Spiky

Sooooooooooooooo...
I've been up since 6:30 AM and I've been doing stuff the entire time. Cleaning and laundry and shopping for May gift-getters and at around 10 AM I was going to take a nap so I could get back to a normalish sleep schedule but then I wanted to sweep every possible surface before I took a nap so I could mop after my nap and then it was noon and the pain showed up and I hadn't taken my pills yet and I needed to eat and while I was eating I started doing stuff on Etsy and putting together pretty collections of possible gifts and then it was the afternoon and I had to do the one project I absolutely had to do today and then my psychiatrist called to say he actually had gotten the lab results fax and my nortriptyline levels were high (duh shit, this is why I'm crashing most days when the sun sets and in a content but shaky stupor during my awake times). At some point I blinked and it was 6 PM. I made dinner. Now it's approaching 9 and I'm still quite alert, unshowered, and need to go to Walgreens to get my new lower-dose prescription nortriptyline before it closes or I go to bed, whichever comes first. Before I can go to Walgreens (3 blocks away) I have to drive to put air in my tire (1.5 blocks away) which has been soft since before the last time I drove, two weeks ago. Tomorrow morning at 9 AM I intend to be at a demolition sale in Park Ridge. I may be a little bonkers, but it's an easy drive.

Oh, good, it's raining. I'm being 50% sarcastic. Good for my head, bad for walking to get the car and then finding the car a new parking space. And that whole putting air in the tires thing. Maybe I'll get up tomorrow at 6:30 again.

The rest of my week has been a blur; everything  feels blurry. I haven't seen Aural Girl in some ridiculous amount of time.
>>Insert note: thunder and lightning outside, so my dog has to be touching me: my legs are crossed and he's resting his head on my elevated foot.<<
I only saw Possible Boy last Sunday for grocery shopping. And I feel like I haven't seen anybody, including myself, in ages. I've seen My Twin (new official code name for friend from junior high and high school with whom I'd lost touch and now we just started meeting up weekly downtown) but in my dreams I frequently see people from my past so something about it feels surreal. It's wonderful, but surreal. We used to say we were twins back in high school because we'd say the same thing or think the same thing all the time. People used to say we looked alike, and we had similar builds, but I'm blonde and pasty white while My Twin is deep mocha African-American and uses her hair an art medium. Still, we held ourselves the same (despite her dance background) and had the same speech patterns and we fed off eachother like Hall and Oates or something. Then we went our separate ways, I thought I'd failed her by being too young and self-involved...Ten years later, we've both changed and grown up and gone through a lot, and the same stuff that made us "twins" as kids seems to have ripened into an older but just as twinny version. I go around collecting people I like and identify with; My Twin was a cornerstone of my collection.
And then I got snippy over the use of the word "meta."

On most tv shows, characters go through some trial or tribulation and learn some life lesson, but things have  to be set back pretty much to zero by  the end of the episode so that you don't have to worry about the continuity and congruence of the episodes. I think I'm a little like this, too. I was reading through posts from last summer to see if I'd already given My Twin a code name, and it's the exact same thing day after day. Posts individually may seem like they mean something or are going somewhere or like perhaps I've really learned my lesson this time, but the accumulation is no more than pencil shavings, and I'm not using a pencil.

Life is so weird. Place your bets now on whether or not I'll make it to the demolition sale tomorrow, if I'll make it to any other sales, and who will go with me. I'm giving 5-to-1 odds I'll have a male or no companion. Who knows a bookie?

Things I Couldn't Make Up

Posted sign near the beach I like to go to with my dog:

Rogers Park is a strange patchwork of socioeconomics that changes in blocks, pockets, and next-door neighbors. I live in a huge gorgeous condo that's full of married couples starting families, pets, and retired  people. Across the street is a gorgeous building owned and operated by a slumlord who steals electricity and does all kinds of shady things including renting to pedophiles and drug dealers. The drug dealers don't bother me since I have been known to smoke pot so I have no right to insist the source stay locked away from my lucky white self. One of the dealers seems not to have a phone or doorbell, so to get a hold  of him you stand outside his window and yell his name until he lets you in. I'd be annoyed, but it's so fucking funny and it drives my neighbors so crazy (these are the people who want to disallow satellite dishes because they look  too "trailer park") I just laugh and laugh.
Across the street in the other direction are perfectly decent apartments. Nice brick three-story building, well taken care of, reasonable rent.
Next door is a three-unit condo building with the most amazing patio garden area in the back. One unit is owned by a very nice gay couple in their late 30s. One unit is occupied by a single mother and her three(?) grade-school aged kids. I heard they were renters and not owners, but it's entirely possible people assumed the family only rented because it's a Hispanic single mother. One unit is owned by some shadowy male person no one ever sees or discusses.

The street Howard is a few blocks north of me. Howard is a notorious Rogers Park pocket of general goods stores and currency exchanges loitering people of color. For as much as I complained about growing up in Oak Park, it gave me a lot of perspective on fear, race, class, and people. I'm still skewed way over on "Lived entire life as a little white girl" side, but seriously? I walk down the Howard strip with some regularity. I'm just as likely to run into an asshole, a dog lover, and a person who smiles at me in the nicest parts of Evanston as I am on the crappiest parts of Howard. People are people. Then you cram them through different sets of life experiences, and they engage those experiences in different ways. But they're still people. We're all people. How the hell did the imperialist thing stay so popular with light-skinned people for so long?

Anyway, what got me started on this whole big rant: the name of the fairly new community center built on Howard? The Willye B. White Park and Community Center. Seriously. The message to "at-risk youth?" B. White. I won't even go into that she was a black Olympic athlete, blah blah blah the only way to be black and famous is to be an athlete.

Maybe Molly the Ferret ran away from home to escape the pressures of a patriarchal all-albino society.

Sprunky

I don't know why I thought I'd feel better today, or why I'm surprised to feel like the same pukeshit yet another day in a row. I showered this morning; the sidewalks are wet outside, too, and maybe I felt the weather break and expected a reprieve. Still, it's spring, and even without the added stress of finals and life-changes that served as rationales in years past, it's a physically rough season.

An Avocado with Parkinson's

Bad shakes. Shakes on the inside, too. I still went to the barbecue held in honor of Neighbor Guy's birthday. No booze, wonderful food, and just NG's best friend, best friend's boyfriend, Possible Boy, Aural Girl, and myself. I was in no shape or position to pull on NG's demons, but I guess I was in no shape to realize that, either. Still, nothing happened, no plunging off on any emotion. I wanted to walk home with NG, but I was too shaky just washing the pie pan I brought, so PB and AG drove me to Walgreens and home. They were very quiet in the car, and I felt like there was something they wanted to say but stopped themselves from saying in front of me. Commentary on NG? Commentary on my dealing with NG? Commentary on how they've never seen me this bad?

The last few days I've been more outwardly sickly. I see my psychiatrist on Tuesday so I haven't bothered calling to say "Bad things are flaring, what drug do you want me on now? More of something? Less of something?" I think the pills are burning holes in my digestive system. The upside to my migraine's latest manifestation is that for once I actually look sick; my friends don't have to ask me how I'm feeling, and the rest of the world is less inclined to expect me in the usual flow of things.

AG is coming over tomorrow to help me clean my house. My mom keeps offering to come out on a Monday and I was ready to call her because I knew I needed the assistance, but I really didn't want to deal with any of the other stuff that comes with my mother especially when I'm not doing well. A year ago, my mom was my only option. Now, I have local friends who are all happy to do anything for eachother.

My life is a really great avocado with a few rotten spots.

Happy Birthday Neighbor Guy, Deleted

I wrote a 1, 712 word post about today. I went to Cambodian New Year and three garage sales with Neighbor Guy. We had fun. Writing about it was a word-purge that took an hour or two. Minutes after I posted it, Neighbor Guy called. Drunk. And of the many things he said, the only one I can repeat is that he didn't want me telling anyone about anything he said today.

I'm not a journalist, I don't use real names, but there are people who know or will  meet Neighbor Guy who also read this blog, and I would feel guilty if I didn't remove the post.

The only safe paragraph:

Cambodian New Year was too big an event for the temple itself, so it was held at the nearby city college. We walked in to parents with young kids and fussy babies out in the hallway; huge tables filled with Styrofoam bowls of noodles and curries and desserts and things don't translate; and monotone call-and-response chanting over a microphone. The two monks wrapped in orange sat on the raised platform with the whole room facing them, but I saw they didn't have the microphones. Two of the genuflectors at the front, dressed in white and posturing a bit higher on their knees, lead the chants.

Maybe someday things will  change and I'll post the rest.

I feel like I'm on a slow moving tilt-a-whirl. I keep eating, like that's going to fix anything. More likely another storm tonight. Maybe that meteor that fell from the sky in a flash last night (I didn't see it, but it's on  the news...probably landed in Wisconsin) is sending me alien signals. I'm rooting for alien signals; then there's a chance they can fix this shit.

If my writing sounds even more bonkers and fragmented than usual, it's because I keep getting distracted  and pausing to drop my shoulders back  and close my eyes and breathe from my diaphragm.

Let go. gooooooooooooooooooo

Friends and Taxes

Very late. Very tired. I need to change the way I do my accounting so next year's taxes won't be Adventures in Approximationland. I could be deducting way more than I am, but if I don't find any 2009 repair reports on my car's mileage by the time I take my pills tomorrow, fuck it. Not sure if that's the socialist or the motherfuckinglazy in me, but either way.

___ and  I met up downtown at the Art Institute this afternoon. We're going  to try to make it a regular thing, since she lives in Berwyn and we never see eachother. We understand eachother's weird shit. We're made out of the same shit. The universe is an amazing place.

moblogged from Kingston Mines

Its a good thing im feeling well & enjoying unbelievably good music. Not wasting my time on drama or misalignment. Im here & theres plenty of wonderful.

Addendum: 1:08 AM. Home now. AG was tired and a bit fussy tonight, mostly at PB. Why do I feel like "Mom, Dad, I hate it when you fight," and the impulse to "fix" every recognizable hurt and sadness I think I see on PB's face? When did my protective side show up? I don't want it to be a narcisistic protective side--my mom does that a lot and I have, too, in the past.

Um, I had two drinks and I feel like I'm writing with rocks for brains.

Also, I made fairly clear but not particularly intense genstures in Ken's direction that were well received. The world is full of maybe.

Computer and Beetle Ramblings

The internet lets me get lost in my head until my body is just packaging. I can do a million things and go a million places and never be bored. It's an extension of my infinite internal narrative--streams to swim through and around and around. I have a keyboard to take minutes: receipts for the time I spend, justification for overthought after overthought.

Walking the dog on the beach today I watched the waves reaching higher and higher and lower and higher up on the sand. Where the highest waves left foam lines on the sand, I saw ladybugs. Mostly dead ladybugs, wings slightly open and bodies at weird angles to the ground. Did they wash up with the wave? Were they in that normally dry area and caught off guard? There were a few still alive. They were more orange than red, so I'm hoping they were what we called "Asian Death Beetles." In college, a non-indigenous swarm of these ladybug look-alikes took over everything. My friends' room had ceiling corner completely black and moving. And Asian Death Beetles bit. I liked insisting they were close enough to ladybugs and making wishes when they showed up individually, but I could never really like gobs of them or their rumored harm to local ecosystems.
This morning's beach massacre looked more like Asian Death Beetles. Maybe it's a sign.

I've been snoozing my pill alarm for an hour now because I haven't wanted to get up from the computer to go take my pills. I wanted to finish this, and I apparently wanted to spend more time lost inside my head. It's beautiful out today. I need fresh groceries. I also need to figure out a weird thing on my taxes and then get them effing filed. That's back at the computer. Pulling myself up, away, go face life.

This is Migraine

Yesterday was bad. Migraine-wise.
I was in a wonderful mood in the morning. I got things done, took the dog for a long walk in the beautiful spring weather, felt like I could kick the world's ass even if my head hurt.

Around noon I needed to lay down from all my morning ass-kicking. I then spent the next five hours dreaming about how dizzy and sick I was, waking up to a sweaty and exploding self chugging water and thinking, "Why? Did I take the wrong pills? Is all this from that tiny bit of chocolate I ate yesterday? It's beautiful out! Why? Why? Why?" I'd be back asleep dreaming angry things again, screaming at my father, then out somewhere stuck and incapacitated and helpless.

Around 5:30 I woke up for real. The pain was clearly pain instead of all the other things that make me crazy.

I have no memory of anything between waking up and the storm, even though it was just yesterday. I know it was already raining when I walked my dog. I may have been on the computer or eaten or done any number of mundane tasks, but I can't find it in my memory. I know people block out terrible things that happen and chronic pain leads to memory loss and all of that. It makes sense that I unconsciously refuse to imprint anything during a migraine. Still, it's very creepy to turn around and see nothing where your immediate past should be.

Then the storm broke. A real one, not just in my head. Thunder, lightning, my dog completely terrified. I felt guilty my dog spent the sunny warm part of the day snuggling me in bed and the stormy gross part of the day staring at me trying to accomplish something. But the storm justified my migraine; it was an echo of my experience earlier in the day. The hail against my windows had me giddy with gratification; it was my migraine, now escaped and showing the rest of the world what it had done to me in the afternoon.
I wanted to scream, "Do you see that? See that hail? See how hard it's pounding? Do you get it now? Do you get it? Now you can see it! Now you can feel it too!"

When I woke up this morning, it was nice out again. My head predicts another night of rain. A little bit dizzy, a lot of the weird zapping from everywhere, a lot of feeling like I haven't eaten even though I'm eating.

I had to go to the post office to mail a package. The sun was warm and shiny. I stood directly facing it and closed my eyes. It felt wonderful to have something that singular and bright and all-consuming. All the sharp little light sources that press and buzz and ache and tingle were nothing. This one beautiful source did not hurt. It felt healing and buttery. Then I crossed the street.

Now? I miss people. I'm saving my shots for tomorrow so I can go see Billy Elliot with Possible Boy for his birthday, so tonight I ride out the pain again. My house is a complete mess and I hate it so hopefully I'll be up to cleaning some before I crash completely. Otherwise, it's another night of convincing myself I'm this strong warrior, doing things that look like I'm a productive member of society, watching Hulu and DVDs when all I want to do is watch Hulu and DVDs, and making small efforts to contact friends with lives somewhere outside my head.

I've been pouring my energy into my Etsy stuff so writing anything else seems so...is there a form of the word "ennui" that I can stick at the end of that sentence?

I still have excellent friends, and HDS is actually coming to live with me for at least this summer, which is pretty fucking fabulous except I'll have to start using my storage space downstairs as a storage space instead of using my office as a storage space/haven of disarray.

I'm trying not to play out every possible scenario in my head with regards to boys. If my head needs a project to keep it busy, I will think about my house or come up with some other life riddle that doesn't involve imaginary boyfriends based on real people.

My parents are insane. My mother's mother is incredibly negative and my mom frequently complains how negative her mom is. I've made a much larger generational improvement and I'm still 27.

My eyes let in too much light. The world shines too bright and then i dont know what to do in the dark.

Blue Fairy

Today I am sure I am dreaming.
Or some form of divinity and/or order is shouting, "How much more do you need to prove the chaos isn't random? It may not be fair, but there is pattern and order and control."
My wishes keep happening.
New wish: the knowledge and strength to make decisions and some sense that I know what to do and how to do it.
I don't mean this to be cryptic. I mean I have a really hard time making decisions over everything and if there isn't a clear, logical "answer" I get stuck.
So, message to whatever keeps giving me everything I want: that's what I want.