Responsible

Neighbor Guy called me this morning from his neighbor's phone to say he had to go to the emergency room, could I give him a ride.
He thought he had alcohol poisoning.
He was conscious, had thrown up earlier, and described standard "I drank too much and now I feel like shit" symptoms, but his neighbor seemed to agree the ER was necessary so I put on my jacket and went to get my car.
My car started, went half a block, and stopped. Same dead transmission crap it pulled a few weeks ago. Two guys standing out in the single-digit cold were very nice and helped push my car into a mostly legal parking spot. "Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses" my ass. Hair in a pony tail, glasses on, wearing a hoodie and boys still do nice things. Maybe humanity is just nicer than I used to think.
I walked back to Neighbor Guy's apartment and it was even more clear to me that he was fine, but yet another one of his neighbors popped in and said detoxing at the ER was clearly the best thing, so I figured I was wrong and called a cab while Neighbor Guy went back and forth between lying on the floor in the fetal position and walking around somewhere between anxious and annoyed.
The cab arrives and Neighbor Guy has to choose which ER. He's worked at many of the major hospitals in the area, so he names the closest one he can think of where he knows no one but it doesn't suck.
$20 cab ride later (the driver had to break his $100 bill) we walk into the ER and sit down. The admitting nurse asks what's wrong and looks at Neighbor Guy like he's crazy when he says he thinks he has alcohol poisoning.
"Alcohol what?"
"I drank too much and now I feel..."
"You want to do detox?"
"Yes"
"Are you an alcoholic?"
"Yes."
This whole ordeal is suddenly worth it if Neighbor Guy admits to his alcoholism.
The nurse still thought we were insane or using the ER to treat poor baby Neighbor Guy with his tummy ache and his psychosomatic attention-seeking phantom symptoms.
That's what I thought, too.
They put him on an IV because he wanted to be on an IV. What was in the IV? Anti-nausea drugs and anti-anxiety drugs; a very mild cocktail.

He wanted to be babied and fawned over, but the whole time I was covering just what he needed, tough love, telling him he was fine and he could do it himself. He wanted to come back to my house, I said no. He wanted to take a cab the two blocks from Walgreens to his house. He wanted all sorts of things from me and from the universe and I wasn't going to make any of this cushy for him. I feel physically crappy all the time. I complain about it a lot, but it's something I'm very familiar with. When you bring the crappy on yourself in a very avoidable way, you need to learn to take responsibility for it yourself, too.

Today tied in very closely with my feelings about my trip to New York. I felt very irresponsible on the NY trip. I kept losing papers and things in my purse, I felt frazzled and dependent on Possible Boy but at the same time responsible for him. I felt like it wasn't my trip so everything I did was pure intrusion and as soon as something was actually expected of me I should have it pop magically and perfectly out of a hat because I was responsible for so little. In essence, I was back to Vacation With My Family Mode. I even forgot to eat and got crazy hungry, which is completely Singer Family Vacation Tradition--at least half the family should be hungry and cranky and yelling at any given moment. Possible Boy called me "Sweetie" at one point and I felt so much like I deserved to be treated like a child I didn't even try to punch him.

Flash forward to today, in a cab. Now instead of people taking important documents from me so they won't get lost, I'm the one holding the papers and Neighbor Guy's wallet, all in the same purse that ate addresses and directions just a few days earlier. I direct the driver to Walgreens, give the pharmacist Neighbor Guy's information. Neighbor Guy doesn't have a phone number. Last week I was in Walgreens trying to work a way to get more of my shots to me in New York. I'd tried to get them at this Walgreens, my Chicago Walgreens, a week before my trip, but with Christmas and insurance they weren't ready in time. So I felt irresponsible in New York, a drug addict begging at the counter for vials of the only thing that seems to consistently cut through my pain, and like Neighbor Guy I'd walked right into my pain my first night in New York. I ate cookies and drank a beer. I know now that cookies and beer make my head hurt, but I did it anyway. Then I drank coffee to keep me going. Then I forgot to eat. All these things that can cause problems, and I wanted to say "To hell with it! I'm in New York! I can live life like a normal person!" But I used up my shots and there I was at Walgreens, and Walgreens told me I couldn't get more shots, so now I'd have to live with the consequences. But it wasn't just me, alone in my condo with my consequences. I had friends along for the ride. I'm used to being alone, designing my life around my solitude, my dog is my "plus one." I don't want it to be that way anymore, and it's starting to change, but I have to learn to adapt my behavior, too. "To hell with it" effects more than just me.

Back to Neighbor Guy. He's the extreme example. He wants everyone else's world to stop with his hangover. I understand the feeling of "How can life go on when I feel like death?" but that's one of those ideas you know is ridiculous.
Possible Boy just called. I totally spilled cranky all over him. My mother called moments later and got more of it. I need to eat and I need to remember that everybody is human and we're all just trying to figure out life at our own paces and flavors. Neighbor Guy's inability to see beyond himself makes me crazy, but that's just one facet a lot of people share to varying degrees. Forgive myself for seeing myself first and maybe I can be less annoyed by everybody else.

Apparently I'm going to Aural Girl's house for zucchini pancakes. Local friends are swell.

invisible forces

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
I think I am being stalked by an invisible force field of electromagneticstaticradio waves that is messing with my head and all electronic devices I use. My phone currently holds its charge for about 30 minutes of conversation before its 12 seconds of warning and then shutting off mid-conversation. My computer refuses to work with any internet inside my apartment (even with the code from my neighbor, it works for about 4 minutes every three days) and also won't hold a charge for more than 20 minutes. The Einstein Bagels by my apartment that's supposed to have wireless also wouldn't work and the manager didn't know what I meant by the "access code," even when I used small, nontechnical words. My brain will not behave itself for more than a week at a time before it thwacks me with yet another spring weather/pressure/stress migraine. These things are making me crazy, and keeping me from you, my precious blog.

Updates on the things that need to be updated:
My magazine article writing professor failed me because I had a third absence. "No exceptions." I could have been in the hospital and she still would have failed me. Cunt. Now I have to see if I can withdraw from the class so it doesn't show up on my transcript as an F. If I take it again, the F goes away in my GPA but not on my transcript. Not that anyone will look at my transcript and one F among many As is fairly explainable, but I'm ticked. Everyone in the fiction department was shocked and appalled at the stringency of her absence policy, but that's why I'm spending the rest of my college career in the fiction department and telling the journalism department to suck it. That and the fact the journalism department is significantly weaker and full of idiots. Suck it, Trebek.

I went to New York. It was much fun. We went to the Met and saw Les Mis and ate lots of good food and I saw Birdy and met Inri (for about 20 minutes before I passed out from food/wine/long day coma) and the airport was full of Jews going to Passovers.

Since New York, my life has been: sleep, write, eat, watch TV, poke dog, repeat.

Yeesh, so many things I must do while I have internet. I am very dependent on it these days. Butt.

a triumphant return before I go

It's internet! and it's in my apartment! I ran into my neighbor this morning and asked if he'd be interested in going in on a wireless network, and he said he already had one set up and would I like the encryption code? He's saying I don't have to help pay for it, either, but I feel like I should bake him a pie with a $20 in it every month or give him a blow job or something. Ok, maybe not the blowjob. He's a really nice guy, but I don't find him attractive. Maybe I should pay someone else to give him a blowjob a month.

I'm going to New York with the fam' Thursday night through Sunday. Very exciting. My baby brother is turning 18 (sweetmotherofgod) but all his friends are gone for spring break so my parents offered to take him to see shows and eat shmancy food in Manhattan and I got invited. I get to see Birdy and meet Inri, too. My dog will have to stay at the vet's, which has me feeling very guilty so I let him eat Corn Pops.

My apartment is actually cleanerish. Last week was my spring break and I spent a lot of it cleaning, and then Friday I had the service come in for three hours. I still have to go through a shittonne of papers and come up with some method of organization, but you can see 95% of the floor and walk around barefoot and use the sink and stove and whatnot. I even removed the old smelly things from my fridge. I deserve cookies.

Back to bed. So tired, but I have to meet a teacher at noon for my mid-semester conference. Penis.