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.

The Artist Formerly Unknown As...

I'm antsy. Possible Boy wasn't out tonight, Neighbor Guy's lights were all out at 10:15, I went to the bar to see if anybody knew anything about art. Neighbor Guy's friend who seems gay but isn't popped his head in and asked if Neighbor Guy was around. I said "No and his lights are out. Any chance you have an art history background?"
"I've been an artist since I could fingerpaint. Why?"
"I have $4 in my pocket. Can I buy you a drink and pick your brain? It has to be a $4 or less drink, though."
"Sure. Can I finish my cigarette first?"
At today's estate sale, I got a framed signed Miró lithograph for $10. I don't know shit about art authenticity, but the ink of the print looked like it was on top of the paper and there were numbers in addition to the signature so I figured I hit the jackpot. Then I found out Miró is one of the most forged artists out there. Then I started looking online and found out that BAT above the signature stands for "bon à tirer" and the 10 x /73 that I didn't quite understand as an edition number is actually 10/x/73 as in the date. What's all that crap mean? That if this is not a forgery, it is the last artist's proof before printing an edition. I'm hoping it's worth a bazillion dollars.

I yapped at my new artist friend about all the things I've been trying to keep in and know better than to tell people if I want to be a shiny sparkly person. Our shoulder chips ground around and gnarled and gnashed. I felt very honest and grubby because he was being honest and grubby so that gave me permission.

I mirror personality traits a lot. Speech patterns, too. It's my natural reaction to mirror and often try to make the other person comfortable.

I fascinate me. I could spend my entire life analyzing myself and be quite content. That's fucked up.

Grave Robbing

At an estate sale, I sift behind Death's recent visit, life's recent departure. A calendar with a meeting marked on August 17th that wasn't attended. Crutches and walkers in a corner, adult diapers- things that herald the end of life. And then, nothing. No more use for all the things accumulated over a lifetime. Things things so many things. Why do we make more things when so many already exist? Humanity will never run out of things. I swoop in and buy things that people forgot they had long before they died. I sell them to other people who will forget them, but I also fill my house to make it pretty and warm and feel like something I made. A nest of things, a living space work of art that should somehow express oneself, welcome others, aggrandize, and still be a comforting home.

A man in the bookstore said he'd seen me three times today. Apparently he was at the antique store, too. I hadn't noticed him.

Thoughts I'm still capable of having

Really really really like Possible Boy. No clue how to proceed. No clue no clue no clue. Talked a bunch at the bar. He's even sharper and thinkier than I realized. So what the hell happens next? I enjoy this part, but I don't want to screw up and ruin whatever is supposed to come next. I've never done things in the right order or in any sort of healthy way. I don't think he has either. Are there directions somewhere? An instructional video, perhaps? This part of squishy boy-girl (or boy-boy or girl-girl or microwave-toaster) stuff is much less troublesome in movies and books because you generally know what's going to happen. Smash head into things.

Went to a few antique shops today. Sold nothing. Estate sale tomorrow morning at what appears to be a pack-rat house. I want to get there early. Then I have therapy in the afternoon. Maybe my therapist can teach me how to make Possible Boy Actual Boy. Today felt like a day of wandering. Many of my days feel like that. At least I cleaned my house some. That felt productive. Got my lazy butt on the treadmill by 8:30 AM. Need to keep that up. Remind my heart that I'm 27 and not dead yet. Biofeedback taught me that the way I naturally hold my jaw keeps a huge amount of tension in my temples. Could be a major factor in my migraines. Now I'm stretching out my jaw like a weirdo every time I think about it.

I made myself the best lunch today. Chicken breast covered in chile ancho, cumin, and a bit of cayenne then grilled on the George Foreman and served with tomatoes and avocados on corn tortillas. Extremely tasty. I'm begining to accept rice milk as a suitable liquid for cereal. It's better than getting migraines and not bad as a food substance. I still don't drink what's left in the bowl once the cereal is gone.

My memory is getting worse. I have trouble remembering what floor my biofeedback is on (nine) even though I go every week, and I ran into an Etsy friend yesterday and couldn't remember her name.

Time to be asleep.