something AM, I was playing around on Facebook. One of the regulars from my bar messaged me. He was bartending at the bar two blocks away and it was just him and one other person and they were bored and I should totally come down there. They'd even booze me for free. I was in my pajamas and hadn't been out all day, but somehow, at 1-something AM, listening to sad music and trying not to write too many blog posts that sounded like teen-angst bathroom graffiti, I thought maybe a change of scenery would be a good idea.

It was.

40-year-old guy I'm not actually interested in buy I still find interesting was the only other person there when I showed up. He likes telling me I'm pretty and amazing and since he pays some attention to his surroundings I actually take what he says as a compliment instead of empty flattery. For all the fucked up things with the way gender roles play out in our society, at this particular moment in time, I like whatever it is that makes men spit out as much complimentary garbage as possible. I'm still always the skeptic, and I return compliments a thousand fold when I honestly believe them, but let's be honest here; at least part of me changed out of my PJs an hour before last call so I could hear boys tell me I'm pretty and all the other things I'm trying to learn to believe.

I should make stew more often. It's delicious and easy and cheap.

Dear Possible Boy,

Can we both shed our need to pair rejection with love?

Thanks,
Annabell

Sense of Smell

I smell like my college dining cooperative: bleach, onion, and cooking oil gone cold. Add in my appropriately pruny fingers and the brand of Annoyed-At-A-Certain-Type-Of-Person I'm chewing and this is a total flashback to Nameless Liberal Arts College.
Birdie, you'll know what I mean. (Token Pakistani friend, too, if you still ever read this...)

James Spader and Neighbor Guy and a lot of the people at the coop back at Nameless (and, come to think of it, in my family...good thing I have the most recent two so I know it's not just Jews...) have been seriously, deeply, validly hurt by people close to them. We see these scars, conscious or not, and sooner or later we find one another.
But I don't think James, NG, and many many other Wounded Souls ever see beyond themselves. It's not something they do to be cruel or hurtful, their minds just don't work in a way that fully and meaningfully feel for and empathize with other people. It's like the difference between being able to translate from a foreign language and actually thinking in the foreign language. Empathy v. sympathy suggests (to me at least) that you had to have gone through the experience or something comparable in order to empathize, but not to sympathize. What I'm trying to express is different. It's for those of us who can't help but care. Maybe we get labeled "too sensitive" and we still think we're assholes because we can empathize with assholes, too.
Like most things, people come in various shades. In the Wounded Souls Club, I think the wounding process shoves members to one side or another: you can't see beyond yourself and can only relate to people in terms of yourself -or- you're hypersensitive and fear the consequences of exhaling.
I'm afraid to exhale, so I can only spend so much time with people on the other side without recouping. I used to think I had to spend time with and help those people. They are my parents, a number of Boys I've Liked and even Loved, my life-defining friendships. Punish myself for thinking of myself and being a selfish, spoiled little brat and feeling jealousy and disappointment. Find someone truly self-centered and serve them, follow them, fix them.

I get points for realizing that's exactly what Neighbor Guy is very early in our friendship. Maybe I'm being too quick to judge my most blatant current Male Suitors, but every time I tell myself I should give them another chance, spend more time with them, I'm back with the sense that they're somewhere between charity work and punishment.

I've said it before, I'll say it again:
I just want to be understood. By a person I understand. Reciprocal sharing the burden of the universe. And no being mean.
Really, as many people as possible, all within walking distance, would be great. I'm getting so much closer. Stupid non-reciprocal levels of feeling with Possible Boy. Stupid him going on all these dates and enjoying himself and still having his stupid heartstrigns get yanked by Aural Girl and me not being able to be the friend he needs because I am, alas, the stupid girl that I am.

Happy first night of Chanukah. My house smells like latkes. My car died, I spent many hours with James Spader (code-name James Spader, not the real one). We made lots of latkes and Aural Girl came over and there was good food and conversation and Chanukah-ness. We headed to the bar at 11 and booze and exhaustian kicked in as Aural Girl showed she was human and Possible Boy showed up with his new girl (who I actually think I like...couldn't she just make this easy and be a dispicable bitch?) and then it was just James Spader. Instead of letting people go with things they say, I push them to the verge of tears. I'm not trying to be evil or pop the zit, and rationally I know it's irresponsible since I'm not equipt to offer a full range of psycho-social services, but tonight I didn't even know I was pushing so hard until James Spader's face and voice changed and I recognized things coming from that bitter bile pit, beyond his usual triple-think and stuttering.
I want to be there for him, but I don't want to always be around him. Maybe I need more practice to be more comfortable, but I like my friends that feel comfortable. Is that lazy?

Need sleep NOW.

Dimensions

I took physics in high school, calculus in high school and one one class in college. I don't remember how to find a derivative anymore. I've read very little of Einstein and even less Stephen Hawking or Carl Sagan. What I am reading is A Wrinkle in Time for the first time since I was in fourth grade. Here is what my brain is puking:

Imagine a computerize chess board. The board itself is second dimensional. Each turn, each piece can scan its possible moves across the second dimensional field, but can only move in the first dimension (the knight is arguable, but I don't feel like arguing). When a piece is taken in a third dimensional game of chess, a person lifts the opponents piece off the board. This depth does not exist in second dimension chess, so the piece just disappears.
Scientists seem to agree that the fourth dimension is time. Makes sense. Put together an infinite number of one-dimensional lines to make a two-dimensional plane. Infinite two dimensional planes create a three-dimensional space. An infinite recording of our three-dimensional moments creates four-dimensional time.
But!
We spend so much time with the dimensions we can touch and comprehend. We like how ordinal they are, one creating the next, demonstrated with a stack of papers and a simple equation.
We're dealing with the infinite here, people. That means, quite literally, anything and everything can and will happen.
Things can exist in the second and fourth dimensions without life in the third. That chess game existed in time. Maybe the chess game could even perceive time in a way we third dimension humans can't. The fourth dimension seems to be an easy one to pair with other dimensions. I personally have the hardest time with the first dimension. No depth or breadth or anything. Just A to B. Yes or no. It just always feels wrong.
Before I go adding in any more dimensions, I want to make it clear with the ones we have that they are less in quantitative or qualitative order and more in order the way musical notes line up on a scale. The pitch sounds higher, note requires more vibrations per second, but we don't consider the quantitative or qualitative value of one note versus another. That's how I'm trying to see the world and that'd unquestionably how we should see the dimensions. We can give them numbers but fuck that whole cardinal/ordinal mess.

Our thoughts seem to be the infinite sum of our experiences, and our experiences are our human familiarity with time. Thus, the fifth dimension contains our human process of thought, our thinking consciousness. I've always been fascinated by how people think and how it varies; pictures, words, feelings.

Quick experiment: If I write the phrase "A very tall woman walked into the flower shop," do you hear the words as you read? Envision it happening? Get some essential sense and understanding of tall woman entering flower shop? Some combination? Something completely different? (PLEASE comment at the end of this post! I think we'd all like to know what it's like in other people's brains.)
Take the infinite summation of everything in the first five dimensions: line, plane, space, time, and thought. Total: feeling. People already use the "sixth sense" to describe something that is clearly based in a dimension of non-physical feeling, so I like feeling as the sixth dimension.
Again, I emphasize that none of these are ordinal and we, being human, are like the computerized chess board that loses sight of things as soon as they leave a dimension we understand.

There's so much I don't know, so much to know, so much universe.
I don't know quite how to explain the way in which this is both a purposeful distraction from Boy thoughts and at the same time justifies and makes whole everything that is incomplete. If you could plot this point where I am right now, it is the place of the spider. There's a lot pulling me down, but I remember how beautiful the world is, how infinite, and how possible and probable do their little dances to keep all of our dimensions and senses on edge with the sweet drug of hope.

Hating Myself over Boy

There's a girl. Possible Girl for Possible Boy.
I want to be perfect. I want to be the perfect friend and perfect person who can objectively see how good it is for Possible Boy to have a romantic interest that isn't me or Aural Girl, allowing him to start separating his friendship support system from his amorous subplots. It's something I need to do, too. Logical Annabell knows this.
But Logical Annabell also has support systems stationed in random pockets around the country. And Annabell's imperfect human emotional side craves a hypothetical boy who can look at all my inside goop and understand and hold me, who has the same inside goop and wants to be heard and held back, and then kissed until all the lonely pain stops tasting so bitter because now you're tasting it on love's lips.
With Possible Boy, I ran things backwards. I was trying so hard to look shiny and perfect, I didn't let him near all the important things. Between phone sex and my disastrous long-term friends-with-benefits non-relationship, all things sex default to a setting of fun with quarantined emotions. Hell, even before I myself got near sex, these are the two versions of it that existed in my world:
1) sex for unemotional fun, power and procreation
2) sex as the extension and completion of the perfect kiss

Now the stuff that makes me feel like an asshole re: Possible Boy.
I'm trying really hard lately to do things differently and do things for myself and not treat myself like crap. To that end, it's either fish or cut bait, either see about reentering myself in the more-than-friends pool or put some space between us so I can move on.
But Possible Boy doesn't have another support system. He needs a friend, and while I'm not so fabulous that I'm the only person in the entire world capable of providing adequate and proper friendship, I do understand in a way that seems manageable by a limited percentage of the populace. Everybody has different pieces of things they do and don't see. Maybe I like feeling important, or maybe after growing up with my parents hyper-controlling every aspect of my life, it's just more familiar for me to be entirely codependent. But Possible Boy is good at the codependency thing, too. He might say every mushy thing I've said about him, only about Aural Girl. It's this wonderful chain of low self-esteem. We are human and we treat ourselves like garbage so that no one else can treat us worse.

I may have to ask him not to read this post. Will someone please tell me what to do and then blame me when it goes wrong? That's what I seem to find most familiar and comforting.

Public transportation rules. Im on an espress train thats going what i want it to when i want it to. Cant txtblog while driving. Dont have to park the el.

Esteem

I want to love myself.
I hurt myself.
So much comes so easily to me, I don't know what to do when something is hard. Things either work or I figure out another way to make it easy for them to work.
My heart hurts. Loss and loneliness and jealousy are the hardest for me to bear. When a Boy likes me, I try to make it very clear from the start if he has any chance in hell so he never gets emotionally sucked in only to be let down. Maybe that's a bit too pre-emptive. I'm fussy and not feeling particularly good about myself this past week, and I know many girls in my position would go out and flirt and get as many of their Male Suitors as possible to tell them that they are pretty and wonderful and all that. I half-assed tried to contact the Boys Who Like Me yesterday and today, dolled myself up for karaoke, and still felt like crap. I couldn't really bring myself to tease forth accolades. Because it's evil or because I don't think I deserve their shiny words? Possible Boy has a new possible Girl, and of course that chokes me with extra jealous and lonely. How can I ever measure up to anyone else with a pulse?
I hate these feelings. Why do I feed them tequila? Why do I have them in the first place?

Worm

Very long day with too much driving in Friday traffic and getting mad at myself for things and not eating for many hours at a stretch. Tequila and Aural Girl heal all wounds. My psychiatrist official prescribed a sun lamp for seasonal depression. Why can't it just be ok to hybernate? Juggling my four main doctors and eight regular prescriptions makes me want to hybernate, too. Where's that One Magical Thing or Person that can make everything improve in a constant and noticable way?

Stupid Antisocial Dog

My head is still being stupid, but I had to walk the dog and I wanted human contact, so I tried walking him to the bar. Smoking in front of the door with some friends was the bartender least likely to ever be my friend but most likely to show up as a caricature on Saturday Night Live (and, subsequently, a person I'm glad to have performing behind the taps on slow nights).
That sentence had too many clauses. A lot of my sentences do.
Anyway, my dog being my dog cowered at the mass of cigarette-tokers guarding the door to the bar, but I tried dragging him in closer anyway. Next thing I know, I'm holding an empty leash as he bolts towards home. So much for human contact.
My dog is waiting for me around the corner, neither of us particularly concerned about the other's predilection for abandonment.
Dog reattached, we headed home. Who do we see? This uber-nerdy but very nice guy who has met my dog in the past at the bar and just crouched down and ignored my little psychopath until he was ready to sniff him. So we walk a block together while he talks more than I've ever heard him, saying life is hard right now and he's dropping out of his engineering PHD program because it's just too much. I should do full character write-ups on him and the bartender somewhere slightly less public. Or can I get away with putting them on here? Stupid public/private/anonymity/being a decent human being/covering my own ass/etc.etc.etc.

Requests from the Underworld

Head hurts. Neighbor Guy shows up, wants to hang out. He smells bad and hums and frustrates me in the way that on one hand inspires me and reminds me that my depression/stagnation stuff is silly and on another hand tightens the vice around my ouchy brain. Now I'm a bit more psychologically motivated to get off my ass, but the pain is loud and clear. I took more pills. If Hades took me to the Underworld to be his bride, I think the pomegranates would be filled with pills instead of juicy seeds. One more month of winter for each one swallowed, but I agree to the balance to stave off the end of the world.

I want a really great salad with grapes and chicken strips in it, brought to my doorstep by a person who will then keep me company for dinner but only talk of soothing things in low voices and gladly eat with me in the dark, and never even notice the sink full of shnarsty dishes or whatever combination of pants and/or bathrobe I decide to or not to wear.

Persephone

Beautiful falling snowflakes
I choke myself
one sweet seed at a time
back into the underworld.

I Like the Smell of Bleach

"Don't let me forget to buy milk at the store."
My maternal grandmother said this to me once when I was little. We went to the store and both forgot the milk. Twenty plus years later, I still remember forgetting.
Other people try to forget and go to great lengths to do so. Drink to forget, sleep with strange men to forget, play guitar or parasail or set things on fire or join the army. I spend all this time dwelling on thoughts and memories better forgotten, when POOF! I just can't anymore. I can't always reliably remember what just happened, what someone said, any of it. I've been obsessing over my lack of remembering, but really I should take this as a gift. I can't dwell on what happened if I can't remember what happened, and if I stop dwelling on the fact that I'm losing my memory, I can fade into a nice worry-free bliss.

70 minutes into 116 minute-long The Man Who Wasn't There, the stupid Netflix DVD went all skippy. I tried cleaning it off, jumping to the next scene, but no, stupid DVD is stupid unplayable. I want to know what happens. Now I have to wait. Tantrum.

Today has been an eat things and watch things and make envelopes day. My dog contributes by whining at me if I don't actively engage him.

I feel less like writing and more like whining back at my dog. Whiiiiiiiiiiiiine.