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.

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.

Don't touch me

Today was one of those strange days in my body where I'm in pain but I feel like doing everything, so I did everything. I did not clean the house or take the dog on an extra-long walk, but otherwise I feel pretty fucking accomplished for a scrambled egg brain.

I organized all my vintage maps by region into folders in two small plastic boxes.
I went to an estate/demolition sale that kicked ass. $7.50 for stuff that I can sell for $100+ and it's all easy to mail.
I purchased key ingredients for the completion of two of my ongoing projects.
I went grocery shopping.
I took photos of some of the new things I got at today's estate sale and almost completed getting them listed online.

I'd planned to go to the bar and listen to the Irish band and be social, but I'm completely exhausted. My logical processing ability started its downward decent a good six hours ago, and at this point I'm likely to bite anyone who touches me, possibly including my dog. When I first got back from all the running around errand stuff and I was light-headed and woozy and trying to breathe and re-establish myself on this plane of existence, I looked up and there was my dog, sitting tall in the middle of the dining room, staring at me. I stared back. It was perfect.

Now I don't want the computer touching me, either. I don't usually get like this. Weird.

Do Not Pass Go

My migraine doc calls it "dullness." I refer to it as all sorts of things, including "the crazies," "the zappies," "being stupid," "like I'm stoned," and who knows what else. It's common in migraine sufferers, it's actually a symptom of the migraine (right along with light sensitivity, nausea, etc.), and  it means I don't function properly and there's not a thing I can do about it. I can't always tell when I'm in "dullness" mode. There will be days when I'm chugging along, getting things done on the computer, and I switch over to online kakuro (which I play a lot) and I can't add anything in my head or remember numbers from one moment to the next and I realize my brain is misfiring all over the place and whatever I had been working on earlier probably contains tons of mistakes. Or it took 20 times longer to complete a simple task, or I did the wrong thing altogether. This happens to me at some point during the day almost every day. Sometimes it just flusters me and I just have to accept that it's time to put down what I'm doing and move on. Sometimes I'm stuck in a situation where I don't have that luxury.

I don't even know when or exactly how I miscalculated my finances in the last few weeks. I'm usually quite good at managing where my money is at any particular moment, maintaining the delicate balance between savings, checking, and credit card so that as much as possible is in savings and as little is on credit at any given moment. Well, I paid off my credit card in full and somehow thought there was more in my checking and savings than actually existed in my checking and savings and with my wonderful world of auto-payed bills, as of this morning I have $34 liquid.
I'm panicking.
I shouldn't be panicking. If I can quiet down the panic enough to function without the audible wavering of desperation, I make phone calls and drive around tomorrow until I have at least $200 in cash. My head still fucking hurts and it may keep hurting, but I have a feeling it will hurt less once I'm not worried about my bank account.

It's funny that I have all this anxiety about money. Money isn't real. I'm very aware of that. I feel about money the way a child feels about the dark, or maybe the way I'm supposed to feel about my period. I get far more embarrassed talking about money than I do about my menstrual cycle.

Holy shit my head hurts. It's in my neck. Why haven't I gotten my jacuzzi jets fixed? Get Manbug back over here with Dr. Mary Jane. That would be swell.

Fucking fuck, I feel so much I overload and cry and my head explodes. I take everything in and absorb what I can, live and write what I can, try to dispose of the rest as waste product through my tear ducts, and then anything left over turns into pain.

I texted Aural Girl and Possible Boy, asking them to stop by some time tonight because I'm feeling very down. Apparently they are at a Bulls game (migraine hell, which is why I can't be AG's basketball buddy) but still absolutely are happy to stop by whatever time they get back. This makes me cry, too. It's the huge, unhidden, open-hearted love and kindness. It's what means the most to me in this entire world. Not just the two of them. I know, I know, I bring this up a lot, but I've had some amazing friends over the course of my life.
In therapy today we talked about my propensity to sidekick myself. When it comes to another human being, the reasons I love and like and don't and everything in between aren't  a list of assets and liabilities--it's a feeling. I don't think I'm the crazy lady who likes you or doesn't because your aura is too murky, but I definitely trust some sort of deeper sense even as my logical snark-machine of a brain is churning out pros and cons.
So why should anyone like me? I know my list of traits as well as a 27-year-old woman can know her own list, but it's not about traits. I can't get a feeling about myself so I try to base it off other people, but who do I trust? Can I trust myself to choose good people to trust? Again with the spiral of the ether and all that, and somehow the conclusion tends to be that I'm annoying, a social pariah, and I overthink everything.
I have trouble being present in my own life.
I've always written off the random boys who think I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread; I thought I needed somebody stronger than any guy who could possibly be crushing on me. But that's exactly who I need: someone who does see me as wonderful and shiny and all that; that's the real support.

I feel like I'm playing the self-actualization game and I keep completing levels and at some point I win the Relationship charm but I'm not there yet and I can't see how many more levels there are to go or what I still have to do and that's frustrating.

Will someone just sponsor my blog and give me tons of money to write whatever I feel like all day?

Maybe tonight I'll revive my phone sex account. Also good for money.

You probably think this song is about you

Love is longing? Is the unobtainable? The feeling that your emotional muscles are being stretched to their limit, that is love?
No.
That is familiar. That is the semi-silent suffering that makes for great novels and television dramas and plenty of mediocre works of truth and fiction, too.
It's what we late bloomers, wallflowers, writers, and dreamers  have been carving into trees our entire lives.
Now here we are, blossoming in a maniac's paradise, the world delivered on a plate via room service, and all we know is longing and books and promises we carved into trees.
I still blossom in wallpaper and words, but there is too much world overflowing with true love and fullness to get caught in webs of longing for its own sad sake.
I know you can see how much world is out there--love is there, too. The searing fades away when you can see the love, the intentions, and the humanity.
Now, I'm lapping up every last drop I can get, but I'm also looking for a partner. My heart does a lot of crazy things, but I trust my intuition lately, and whatever happens happens. I want to feed this to you in pill form. I want to take your sadness and flush it into the ether so it's merely another frosty breath passing through winter.
Mine, too.
And then you will see friends as love and longing as pain and love as possibility.

Evening Ramblings

Sometimes my dog is so cute I can't stand it. According to a former light of my life/scourge of my soul, my dog is actually thinking "I am going to eat your face" every time he stares at you with those adorable, wide gaping eyes. Well, maybe my dog should eat the faces of the boys I bring home; I tend to let those boys treat me like crap, so somebody needs to be looking out for us...

That's not fair. I'm looking out a bit better. If I wasn't, I'd totally have gone for one of the not-particularly-nice-but-still-interesting boys. I may be subconsciously trying to train Possible Boy to treat me like crap, but he's one of the most frighteningly kind people I've met in my entire life. But there are more fish! Billions of fish! I have some pretty spectacular friendfish, and now I even have spectacular friendfish down the block, so when the next Boyfish comes swimming along I can freak out and cry and all those other things with people who can physically hand me the bag of marshmallows.

I fought the Topamax Withdrawal Monster today and won. Two phone calls and an email to my doctor's office, two phone calls and finally just showing up at Walgreens, and TADA! Topamax. The shakes are going down and I can almost walk straight again. Hooray!

I just want to watch pseudo-edgy TV dramas all the time. And say "pseudo-edgy" because I'm too cool to actually think anything on television is edgy. I'm sooo edgy. I live in Rogers Park. Sometimes, there's crime. There's even black people. Sometimes, I even talk to them. Oooh, edgy.

Oh shit. I put my chicken back on the George because it was still raw-ish. That was a good 20 minutes ago...
Chicken didn't really burn, but my dog may get a serious treat tonight...

Between A and B

Possible Boy said everything I've ever wanted to hear a person say about something I wrote. And he meant it. Really, really meant it. If I could make myself cry honey and rose petals.

Aside: Other Girl needs a different name in here. It's the code name that seems wrong every time I write it. NBF always cracks me up to call him New Best Friend because how the name came about, the irony of it, the double-edged smirk. Possible Boy is a bundle of still-blooming kinetic energy, so I think of him as Possible Boy like a super-hero name: Super Man, Wonder Woman, Batgirl and Possible Boy.
I discussed Other Girl's need for a new name with Other Girl and, plied with wine, we decided on Aural Girl. We think it's funny.

We can talk now. All the things I was so careful to hide. Hide the crazy, right?
I want to fix him. I want to take all of his sad and make it go away. I don't know how to make my own sad go away, and I'm back on my weird self-defeatism again. When I feel physically ok, what am I doing to make money or somehow improve the world every moment of the day? Oh, look, it's that little hole in my heart. I can't just stuff it full of imaginary Possibilities and dreams to distract myself, so how do I fill it? I ate all the cookies last week. Warm dog, that feels good. I want something bigger, something to pop or burst or push me in some direction. I have to recognize that I'm the one who makes the choices, chooses to pop and burst things, can set things in motion at any moment. But I keep waiting for something external to happen; peg my emotional currency to random forces. I'll just keep playing until I get one good score, take a nap until I wake up refreshed, walk my dog in any direction until we come across something interesting. If I'm a feather in the wind, then I don't have to take responsibility for any of the decisions I make. Decisions have consequences and then I dwell dwell dwell. That came up in therapy today. Therapy that I had over the phone because I forgot we switched it today to her new office. I definitely didn't remember when I crawled back into my nice warm bed this morning post-writing, but I've been weird about it changing to a new place on a new day. What the fuck? People go about their business all the time with changing appointments and things. Ok, so this has been the only constant appointment in my life over the past year, but I also walk my dog every day and go to the bathroom and ingest food. The other things that I don't keep constant, I wrestle with my real commitment to them being constant. What is my life? What do I want it to be? How and when do I remember I'm alive? At least I'm not jumping off airplanes or anything, but I over-analyze every thought and action and then try to insulate myself from myself by hiding in the hole in my heart and reading or watching Hulu. Never mind all the things I got done today because look at all the time I spent not getting things done. Look at all the oxygen I wasted.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.
I'm not the only one like this, but can I use that to inspire myself to keep improving? Hello, Annabell! Do you not remember what you were like six months ago? I'm making insanely tremendous leaps here. Patience. Rome wasn't built in a day, and other such sayings and aphorisms and blah blah blah. How much do I coddle myself and say "look how well you're doing!" and how much do I yell at myself to get the fuck off my ass and stop analyzing my lack of motion and (apologies to Nike) just do it? Carrot, stick, carrot, stick. Isn't there another way? An easy answer? Something solid and definitive I can hold onto? I wanted a human to be that thing I could hold. I've imagined that as my panacea. I had a friend a few years ago who was adopted, and she always thought finding her birth parents would be her "cure." White wales and golden fleece, why do people all feel so incomplete?
My parents have all kinds of faults and difficulties and incompatibilities, but there is no question in my mind that they are the ends of one anther's beginnings. They also still have the incompleteness and the insecurity and the melancholy.
Books and movies and television are filled with lies. Like drugs, they get us high on the illusion of a simple answer, a simple happiness, definitive answers and paths from point A to B with story arc and happy ever after. When I wake up and remember I'm trying to narrate myself in a complicated universe, I throw temper tantrums and curl back into my head and books and tv and don't want to do anything that doesn't go into the story. No paying bills or daily tedium. No routine. You don't write about all the days you got up, flossed, brushed your teeth, walked the dog, ate cornflakes, watch Colbert Report, and then farted around on the computer for two hours before showering if you even bothered to shower. The narrative skips to what you did, and I feel I'm failing myself and the narrative and my debt to being alive every moment that isn't story-worthy. At least, that's how I feel while I'm writing.

While I'm talking to Possible Boy, I want to make everything whole, in myself and in him.
While I'm talking to Aural Girl, it's scaffolding around an archaeological dig; building up more support, digging a little deeper.
And then there's the general flock of Boys at the bar. It takes so little for them to tell me I'm pretty.

"She had begun to notice something strange.
Her ugly duckling features
Had undergone a change.
In short, she was growing pretty.
For the
first time in her whole life--pretty.
And the shock so stunned and thrilled her
That she became
Almost immediate
Incurably
Insane."

(From The Fantasticks by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt)

That's enough rambling and ranting for tonight.
And they all lived happily ever after
and had direction and purpose and willpower and shined like cattle guard on the Little Engine that Could.
Amen.

no news is?

I spent many many hours in a row with Neighbor Guy yesterday. His life story is amazing. Maybe he'll let me write it for him someday. By the end of the day my brain was getting fussy and I was getting fussy. Then today I was a zombie until I ran out of my house screaming* after 3. I'm feeling very stagnant and unproductive when I'm home. I'm also getting spoiled by feeling better so I now expect to feel better and get annoyed when I feel crappy again. The past few days it rains and stops in unexpected bursts. Walking to my car: sunny and then pouring in half a block. My head does this, too, but with a little more foreboding and then I have to sleep or feed it drugs and POOF!
I'm fine again. Can't concentrate on anything up close and immediate, like reading more than a few pages or doing anything particularly contemplative on the computer. It puts me in a trance, feels like I'm being hypnotized. Right now I don't mind being hypnotized because I took a nap from 8-9:30 PM and I'm never falling asleep again ever. And my tongue tastes like corn tortilla even though I last ate corn tortilla at 2 this afternoon and chile ancho and cumin are the pervasive smells lingering around my condo.

I never showered today. Eeeeew. I'm gross.



*(minus the running or screaming)

My Dog Must Live Forever

Possible Boy seems to be dating Other Girl.

I may have found something I can do for money.

Neighbor Guy is in a state of depressed hiding and his cell phone got disconnected because he couldn't pay the bill and now he's extremely hard to find.

I spent 28 hours with one of my best friends from junior high and high school who I hadn't seen in almost ten years. We've had completely different lives from day one and yet we're still very similar people. I think we're made out of the same flavor goop.

As my dog barked and snarled at another dog on the beach, I grabbed him by his neck scruff as usual to try to calm him down. The other dog kept coming closer and closer and my dog kept freaking out more and more until he was on his side and barking and swallowing sand and then he stopped moving and stopped breathing and I was shaking him and yelling and thinking he was choking on the sand and he couldn't die there like that and then it was clear he was conscious again but he still wasn't breathing and I kept shaking him and the owner of the other dog asked if she should call somebody and I said yes and she called 311 and I kept shaking my dog and patting him on the sides until he started breathing again, a little at first, and by the time the woman got the animal ER people on the phone my dog was breathing and conscious and not totally fine but certainly not at death's door. The ER people said to bring him in, so we walked back to my condo and grabbed my purse and headed to the doggy ER.
He's fine. He seems to have the beginnings of congestive heart disease, but catching it early means beta blockers or something of the sort like people take. Still not entirely sure why he passed out the way he did, but the vet seemed satisfied with her list of entirely probably explanations. Monday we need to get an appointment to see a doggy cardiologist for a full workup and to figure out where to go from here. He's watching me write this with his big pleading eyes and I just want to hold him all the time.

My migraines have been much better the past few days. I've taken milk out of my diet. I'm worried that's why I've been better. It's wonderful if I found a cause and can stop the madness just by changing my diet, but I really like milk. Yes, I'm being a brat.

Karaoke at my local bar was amazing tonight. Even if I went knowing full well I'd be in not the best friend-surrounded environment, I wanted to go. I wanted to sing and show off my new Target clearance dress and milk my being awake and alert and not in pain for every possible minute. I sang "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid and one random woman was convinced I was in musical theater. Boggled my mind a bit and flattered me beyond anything I've heard in ages. My brief stint trying out for musicals in junior high and high school and finally resigning myself to the pit orchestra after total and complete rejection one too many times.

The world and my life amaze me to no end these days. They're like painfully rich chocolate cake--you can only take a few bites at a time or it overwhelms te senses. It's wonderful, but just so overwhelming. Like trying to say the entire alphabet at once. All the letters on top of one another, tapped out by a single tongue in a single mouth in a single single syllable's space.

So exhausted. All of the sudden. Sleep time.

Positive Thinking turns Existential Crisis

To do list:
Give self credit for the good I accomplish

So jobs that pay and count me as a productive member of society are a bit of a no-go right now. I still do a lot of good. I'm a good person. I don't feel like a good person, but examining the evidence* I certainly have the thoughts and actions of a good person. After having lunch at a recently opened restaurant for the second time and being once more blown away by the fabulous quality of the food, I will leave a review on Yelp. Writing Yelp reviews is easy for me because there's no obligation and I can do it whenever I'm up to it and if I'm never up to it or can't come up with anything to say, it doesn't matter. But when I do publish something on there, it is a service to everyone who reads it and, in the case of positive reviews, a service to the business that made me happy.

I kept the kid entertained for hours on Saturday. It felt to me like "Of course I played with the kid. It was fun and gave me something to do and I couldn't have just left him to sit there bored for four hours." But (thank you, Therapist), everybody else around was quite fine going about their own lives and not giving a flying crap about the happiness of the 8-year-old. I could have brought my card stuff out and worked on it alone and been much more productive in a cards-to-sell sense. But I didn't. I did a good thing.

Good things are good. They are not just expected and obligated. For me there are only obligations and failures. Bad bad bad bad bad. See the good in yourself, Annabell. Acknowledging my own accomplishments (particularly in my own head) is not inherently conceited.

We are all sinners in the eyes of God. Terrible, wretched creatures drawn towards doing terrible, wretched things. Only Gratitude and Magic Words can set us free. Only Good Works and Acknowledging our own Helplessness and Magic Words and Obedience can set us free. Only Death can set us free and God decided ahead of time if that Freedom will be Eternal Suffering or Glory. Only Death can set us free and We decide in every act if that Freedom will be better than the Wretchedness.

Wait, I was raised Jewish.

We are all terrible wretched creatures for what we've done to our mothers by not calling them enough. Only an advanced degree in something that pays well can set us free.

Holy shit, that's my life.

Can I please train myself to think differently? Here's the one I get glimmers of and try to maintain but my satirical Jewy version always looms and beats it up:

Everything is beautiful. Even the most wretched, sick, sad, atrocious is part of The Beautiful. Every time we laugh and remember and breathe and look around, we are free. But it is still our job to help comprise The Beautiful and live our lives, so making as much Happy as possible becomes the daily goal. And then it doesn't feel like such a struggle. It doesn't feel like an escape to be free.

Meanwhile, I just ate a ton of gummy bears and will probably regret it later. Can I look at that as funny? Keep remembering how ridiculous it is? Enjoy the gummy bears. They were tasty and gummy.

I am not wicked for learning how to smile inside before I learn how to make a living. Happiness is more important happiness is more important happiness is more important happiness is more important happiness is more important. Feeling guilty about spending this time writing in my blog instead of doing something that makes an obvious stride towards my financial independence is part of the ridiculous. I won't be happy at anything until I reconcile that guilt. Can I take it out and beat it with sticks? I'm trying to write it all out, but it's more of a snake of grime oozing out of the pore of a blackhead than any satisfying burst. I hope it doesn't scar.

car, migraine, yap yap yap

Still in a migraine stupor. I hate this. I was going to try out for Wheel of Fortune today, but there's no way I'm going anywhere loud and crowded or acting excited about anything.

However, thing that I am excited about, even if I'm incapable of expressing it at the moment: apparently, my parents are buying me a new (well, new to me) car! I love my old Camry and thought I'd drive it until the day it died, but they called to say they came across a really good deal on a 2003 Saab somethingorother and would I like it? I'm a bit sad to say goodbye to my Camry, since that's the car that went to Key West and back in a weekend, and it's been good to me, but I know with 130,000 miles and 12 years under its belt, it's getting ready to die. And I have a sense it's going to need new breaks again soon, too, since they're starting to sound/feel funny. So new car! That's like winning on Wheel of Fortune without ever playing the game. I still would have liked to play the game...

What the hell am I talking about? The weirdest part of a migraine is how drunk/stoned I feel, like thoughts don't stay in my brain for more than about two seconds, and normal emotional reactions just don't exist. Like, I know I'm excited about new car, but I'm not feeling properly excited about it. Like, this is big fat exciting! A Saab! I really like Saabs. But I'm too numb right now to really feel it. Almost in that depression way, but without the sadness or hopelessness...or even that feeling of numb. This is more the way I don't feel things in my third arm because I don't have a third arm. I am not missing a third arm, I just don't have one.

Yeesh. The logic of Full Blown Migraine Day 3 is very odd. It doesn't help I keep getting distracted by things in my peripheral vision that aren't really moving but randomly take my attention, anyway. I wanted to write about how weird it is that my parents now have all this money. Again, not that I'm complaining. If anything, it's perfect when in my life they went from getting by to comfortable to "want a new car?" Because I grew up not spoiled but not needy. When I got too big for my clothes, we could afford to go get new clothes, but I didn't get a whole new wardrobe every season or shop at boutiques and department stores. If I wanted a new toy, it went on my Hanukah or birthday list, and big-ticket items (a new bike or a boom-box) meant that was pretty much it from my parents for the holiday. Totally comfortable, totally reasonable. But I guess what my dad is/does is pretty unique and now he's all high on the corporate ladder and I get calls like "Do you want a new car?"

Think they can buy me a new brain?

I hope this makes sense.

Something smells funny and I can't tell if it's real or in my head or some combination.

Anybody (HDS, I'm looking at you) know a shit-ton about C. S. Lewis? I have a presentation on Thursday.

Blah blah blah blah. This is a clear case of "those who speak do not know," or at least "the less my brain is functioning, the more I write."

Grandly Fussy

You know when there's a person you really love but you're spending too much time with him/her and you just need a little space? That's how I'm feeling about myself right now. I'm annoying the hell out of myself and could really use a week's vacation away from me. I am a self-centered co-dependent. I'm a serial monogamist at heart, but I replace the significant other character with a platonic BFF. I am not an easy person to live with, particularly for me.

My brother graduated high school on Sunday. It's an extremely diverse and segregated school. Watching the kids go from alphabetical order into their groups of friends was like watching a fresh deck of cards being shuffled on rewind. I understand the desire to surround yourself with friends who are like you, but your racial/cultural background should just be one of the aspects of who you are. At my high school, it also dictated your interests and aspirations, and that's fucked up. The cheerleaders were all black. The drill team was all blonde (even the ones who weren't by genetics or peroxide had blonde souls). Most of the other official extra-curricular activities were white, except for the specific ethnic groups (i.e. Latin American Student Association). Chorus was mostly white, but there was a gospel choir full of black singers. This shit is stupid. Having a cultural identity is a good thing, but then why the fuck can't we reshuffle ourselves before dividing off into other groups of likes and dislikes. All the writers. All the artists. Split up by favorite color, favorite zoo animal, birthdate, ideal pillow firmness, favorite time of day. Divide by likes and interests instead of skin color. And then let me be selfish/self-centered and go through and find the intelligent, creative, open-minded, sarcastic writer-types and hang out with them. Maybe I'm fooling myself, but I truly believe that we'd have a much easier time finding strong human connections if class and color didn't seep in and separate us out. Fuck JDate, I want CreativepersonDate.

I need to be writing crap for class tomorrow, but I just want to have my temper-tantrum.

Lots of words without saying anything

I feel like whining. My body still hurts from yesterday's fall. The bruising on my knees is surprisingly minimal, but I seem to have pulled something in my back and my right arm and hand are distractingly sore.

Today I went laptop bag shopping with my mom and sister. I actually got them to come out to me, since I thought we'd have more luck at one of the many cute stores in my general area than we would out in the 'burbs. We went to over a dozen different places and saw many fabulous bags, but my stupid computer is too big. I was running around with a measuring tape and a sinking heart. I love my computer. That is why I want to bring her with me to school and around in general to do my writing. But with the wide screen, there is nothing that will accommodate her. In the end, I thought I found something that would be big enough, and it certainly was long enough, but I wasn't even thinking about the width. I'm going to try to return it tomorrow (assuming I get up before I have to leave for my improv class) and actually bring my computer with me this time and shove it in bags to see. Maybe I should just go online, but I like to try bags on because I am a small person and sometimes they look silly on me. My sister suggested I use the school's computers and just carry around a flash drive, but I tend to like to write in my own random found spaces and I write significantly faster (and frequently better) on a computer than I do by hand. It's kind of like my musical instrument or piece of sports equipment. Yes! It is my tennis racket and it needs a case. I am not going to leave my racket at home and use the ones at the club.

I'm making headway on my alcoholism. I've been keeping my fridge stocked with quality beer and drinking about one a night at home alone. Right now I'm enjoying The Poet oatmeal stout. If I am lucky, the alcohol content will be enough to counteract my deep dark nap I took around 7 PM. Not the smartest move on my part. Sunday I have to be at work by 8 AM. Giant piece of poop. I can't be on this weird schedule of half-sleeping through the night then crashing late evening. And then school on Monday. What are the odds I actually make it to all of my classes this time? I've been very good with my improv classes, so I'm hoping that will carry over. No more hiding in my room and refusing to shower or leave. That is not one of the seven habits of highly effective people; it is one of the habits of useless depressed people. I want to be effective, not useless.

I Georged one of the steaks from my freezer tonight. It sucked. I need to figure out the practicalities of snacking and shopping for Healthy Annabell, now that I am trying to be healthy. You know, aside from that whole alcoholism thing.

May I please go to sleep now?