Pee Day Ramble

Today was Pee Day. My dog christened it by peeing all over the back porch stairs (that don't get rained on so I had to clean them on my hands and knees, which was just awesome for my dizzy bullshit). I then spent the day peeing into a jug and cleaning my hellaciously messy life and feeling like crap and sleeping. It started raining this evening, so that may have contributed to why I felt so awful all day, but it made cleaning the house harder. Still, I almost completely unearthed the futon in my office/spare bedroom/world's biggest closet; I just have to figure out what I'm doing with all of the alphabet blocks still spread out in order across the bedspread. Then there's the rest of the room, which is coming along (I found a good chunk of the floor) but remains more closet than living space. We're having a condo-wide yard sale on the 29th and it would be so much more convenient if it were, say, last weekend and all the extra shit in my life already disappeared, replaced by money, but no such luck. Instead, I have to try to clean with the sale in mind, organizing things enough that next week is somewhat easier and I don't spend the entire time trying to re-sort everything all over again.

I looked up the weather for the wedding and it's going to be a high of 60 degrees. This means I have to figure out my coat options, which should be no big deal but at the moment feels like one. more. thing. I'm way too nervous about this wedding, or, more accurately, seeing people at this wedding. I don't know how I'm going to get along with the people I haven't spoken to in years who were once my closest friends, and it terrifies me. They used to mean so much and I'm not sure how to take our relationships, past or present, and I'm trying to be as optimistic about it as possible but now that I can't just get shitfaced and have everyone declare everything happy and fine (since I still can't drink) I'm not sure anymore how I most hope things will turn out (a sober mutual declaration of "All is forgiven, all bad is forgotten, we're cool" is a hell of a lot harder and less socially acceptable somehow), I'm not sure what the best possible outcome would be. Without knowing what to wish for, I have trouble calming myself down with optimistic happy thoughts. But the wedding itself should be my happy thought. My friend who's getting married deserves to be happy so. much. And I'm now driving up with Birdie, which means two hours of quality Birdie time I didn't think I'd have. That's a big happy thought. I'm just being Captain Negativity and dwelling on the parts that have me freaked out. I just don't know what people will think when they see me 20 lbs heavier, the only one single, and half-broken by migraines with some new weird malady that's got me peeing in jugs. At least I haven't lost my sense of humor. Or my depression. I had that when I knew them, and they loved me then. I have lost the chip on my shoulder, but I think I could use it right about now because it was a nice protective coating. Still, I have to remember that it's not like this weekend is about me anyway and everybody will be coming with their own shit, too. Maybe we're all fat now. Is it terrible that I kind of hope The Former Boy is fat? I do. I really do.

Enough rambling about that.

It's a little funny that I'm going to a wedding considering I spent Friday wanting to jump a married man. We're friends and we have a really fantastic time together, but he's married so my crushing is useless. Why do I torture myself?

Mouse Hunt

I killed a mouse Thursday. Snap trap and plum. Only I didn’t kill the mouse, it somehow set of the snap trap and escaped with the plum. I should have known then it had an accomplice.


I killed a mouse last night, this time for real. I moved the snap trap and used smaller bait: just enough muenster cheese to cover the bait part of the trap. It seems to have worked, because the mouse was very dead in the morning.

I would and could have set down glue traps, covered traps, other things that require less contact with the mouse, but these are actually less humane and less effective. As for a live trap, I live in the city. I’m not driving over an hour so some urban-adapted little shitter can go get eaten by his more wilderness-prone cousins.

So ding, dong the mouse was dead and I went about cleaning up the disgusting poop it managed to leave under my kitchen sink and behind my kitchen cabinets.

All mopped, every surface disinfected, so what the fuck still smells like mouse shit?

I’m not happy I now recognize the smell of mouse shit. I have nose that rivals most of the animal kingdom, a trait that’s been entertaining in my antiques/vintage acquisition. I already think cling wrap has a smell and my ice maker has a smell, so adding “mouse poop” to the olfactory equation has me homicidal and I already killed the mouse.

Or so I thought.

No mouse is an island.

A smaller, completely black mouse darted across the kitchen tonight. Darted across my freshly mopped floors. I yelled and I banged on things and I told it I was buying a shot gun. It seemed lost. It went for the washing machine and tried to come back out again with no real direction. Maybe I killed off the mouse responsible for acquiring food and making poop, and now this mouse is looking for answers. If I could show this mouse the door and no other mice or bugs or vermin ever crept across my threshold again, I would show this mouse my mercy. Otherwise, I want to blow it to hell.

I fear my kitchen floor boards don’t make it all the way to the walls and there’s a zoo living in what I judge to be my downstairs neighbor’s heating duct, creeping up into my kitchen at night to feed and poop.

My dog is useless.

Does Illinois require a license to buy a flame-thrower?

Roach Attack

Roaches were living in my dishwasher.

Shock value accomplished, I should be more specific. There's space in the door behind the stainless steel face where all the electrical and mechanical workings of the dishwasher stay dry. I imagine if you're a bug it's a pretty fabulous space to live, warm and steamy, always surrounded by food smells, but dry enough that there's a designated spot in there for your instructional  booklet.

I clean my kitchen a lot. I get a bit OCD about it. The first time I opened the dishwasher and a roach crawled out, I was grossed out as all  hell but I chased it down and killed it. The second time I opened the dishwasher and a  roach crawled out of the same little spot as the first time, it was too disgusting a possibility to comprehend. Then Friday I saw a  roach on the digital display, went to kill it, and discovered it was in the digital display.
Screwdriver, paper towels, garbage bag, indoor bug spray.
I had my dishwasher in pieces and it wasn't even 7:30 AM.

As soon as I saw the bug in the display I had this mental picture of a horror show crawling with a layer of roaches. So when instead I chased maybe 20-50 insects out of plastic compartments and insulating foam and around the wires and processors, it felt quite manageable. "Cockroach holocaust" and "I'm issuing a fatwa on creepy crawly things" kept playing in my mind. [Insert thought-provoking commentary on the religious nature of my bug-killing mentality HERE.]

I need to go camping. Then I'm invading the bugs' space and things are supposed to be dirty covered in dirt because they are made out of dirt.

Thanks to a 2 1/2 hour nap today, I am awake  after 10:30 PM for  the first time since...Wednesday?

I want to poke my uterus with a stick

Crampy. I had a very good yesterday. From a single sushi roll as I dined alone for lunch in Highland Park after my therapy session, to mediocre chicken vesuvio with Aural Girl and Possible Boy at the weird restaurant we've been meaning to try. I got stuff done and walked two different dogs at the beach.

Today, I feel crampy and overwhelmed by each project I think to tackle. Cleaning my bedroom and master bathroom was high on the list, but I'm making excuses. I think I need to put on real pants and take the dog to Walgreens and pick up my birth control (which I missed taking at 11:11 AM and can't be helping crampland) and maybe some Aleve because lord knows I'm not on enough drugs.

Like Family

Last night, my parents and brother came over for dinner. It's the first time I've truly hosted them for dinner. It was my chance to show off all my shiny things that seem so absurd when I wave them around at my friends; things like a fully set table with crystal wine glasses and appetizers in the living room (well, bags of chips and humus from the store and guacamole I'd made days before) and my general ability to hostess like a grown-up to sufficiently meet and exceed their expectations. Growing up, I watched my parents wig out when their families (my dad's side in particular) came to visit, cleaning the house top to bottom, never serving anything in its original container, making presentation prime. When my dad was growing up, they wore ties to dinner and had white linen table cloths every night and a maid. Both of his parents were doctors and his mother went to finishing school in Switzerland. Her father was a somewhat notorious lawyer in New York City who defended a Communist spy. My grandmother was herself a card-carrying communist for a time. Same grandmother who was a Freudian psychiatrist. At their formal nightly dinners, she and her medical degrees and her Smith College and her finishing school background would frequently stand up under five feet tall and pronounce "You ass!" in response to my grandfather. She could cuss like a sailor and would, but over lobster bisque served in silver tureen.

So never mind the mess in my office or in my head or everything else. If I can be a good hostess, if I can prove whatever it is I think I need to prove to my parents and to myself, then I am officially a successful human being, deserving of their love and praise, deserving of their financial assistance, deserving of my share of the oxygen on this planet and the space I occupy and everything else.

Half Measures and Slow Sinking

The sum of today's productivity:

• Cleaned my kitchen (bleach spray makes me feel like I'm doing something)
  Took photos of cards that may need to be retaken, but I didn't actually bothered editing the photos (yet) so I'm not even ready to say if I need to retake them or not
• Went to therapy
• Wrote the beginning of something that I realize ties in with my old creator/creation Frankenstein/Golem/Genesis/writer thing that may or may not some day solidify into an actual work of something whole. Golem musical is still the closest I come to a mazzoh ball in that idea soup.
• Talked briefly to Birdie to determine that my weirdness about another work-related thing is now entirely moot (was probably moot to begin with, but I'm weird, thus weirdness) so I should go ahead and write an email and get something going whereby I decorate a person's life in exchange for vegetables. Have I sent the email yet? No, of course not. Today is a day for half-measures.
• I gathered some newspapers off the floor of my office and moved a few things around and took out the dirty dishes. It would be a stretch to say I actually cleaned my office, but these things are at least a step in the right direction.
• Took my pills on time
• Told my mother I wasn't going to take my parents' opera tickets this weekend because I'm trying my hardest to go to my brother's NCAA Division III Soccer game in Iowa on Saturday

Some people teach, others build shelters for the homeless, others cure disease. I'm doing little to justify my use of oxygen and since I'm annoyed with myself, I'm curling up and doing less. I thought about going to the bar for human contact, but somewhere along the line I decided I didn't deserve to go out. Maybe not my best move, since now I'm going to spend more time at home smelling like bleach and fake-tidying my office while watching random tv episodes on Hulu. I should eat something, too. I've gotten away from the regularly scheduled meals thing again, even though I know better. The self-punishing torture misery thing is really satisfying and cleansing when done right for just a day or two, but I have to be careful not to get sucked in. It has to be a low point I bounce off of, not a sticky mud puddle.

If I don't go to at least one lighting store tomorrow to sell my shmancy lamp, please bitch-slap me.

clean and empty

My condo fit so well with a family, baby running up and down the hallway yelling "hubble! hubble! hubble! tack-o!" [translation: football! football! football! tackle!]. Now my comforter is in the dryer, the last piece of cleaning I intend to do tonight before going to bed. My bedroom smelled wrong until I washed all the sheets, vacuumed every last dust bunny, mopped with my Method floor cleaner, and attacked the surfaces with Method grapefruit spray, my usual cleaning products creating familiar smells. My dog wasn't going in there until after it had been scrubbed, either.

I'm learning how to keep house. It's a portion of my education entirely neglected up until this point, but I have this perfect opportunity to learn right now. Scheduling myself times to clean. Structuring my life. For whatever reason, I am 27 years old and lousy at self-structure and self-dicipline; it doesn't come naturally to me. Luckily, I have the chance to experiment and work and figure things out now.

Hanibal Lecture

I need a regimen. Structure. Some skelleton for my daily activity. I'm so scared of what happens when I get locked into things and then "fail" to do them, I instead go for the amorphous blob life.

I need to write. Every day. Make a schedule. Give myself hours of writing instead of hours of fucking around on the internet. Write in my journal. Write on here. Write blips and stories and anythings. Just write. Set a timer. There are alarms on my phone. I have one set daily for waking me up so I get up at roughly the same time every day. Get up, walk dog, eat and write until noon? I can do that. Write anything. Write about not writing if I'm feeling that stuck stuff. Write reviews of movies. Just make sure I'm producing words in such a way that those words can be read by another person at another time.
Maybe that'll help my recent brain self-cannibalism....
Chomp chomp chomp there is nothing in the universe to hold onto chomp everything is relative chomp all I have is perception chomp and perception chomp is relative and unreliable chomp so who am I? chomp! What am I? chomp! there is absolutely no way of knowing and no stationary unquestionable and dammit I want something stationary to hold onto chomp chomp gobble gobble swallow wipe juices off corner of mouth with napkin.
I'm reading Tom Robbins's Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. I hated the first 40ish pages. Now I'm much more mixed about it. Staggering. Totally post-modernist. Totally those guys in creative writing classes who are so amused by their own uber-randomness and creativity. Like, come up with some really obscure bit of subconscious something that you force together and make it work because life is crazy anyway, man. Tip your hat as often as possible to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. It reminds me of a boy I liked a lot one summer at camp. I couldn't write shit that summer. It's not my style. I'm forcing myself to read it anyway for the parts I do like and because it is a style and I don't really like the currently popular mid-century revivalist decor, like what 1970 thought 2010 would look like. But I'm studying it because it's popular and people buy it and it doesn't hurt to know what other people like. There's no right answer. Opinion. All opinion. I like to think that what's "right" is what causes the least amount of pain, stress, oppression, etc. But that's all subjective, too. Too much subjective. Give me ether.

These are thoughts I've had since elementary school. Some are more developed than others. Some bother me more than others. Sometimes I can ignore things, like basic questions of existence. Sometimes I trip over those things every step I take. I don't give myself enough credit, allow myself to ponder and wonder without feeling like a pompous asshole. Why, if everything is so subjective and ok, am I so infinitely critical of myself? It's like I use the subjectivity to move from perspective to perspective so that I can shoot myself down wherever I go, whatever I think or do. Use your powers for good, Annabell. And self good. I think about Neighbor Guy. He's imposed all these rules on himself so he'll think about others, but he's just never dealt with his own issues and is way too fucked up to care or notice anybody else's existence. Is there an answer to that? Does society have it? Am I doing the "right" things? What am I doing anyway? Doubt doubt doubt. I am a parfait of doubt.

Then there are the fruit flies. In the last few days, they've attacked in force. I leave out an empty beer bottle from when people came over Saturday night, and the next morning it's a macroscopic orgy. The food that gets caught in the drain stopper after I do dishes is also very popular. I empty it into the garbage under the sink, which has also attracted quite the colony. I attack each space with bleach. Fruit fly holocaust after fruit fly holocaust, and still they send in reinforcements. Why do they like the paper towels sitting in the bathroom? Why do they like the bathroom? My office desk lamp? My printer? When I was a slob, the appearance of bugs told me I needed to clean up. But now, what more am I supposed to clean? I'm sorry I have a garbage can! What can I do! Apples! Those apples are very good and they get mealy in the fridge! I don't want to put them in the fridge, but what else can I do! I'm no longer asking for a fruit fly infestation. How do you ever know when you're doing as much as you can do and the rest is just futile?

And there again is the big question. I want to know something. I want some sense that I'm doing something right. That cleaning my house has a positive cause-and-effect relationship and I'm not just putting on makeup before I get in the shower. I want an answer. When I get like this, I just stay like this until I can sufficiently distract myself back into the day-to-day and ignore my lack of gratifyingly believed purpose and motivation until the next time. Something shiny and busy, or extremely tactile. Boys are good distractions. I need to find a Boy other than Possible Boy. And have more local female friends I can bitch at and talk to about thinking, because we womenfolk don't get enough credit for thinking about thinking, and most of my favorite thinking she-people live anywhere from 45-minutes to 45 countries away.

I ate, I wrote, now I should clean and do errands but I may crawl back into bed with Tom Robbins. It's my first day adding to the "schedule." Go easy on myself. I have to go to my parents' house for dinner tonight. That's enough stress.

Ooh, Baby

I think I can't eat gluten. Fuck. I was so sure that was going to be perfectly fine to add back in, but it seems to be the thing that has me feeling bad again, not the weather shift. Or it's the combination of the two, but at least gluten is something I can control.

Spent a long time at the bar tonight talking to one of my favorite people. For blog purposes, I will call him "Dijon." He's the one who adopted me into the crowd of regulars. He instantly recognized something in me that I'm recognizing more and more in him. It's like we're made out of the same flavor Jello, or our insides have the same wallpaper or something. There are many, many, many, many, many, many aspects to a human being and obviously we can't share or compliment every aspect of ourselves with every single friend. Still, it's a big warm fuzzy to find another person with a long list of sames.
Dijon's over-testosteroned skeezy drunk politician friend from childhood stopped by. I fucked with him a bit but nothing too overt. He asked me out. I said no. He asked if I was a lesbian. I said no, but I had enough on my platter as it was. When he left, he tickled me. What the fuck? Asshole gets rejected and then still tickles me. Possible Boy and I are afraid to get near eachother. I'm doing something wrong.

Six days until a baby stays in my condo. Must clean.

I was too frustrated/befuddled/tired last night to write. Neighbor Guy is being all depressed and dumb about it. He's so emotionally stunted I want to shake him and slap him a lot, but I can't do the work for him or say magic words to fix him and that frustrates me. Possible Boy and I went over to see what was going on with Neighbor Guy and I realized I couldn't just say whatever I thought Neighbor Guy needed to hear but I also had to tailor it so it was Possible Boy acceptable, too. Neighbor Guy wouldn't cry with Possible Boy there, and I wouldn't do nearly as much bitchy tough love. But it was good, too, because I was more aware of how narcissistic and monologuey I get when trying to help.

I'm fuzzy this morning. I was feeling good when I went to walk my dog, but computer makes me fuzzy. I cleaned out my hall closet. Something smells like poop and I can't figure out what. It may be one of my estate sale items.

Still like Possible Boy. He's still spending lots of time with Other Girl, but I know from comments he's made they're not getting it on. She's not thrilled at my existence. She reminds me a lot of myself.

Did I mention I'm fuzzy? Writing is hard today. Can't focus. Stopping now.

Pretty Pretty Princess

How do I let the Boy I actually Like know that he's the one I actually Like? So far I'm showing it by saying really dumb shit to him while I flirt easily with all the other Boys. I don't think that's the best plan. Are his mixed signals a symptom of him doing the same thing? If so, he needs to fucking call me. Ask me out. I have tried to invite him to things twice when he was validly busy, but I am not inviting him to a third thing without some hint of reciprocation. Ok, I have hints. I want more than hints. It's his turn. That's how this works. I'm done. I quit. Only I don't really quit because I'm clearly still interested. He meets all of my most basic qualifications (clever, has depth, and I'm attracted to him) and that's exciting. Poor James Spader is extremely smart and clever, and he has more depth than I give him credit for, but I'm not attracted to him. NBF thinks James Spader and I should run off together and have hyper-analytical socially awkward sex all the time, but NBF doesn't give me credit for being capable of working a social situation. Then again, I frequently forget I'm able to work a room. The Colombian and the 8-year-old boy who said "You look very pretty" as we passed on the street and the older CTA worker who told me on the train "You are a very pretty girl...a very pretty girl," I'm still not entirely convinced they are not all figments of my imagination. Hallucinatory side effects of the drugs, or schizophrenic delusions, or I'm asleep or dead and none of it's real.

I have an easier time believing I'm crazy than believing I'm pretty.

That's not fair. I'd say it's about an equal chance.

Why would I be pretty now when I wasn't pretty before? People think I'm prettiest now in certain outfits (my cherry sundress, which isn't particularly showy or revealing, seems to get the most vocal approval) wearing mascara, some mineral foundation powder and blush, and Burts Bees Lip Shimmer in Nutmeg. But people still respond to me like I'm pretty now when I'm rolled out of bed and looking like crap. Did something vital change? Mature? Relax? Wisen? Unfurrow? I feel stupider lately; does that make me pretty? Or that I'm finally working through all the layers of gunk over my heart and really changing things about myself.

I've stopped being late to things. Since I still have no internal clock or sense of time, I'm frequently insanely early instead, but I've learned to leave way more time than I think I need, because I am aware that I don't know how long things take and if I leave with just enough time if everything goes right, something will go wrong. Then there's plenty of time for traffic or lifted bridges or impossible parking or whatever else comes my way. I have my therapist to thank for this.

My condo is 100 times cleaner than any other space I've ever lived in. Right now it's messy and it's bothering me and I'll clean all or part of it in the next 24 hours, I'm sure. My house is cleaner than my parents house. The maid service that used to come every other week is now scheduled for once a month and once I convince myself to clean my own damn bathrooms again I can eliminate them completely.

[Side note: lately, I haven't been able to write much. Today, it seems to be the only thing I can do. Write write write!]

Maaaaybe done writing for now. I can feel the barometric pressure changing in my head. Very strange. Trying to do my biofeedback relaxation. Pressure in the forehead, relax the forehead. Still haven't figured out how to relax my temples. If it doesn't rain or relax soon, I may have to lay down and/or take my Norflex/Vistaril cocktail.

Have you ever wanted to shoot a cloud?

You, Topia

I just cleaned the living bajeezus out of my kitchen. My fingers are all pruney. I still need to mop the floors and finally put away all the dishes and shit thats been living in boxes in the dining room since I moved in (AKA stuff I won't need unless I throw a dinner party), but then I can put up a large "Suck It" sign when my parents pick me up tomorrow.

I have a new guess at a possible migraine trigger: the turtle. It seems totally random, but it showed up right when this batch of migraines did, and it's right by my computer, so maybe something in the woodchips? And thinking back to when I had the really awful bout in Oberlin and Cleveland, that's when I had my turtle. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's worth taking the turtle back to my parents' house at least and seeing if the head gets better. How weird would that be?

Ever step back and wonder why basic food, shelter, and medical coverage aren't provided by the State? Of course upgrades should be available for purchase, but why the hell don't we make sure our most basic needs are met? We're just so primative in certain ways, it's amazing.

Miss Management?

I organized all of my bathroom stuff (toiletries, drugs, make-up) and cleaned the sink. It turns out the sink fixtures are a golden brassy color. Never would have guessed under all that rust and tarnish and weird layer of what I'm guessing was Comet residue. My building manager is supposed to show up tomorrow morning to finish the shit that didn't get finished before I moved into the apartment. I have a list, numbered more or less in order of personal priority. It's amazing how good I am at micro-organizing and managing certain things, considering it's after midnight and I haven't come close to finishing things that are due and past-due for school tomorrow.

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.