Raggedy Annabell

I ran myself ragged yesterday.

Biofeedback was much more successful. We played with my posture and the muscle under my back right pointy wing bone is much tenser than its left side counterpart. Finally got my jaw and temples relaxed, too.

Then I drove to a contemporary art gallery in the west loop to find out if my Miró lithograph was real or not. The gallery had a note on the door saying it was closed for the rest of August, but I called the phone number listed "in case you need to get a hold of anyone" and it turned out the owner was there and happy to help. He taught me all sorts of wonderful things about looking for dots in the printing and other useful tips as we ripped off the back of the frame and discovered my print is quite definitely out of a book. Considering I paid $10 for it, you can't get something framed that nicely for$10. Still, it would have been nice to have found a gazillion dollar treasure. I could use a jackpot. Get rich quick. The education is infinitely valuable. Next estate sale I'm buying myself a magnifying glass and a small flashlight.

I wasn't far from Jan's Antiques and I'm still missing a bobeche to complete my chandelier, so I figured I'd stop by and look again. I'm starting to give up on finding a single one to match and now looking for five of about the right size and style. I hadn't eaten all day so I got a salad from the coffee shop next door, then made my way to Jan's. Closed. Poop. Hungry and feeling my head, I wandered back towards my car to eat my salad when suddenly my steps felt funny. I looked down at my feet to see I'd just walked through fresh cement. Three sunken footprints nearly ruining a day's work. The street worker was very nice about it and managed to smooth things out again while I stood there apologizing over and over. There's a lot of galleries in that neighborhood, but all I could think was that the man fixing the cement was the real artist as my feet disappeared.

There's a Salvation Army I'd never been to on Union right in that area, too. So I went. Turns out it has an entire "antique boutique" and much of it is laid out more like an antiques/salvage shop than the standard Salvation Army digging free-for-all. Good if you're looking to buy a specific piece for less. Bad if you're a treasure hunter hoping to find something worth a gazillion dollars mixed in with rest of the junk.

There was another antiques auction last night, but I decided I haven't sold enough stuff to go buy any more. No more buying until I've unloaded some of these pieces. So I drove to Jazzy Junque, which sells lots of cookie jars and such and my mom once actually bought a bunch of salt and pepper shakers much like the ones currently sitting in my car. Jazzy Junque had a "We're moving!" sign in the window with their new address on Lincoln. Fine. I drove to Lincoln. Clearly, they haven't moved in yet.

At this point I was exhausted and a few blocks from Trader Joe's. Time to spend all the money I hadn't made on food I can eat and enjoy. $50 later, my house is now full of delicious things that follow my annoying dietary restrictions. Two vats of rice milk so I can have cereal all the time without worrying about how friggin' expensive rice milk is at Dominicks. Dried fruit so I will have fruit even after the fresh stuff is gone because it never lasts that long in my house. Mango in frozen, dried, and fresh form. Avocados for my Mexicanish food because only at Trader Joes can I get avocados for less than a dollar each. Dynamo juice, whatever the hell is in that, because it is tasty and has lots of calcium now that I can't have milk. More yummy chicken sausage things because they are very easy to make and are delicious and I'm craving protein a lot.

I dealt with more of the bills that have been evil black clouds over my soul. They're in the mailbox. All that's left:

• a call to my neurologist's hospital to figure out how much I actually owe because they bill my parents and me for the same things and then send me refunds for payments made on some things while saying I owe money on others and are the most confusing billing people ever
• yelling at RCN for charging me a $75 early contract termination fee when I never terminated my contract (glad I caught it...I'm on automatic billing for them...WTF?)
• finishing the census survey I'm required to fill out BY LAW
• straightening crap out with People's Gas. Again.

The People's Gas thing is the only one that really makes me want to curl up and die. It's the kind of thing where logic and fairness don't seem to prevail and every time I think it's fine and dandy and fixed they send me another bill that proves it is not fixed and if it wasn't something ridiculous like $400+ I'd just pay it to make it go away but I don't have that kind of "just go away" money.

I had a brilliant idea last night involving knitting, coffee shops, and coffee sleeves. I want to just come up with ideas and help start them but then have other people be the ones to really run the day-to-day stuff and I can go on to my next idea.

My therapist wants me to come in today at 2:30 instead of 3:30. There's no real reason I can't, but I don't want to. I want to fuck around my house as long as possible. It's gloomy outside and I'm fussy.

Last night I fell asleep before 7 and woke up around 9 with a bad migraine. I'd say around a 7 in pain. I'd really wanted to go out and be social, but there was no way I could be around noise. Instead I had a whole long text message chat with Possible Boy, who was at home dog sitting Other Girl's Jack Russel/chihuahua. It was really nice. I'm much better at texting than talking with Possible Boy. It gives me time to edit. I still want to write letters or notes on paper. You can't give a box of text messages to your grandchildren. There's nothing permanent. I like ephemera, dammit.

Cereal sounds good. Dog should go out. I should make at least one of the easy phone calls before heading to therapy. Blerg.

Biofeedback, Blerg, and Boys

This morning began with my second session of biofeedback. Biofeedback is friggin' cool. I go to St. Joseph's Hospital, where valet parking costs the same as regular parking for patients ($4) and everybody is nice, and the Diamond Headache Clinic has an outpost on the 9th floor.
[my computer sounds like it's sizzling. that can't be good. dog hair in the fan?]
For biofeedback, they hook up various muscles in my head and neck to a monitor that shows how tight or relaxed they are, and my finger up to a thermometer. I've already mastered making my hand temperature rise just by thinking about it within minutes, which is pretty friggin' cool. Plus, it feels like some of the internal glurping stuff I used to describe during acupuncture, but now there's machines hooked up that show a difference in my body. Today's muscles were in my temples and jaw. I thought jaw would be the big clenched culprit, but I figured out how to relax it pretty quickly. Temples not so much, so we're working on that again next week.

I left in a hypnotic fuzz, but I needed to stop at Target. I didn't get a rolly cart, just a hand basket, thinking I was only picking up a few things and none of them were heavy. Except milk, and I'd get that last. I wanted more Epsom salts for my own baths, but they only had a huge container. Then I realized this particular Target had full grocery so I had to get a bazillion other heavy things and waddle like a dork to the cash register, weighed down by my gazillion pound basket. When I got home, I realized I'd made it there without the bag that contained one of the major items for which I went to Target in the first place.

Then I broke one of the bobeche of my chandelier just as I finally got everything I needed to finish fixing it up and actually figured out how to fix it with all the wiring and everything (nevermind attaching it to the ceiling, but getting its own sockets and lightbulbs all wired and happy, I'm set).

Dog joined me for Target Run 2 followed by Epic Naps 1 and 2 since I just couldn't stay awake. Lame. Extra lame because...

Neighbor Guy called me yesterday to say that Possible Boy was talking about me again and hoping I wasn't jealous of the other girl and saying how pretty I looked and blah blah blah and that Possible Boy was probably going to call me, but then I was ouchy-dead and not really able to talk to Neighbor Guy and the thing about Neighbor Guy is that you never know if what he's saying happened in reality or in his head. I'm a little worried he's (non-consciously) trying to pull me into his Pining for Possible Boy Club. But I also refuse to contribute to Neighbor Guy as messenger for the torrid love triangle (SO TORRID) for both the sake of Neighbor Guy's emotions and the sake of the message. I explained to Birdie, Neighbor Guy is like a little kid-you tell him something, and he might relate back what you said, but he also might warp it so it means something completely different or just talk about firetrucks. So I really wanted to call him back today with my wits about me. No such luck. And tomorrow is the Museum of Science and Industry's Members' Night and I want to go and if Possible Boy had called me I would have invited him but he didn't and I don't want to do all the pursuing since I already get a sense he's a boy who likes being pursued and I don't want to be a pursuant for the sake of pursuit and I already called him once. So if I can stay awake tomorrow, we'll see what the day brings.

I still haven't contacted Another Boy. What are the formulas? How long am I "supposed to" wait? Do I have to rent Swingers again?

This part of the boy game is hard. I'm much better at melodrama and fooling around.