AAAAAHHHHH! Wake up wake up wake up!!!!!

Yesterday I slept and slept and slept.

Today I had an ohsomuchsleep! hangover and ate puffed rice and apple sauce and read The New Yorker and then played stupid games on my cell phone for some insane amount of time. And now it's 3 PM and I haven't showered or done anything and there's stuff to do but there's nothing to do so I'm eating Fritos (only three ingredients! corn, corn oil and salt!) and pea pods and drinking orange juice and trying to pull myself together a bit by writing all this down. Clarity. Need clarity. Writing brings clarity because it forces all the bazillions of fuzzes of thought to choose one loudest string to write down. Pick a single path, a single narration.

This is the sort of thing that belongs more in my handwritten journal, not so much my published blog, but I need to type it and I can think of a few very specific people who find this amusing, so everyone else can just ignore this post as part of the great "why do I give a fuck?" garbage of the internet.

[Side note: I love that my dog loves pea pods. They're so much better for him than, say, his butt.]

My general life to-do list is pretty fuzzy, since everything has to be optional on the days I can't do anything. I have things to do on the days I'm feeling go-gettum-y, but on blah days when I can but I lack momentum, I need more direction. I need a real list and priorities and whatnot, not with the type of urgency that makes me crazy and guilty when I can't accomplish anything, but with enough forward motion and upside* that I want to do it when I can.

I really have managed to re-teach myself how to think about huge quantities of life. The migraines have been a serious forced and necessary paradigm shift and (a path towards enlightenment)**.

[Distraction! Went to check email and discovered person I know through my crafting stuff has been missing since last night. Hopefully she's fine and people are just being alarmist...maybe she's eloping? That would be fun and not bad. Try and think the best instead of the worst.]

Dog won't stop whining because he wants to go out. I won't take him out until I shower. I need to shower. Priority #1. Then I can go back to writing and listing and sorting out the universe and not being able to do anything about missing persons and trying to convince myself to do something about things I cando.


*wrong word, but I can't find the right word in my head at the moment...positivity...optimism...no no no...stupid wordfind...

**again, wrong phrase, but it's as close as I'm getting right now to the right one

Still Dreaming

Rain outside, rain in head. Rain makes me sleep too much. Can't concentrate. Can't think.

Last night was another adventure of Annabell + Boys. NBF's friends who live by me who I shtupped one of their brothers, the one whose brother I did not shtup. He reminds Birdie of James Spader. I wish he reminded me of James Spader, because James Spader is incredibly hot and I want to shtup real James Spader but I don't want to shtup fake James Spader and fake James Spader gets added to the list of Boys Who Want To Shtup Me. He's one I feel bad about, since I've been trying my best not to lead him on. He's a nice guy and I only invite him out in groups, but I'm always the only one he knows in the group or we end up just the two of us. He's a nice guy. Did I mention that? He's just exactly all the things I'm finally learning not to be.

Outside. Rain and sun. In my nap dream there was a rainbow at night. It was new years 2010 and Obama and the White House were in Chicago somehow and my immediate family got to go to the government New Years Ball and Hilary Clinton was announcing her resignation because their family was about to be indited for an international imbezzling scheme that existed so that Bill could bring over his mistress who was a foreign prostitute. Then the power went nutty at the White House and we were watching a presentation in a theater but the seats kept going back and the gravity got all messed up and we were all freaked out and had to hang onto our seats so we wouldn't go crashing to the walls and my family started climbing towards the aisles to evacuate but I thought I should hang on and stick around inside the auditorium to see what happened. It turned out the whole thing was part of a terrorist attack and the Sears Tower had been hit and moved but not destroyed by the blast. Later I was outside with my dad and we ended up getting cornered by terrorists and they were going to kill him but I was crying and pleading and he thought he could talk his way out of it but the only thing that was getting their attention was me and I was stalling until we could make a break for it down a corridor.

Based on the current location of the sun and the rain, I should be the rainbow.

I was with James Spader and my boardgames guru friend post-wordgames at my coffee shop event last night when we decided to go next door to the bar for a drink and who should be there but Neighbor Guy and Possible Boy. I'd heard from neither of them in a week. So, boysboysboysboysboys.

Aaaaand, fuzzfuzzfuzzfuzz says the head. Maybe I'm hungry. Where's my leftover Indian food.

Did I ever talk about Hot Dog Sam and her husband coming to visit? Ugh. I feel very heavy in the head today. Trying to convince myself to do things is even harder when I'm wearing an invisible lead Carmen Miranda hat.

As Needed With Headache

I'm good at pretending I'm ok on this very nice shiny superficial level. And I am ok on a very nice shiny superficial level, so I guess it's not a tough act. I can run around and carry on bits of conversation and smile and make myself pretty. Aaaaaand that's about it. I guess this is what it's like to be stupid. I can do things when I can do things, but as soon as a task starts requiring effort, my brain starts misfiring all over the place and I break things and lose things and forget things to a point whereI'm actually better off not doing them. Not just perfectionistic "better off not doing it at all if it can't be perfect," but I get into this state where I think I still should be able to do errands or pay bills or work on something around the house, and then even when I think I've accomplished my task at the time, my next moment of clarity proves I've made things worse for myself than before I started.

I have a very similar but importantly different migraine pseudo-stoned state that tends to put me on the path of serendipity. I can't always tell the two feelings apart when I'm having them, which may be part of the problem. Maybe it's all one thing and my brainwaves get tuned to Fate so whatever way the wind blows, there I fly.

morning:
40 mg fluoxetine hcl (Prozac)
50 mg topiramate (Topamax)
400 mg gabapentin (Neurontin)
.5 mg levothyroxine sodium (Synthroid)
afternoon:
400 mg gabapentin
night:
50 mg topiramate
400 mg gabapentin
25 mg amitriptyline hcl (Elavil)
as needed with headache:
25 mg hydroxyzine pamoate (Vistaril)
100 mg orphenadrine (Norflex)
1 ml self-injection ketorolac trometamine (Torodol)

The Colombian

Why am I home from the Museum of Science and Industry tonight? Why, to receive the call from The Colombian, of course.

This is getting a teensy bit ridiculous. As I texted* to Birdie, is my Fairy Godmother trying to win some kind of bet?
---------------------------

I never told the story of The Colombian.

After my cousin's wedding in Miami. I got my $300 in travel vouchers for taking a later flight and hanging out in the airport. That was when I was still mostly stoned out of my gourd on migraine meds, so I couldn't concentrate enough to get a full narrative down, even when I had a fabulous one to tell.

Airport. Sunday, June 7. My parents and brother have boarded for Chicago, a few other related and unrelated wedding guests are still getting on the plane, and a man standing casually by my seat at the gate asks me if I'm on this flight or the next one. I thought he was waiting for his boarding group to get called.
"Well, I was on this one, but I'm giving up my ticket if they need it and taking a later flight."
Casual shmoozing ensues.
He's on the next flight at this gate, going to Colombia (explaining his accent).

Three hours later.
He walked me to the gate for my flight, which was at the other end of the airport and ended up leaving before his, which was repeatedly delayed due to the thunderstorm outside. He gave me 1000 Colombian peso note so I could feel rich (it's worth about 50 cents, but as he put it, "[gasp!] So many pesos!") and remember him. It's still in my wallet.

We'd exchanged business cards earlier during the "What do you do?" portion of conversation. He works with a personal injury lawyer in Houston, helping immigrants know their rights (like, that they have them) when they get hurt. And he worked for Comcast for awhile but hated the manual labor, which is weird, because he also owns a ranch in Colombia. He tried ranching in the U.S. but apparently "In Colombia, the cows do all the work, eating grass and getting fat and then you sell them. Here, the grass doesn't grow in winter and you have to give them feed and move them and it's hard work!" So every six months he goes down to his Colombian cattle ranch for a month, which is where he was headed.
He was completely impressed that I was a writer because he said he was no good with words and language. He acts like he is embarrassed about every word coming out of his mouth. He says his English is terrible. It isn't.
He said when he first saw me he thought I was really young, like, too young, but then he got a little bit closer and thought maybe not, and then when he was closer, he saw my eyes and he saw that they had wisdom and knew I was older.
A man with English as his second language was the first to express impressions of my age in a genuinely flattering and beautiful way. Bad with words my ass.

I kept saying his English was worlds better than my Spanish and somehow he got me trying to speak Spanish. I can still understand Spanish fairly well, but no hablo para caca. Rusty is an understatement. We were talking about me living in my condo with my dog and I was trying to say I love my condo, but direct object pronouns or indirect object or whateverthehell part of speech is the thing that is being loved I kept fucking up and saying "te amo" instead of "lo amo" and I knew it was wrong but I couldn't remember how to fix it (never mind living in Chicago or watching telenovelas, it's been over 10 years since I've had any formal Spanish language training) and he thought it was the best thing ever.
"You kept saying it, and with your accent! Oh, it was wonderful."

He said he made an excuse to talk to me because he thought I was beautiful and wanted to see if I was nice, since apparently I'm every guy's ideal (news to me) and that might make me stuck up. But I was friendly. He guessed I was from the Midwest by my accent, though he couldn't place Chicago. We talked about accents and the friendliness of Midwesterners. He said he hates Houston because there you're either American or you're Mexican, and if you're not American you're stupid. He wants to visit Chicago. Wants to see the lake. I told him I lived right by the beach and he couldn't believe there could be an entire beach and big waves waves for a lake.

Later, after his flight was delayed and he bought me a cranberry juice at the bar by the gate and we found new seats, he said my speech pattern reminded him of a good friend he used to have from Michigan. He (the friend) was very smart and a very good friend and things seemed to be going better for him, but he killed himself.
Great. Is my somewhat-controlled depression that obvious? Like a big mole on my face? At the same time, The Colombian's ability to draw the parallel still counts strongly in his favor in my mind. Maybe I'm reading too much into things. Maybe I have a Michigan accent. But he said I reminded him of this friend a number of times, and I feel like he had a sense of something familiar. At least I've never been suicidal...

I had absolutely no idea how old The Colombian was. His eyes creased a bit when he smiled, but just enough to rule out younger than me. He could have been 30. He could have been a well-preserved 50. You can never really tell how old anybody is.
He's 39. He didn't want to tell me. He acted like it was going to be 60. I told him 27 and he said he knew I wasn't lying. I kept threatening to check his passport. I wanted to, except it didn't matter if any of it was true. It could all be shiny fiction and then vanish at the gate. Three hours of flattery and company. I was quite content for it to be what it was.

I'll admit, I looked him up on Facebook after I got home. He was there. Full name, in Houston, Texas. One bad blurry photo as a profile picture, a list of friends, and an otherwise hidden profile unless I "friended" him. But I left it. He could find me if he wanted, otherwise, I had his peso and the story.

There's more story I could tell, but none of it involved airport bathroom sex or even smooching. Just more morsels of exchange.

But tonight, he called. He'd gotten back from branding cows in Colombia and wanted to call.


Did I slip into a coma two months ago and my life since then is entirely in my head? Maybe I'm watching too much LOST, but my life seems more and more like a lighter, funnier drama done by the same writers.


*txt'd? wtf. I didn't say it to her. I didn't quite write it to her. Once again, technology and semi-anal accurecy chew away at prose.

Lump from dog's butt is benign. Lump in my soul rejoices.

I gave the now married couple their wedding pictures via flash drive they brought. They gave me a really nice thank you card and were extremely happy.

It's members' night. Museum of Science and Industry. I want to go. I don't want to go. They have the new Harry Potter movie in IMAX and my head is already iffy and there's no way I could survive that. I like all the other stuff, and it will probably be less busy everywhere else as a result, but like I said, the head is iffy. And I don't have a "date." I know if I pushed I could find someone to go with me, but it's almost 6 PM already and I'm not so sure I want to push. Just can it at this point. Take it easy, eat an actual dinner, do something that I enjoy that won't make tomorrow useless.

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.

Jacuzzi Power!

It's 1 AM. Today's pain didn't like light or sound, so I slept a lot. Snuggled the dog a lot. A few hours ago as I was lying around awake but unable to use the computer or read or listen to audiobooks or anything, I tried to think what I could do to keep my brain interested. What senses could I stimulate in a way that wouldn't just cause more pain? I've thought more than once that it'd be nice if I could read braille. It would also be nice to have a human snuggling companion, but I'm not there yet and human snuggling companion would have to be well aware of the "no talking or I will kill you, and no taking my snippiness personally" rules. Then I thought of it: jacuzzi. I own a jacuzzi tub. Warm, sensory, soft, different than bed that I'm in all the fucking time, no light, the sound doesn't usually bother me. Perfect.

And it was. For over an hour. Distracting from the ouchies and even melting away some of the pain. I need to do that more often. Maybe get some essential oils or something. I threw in some Epsom salts for good measure since I had them sitting right there. Awesome.

Now the computer is starting to bother me again, but I'm using it in my dining room and I had this picture of myself silhouetted in the window by the glow of the screen with one of my newfound male admirers walking past on the street*, looking up, not knowing it's me but still being struck by the image. I also had something Japanese and entirely unrelated playing in my head, but the strangest thing about my thought process at that moment was how aware I was of exactly two of my channels. I'm surprised I didn't have "The Little Mermaid" soundtrack playing and several different ideas for things I should feed myself before going to sleep and who knows what else as well.

Ugh. I stopped making sense. Back to sleep.

*entirely probable now that they all live in my neighborhood. does this mean no more rolling out of bed and walking the dog without changing or brushing my hair?

Poor Puppy

Before those of you who've met my dog say anything, shut up. I love him and he's my puppy and I love him.

My dog has a creepy thing between his toes on his rear right paw. It looked like a tiny stone or something got stuck under the skin, and considering how often we're at the beach, I figure it could be anything. I noticed it Thursday night, but Friday I had my own doctor's appointment to attend to so I got him a 1:40 slot at the vet on Saturday.

I figured I should also point out the little lump on his back where his tail meets his body. I wasn't sure if it had always been there and I just never noticed or if it was new, but it didn't hurt to check it out.

Neither spot seems to bother him, but his seasonal allergies have been bad the last few weeks and I'm plying him with half a Benadryl on his extra itchy days.

The vet decided to remove the lump on my dog's butt right away since it was a 15 minute procedure they could do with lidocaine and he has a history of cancer. A big shaved patch and three stitches make it look like they had to reattach his tail.

She squished and prodded his toe while he stood there and let her. This from the dog who won't stop barking until 10 minutes after a person he deems a "stranger" (ie anybody who isn't me or my parents or sometimes NBF) leaves my condo. Or about two square blocks surrounding my condo. Or my parents' house. The dog who shows teeth if that same "stranger" class of people tries to look him in the eye. Or put out a hand. Yes, my dog, was a perfect patient as the vet tried to dig into his gross icky toe thing to see what it was and if anything would come out. Nothing came out, but they soaked it in warm water with epsom salt and advised I do the same for a week and see what happens. The trouble is, if it's something like a malignant tumor (and apparently biopsying makes infections and tumors look the same?) then the whole toe would have to come off. He's had a hard enough life without losing a toe to the inadequecies of modern veternary medicine. Now, I don't know shit about dog tumors, but this thing looks more like a wart on top of an infected cut or something. That's why I thought it was a stone caught under the skin. Still might be.

So how do you get my dog to soak his foot in epsom salt? This worried me far more than the $300 bill at the end of the vet visit (thank goodness I got doggy health insurance). I was going to stick him in the kitchen sink. That's the one place I can give him a bath, with the spray nozel and deep sink so he can't escape as easily. But there are onions in my drain stopper and I didn't feel like cleaning my whole kitchen sink just to refill it with fur, and a foot soak doesn't require a spray nozel, so I moved operations to the hall bathroom. Warm water, epsom salts, and a package of bologna for bribes.

The dog followed the bologna and we had an absolutely lovely time hanging out, snuggling, and playing "snatch bits of bologna out of mommy's hands" while his two hind paws remained stationed in the full sink. After we were done and I lifted him back to the ground, he camped out in the bathroom like this was his new favorite place in theuniverse. And why shouldn't it be? The puppy-pedi-soak won't be so bad after all.

Murder and Intrigue

I went out to the bar by my house tonight for karaoke. Neighbor Guy called me earlier to say he and Possible Boy were going, and Possible Boy was saying some very nice, flattering things about me and about how pretty I am, etc. Um, awesome.
I get to karaoke night only to discover that with Possible Boy and Neighbor Guy is the girl the two of them had discussed the day I met Possible Boy as hotly pursuing him. And her posse. And it's her birthday. With moderately dejected heart I resigned myself to leave them alone, have fun with Neighbor Guy, and flash the occasional smile when coyly appropriate.

There was Another Boy whose eyes kept meeting mine. Neighbor Guy noticed and informed me my ocular pen-pal was gay. So I started being less shy about ogling the Boy, and the boy kept looking at me until he introduced himself.
"Hi, I'm Another Boy."
"Hi. I'm Annabell."
"Where are you from?" He expected somewhere between Iowa and another planet, I think.
"Across the street." He couldn't believe it.
"What do you do?"
"That's a harder question than it should be, but the easy answer is, I'm a writer."
He acted like I told him I was an astronaut. Not only that, but he too was an astronaut and hadn't been able to tell anyone.
"Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend?"
"No and no [surprisingly easy to say considering how naturally and frequently I lie about this to the creepy guys who ask at car washes, in parking lots and on buses]. What about you? Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend?"
"No and I'm not into guys."
I guess Neighbor Guy was wrong.
After a bit more awe-struck stumbling through words, Neighbor Guy whisked me away to dance as the woman running the karaoke sang "At Last."
Another Boy handed me a piece of paper with his phone number and email as he headed out the door.

I want to have multiple Boys and for all of them to be faithful to me and me alone. Is that so wrong?

Phone Anxiety: A Bad Connection

Another good day today! I'm counting my blessings and the number is getting up around 319.

I called Possible Boy to invite him on a possible adventure. He didn't answer, and it turns out he was at work, but still, I called him. I'm fairly brave about that sort of call. I say awkward and stupid things and make a dork out of myself once on the call, but I make the call with little hesitation or ambivilance. I also need to call my health insurance company and make an appointment with a gynecologist (since I haven't gone in like five years and the brain doctors and I want me taking a progesterone-only version of The Pill). Nothing about my self-worth is contingent on these businessy calls, and yet I hesitate, procrastinate, and panic over Blue Cross Blue Sheild's customer service department far more than the boy who makes me feel uncontrollably squishy. What the fuck?

Better Days

I felt a lot better all weekend. All day starting Friday and even through Monday. Clearer and I could concentrate again and the pain was manageable, especially once I added in some combination of Norflex, Vistaril, and my Toradol shot. Last night, I even started looking through the Craigslist help wanted ads.
Today I'm still not terrible, so I am hoping this is not just a quick break in the misery but a continued positive direction. I'm trying very hard to avoid dissappointment or negative feelings that today's setback (super light sensitive, strangely sore muscles, and Pain that isn't calming down when I give it the extra non-injected drugs) is a trend. I'm still feeling emotionally better. I'm still able to write things, it seems. Pretty good indication the Neurontin was what had me quite so stoned, not the "abortive" meds.
I slept all day.
I can't decide now if I should give myself the Toradol to keep myself in the lesser-pain mode, or not do the Toradol so I don't overuse it and render it useless like I did to the DHE.
But I kind of want to go out...
Because there's a possible Boy...

Possible Boy is Neighbor Guy's best friend, even though Neighbor Guy doesn't call him his best friend. Neighbor Guy "had" a huge crush on Possible Boy. For a long time. Possible Boy knows this. They've talked about it. Possible Boy is straight; he likes girls. Neighbor Guy is not a girl. So Neighbor Guy decides I should meet Possible Boy. "Oh, you would really like him."
Neighbor Guy drags me to a barbecue. Possible Boy also comes to barbecue.
Turns out Possible Boy is sharp and snarky with depth, and he's cute.
Neighbor Guy claimed he had his crush in check and was "totally over" Possible Boy, but we all know that's bullshit. Still, so long as Neighbor Guy is a guy, Possible Boy can't see him as anything more than a friend.

NG: Possible Boy was telling me to call you the other day to invite you out but I told him you were probably having your headaches and you'd call me if you wanted to do something.
Me: Blah blah blah not important to story
NG: Well can I just give him your number? I hate being the middle-man.
Me: Of course! Blah blah blah
NG: Ok good because I don't want to be an intermediary blah blah blah etc.

Neighbor Guy kept saying he'd had a horrible week but nothing about it sounded horrible. Now I knew why. He'd been fielding off-hand, pseudo-casual remarks from both me and Possible Guy about one another, having to endure the Glimmer of Interest in and about the current Love of his Life. To make matters worse, he introduced us.
I'm used to being in Neighbor Guy's corner of the love triangle. It's the self-defeatist's spot and I empathize completely. I don't really know what to do or how to handle the good corner. For that matter, I don't know how to handle possible boys. How do I not automatically turn him into a just friend? Or chase him away completely? This is not one of my better games. HELP!

Totally unrelated: In my dreams, I keep accidentally eating things that are big no-nos on my migraine diet. These dreams have the same feel as the ones where I do something that accidentally hurts a child or children, but now I have a new theme. It's me doing things I shouldn't without realizing it. Since they are dreams, they skip the parts where I'm making any decisions or thinking about it and go right to where I'm eating the pizza or letting go of the bar before the kid jumps up to grab it.
Obvious interpretation: I feel like I make all these mistakes in life that are my fault without having any control over them.
Obvious easier-said-than-done solution: Take control over the things I can control and let the rest go.
Reality: I'm still a long way from actualizing the AA serenity prayer.

Waiting for Nemo

I took over 300 photos today at a stranger's wedding.

Neighbor Guy asked me last weekend if I wanted to be his date to this wedding he was invited to on a boat on Lake Michigan on July 3rd. I said probably yes, but I was nervous about my head. I'm not quite sure what happened after that, because next thing I knew it was Friday night and no word from Neighbor Guy, so I ended up at my downstairs neighbors' barbecue hanging out with her entertaining, hard-partying, and mostly jock-lesbian posse. Then I called my other neighbors (the ones with the brother I shtupped) to see if they'd want to go down to the beach at the end of the block to try to catch some fireworks, since I kind of thought I'd be seeing fireworks that night from a friggin' boat on the friggin' lake. The one who isn't the brother of my shtuppee took me up on the offer and we had a very nice time. No shtupping. We did manage to run into Neighbor Guy at the bar, though, so I guessed I wasn't the only one who wasn't on a boat.

I was feeling well enough again on Saturday to play Hostess/Housewife and invited my cousinses, Neighbor Guy, and my Fireworks Friend to dinner. I cleaned all day until my house was sufficiently perfectish (unbelievably perfect if you know me) and my cousinses thought they were coming around 7 but then they were coming around 8 and then they showed up at 8:30. Neighbor Guy kept saying things about some other barbecue he was supposed to go to but since I cooked he really wanted to come over for at least a little bit so he'd stop by blah blah blah. At 7:45 he called and asked if he could bring his roommate with him, too. I asked how many people? He said just him and one of his new roommates (two Slovakian girls in the US for the summe, who moved in last week after answering his ad on Craigslist), so I figured since I never heard from Fireworks Friend I had plenty of food. At 8 I opened the door to Neighbor Guy, his roomamte, and "Chris." "Chris" was some random guy they'd met earlier at the bar or something. I have no idea. Neighbor Guy does that sort of thing all the time. He meets people he finds interesting or boys he thinks are cute (who usually turn out to be straight or in stable, committed relationships) and just brings them places assuming it's ok. But that's sort of how he lives his life. He reminds me a lot of Dory from Finding Nemo, and everbody loves Dory, right? He's a great friend for me to have around, even if I do find some of his human fascinations terribly annoying. Some of them are great, and I'm one of his human fascinations, too.

Turns out the wedding wasn't July 3rd, it was July 5th. Today. Neighbor Guy (co-worker of the bride) also thought it was in the evening until he called me and woke me up at 9:30 AM to say the boat left at noon. He'd mentioned on Saturday that he wanted me to bring my digital camera. Well, when we go to check in at the boat, I find out that we're the photographers. Really, They didn't hire professionals. A few other people brought digital cameras, too, but Neighbor Guy had offered to take photos and somehow (it being Neighbor Guy, there's a million possibilities for how) we were now their primary source for photographic wedding memories. After Neighbor Guy took a few awkward, timid pictures with my camera, I asked if he wanted me to do the actual picture taking. Yes! Oh, he was so relieved!

I feel bad for the couple, since my camera and photography skills aren't great and who knows what the bride's expectations were based on whatever conversations she may have had with Neighbor Guy. So I took pictures of everything from every angle to make sure there'd be enough good ones in the end. I'm about 2/3 of the way through half-assed editing the 300+ pictures from the day.

Dory the fish. I'm always trying to be less like Marlin, anyway.

I need to sleep now. Pity, I didn't make it to talking about the (possible) little love triangle in which I'm getting one of the good corners.

Goodnight.

Open Letter

Dear Two Guys Installing My Elfa Shelves,

Please do it right. And carefully. Be anal about it. Not like my bathroom sink which is flush to the wall on one side and half an inch away on the other so that the whole unit is at an angle, made obvious by the way it sits askew to the tiles on the floor. Not like my dining room ceiling, which is incredibly streaky because the paint goes on streaky but perhaps you could have said or done something before you were completely finished?

Is there a reason you don't have and/or don't bring tools? Just wondering. Because last time you had to go out and get a level (perhaps a carpenter square would have served you well, too), and today you had to buy the correct drill bits before you could do anything. And then borrowed my pliers. And my scissors, step stool, paper towels, vacuum, hammer...sorry I didn't have a rubber mallet. Maybe I'll get one for next time.

I'm very glad you're nice. I'm nice, too. Until you fuck up my house. Don't fuck up my house.

Love,
Annabell

Sex, Drugs, and Trying to Get Off the Island

I think my psychiatrist is convinced NBF and I were doin' it. There was this very strange bit of conversation today about me being "sexually active" (matters because migraine doc is making me go to the gyno for hormone meds it instead of just writing me a prescription, largely as incentive to make me go to the gyno...blech).

Dr. Shrink: Are you sexually active?
me: Yes. Well, I don't know how active, but yes.
Dr: What do you mean by that?
me: I do sometimes have sex but it's not exactly a frequent or regular thing
Dr: When was the last time you ad intercourse?
me: Duh...um...what day is it? A month ago? No, more than that...a month and a half? Something like that.
Dr: [sounding like he'd gotten me in a trap] Was this your friend that moved away?
me: Oh god no. We were never like that.

Then I started rambling about occasional circumstances presenting themselves and sometimes lead to intercourse blah blah blah, but I think he took my weird bumbling as me trying to cover that NBF and I were actually lovers instead of me just being a bumbly person not sure how to explain things to my attractive and young enough you'd think he'd be less suspicious of a 27-year-old having occasional casual sex psychiatrist.

I have new friends in my neighborhood. They're Neighbor Guy's fault. Most of them are gay males. I'm also now connected to a surprising number of ex-navy men. They all hang out at the bar that's around the corner from my condo. Very convenient. I'm currently on the zero booze migraine diet, but mixes of juices make me feel fancy. I'm writing like I do this all the time when I've actually been once. Well, I went with NBF and I think I even dragged my sister before, since it's right here, but I never actually talked to people I didn't already know before.

I'm watching obscene amounts of LOST. You can see all five seasons online, and now that I'm physically incapable of concentrating on anything that requires more than a minute of my input, movies/tv shows and walking the dog are about the only ways I get any stimulation. I'm really excited I could write as much as I've written tonight. I'm spacing out pretty badly between sentences and clauses and having a hard time getting this last paragraph down, so I think I'm spent, but it felt good to get this much out. I started a paper journal again hoping it would be easier to keep up now that I'm a space cadet, but I write so much slower by hand that I get less out and once I start spacing out I'm a goner. Ok, I'm a goner now. Stoned writing again, except without the pot. We cut my Neurontin in half starting today so maybe I'll be better soon. As of now, who needs marijuana when your daily breakfast comes in pill form and your own saliva requires a side effects warning label?

Ugh. Brain fried. Fried fried fried.

Two-Steppin'

There's pollen floating so thick it looks like summer snow. It gathers in drifts on the grass and clings to leaf piles and big rocks on the sand. It's beautiful. I don't get seasonal allergies or sneeze at flowers, and for that I am grateful. It is magical fairy dust instead of the threat of greater discomfort.
My head has been bad. Still. Yesterday I was feeling better and did as much as I possibly could in my shiny happy window, including going to the beach with my across the street neighbor and both of our dogs. Mine required constant Dog Whisperer correction and is a pain in the ass, but I love him to pieces and he had a wonderful time and he needs new dog friends now that NBF's dog is gone. And I need new people friends now that NBF is gone. Like, people who are local. So it's completely fabulous that I'm hanging out with Across the Street Neighbor. He needs a code name, I suppose. Neighbor Guy? That works. We went to Two-Steppin' Tuesday at a country-themed gay bar in Andersonville last week and learned how to line dance and two-step and had a fabulous time. I was the only actual girl in the entire bar for most of the night but there were only about 30 people in the whole place and everyone was extremely friendly and forget the myth that gay boys can dance because they were all tripping over themselves and eachother and laughing and having a wonderful time. I was one of the better dancers there, and that's saying something. I had to lead sometimes in two-step because some of the guys only learned to follow. Some dressed for the occasion in their stylin' cowboy best, too. Basically, awesomeness.

blog : journal :: sex : ?

One of the Best Friends I've had in my entire life contacted me on Facebook. I'd looked for her before, Googlestalked and asked around, but no one really knew where she was these days.

And now she's resurfaced in Chicagoland and I can't begin to express how happy this makes me.

I wish I had just enough more of the writers' narcissism to not give a fuck if things I wrote in here ended up hurting or offending anyone. But even with my pen name, enough people I care about know both this blog and enough other people I care about, and I just don't want something I write to fuck anybody over or hurt them in any deep and lasting way. Fine. I started a fresh paper journal the other day. I'll go write in there. It's just frustrating when you know you're playing it safe so you end up turning down a willing partner because he's your friend's ex-husband or brother or something and you can go home and masturbate but it's so not the same.

Remembered and Lost

I think I remember a time when I didn't have a migraine. Nixon was president and we were worried about the Y2K virus infecting all the cows in Asia. I thought some day I'd take over the world by being a journalist. I went to a concert and didn't require 23 different chemical compounds to make it past the gate. I went to school or work without a second thought.

I just added cinnamon and sugar to my plain yogurt. It's delicious. I tend to think anything is delicious when it involves cinnamon. Even more than chocolate, though I think of it less often.

How much LOST can I watch in one day?

My Grain is Rice or Corn

I'll get back to The Columbian later. Can't really concentrate or think about that story right now, so you get a different one.

Let me be frank with you all for a moment. Maybe Frank is having an easier time than Annabell.
The migraine stuff has been rough. I'm drugged out of my mind to the point that it takes all my concentration to accomplish simple tasks. Writing has never been difficult for me and yet this blog post is requiring all kinds of extra initiative and push and time. I have bills to pay and phone calls to make, too, and they very well may take me hours instead of minutes.

My latest major anti-migraine push has been a diet change. Since there are a bazillion little additives and weird things in our foods, any number of which could be triggering or causing the migraines, I'm taking them all out. Gluten, milk, and eggs are always big question marks for migrainey people, too. I did a version of the no gluten diet six years ago, but now that things are so bad I'm being extremely strict just so I can either find a culprit or officially rule food out as a cause.

So, the only foods I am eating are:

• fruits
• vegetables
• potatoes
• corn
• rice
• milk
• meat
• sugar in its nice pure sugar form (no corn syrup or weird fake sugar products or derivatives)
  
• spices that can be found in a spice cabinet (MSG is not a spice)
• butter
• olive and vegetable oil (NO soybean or peanut oil, more strictly than usual)
• beans (meaning garbanzos since they're the ones I like)

I think that's it. No eggs. I'll eventually add eggs back in and take out milk, but getting rid of both simultaneously seemed like too much. No soy. No gluten. No multisylabic anything. No chemical anything. I'm trying to buy organic and reading labels like a Wall Street Journal editor. I feel like a hippie. I'm so all-natural, except for the copius amounts of drugs I take every day in pill form.

I've been eating a lot of rice cereal and Indian food with rice cakes. Yesterday I made it to the grocery store and got yogurt, but only plain yogurt passed my dietary test, so I took my buy one get one free organic strawberries, chopped some up in the blender, and mixed them in with said plain yogurt. I considered adding sugar but thought no! I own real vanilla! So I added in a splash of vanilla. And since I was in the spice cabinet I saw my cinnamon, and I love cinnamon, so I mixed that in, too. Let's just say Dannon can suck it.

Why do I already need to lay down again? Is new diet worse for me? Is rice actually my kryptonite? Will dog ever stop whining even though I'm not letting him lick my empty yogurt bowl?

Tune in next time.

Miami International Airport

I went to my cousin's wedding in Miami. The plane in which I was originally scheduled to fly home arrived at the gate as a 737 instead of the planned 757. They offered $300 in travel vouchers and a guaranteed seat on the 8:15 PM flight to anyone willing to trade in a boarding pass.

I was at the podium before they could finish making the announcement.

It's not like I had anywhere to be, and many of my best friends live in far away places. $300 of airline travel for four and a half hours of hanging out in the Miami airport is far better than my usual pay rate.

The rest of my family opted to stay on their original flight. They all worried about working Monday morning and general life obligations and hassle and whatnot. The other wedding guests, too, refused a $67/hour waiting incentive and boarded for Chicago.

I had the two most recent issues of the New Yorker, the Sunday New York Times, and a cell phone with two virtual pets, a virtual farm, a virtual pyramid, and a virtual mine, plus the will and ability to nap in strange places and positions.

Instead, there was The Columbian.

...and then I spilled most of a bowl of Cheerios on myself and the floor by my desk. Not in the schlemazel "oh, this always happens to me!" way, but in a completely oblivious slide of my lower desk shelf while I read something online. It hadn't occurred to me that I might spill. A lot isn't occurring to me right now.

What is it about a demi-stupor that drives me to document every thought and action? Like I need to save everything I'm doing now while I can't properly analyze for later. Or like I'm some sort of lab specimen.

Dog is extremely useful for cleaning up Cheerios. I knew it would be OK if I missed some of them, and he just finished his search-and-destroy mission for the stragglers. Now he's looking at me like he wants more. Sorry, little one.

Somebody is intermitently blowing an airhorn outside. Why? Left over from graduation earlier today and every so often the curriosity of it overcomes people at the party?

I need to take dog out. He's been so good today. I am so lucky to have him for days like the past few, when he forces me to get fresh air and otherwise provides love and company while I'm conscious and unconscious alike.

Batty in the head going batty in the head. I'm awake but there's a dream happening just below the surface. I want to capture it and write it down but as soon as I concentrate enough to write it, it disperses at my touch. I didn't even take the extra weird medications today, this is just me and the standard cocktail plus a low constant pain that feels like my brain is bruised deep down. Like it would make perfect sense somehow if this was the dream and the "reality" was my brain fell off the shelf and got banged up and now I'm just feeling the soreness of the fall and trying to operate with this bruised aching brain.

Maybe we're all just brains on shelves and migraine sufferers are the ones whose brains get used as soccer balls.

Zomigawd I have to pack for my cousin's wedding this weekend. Concentrate concentrate think think think. This is like the time I tried to go to the grocery store really really stoned, but without the element of fun or choice.

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.

Fuzzy Paradigms

Fuzzy squishy stupor. Half-assed floating around all day. Can't snap out of it because I don't have the will or the want to. I think it's the Neurontin. It's only 10 PM and I think I'm going to bed so I can get a fresh start with a fresh day tomorrow. Fuzzy cold rainy weather. Thought about going over to my neighbors' and getting stoned but I think that would just be me justifying how I feel with something extra I'm doing to myself. Control thing. I'll save my social visit for a day I'm feeling truly social instead of dangerously strange.

One of my friends from Nameless Liberal Arts College came into town for 26 hours for a job interview that didn't go fabulously. Seeing people from that era of my life, though it wasn't that long ago, makes it clearer how much these last two years of migraine incapacitation have changed me. Not necessarily for the worse, and I might have changed without the migraines, but I've had to let a lot of things go and turn my old intensity level almost completely off. I always had the depression, so it's not that; I just can't be a Type A anymore, and that's an odd shift to make. I've had to retool my whole world outlook so as not to go completely insane, and I don't know if you can see the paradigm shifts from the outside, but they make old friends I haven't seen in awhile look totally different. Again, not a change for the worse, just a change.

Excuse me, I need to go curl up and have a frustrated cry in my bed now because I feel like I'm stoned all the time and it's much harder to be productive when you're stoned all the time and I still haven't separated my self-worth as a human being from my productivity level.

Shooting Pain

I just gave myself my first shot of Ketorolac Tromethamine. Still woozy, but I can in fact see and was able to walk from my living room to my computer chair in my office, so the initial wave of "omigawd! bright lights! splotchy! can't stand!" already passed.

Yes, Virginia, I'm back to shooting up migraine meds. Different from the DHE I used to have to squeeze into my tummy fat. "Sub-Q" aka "subcutaneous. "That was a smaller needle but way worse since the injecting part was much slower and more concentrated. This is "IM" aka "intramuscular," so I stab it into my thigh quick like a dart and barely have to look at anything. It still took me several false wrist-flicking starts where something inside stopped me before I hit the skin, but in it went and so did the medicine and maybe I'll stop feeling like shit soon.

All day today I've been in pain and asleep with migraine dreams or needing to be asleep. I took my other new drug earlier, but it clearly didn't help as I still had to give myself the shot. Please please please let the shot break the cycle. The 21 month cycle that has me in all kinds of useless self-hating demi-stupor all the time.

I went to the Diamond Headache Clinic for the first time on Tuesday. My regular neurologist referred me to a specific doctor there as the expert on hormones and migraine, since my hormones are nuts and no one ever wants to let me near The Pill with my stroke risk crap. That's why I have all these new drugs. She (Diamond Headache Doc) also suggested I do biofeedback, which I hope to start ASAP, and if that doesn't work, my parents get to dogsit for a few days while I go in as an inpatient and they hopefully IV drip the hell out of the migraines until they stop coming back on a daily basis. Modern medicine may not have caught up with the "why" or the "how" of migraine, but it likes to beat migraine with sticks until it shuts up temporarily. Diamond wants to use more aggressive sticks, I'm all for it. Get me out of this hell. I'm not counting on it and I'll still have to live my life with the big constant question marks of functionality, but I'm getting desperate to live my life. I try to accept being incapacitated for days and make the most out of when I'm not, but it's so frustrating and it makes me feel like I'm failing myself and when I am doing ok I should be doing everything and when I'm in between or if I ever take time when I'm physically capable of being productive to enjoy things that aren't productive, there's this guilt that I'm wasting my few precious moments and I may not get them again.

What's a girl to do?

Fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it

Conversations with 8-Year-Olds

"They're still talking."
"Yeah, grownups like to talk a lot."
"A lot a lot."
"I guess once you're grown up you stop having games and toys to play with so you talk instead."
"That's terrible!"
"It doesn't have to be. Talking can be fun."
[skeptical look]
"If you know how to use them right, words become your games, your toys. Words can be fun."

*actual conversation I had today

My building had a garage sale today. Only my downstairs neighbor and I brought anything out to sell, but many of the Cast of Characters came through. I sold my old microwave and bought a mirror for my dining room and a bag of bubble wrap.

One neighbor was having her porch professionally landscaped (really). Some cross between interior and exterior decoration with flower pots and chairs and a giant umbrella that looks perfectly nice but seems a bit out of place on a second floor porch with the third floor porch directly above blocking the elements. Then again, maybe the umbrella should be taken completely out of its utilitarian comfort zone and used as a general decor item. People hang pretty fans on their walls, so why not an umbrella over my coffee table? I'm not superstitious, and wouldn't it be lovely during the long Chicago winter if my living room set came straight from a the deck of a Carnival Cruise?

I'm not sure when exactly that last paragraph turned sarcastic, but it did. It would be amusing to turn my living room into a tropical resort, but I like the warm living space theme better than the tacky-with-irony right now.

At any rate, the landscaper brought along her son for the day and the poor kid had absolutely nothing to do. For the first hour he just hung around and played with my plastic toy cash register and found new and bored-looking ways to climb up and down the bottom few stairs. When we hit the afternoon lull in both customers and conversation, I asked the kid if he liked games or arts and crafts or anything I might be able to bring out for him from my condo.
"Arts and crafts!"
Boy had he come to the right place. I brought out my cardmaking stuff and showed him how to make envelopes and he had a grand old time. I'm just glad I don't pay for the paper considering how much he went through.

When I was a kid, I didn't want to be a kid and I wasn't very good at it anyway. Now I finally see the merits and it's time to grow up. I was much more comfortable with adults before I became one. It's harder to see when you're in the midst of something; maybe I like being the "other" so I can maintain perspective.

Music of the Night

Thing that gets stuck in my head on a regular basis:

Yo Gabba Gabba! (There's a Party in my Tummy !)
Uploaded by Materialiste - Click for more funny videos.

I think I first heard about Yo Gabba Gabba from Mixed Species's blog. Never mind I'm 27 and have no children. When I watch Sesame Street online I can claim it's for the nostalgia. No such excuse here. Yo Gabba Gabba is just silly and entertaining and better than Charlie the Unicorn, so I will continue to go there for an occasional mental escape.

Who knew Al Sharpton played piano?



Ok, that's not Al Sharpton, it's Allen Toussaint.


Real Al Sharpton:

Tell me they're not long lost brothers.

Compressing

Trying to decompress a bit after many days in a row of crazy.

Starting last Tuesday:

• RCN stood me up and I got stuck home all day while developer's contractor guys switched my incongruous sink for happy-matches-the-rest-of-the-condo sink.
• crashed at NBF's house

Wednesday:

• happy 27th birthday to me!
  
• crawled back home by 7:45 AM so contractor people could come put granite on sink
• good RCN person came after I did much yelling at every RCN person possible
• therapy
• psychiatrist
• picked up NBF and dragged him around for rest of day because it's my birthday, dammit
  
• rented cargo van
• drove to Wheaton to pick up 1920s art deco table and chairs I found on Craigslist
• tried to drink a shmancy beer to celebrate but fell asleep after a few sips and was out for the night by 11 PM

Thursday:

• drove (still in cargo van) to O'Hare to pick up NBF's dad
• waited in cell phone lot while NBF's dad got his luggage
• discovered NBF's dad was actually at Midway.
• drove downtown to meet NBF's dad half-way from Midway to us
• NBF, his dad and I carried 1920s art deco table and chairs from van into condo
• picked up futon and big squishy armchair with ottoman and brought them to condo from NBF's house
• stared stupidly while NBF and his dad carried furniture up stairs
• lunch!
• drove myself in cargo van to Container Store to pick up Elfa closet components for awesome office closet that, once installed, will be the greatest thing in my life
• carried 90% of heavy closet crap up to condo all by myself when NBF and his father appeared (NBF left his cell phone and keys in the van when we parted ways for the afternoon...oops) and they helped with the last bit before I had to run off to return cargo van before Enterprise closed.
• Filled van gas tank and returned van. Flirted with fabulous boy at Enterprise place. Wondered why boy was working at Enterprise.
• Picked own car back up. Filled it with gas, washed its exterior, had 70-year-old car wash operator tell me I'm a beautiful woman and my husband should spoil me and they'll spoil me at the car wash whenever I come back, spent an hour cleaning out car's interior down to my leather wipes so it would be presentable for driving NBF's parents either that night or the next morning
• Shower. Nap.
• Back to O'Hare. Birdie's flight came in after 11.
  
• IHOP for pancakes.
• Sleep like dead people

Friday:

• Coffee with NBF's dad and Birdie at coffee shop across the street until NBF called to say he was at my doorstep, so he joined us having finished his last paper minutes before
  
• Shower and get pretty for graduation. Original pretty sun dress had to be scrapped for layered wear thanks to Chicago refusing warm weather on May 17.
• While NBF and Birdie went straight to the graduation, NBF's dad and I drove back to O'Hare to pick up NBF's mom (NBF's parents, being divorced, hadn't seen eachother in five years. Weeee!).
• Turned around to go get tickets from NBF.
• Turned back around towards O'Hare.
• Rain
• Met up with NBF's mom at the O'Hare Enterprise, which is not near the main stretch of other rental car companies and required my driving back up a one-way stretch on the Avis car return and doing several U-turns before following the Enterprise shuttle into a parking lot behind a hotel
• NBF's mom wanted NBF's dad to drive, which was the whole reason we had to go to the airport even though she was getting a rental car. Then the two of them were going to follow me since I knew where I was going. I also printed up directions for myself and them just in case. They followed closely until the very end when we had to start making turns, at which point they decided to pass me. In the end they followed the directions, which turned out to be slightly wrong, I had them stop in a parking lot, went and found them, and eventually led them into the correct parking lot. We were 15 minutes late and shouldn't have been allowed to sit in the seats Birdie texted me that she saved us, but the woman watching the door we went in was nice and we just spent 15 fewer minutes sitting through boring crap.

So NBF graduated law school and moved back East. No more NBF. Pretty devastated. Plus side: finally being forced to make new friends, leave my cave, etc. Negative side: no more NBF around to satisfy my social urges when I'm not up to doing anything beyond waddling my ass eight blocks down the way and curling up around somebody else's dog.

Birdie is super-swell. Some of our mutual college friends got married and made babies and live in the Midwest, with a pair in Champaign, IL and another in Bloomington, IN. Despite my reluctance towards long car trips (my life-long motion sickness has been worse and more migrainey in the last few years...bullshit asshit faceshit since it wasn't so long ago I did northern Ohio to Key West and back in a weekend) Birdie talked me into meeting the babies and their parents in Indianapolis and then following the Bloomington set home for the night.
So. Much. Fun.
We met up at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis which was awesome. We spent the entire time in two of the exhibits because our friends' one- and barely-two-year-olds couldn't get enough of the dinosaurs and then played themselves silly in the Playscape.
Our Bloomington-based friends' baby boy fell in love with me the moment he saw me. He wanted to show me everything and hold my hand and have me pick him up a lot. Apparently he never does this, not even with his mom's sister, and I'm not that well versed in the art of very small children, so I felt like the most special person in the universe. Both of the kids are completely awesome and gorgeous and all four parents are just so good. They don't let the kids set things on fire or anything, but they're totally cool about letting them explore and not freaking out if they fall or eat their noodles off the floor. I took a bazillion pictures (on my Flickr and Facebook if you know me in reality) and am uploading them right now. There's also a number of pictures on other people's cameras of me dressed as a turtle, palaeontologist, and bee thanks to the child-sized costumes into which I fit, provided by the museum.

My condo is now just me and my dog and the mess from my house guests that I feel strangely compelled to clean. When my apartments were messy they felt right. When my condo is messy it feels wrong. My apartments were nests. My condo is pretty. It is warm and soft because it is pretty, not because it gets filled with crap.

Piece of story I conveniently left out: Friday night. Birdie and I were going to go to the party of a completely different friend of mine, but he lives 45 minutes away by car and we were exhausted and ended up at NBF's friends' condo a block from my condo. NBF's friend is a very attractive boy but he has all kinds of crazy and baggage and story I know about so while jumping him has always been a bit tempting it's also a bit out of the question. Well, said friend has a brother. His brother was in town for graduation. His brother (henceforth known as Beetle) is also very attractive. We played Rock Band, partook of some substances, and made out to the first half of Team America before slinking off to a more private setting for fun and mutual body appreciation. I'm amazed at the difference between boys who know what they're doing and boys who don't. Boys who understand that girls also want to have fun and are not just there to please boys. I'm amazed how gratifying a compliment is when I know it's genuine. How powerful and awesome I can feel. And how much fun it can be on such a non-emotional level. That's another amazing difference: emotional versus unemotional Boy ravaging. The kiss seems less urgent, the touch itself has a different burn. It tingles and pulls from a different place. I still haven't had emotional sex, and as a result, part of me still feels like a virgin. The act may be the same, but even a kiss that means something and one that doesn't are such completely different beasts it's hard to think of them as the same thing. I wonder if and when the person on the other end can tell. One kiss is acted and thought out and just a prelude and a push below. The other I want to hold and devour. Does the kiss recipient know? I've heard such things about the difference in sex. I'd like to see for myself, but I suppose that requires significant emotional attachment to a Boy. Am I really ready for such things?

Today was my decompression day. Tomorrow I have to get back to reality. Terrifying.

lure me not

Saturday's temptations and desires, in approximate order:

1. kill NBF
2. just keep NBF in some state of half-strangle, half-hug forever
3. kill parents
4. puke
5. fill stomach but puke at the same time
6. puke
7. decorate condo with everything in sight, or exact opposite of everything in sight, depending on sight
8. disassociate self from parents
9. redo ages 20-22
10. make other people interested in good beer
    
11. start watching Saturday Night Live regularly
12. go to random college party across the street from bed and breakfast and make up identity and story and anonymously screw random college boy

My mom wanted to spend Mother's Day with as many of her children as possible, so after much pressure she got me to agree to a weekend trip to my brother's college. "Just one night" she emphasized. Fine. I like my brother. I don't like long drives (it's only 4 1/2 hours, but I still get carsick and migrainey and all those lovely things my body likes to do...and I'm the girl who drove from Cleveland to Key West and back in a weekend for the hell of it...I don't know what happened). NBF moves away forever in a week and I want to spend time with him, but Mother's Day is very important to my mom and I have trouble saying "no" to her. So I'm here and it's not so terrible and I want to play "college kid" in a way I totally rejected when I actually was one. And now I want dental floss. That makes 13 major desires for the day. I think I'll leave it at that.

I try to talk about the actual events of my life and moving and whatnot and instead get distracted by more internal squish

Did I mention I moved?

I am now the owner and resident of The Greatest Condo Ever: two bedrooms, two bathrooms, huge, a block away from my old place so I'm still in my beloved neighborhood, and retained and restored vintage details with beautiful renovation. I've been sleeping here for a week. There are no blinds up on the windows yet because I have it in my head that I need a second person and NBF refuses to have anything to do with my moving or new place as he's having all kinds of fun issues with his own impending move and life direction so he is a puddle of useless. I bet I could hang the shades myself. I haven't even tried.


"The check is in the mail."
"I'm two blocks away."
People say and do that sort of thing all the time. It's not a big deal. I don't think it's a big deal. You come to expect it and factor it into the universe, whether you're the one saying it or others are saying it to you.
My parents equate it with murder. These things are lies and once someone lies you don't know where it ends or if you can trust that person blah blah blah.
Things are not that black and white. I have way more problems because I'm too honest and too forthright. White lies are not the end of the world. One of the reasons I write is as a confessional, to undo anything I might have slipped or exaggerated or fudged in real life. Did I say 10 minutes when I knew it was likely to be 20? Two blocks was really eight? Say this is the fifth time I've spoken to customer service when it's really only the third? I do it without thinking. It's not a big deal. It does not make me a bad person. Hell, I learned to lie to my parents at a very young age to protect myself. Make them happy, shut them up, get them off my back and then deal with whatever it is. Because shutting them up was always more important than dealing with the actual problem. My motivation was always the guilt and nagging, not the thing itself.
It's almost my 27th birthday and I'm just starting to recognize that I should make my house pretty because I would like a pretty house, not so my parents will be proud of me. I'm still having a very hard time working on the great battle between my desperate need for my parents to be proud of me and living as myself for myself making myself happy. I'm trying to learn to control the emotional muscles, like a psychological version of learning to wiggle your ears or raise one eyebrow. This is the positive I am doing while the weather changes every five minutes and my head keeps me half-blind and dizzy and in pain day after day. That's another thing I need to remember: I really am excused from being a fully functional adult. I am not faking it. Sometimes I feel like I must be faking it. Like I'm just taking advantage and lazing around all the time and doing nothing. Maybe I am taking advantage of my situation. But isn't that what I should do? Take advantage of the position I'm in because it's the position I'm in and for the love of Everyhing, it's not a fucking puzzle I just have to solve and I'm somehow being lazy and useless by not at least spending every minute physically possible solving the problem. I watch my parents doing everything all at once and feel like I should, too. Obligated, since I've benefited so much from their constant work, that I'm in debt to them and to the universe for this life I don't deserve and struggle to be the person who could somehow repay it when everything in me screams otherwise.
They have chosen their lives. They like their lives. I am a good person. It makes me cry to write "I am a good person," but I believe it. They are not always rational, reasonable, or right, even though they believe they are. They can support me on their terms, but I have to live on my own terms. I have to make my own decisions. They are just my parents. I am a grown-up. They, being my parents, may never see me or treat me like a grown-up, but they try. They were so good on Sunday.
Into the Wild.
There's a reason the children of upper-middle-class suburbia become drug addicts. When the past however many generations have expected upward mobility, but you are given the luxury of exploration around a strange rigid prescription for life and still the assumption that you will do at least as well as your parents, screaming "fuck this" and blowing as much of it away on heroin is a good way to obliterate the bubble.
I don't want to lose my life. I get frustrated as it is losing so much time in the migraines. But those, too, are not as bad as they were at one point. More drugs. More doctors. Who knows? Again, that nagging feeling I'm not doing enough, not fighting hard enough, not spending all of my energy all of the time.
Why?
Why is that the expectation? I have so many expectations for myself. Can't I just be a regular human being? Upward! Better! Faster! Stronger! Fix it! It all goes back to the nagging, the doing things to stop the yelling and the Voices (except my interior voices are so clearly me...). Instead of doing things for their own sake. Changing my way of thinking is important. It is good. I am doing it and I feel good about doing it. I deserve to feel good about doing it.

Annabell copes with stress by making statements of grandeur

There is so much life, and so much to life, sometimes it's hard to bear. But it's incredible and I love it and I have to remind myself so it doesn't hurt.

It makes me a writer. I will be a great writer so long as I don't get struck by lightning or anything terrible too soon. I'm never sure how much I buy into all the "meant to be" crap, and it doesn't really matter one way or the other if I believe in it or not. But I can and I will take everything I am and see and experience and use it to be a great writer. Maybe I won't live to see my own success, but I think that's ok, too. My parents and grandparents are almost entirely responsible for my current financial status, so I suppose it's fitting that any wealth or grandeur achieved be visited upon future generations. Not sure I believe that, but it sounds right. I still have the guilt about not supporting myself. I want to support myself. But I also want to accept who and what I am and be happy.

I am not my parents.
It is not my job to appease my parents.
Everything is relative.
Everything is a matter of perspective.
There are no absolutes*.


*mmm...paradoxy...

Gay Marriage

"Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!"

but what if it was "Steve and Eve?"
would we all spend our lives searching for partners with rhyming names?
and what would Eve have done once she found herself in a loveless marriage with a gay man?
would he ever be open and honest about it to himself, let alone to her?
and if he was, would she be supportive, or just bitter?

recurrent dream, get happy

Recurrent dream I had again last night:

I'm back at Unnamed Liberal Arts College or (like last night) Interlochen Arts Camp, only it's now a built up with restaurants and bars and shopping malls and a monorail/elevated train/bus shuttle system. In the Interlochen versions I'm going back to work again but I have to be a few weeks late because of some other commitment so I'm coming into things in the middle and it's ok but only kind of and I'm dropped in the middle of things and I have to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing and where everything is and I look for markers of the few buildings that stayed where they used to be but so much has changed and I realize how long it's been since I've been back. I look for HDS and sometimes I find her and that's wonderful and exciting and makes me happy.

Dream theme/summary: you can't go home again. I wonder why that's so pressing and common in my sleepy subconscious. Am I trying to go home again? Interlochen was my happy place and Unnamed Liberal Arts College (particularly my friends) was happy place when I wasn't busy being horribly depressed. I'm trying to create new happy places now. I'm trying to remember my happy times to prove to myself that I am capable of being happy. Concentrate on good thoughts and good things. I have an easy time doing that with external stuff, like how gorgeous the universe is (have you seen the lake by my apartment? Chicago's architecture? Absolutely everything on my bus ride downtown? I love that bus ride), but a much harder time when it comes to anything internal. Back to the whole "I suck" thing that is so engrained in everything I think and do. But why? If there's so much gorgeous in the universe, and I am part of the universe, why isn't there gorgeous in me? So I'm trying to find and concentrate on the gorgeous parts. Find and concentrate on the happy things and happy thoughts that are internal. It's exhausting. Probably because it's so unnatural for me right now. Which is sad, not dumb like I automatically think. Sad. Why is it dumb? No. Sad. The fact that I think it's dumb is sad. So let's fix it. No, fix is too harsh. Work on it. "Work on it" gives it the time and energy it deserves and takes.

This is why people go stay in hospitals or Bell Jar-esque resorts for months while they get happy. It takes a lot of concentration to completely change your thought process.

yes, condo!

I bought a condo!!!!!!!!



It's amazing.

holy fucking condo?

Oh my god I'm buying a condo.

I put in a bid yesterday.

They didn't laugh at my bid.

They countered.

I'm going in to negotiate later today.

Holy fuck.

Fucking shit.

Shitting fuck.

This place is huge and gorgeous and if we can push them down far enough that it's worth it, that would be amazing.

Two bedrooms.
Two bathrooms.
Huge.
Gorgeous.

If it doesn't work out, my third choice is pretty nice, too. But if we can make this happen today, hot damn.

Sads

I've got The Sads and I don't know why. Is it the medication? Is it whatever was before all the fun with the medication just catching up with me again? I don't know. But I'm crying and deep-down sad and I've been hiding out at NBF's since Saturday and just went home tonight even though I really didn't want to. I just want to hide there forever. Curl up into a little ball and not deal with anything. Not be alone. I'm having trouble writing and I can't concentrate on anything still and I don't feel like doing much of anything, so staying there and watching movies and reading and eating and playing with dogs was perfect. Sometimes when I'm in depression mode I want to be alone. Right now, I want to be not alone, but not in public either. This is when I used to show up in Birdie and Sunny's room/house in college. My parents are the last people on earth I want to see. I want my super-close friends and to cry a lot and for the hurt to stop being hurty. Why am I all hurty?

Fixing My Exchange Rates

Pegging your happiness to another person is a lot like pegging your country's currency to the dollar—when you're feeling week and unstable it may seem like a good way to prop up your emotional economy, but ultimately you have no ability to micro-manage when your markets' ups and downs don't coincide, and the whole thing is just a total fiscal policy cop-out to begin with. "Oooh, Annabellians can't help their sudden decline, just look at the US Dollar. Maybe she should have pegged to the Yen..."

But hey, why not peg to a person, a currency, an anything. As long as I'm going through all these crazy psych drugs that mean the physical feelings of my emotional feelings aren't matching up and it's hard enough to tell who and what I want when it doesn't go along with who and what I think I should want, I could just as easily pick a religion or my horoscope or the migration patterns of salmon. I just want to pick something and follow something real and concrete for a change, because the whole head/heart thing just doesn't work. Sometimes I'm allowed to listen to my heart, sometimes I'm not, and I'm terrible at discerning the two when I'm not going up and down on drugs.

My therapist is a big fan of "choose happy," and I'm trying to "choose happy," but is this big nagging chunk of me keeps doing its "I'm still here and I'm not happy and you're just ignoring me" dance. But where's the balance of working through things versus brooding on and obsessing over things? Staying positive versus ignoring what's bothering you? These things are hard for me and they occupy more of my emotional and mental space than life has room and I don't like myself very much as a result. I'm working on it. Or I'm trying to work on it. Or I think I'm trying to work on it. I don't even know. I go to therapy. I take pills. I write. I cry. I snuggle dogs. I knit. I write more. And I keep waiting for some sort of miracle change, like I'm trying to get somewhere. Logically, I know this is my life. The process. Stop. Smell roses. Lather rinse repeat. This is where I am and I have to stop worrying and hoping and working for this magical "one day" shiny happy salvation idea, but I'm not there yet. The logic is there, the heart is not. The heart is used to being sad so we keep singing our sad song together. Yes, the song gets happy, but it doesn't stay happy. I live in my little overfeeling life of overprivelage feeling overguilty and overwhining and then getting mad at myself and feeling more overguilty for the overwhining
STOPSTOPSTOPSTOP. DOING IT AGAIN. This is definitely the "bogged down" category. Stop it, self. Watch more 1978 Battlestar Galactica. Snuggle more dogs. And for the love of gawd, start an intellectually stimulating project so you don't have so much extra brain energy to spend being crappy to yourself.

Anyway, Malaysia was on a fixed exchange rate and they're doing pretty damn well now, so who am I to make these ultimatums?