Eureka?

Not quite as funny as "A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into a bar," but How many neurologists does it take to diagnose a seizure disorder? None! A puppet-maker dispensing mostly bad advice about depression with anxiety in a crafty-people chatroom.

I just learned of the existence of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. For all of the millions of things that sound sort-of-kind-of like what I deal with, I think this one is it. Maybe I'm just nuts, but between a thing I heard the other day about a woman with migraines like mine plus a seizure disorder, and then the symptom check-list for TLE including more of my symptoms from across the board, I want to call my doctors, like, now. Except it's 1 AM and tomorrow is Sunday. But TLE doesn't show up on the brain scans I've done. That was the big exciting thing. I know there's more to my migraines and my everything neurologically than we currently understand.

ouchy pressure tight ouchy want to puke kill the ouchy distract

Back to the woozy again. Body, just tell me what's wrong and I'll act accordingly. Am I woozy for lack of food? I'm eating things that seem easy to digest. More rice? More water? Do I just wait until the earthquakes die down? Am I being punished for not worshiping Wanda the Three-Headed Sphincter of Wonderland?

The more of my life I spend in bed, the less anything makes sense.

Too Much

My stomach twists tighter and tighter. For wanting Possible Boy? It's fear and jealousy and it's only getting worse now. Panic panic panic. The money is almost fixed. Why the panic?
I've always had anxiety problems. The last two years may be the first time I haven't had major anxiety problems. Anxiety returns and I flip out over its return. Figures. HDS just had a panic attack for the first time in ages. Something is askew. Ken was talking about some people who are sensitive to solar flares, they just don't know it. Who knows if it's solar flares or extra WoobahWoobah energy being released on planet Xerg or insect migration or what, but yes, I am sensitive to things I do and don't understand. Possible Boy and Aural Girl are living happy ever after and that makes me feel sad and left out and lonely. That's pretty easy to understand. Less easy to understand is why I feel like I'm about to be found out for murder, or the bottom is getting ready to drop from under me in some other huge way. I can't move. I'm looking for some huge thing I fucked up to justify the volume of my panic and it's just not there. This reminds me of when I flat-out lied to a Hebrew school teacher in fourth grade. I atoned for that one at least two Yom Kippurs in a row and made myself sick every time I thought about it.
Can I ever forgive myself for being human? This will  be the second day in a row I take my lorazepam, an anti-anxiety drug I've taken only a few times in my entire life. But for the level of freak-out I'm feeling, it would take a murder or some other very conscious harm to justify the bats in my stomach. This is what the pills are for. Now I'd like to function again. I'd like to figure out  in a non-insane way what and how I'm feeling about the Ken situation. I'd like to get through my emotions without boiling over and shutting down. That would be swell.

purposefully vague (sorry)

My last post is annoying.

Ken is full of surprises. I'm throwing my little temper-tantrum of unhappy, and he comes gallopping in with solutions to everything. Is he real? Human? Now I sound like the conspiracy theorist...

Yolk's On Me

I didn't get the golden goose, now I'm cracking open every egg, looking for the prize inside.
Why do we keep crushing eggshells?
Isn't it enough to be somebody's prize?
All the kings men tell me I'm golden.
I want the answer to loneliness from the whites of his eyes.


It's possible to be happy for someone and so jealous it hurts, all at the same time.

Can I please run drugs for a week? Just a week. Even the phone sex thing takes like a month to get paid, otherwise I'd already be doing that.
I've heard of manic-depressive, right now I'm panic-depressive. I spent the last two days in a sleepy, woozy, teary funk. Now I'm awake again and going batshit because I can't fucking sell anything large enough and/or fast enough to cover my psychiatrist check and my condo assessments check now that it's March.

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

Have to buy bubble wrap and mail things that actually WERE purchased (yay the $50 that are in my checking account) and eat something and remember that money and the world are all imaginary anyway. I should pop one of my anxiety drugs that I own for exactly the reason that I sometimes get like this and can't function, go over to the house of a friend and think about things that do matter, like being alive and human connection.

 I want to make a noise like a dinosaur.

Snippets from incomplete posts, written over the past two days

I'm starting to think a lot of the "crazy" people of the world may just have certain sensory perceptions heightened beyond their psychological and physical ability to process.

A plastic bag just scaled the building across the street from me. I'm not sure if a squirrel was carrying it or stuck in it, but it  was pretty strange.

Work will set you free.

I'm anxiety bonkers. Can't shake it. How much of it is my financial panic? How much is this illigical, groundless selfishness over the Possible Boy/Aural Girl dating situation? And why the hell does that present itself as anxiety, too?
I wish I could switch back and forth between Human Annabell and Robot Annabell at my own convenience. I'd be a robot long enough to complete a certain set of tasks every day, keep all budgeting and accounting in order, and maintain perspective on all emotional life-pimples. I can be human for everything shiny, savory, or available as a mouse.

I can't write, either. The last few days. Writing too much for my  businessy crap? Spending too much creative energy on photos and blogs and forums and general whoring? It's effective, but I'm sprinting back towards insane.

See what I mean? Can't write worth a CRAP. So frustrating.

Do Not Pass Go

My migraine doc calls it "dullness." I refer to it as all sorts of things, including "the crazies," "the zappies," "being stupid," "like I'm stoned," and who knows what else. It's common in migraine sufferers, it's actually a symptom of the migraine (right along with light sensitivity, nausea, etc.), and  it means I don't function properly and there's not a thing I can do about it. I can't always tell when I'm in "dullness" mode. There will be days when I'm chugging along, getting things done on the computer, and I switch over to online kakuro (which I play a lot) and I can't add anything in my head or remember numbers from one moment to the next and I realize my brain is misfiring all over the place and whatever I had been working on earlier probably contains tons of mistakes. Or it took 20 times longer to complete a simple task, or I did the wrong thing altogether. This happens to me at some point during the day almost every day. Sometimes it just flusters me and I just have to accept that it's time to put down what I'm doing and move on. Sometimes I'm stuck in a situation where I don't have that luxury.

I don't even know when or exactly how I miscalculated my finances in the last few weeks. I'm usually quite good at managing where my money is at any particular moment, maintaining the delicate balance between savings, checking, and credit card so that as much as possible is in savings and as little is on credit at any given moment. Well, I paid off my credit card in full and somehow thought there was more in my checking and savings than actually existed in my checking and savings and with my wonderful world of auto-payed bills, as of this morning I have $34 liquid.
I'm panicking.
I shouldn't be panicking. If I can quiet down the panic enough to function without the audible wavering of desperation, I make phone calls and drive around tomorrow until I have at least $200 in cash. My head still fucking hurts and it may keep hurting, but I have a feeling it will hurt less once I'm not worried about my bank account.

It's funny that I have all this anxiety about money. Money isn't real. I'm very aware of that. I feel about money the way a child feels about the dark, or maybe the way I'm supposed to feel about my period. I get far more embarrassed talking about money than I do about my menstrual cycle.

Holy shit my head hurts. It's in my neck. Why haven't I gotten my jacuzzi jets fixed? Get Manbug back over here with Dr. Mary Jane. That would be swell.

Fucking fuck, I feel so much I overload and cry and my head explodes. I take everything in and absorb what I can, live and write what I can, try to dispose of the rest as waste product through my tear ducts, and then anything left over turns into pain.

I texted Aural Girl and Possible Boy, asking them to stop by some time tonight because I'm feeling very down. Apparently they are at a Bulls game (migraine hell, which is why I can't be AG's basketball buddy) but still absolutely are happy to stop by whatever time they get back. This makes me cry, too. It's the huge, unhidden, open-hearted love and kindness. It's what means the most to me in this entire world. Not just the two of them. I know, I know, I bring this up a lot, but I've had some amazing friends over the course of my life.
In therapy today we talked about my propensity to sidekick myself. When it comes to another human being, the reasons I love and like and don't and everything in between aren't  a list of assets and liabilities--it's a feeling. I don't think I'm the crazy lady who likes you or doesn't because your aura is too murky, but I definitely trust some sort of deeper sense even as my logical snark-machine of a brain is churning out pros and cons.
So why should anyone like me? I know my list of traits as well as a 27-year-old woman can know her own list, but it's not about traits. I can't get a feeling about myself so I try to base it off other people, but who do I trust? Can I trust myself to choose good people to trust? Again with the spiral of the ether and all that, and somehow the conclusion tends to be that I'm annoying, a social pariah, and I overthink everything.
I have trouble being present in my own life.
I've always written off the random boys who think I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread; I thought I needed somebody stronger than any guy who could possibly be crushing on me. But that's exactly who I need: someone who does see me as wonderful and shiny and all that; that's the real support.

I feel like I'm playing the self-actualization game and I keep completing levels and at some point I win the Relationship charm but I'm not there yet and I can't see how many more levels there are to go or what I still have to do and that's frustrating.

Will someone just sponsor my blog and give me tons of money to write whatever I feel like all day?

Maybe tonight I'll revive my phone sex account. Also good for money.

So Much Love in the World...

Aural Girl came over this evening to tell me that she and Possible Boy decided to start "Dating."
I'm feeling too many things. I'll get as many into words as I can.

I'm afraid. I found these real, true, quality friends and they are wonderful and right here and they care and understand and support and are so full of love and adoration and are just as happy to have me exist as I am happy to have them exist. I don't want anything messing that up and I'm absolutely terrified of shifting the balance in any way that might hurt this amazing thing we have right now.
I want more than anything in the world for them to be happy and find exactly what they could potentially find in eachother, and if there's even the slightest chance that they could be one another's Someone, then there's so much potential wonderful in Aural Girl seeing Possible Boy's...possibility.

I'm still attracted to Possible Boy but deep swoons and jealous flare-ups subsided some time ago. I don't think I believed I was more or less "over him" until tonight, and I may feel very differently when I see him/them, but at the moment the "Boy I Like Is Now With Another Girl" thing isn't strong enough to make it  through the rest of what I feel.

I'm afraid of everything that comes next. I already feel a bit like a third wheel, but I tend to do that to myself; half the time I play side-kick in my autobiography. Now if the two of them become a romantic unit, they suddenly both have eachother fulfilling that giant deficit in a way I can only watch and wave and smile.
That's assuming things go well.
Over-analyzing will be death of me, but I feel the fear and I'm addressing it, dammit. I've had plenty of  experience being friends with both members of a couple and when things aren't going well in couple-land I never know what to do. Going back to high school, I'd have couple friends with one member cheating on the other, telling me about it in detail while keeping the other member in the dark. Two different versions of the same incident, and I'd try to fix everybody and give advice taking both perspectives into account, meanwhile never having a relationship of my own as experience/reference. I know this isn't the same, but patterns pitter patter about my brain and scare the shit out of me.

This is not about me. This is about them. And it could be a really wonderful thing for them. It could be a disaster, too, or anything inbetween. I guess we'll see.
I can't look at this as a big sucky thing that leaves me on the sidelines. They still adore me. None of that has changed. And there's still so much world. I have a fucking menagerie of "gentlemen callers." I seriously considered calling Manbug to fuck away my woes.

Chain Boy* was over here last week when my head was really awful and it was nice, but I know better than to just fuck with him to make myself feel better. And maybe I'll actually crawl outside my most recently fortressed comfort-zone and spend time with other friends, other neighborhoods, other Boys. There are many more stories to be lived. I'm experiencing a highly saturated chunk of my life.
Finally getting together romantically with Aural Girl is such a huge thing for Possible Boy, I want to be able to be as excited and happy for him as it/he deserves. But I can't see theirs without also seeing the giant hole where mine could be, and it hurts like hell.

*Boy who like(d/s) me for quite some time now but I don't like myself around him and he's really negative but then we have a nice time together randomly until he starts saying I remind him of his schizophrenic ex-girlfriend needs a name in here and I'm going with Chain Boy for a number of reasons that are amusing in my head.

Iguana on a Hot Tin Streetcar

"When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone."
-Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams fucking rules. I went looking for a good quotation of his to use for something un-blog-related and found pages and pages of reminders why I think he's awesome. I don't usually include him in my Greatest Authors Ever list, but I think I should probably start.

By the Power of Grayskull

Aural Girl needs love and support and I couldn't even drive to the grocery store let alone pick her up from school or do anything else helpful, loving, or supportive. Grrr. Only one of us is allowed to have any sort of problem or physical ailment at a time; it works out so much better that way.

She still managed to bring me apples on her way home.

My psychiatrist had never heard of She-Ra or He-Man. I didn't think he was that much older than me, but he must have missed the cartoon wonderland of the 1980s somehow. I brought it up because I just discovered She-Ra on Hulu. I've only watched the first two episodes, but holy shit.

Possible Boy called. I'm going over to his house to watch Billy Elliot. Much better than my Law & Order SVU marathon in my own livingroom I had planned for the rest of my night. Still quiet, still dark, but human contact and a change of scenery. Had I been capable of coming up with such a plan, I would have planned it.
Migraine doc says the "cognitive dullness" is a not-so-unusual symptom of the migraine itself. No reason to get frustrated over things I can't control.

Domestic Violence*

My migraines are my abusive boyfriend. I live in fear, do everything I can not to set them off, make excuses for them. "This time they'll be different. I have a new medication now, I'm doing biofeedback, seeing a new doctor, changing my diet." Then the cycle begins again and I'm isolated from my friends and family, unable to concentrate, doing what I can to hide and ignore the pain.

*Apologies to anyone who is now or has ever truly been in an abusive relationship.

Day ?

It's hanging on again, day after day, ignoring medication after medication. Am I doing something wrong? Something different? Something bad? What's the variable? Is it something I can control?
My house is a mess. I expect the migraine to break and then I can clean up, but it's not breaking and it's been too many days of bad. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, cleaning the house will just have to be my quiet, slow, in-the-dark migraine project. I've learned how to live like this, had extensive training, so deep breath and prove myself a worthy advasary for The Beast.

My poor dog is going stir crazy. Half-assed walks and throwing treats up and down my hallway aren't sufficient entertainment for him while they're a little too much for me.

I. FUCKING. HATE. THIS.

2 Shots, 5 prescriptions, and a spatula. If i manage to pick up my car and make it home in one piece, today will be one for the win column.

I keep starting posts and then not finishing them. They're all saved and can be edited and completed later. My brain is being bitchy and making it hard to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes. I'll try to keep this short and hopefully get one fully formed idea out and published before I lose it again.

 Today I had to pick up the stuff I bought at last week's auction. Today the migraine continued to kick my ass. Today my car wouldn't be ready until after 2 and I was supposed to have a psychiatrist's appointment at 4.
Lucky for me, today was Presidents' Day and Possible Boy ha the day off work. All the stuff I got at the auction barely fit in his otherwise empty car. I had help loading and unloading and it all went exponentially faster and easier than the multiple trips and hobbling around I would have had to do on my own.
But there's something even better than just having help get crap from point A to point B. I was feeling really shitty and there was this human being who would drop everything and help me without question and without declaring himself a martyr and making everything a lesson, a criticism, and a judgment. I've had other friends like this in my life and I feel so fortunate. In the past few years my head has only gotten worse, so I'm thrilled to have people who are quick to do everything they can living a block away.

Tomorrow I see my psychiatrist at 10:30 and my migraine doctor at 1:30. Whoopie.

I don't want to do aaaaaaaanything today. I want to hold as still as possible with warm dog and warm computer and no shower and watch tv and movies. Dog is so warm, livingroom is so sunny, body is on the shores of that little island of Notinpain but certainly not running across the beaches or building sandcastles. These are the days that trouble me. I never know if I should push myself to do things and be busy and that's all I need to feel better, or if by pushing myself I'll end up crashing and burning and breaking things. When I feel just a touch worse, it becomes clear and I slip into my migraine-mode and I knit and do my other quite low-stress projects and stop being so hard on myself. I'm not sure being hard on myself gets me much further when I feel well, so I think today I will try allowing myself to do and not do whatever and trust that if it's really that important,  if I really care about it and it matters, I will get it done. So how much longer before I shower?

Of note: growing up, my parents (mom in particular) would constantly nag and berate about  absolutely everything until it got done. Every task came with a feeling of resentment and conflict. Procrastinating was a form of rebellion, like a naughty pleasure and a scarring masochism. I try to recreate that same narrative of "Shouldn't you be ___ right now? How long have you been doing this other useless thing instead? Ok, after the next ___ you will do the thing you should be doing." Then of course after the next ____ I continue to do whatever it is that I said I would stop doing and bargain with myself. "Ten more minutes." Ten minutes later: "I have to finish this thingy." After finishing that thingy, "That wasn't nearly satisfying enough. I need to do another thingy."  Then, " I told you you should have been doing that other thing an hour ago! Now you have hardly any time to do it. Go go go! What's wrong with you? Why do you always do this?"

As they used to say on the old anti-drug ads, "I learned by watching you!"

Not today. Today, I am allowing myself the freedom of a full migraine day, but without a full migraine, let's see what I do.  Hopefully not get a migraine, because that's already a possibility the way the lights have been moving...

Ketchup

I'm catching up on my Daily Show and Colbert Report tonight after an extremely productive though not visibly lucrative day.
February 4, Henry Louis Gates was on. He's the Harvard professor who got arrested on suspision of breaking into his own home and then people were yelling "racism" in every direction and Obama got involved and eventually the media blitzed the "beer summit" on the White House lawn like it was an actual peace talk between races.
In all of the hubbub and the hoopla surrounding his erroneous arrest, all I heard was that he was a professor at Harvard. Turns out, he studies histories of/through people's DNA, mapping out bloodlines and relations and all the crazy fun intermingling that makes America what it is. I wonder if he mapped out the bloodlines of the guy who arrested him, Obama, and any particularly annoying reporters, just to see if they were his distant cousins.

February 3 Colbert had on a guy who promotes a "caveman lifestyle." The guy seemed like an annoying dick, but at the end he was talking about his "ideal woman" being a carnivorous lactose-intolerant with celiac. Basically, all the things I can't eat. I felt like writing in and saying "I'm your perfect woman but you seem like a self-righteous schmuck. Go fuck yourself."

So hostile. Must be bedtime.

You probably think this song is about you

Love is longing? Is the unobtainable? The feeling that your emotional muscles are being stretched to their limit, that is love?
No.
That is familiar. That is the semi-silent suffering that makes for great novels and television dramas and plenty of mediocre works of truth and fiction, too.
It's what we late bloomers, wallflowers, writers, and dreamers  have been carving into trees our entire lives.
Now here we are, blossoming in a maniac's paradise, the world delivered on a plate via room service, and all we know is longing and books and promises we carved into trees.
I still blossom in wallpaper and words, but there is too much world overflowing with true love and fullness to get caught in webs of longing for its own sad sake.
I know you can see how much world is out there--love is there, too. The searing fades away when you can see the love, the intentions, and the humanity.
Now, I'm lapping up every last drop I can get, but I'm also looking for a partner. My heart does a lot of crazy things, but I trust my intuition lately, and whatever happens happens. I want to feed this to you in pill form. I want to take your sadness and flush it into the ether so it's merely another frosty breath passing through winter.
Mine, too.
And then you will see friends as love and longing as pain and love as possibility.

Another Saab Story

My car is still in the shop. Again. It knows I'm not a "Saab person;" I don't but weird little upgrade parts so the engine does weird little things and I don't go to shows or internet forums to talk about Saab things and I don't speak Swedish and I don't rub down the leather seats with tanning oil. I like the ignition key position on the center console and I like the seat warmers and other than that, I have no business driving a Saab. It knows. It melts and cries fluid and throws belts every chance it gets. I need it to be healthy long enough to empty it out and sell it and buy a friggin' van.

Yesterday was pretty much amazing so I think I'll give it its own post...

@The antiques auction. Man standimg next to an antique saddle says "Excuse me, i think you should buy saddle and i be your horse and you ride me."

When it rains, it rains goldfish

Yesterday, chocolate proved itself a migraine trigger. I took my pills and resigned myself to a night at home doing dishes and laundry and watching movies.
The phone rang  a little after 7; Possible Boy wanted me to go hang out with him at the bar. I told him  I wasn't leaving the house, blah blah blah, and we began an extended texting conversation while he went to the bar and I washed dishes.
One of the dishes that needed washing was Aural Girl's Pyrex. I didn't know if it could go in the dishwasher, so I texted her to ask. When my phone beeped to say I had a new message, I assumed it was AG or PB, but no! it was Jame's Spader's now former roommate. I'd started the night running around in one of my slip/chemise/nightie things because I was cleaning and flatly refusing to wear pants or real clothes of any sort, plus, as you may have gathered from my previous few posts, I've been insatiably horny as hell for the past few days. Then both James Spader's ex-roommate and Possible Boy were sending suggestive flirty texts. I like suggestive texts. I also can get carried away with suggestive texts. Apparently I can also read more into them than ever actually exists, as when Possible Boy came over and I put the kibosh on the flirty stuff and then he left just a few minutes into Billy Elliott, I assumed he left because he thought he was coming over for a reprise of November and instead got my nervous-like-I'm-at-a-job-interview mask and zero comfort or encouragement.
I tried to keep watching the movie but Beetle's brother (ok, new name for Beetle's brother: Manbug. It's like a ladybug is related to a beetle but this one's definitely a man) kept texting me, hounding me to come over and smoke up with him. I still refused to leave my house but told him he was welcome to come to me. So he came.
I did, too, but that wasn't until a few hours later...
I wasn't going to get involved with Manbug, and as far as I'm concerned I'm still not getting "involved" with him; the universe handed me this perfect little opportunity and, unlike the other boys on my dance card, I know I can fool around with him and not crush his soul. In the extremely short-term, anyway.

After PB left, I emailed him about our not hooking up. However many of you dear readers just rolled your eyes and shook your heads and asked, "Jesus, Annabell, are you completely socially oblivious?!?" the answer is yes. Turns out not only was it a faux pas in the general being-a-dork sense, but my assumptions that PB's innuendo texting was anything more than playing around was dead wrong. I guess I didn't think it was more than playing until he said he was coming over when I knew he was drunk, but I'm glad I was wrong. He made a point of clearing the air today. I was jonesing for a fuck buddy and trying to be there for him as a friend at the same time and I'm terrible at multitasking, so maybe putting PB at priority #1 made me think he was part of priority #2. Who knows.

I got my hair cut, low-lighted (darkened in such a way that it actually looks like it's highlighted even though the highlights are the pieces that are my natural color), and my eyebrows darkened all for absolutely free and I really like it. We'll see how it turns out tomorrow when I try to do it myself, but for today, I am pleased

People are turtles the whole way down.

Side Effects

Today at therapy I was yammering at a million miles an hour about everything in my life and in my head and being "on the prowl" last night and my therapist asked. "Are you feeling lonely?"

I've gotten much better at handling myself during my migraine isolation, accepting it as not a big deal  because it can't kill me and I still can do so many things; but once I'm feeling like a normal person again, I want normal person things and I want them all at the same time to make up for days lost and prepare for days to come. It's like living in hurricane-prone paradise. Will everything you own be destroyed and washed away? Maybe. If so, you rebuild as fast as you can and board up the new windows so you have someplace to hide when the next one hits, if the next one hits. When they're bad, you're grateful to be alive, but still you lose something. The garden is washed away...is there a point in replanting the garden? Swing set crumpled...do you buy a stronger, better swing set or do you accept that you'll just have to be happy with the pool?

I hug the people I love a little too tight and want to eat as much of the world as I can. Yes, migraines are painfully lonely. I have my dog and I have as much internet as I can handle and I have wonderful people all over the country who send me text messages and make me smile, but sitting alone in the mostly-dark for a week and a half is lonely. More lonely than just the standard having to go through life without feeling complete lonely. It is lonely because I am alone.

That was one of the major plus sides to my friendship with NBF: we were happy just to be in the same room together, so I could be half-dead and he could play his computer games and we weren't alone. He was my husband-without-benefits. He wasn't particularly gracious about it, but if I needed to go to the store for something and couldn't drive or think, I could usually convince him to take me. Monday when I was mostly dead and needed to go to Walgreens I almost called Possible Boy for assistance but I decided I wanted to do it myself to prove I didn't need anybody. And I don't need anybody in a literal sense. For as bonkers and flighty as I feel much of the time, I'm quite self-reliant. But I don't  want to be alone. This doesn't require Husband or even Boy, just humans. Basically, it's no surprise I was ready to feed last night and spent today itching to affect the entire universe.

Ungrounded

I'm feeling better again. I was going to watch the season premier of LOST at Possible Boy's house but he decided he wanted to go out and not stay home for three hours of couch potato-ness. I texted James Spader to see what he was doing, since I know he watched LOST, too, and he would also be an entertaining watching-buddy. He would be full of conjecture and criticism, a side of myself I've been sprinkling with coarse ground sugar instead of feeding its usual lemons. (Un?)fortunately, James is out of town. The episode will be online tomorrow and I was much more interested in getting out and having fun tonight than watching other people run around an island, so I went to the bar for improv night.

Holy shit am I squirrelly.

I've been cooped up and feeling like crap for a week, and tonight was/is my explosion of all my kinetic energy not knowing where to go.

I left the bar shortly after Aural Girl did. Sometimes Possible Boy and I can't talk to eachother. This was one of those times.

But tonight, I was feeling dangerous. There was a bar full of Boys and I wanted to get in trouble. I wanted to do something with all this energy, wanted to watch something explode.

So I left. Before I could hurt anyone, or even ruffle feathers that might later need to be unruffled. But even now, I'm sitting here completely sober with too much fire behind my eyes, still wearing my boots and my coat. I could go back. I could prowl and devour and find something male and fleshy to prove I'm alive.

Down, girl.

Evening Ramblings

Sometimes my dog is so cute I can't stand it. According to a former light of my life/scourge of my soul, my dog is actually thinking "I am going to eat your face" every time he stares at you with those adorable, wide gaping eyes. Well, maybe my dog should eat the faces of the boys I bring home; I tend to let those boys treat me like crap, so somebody needs to be looking out for us...

That's not fair. I'm looking out a bit better. If I wasn't, I'd totally have gone for one of the not-particularly-nice-but-still-interesting boys. I may be subconsciously trying to train Possible Boy to treat me like crap, but he's one of the most frighteningly kind people I've met in my entire life. But there are more fish! Billions of fish! I have some pretty spectacular friendfish, and now I even have spectacular friendfish down the block, so when the next Boyfish comes swimming along I can freak out and cry and all those other things with people who can physically hand me the bag of marshmallows.

I fought the Topamax Withdrawal Monster today and won. Two phone calls and an email to my doctor's office, two phone calls and finally just showing up at Walgreens, and TADA! Topamax. The shakes are going down and I can almost walk straight again. Hooray!

I just want to watch pseudo-edgy TV dramas all the time. And say "pseudo-edgy" because I'm too cool to actually think anything on television is edgy. I'm sooo edgy. I live in Rogers Park. Sometimes, there's crime. There's even black people. Sometimes, I even talk to them. Oooh, edgy.

Oh shit. I put my chicken back on the George because it was still raw-ish. That was a good 20 minutes ago...
Chicken didn't really burn, but my dog may get a serious treat tonight...

Poke Her Face

My hands are covered in dry superglue. I made a bunch of cards with envelopes to match. I can't sell the sum total of what I did for more than $30, but I left a mess and I created things and I enjoyed the process and my head is better now than when this day began.

More things I want to write about but I'm crashing (finally...sleeping much of the day has me wide awake past 1 AM). I'll write a treatise on Lady Gaga as a songwriter and Gagaism as the new dadaism later. Just watch this because it is in my head and totally changed my opinion of Lady Gaga:

Couch Party

Earlier today I gave myself my ketorolac tromethamine shot, walked the dog, and fell asleep on the couch before I took off my coat. When I woke up from the nap, I still had the headache. I went to the Walgreens drive-thru and forced myself through a quick shopping trip at my little local grocery store. I needed rice milk but there was no way I could deal with Dominicks (now owned by Safeway), so I still have no rice milk. It is amazing what I can do, when necessary, with migraine. It's also amazing how hard some things can be. The mess builds and builds, and at this point I'm still assuming I'll feel better in another day or so, and then I can clear away the rubble. Now, the logic and organization receptors are frustratingly haywire and as long as I'm not back in permanent status migraine mode, it's not worth trying to think in the way that hurts most.

When I came home from my errands, my dog was in my nap spot on the couch. I've since reclaimed the space, forcing him to build himself a little fort out of the cushions. First he had to "dig" the cushions, then my sofa's slip cover provided him a more fruitful excavation. We stayed through sunset, watching Hulu. I ate half a papaya, three bananas, and a generously buttered sweet potato. I knit. I finished the entire season of Lie to Me and a good bit of the scarf I'm knitting. My dog farted a lot.

At least I don't feel bitter or ashamed of my day. Maybe the pain is too wide to fit my standard self-doubt, but I feel like I got today "right." I pushed on the things that required pushing and let go everywhere else. Aural Girl and Possible Boy are wonderful and amazing when I'm migrainey. They say nice things and mean them and care and are concerned in a way that isn't more about themselves (cough, my mother, cough cough). They went to see the NBA game in Milwaukee, and I just got a text from Possible Boy that says "having a blast, wish you were here with us!" and at this particular moment I am very glad I am not with them because they are somewhere with noise and motion and people and things that would make me curl up into a little ball and cry. People confined to wheelchairs don't generally get to climb through ancient ruins or Escher lithographs; I may not be able to plan attendance at indoor sporting events, concerts, or the entire city of Las Vegas. I'm so used to having it all, it's not a bad life to have it most.

In a perfect world...

Dear doctors,
When Walgreens calls you to refill a prescription, call them back. Due to insurance, I can  only refill my prescriptions a week in advance. That should be plenty of time to authorize additional refills. It's a huge part of what you do.

Dear Walgreens,
If the doctor doesn't call back, please try calling again. Please. I am at home not knowing if or how much you have hounded them. I don't know if they've already called it back in and you just haven't completed the prescription. You claim to do all of this so I don't have to. Great. Then please do.

There is a reason I am on so many medications, and when that reason coincides with those medications not getting refilled, it sucks a lot. I'm having enough trouble walking the dog and feeding myself at semi-regular intervals. It would be great if I didn't need to chase down doctors on the weekend when I've run out of my emergency supply because only one of my five refills are ready for pick-up and I submitted it all on Monday.

In large amounts of pain and this is not helping,
Annabell

Too cold and uncomfortable to do anything. Must watch Bones. David Boreanaz is hot.

Addendum

Weird exploded into ouchy head. Anybody surprised?

Expanding

Feeling really weird today...indecisive,  too. Go to the auction as a proactive move and hope to find something I can turn around for a larger profit or stay home and do the million things I want to get done here?
It's good that  I'm back to doing things and feeling  like I can do things, but I've also welcomed back that unnecessary anxiety that every minute I'm wasting and there's a world of ToDos hovering above. Sort and clean and list and sell go go GO! That's the life I'm trying to step away from. I'm not saying I want to sit around doing nothing all day. I'm trying to see things to do as things that give my life more dimension. Maybe that's the real key--make my daily choices based on some guess as to what will bring the most dimension (which is different from happiness) to my life, knowing full well that each choice is a guess, that I can only measure in relation to myself, and that that's still a worthwhile measure to make.

An undiscussed side effect of migraine: too much time to think.

In other news, I could sure use a fuck-buddy right now. I need something extremely hot and physical and emotionally uncomplicated. I'm going through my head all the Boys who have expressed interest like a closet full of clothes with nothing to wear. It's all a nasty little hornets nest of me making excuses not to go to the ball because I'm afraid my admirers won't want to dance with me and if they do I'll freak out and spend the rest of the night hiding in the powder room. But aside from all that, fuck buddy. Want one. Now.

Obedient

My dog and went to an almost two hour evaluative session at a trainer today. Is this the way I want to train him? While there, I was very well trained to think it was the answer, but I'm very susceptible. Going straight from the dog trainer to my parents' house, I still had the confidence mask on from dog training and when my dad tried to intervene (well intended but all the usual gobbldy gook); I gave him the verbal "NO" I normally reserve for my dog. I spent the rest of the night correcting my father's dog-spoiling behavior. Having the self-training fresh in my mind also helped  me with my own therapy work, since the emotional fence was up and what it lacked in strength it made up for in height. My parents still pried into everything I tried to leave outside their knowledge base, but like my dog, I made some awkward but progressive steps in keeping things outside their knowledge base. They really don't accept the "I don't want to talk about it/tell  you" cues that work for most of humanity. My mother always says strangers tell her their life stories for no apparent reason. Her prying, nudging gestures amid a pronounced and purposeful silence might have something to do with it. I like extracting people's stories, too, but it's good to remember/know that it's not always because people are so desperate to talk or tell us--we egg  them on, consciously or not.

Another fun moment with the parents: my mom told a story about something that happened in the past few weeks. My dad jumped in to say the exact opposite happened. My mother remembered an extremely different course of events. I'm sure my father was right because, I'm finally fully aware, my mom doesn't always remember reality. Years and years and years of assuming I was the crazy one! I may have some of the crazy too, but I don't trust perception to be anything more than perception. The other day I was using the analogy of colorblindness, and it's funny because my mom knows she's terrible at color and yet she still argues and insists she's right in any color-based decision.

So me, coming back from being strong and dominant all night, instead of being energized or encouraged, I can't fight this sinking discomfort, that (at least the extreme version of the dog part) is too much. It's the black-and-white shit again. I'm never supposed to pet him unless he "earns" it. When my dog bit a person, I should have "beaten the shit out of him." My dog was beaten enough already, thank you. The other dogs at this place just sat there perfectly until told to move to another spot. Can I have a dog who won't bite my friends without having to make him sit on nails?

We have a choke collar and strict instructions. My strict will never be the trainer's snapped German instructions (odd language choice with no accent and mostly Polish coworkers), but I'm starting to think I want to check out a few other local trainers...I'm naturally resistant to some of the harshness necessary to train my dog, but there may be more bugging me about this guy than just that.

Last night I was drunk.
Today I am cranky.
I need to sit in a steam bath of magical herbs and clense my aura.

Floating Head, Frozen Heart

Today I am woozy. All day. At one point I was sitting in bed on the computer and a piece of paper in my peripheral vision moved and floated of its own volition. I turned to look at the paper and it was still kind of floating in a halo. Then everything looked floaty.
Not. Fucking. Cool.
Cool if you're dropping acid or smoking pot or doing some other purposeful thing to alter your perception of reality. Cool if you get to brag about it later to your friends. Significantly less cool when you immediately start to wonder if you somehow messed up your very legal doctor prescribed medications, if there was something you had eaten or hadn't eaten (the latter of the two being my most common culprit, though probably not today). Finally, Cool curls up into a little ball and whimpers in anguish when you start figuring out where you are in your completely fucked up menstrual cycle. Ah yes, sorry Cool, but I think it doesn't matter how many pills I shove down my throat, my body goes crazy every time it remembers it's female.

Last night was more general evidence of my biologic sex.
I've been in general targetless boy-craving mode all week. For the first time since, well, "band camp," I have this collection of boys who want me. I'm trying to convince myself to want some of them back without them feeling like consolation prizes.
One came home with me last night.
He ate cornflakes
We talked, and the whole conversation was just a huge reminder of why I'm so averse to really dating him. His answer for everything is "Well, just do it." Everything is black and white, and most of it is black. He truly is what hipsters aspire to be. It's not necessarily a bad thing and there's a lot more to him than just that, but I am a writer. Equivocation is a lifestyle for me. He thinks I should just stop. He thinks that's an answer. Well, it's an answer, but once again, there are an infinite number of answers and who's to say what's right? Does it make me happy? I don't know. Is it supposed to? It's where I am right now and may not be forever but it is how I make sense of the world. I'm not satisfied with "yes" and "no."
"Yes" and "no" may never enter the playing field with this boy since the closest thing he did to making a move was pull me into an awkward hug. I wasn't helping or encouraging. I'd eaten a huge late dinner and my stomach was not happy and then he was declaring the world a shallow awful place. Maybe next time I'll put post-it notes up to remind myself to use boys for general life experience. I'm already being not nice by being vague and waffly, if I start actively using boys then they at least get something out of it.

For the Love of Dog

The personality traits that make someone a good leader are not the same traits that make someone want to lead.
I made it to my first condo board meeting. Tonight they were going to discuss rules and regulations, and based on previous interactions with my neighbors, I felt it was important I be there to at least voice concern over excessively stringent or intrusive rule-making. I turned out to be the only one there who wasn't a board member and no huge decisions were made, but a discussion on satellite dishes made me glad I came. One board member wanted to completely outlaw satellite dishes as they are an eyesore and can be destructive to common structural elements to the building. If the dish is going to drill into the roof and cause leaks for everybody, that's a totally understandable concern. But completely banning all dishes because they "look like a trailer park" is excessive.
"They effect everybody's property values."
I didn't say it out loud but shouted in my head, "So do black people. Should we ban them, too?"
I love the Rogers Park that exists at my bar and at the beach and in my head. It's the version of this neighborhood in which everybody is a little bit quirky and has actual friends from at least three different continents, four different decades, and not more than two el stops away. Too many people in my building invested hoping to help gentrify the neighborhood and turn their condos around. Monetarily, I would do well for that to happen, but for my own personal selfish reasons I hope my happy little alcove of utopia stays eclectic and gritty until I'm ready to move on. For non-personal selfish reasons, I hope Rogers Park can maintain its multifaceted complexion for a long time. The city needs places that are neither dangerous nor bleached-out gentrification yuppievilles.

I went to the dog spa place by my house today to get my dog's nails trimmed and see if they had any good private dog trainer recommendations. My dog was extremely well-behaved for the trimming and they had a 50% off coupon for the trainer they normally recommend. Jackpot. Except the trainer is in North Plainfield. Don't be fooled by the name of this suburb, there is nothing north about it. It is near Joliet and all its ass-faraway-southliness. They do in-home training (what my dog needs, considering his worst behavior is in the home when strangers come over), but their website didn't give concrete pricing so we'll see how expensive they are even with 50% off. I found a few others on Yelp that sound good and are closer and have real listed prices. Time for puppy to stop scaring people.
Coincidentally, after I'd gotten the trainer coupon earlier today, the condo board president informed me that my upstairs neighbors (who I never see) had expressed concern that my dog might be dangerous. I should have just left it at "We're signing up for private lessons," but I took it unnecessarily personally that my neighbors didn't come talk to me themselves, so I said all sorts of extra dumb crap that made things worse. The condo board president keeps his dogs in a cage all day so they won't mess up the house. I don't know what I thought I would gain by talking. It's just hard for me. My dog isn't a thing. He means the world to me. He is also very, very difficult. I'm not going to let him attack your baby. I might let him take a little nibble out of Possible Boy's leg, but both my dog and Possible Boy are up to date on their shots.
I tried going to bed once tonight. My dog puked a huge quantity of gross on my fitted sheet and one of my sweaters. He's not usually a pukey dog. I cleaned it up and changed the sheets and felt restless and bothered by my deep and profound love for this creature no one else seems to find lovable.

Easy As

If you are male and significantly older than me, can I please talk to you because you are interesting and not because I want to sleep with you?

I've been updating my work-related blogs and listing things for sale on my website fairly consistently the past several days. Today I took a gazillion pictures and only got one thing up into the Internetosphere and felt like I'd let myself down in my new "do one of each of these things every day" plan. But I get lots of gold stars today. I did a lot of work stuff until my body informed me that I had to be asleep. Then there was absolutely no question I needed to be asleep, so I went and took a 2+ hour nap that I didn't feel ad about taking because I wasn't being lazy. Then when Possible Boy invited me to dinner (he cooked! he's learning to cook and this may be the first time he's ever made food by himself for another person to eat, and it was quite good, not just for a first attempt) I didn't leave the house until I put up the one worky bloggy thing that matters most if it isn't daily. Social happy fun time later, I came home and made caramel corn (my air popper is back in my life and reminding me how wonderful chompy snacky popcorn can be) and edited some photos so tomorrow I can list early and easily before I have to go to therapy and chase down my as yet unfinished car.
Increased productivity and self-assurance, brought to you by amitriptyline. One more little green pill before bed and POOF! You can stretch just far enough to grab the world by the testicles.

My brother heads back to school tomorrow, so Sunday night he came over to hang out. Getting him up here was a little like convincing a dog to go to the vet, but we finally had our plans for him to drive up after the Sunday football games for dinner and quality sibling bonding time. Then my parents called to invite themselves because I haven't seen them in weeks. Fine. No time with just the brother, but the parents are much easier when he's around. Well, Sunday morning I get a text from my brother that made it sound like he wasn't thrilled with my parents' self-invitation either, so I called them and asked if they would be terribly hurt if I saw them a different time. I know my mother really likes it when my siblings and I want to spend time with one another (her mother is queen of pitting people against eachother and it's taken my mom 50+ years to start valuing her own brothers and sister), so of course it was fine and hopefully she'd see me soon but not Sunday.
I'm trying to set my boundaries with my parents, but I'm not sure where those boundaries need to be. They own me financially and they're not evil entities I want completely stricken from my life, but I'm going to have to find and define and refind and redefine that middle ground over and over. It's easier to make caramel corn.

Effexor withdrawal is the worst thing in the universe, genocide be damned.

Prozac withdrawal seems to be not so much terrible as floaty fluffy weird.

Why am I going through Prozac withdrawal? Because after my pharmacy spent 6 days calling my psychiatrist for an authorization on the refill and I blew through my three day emergency supply, and then called my dear darling shrink myself on a Friday evening, hoping to inspire some sense of urgency, it wasn't until 10 PM that he finally sent me a text message saying no more or less than "Prozac called in." The pharmacy at my Walgreens closes at 10. It opens tomorrow morning at 9. I went online to check me account, and they still have the thing "pending physician approval," but if I'm the first thing they see when they open, maybe I can be drugged and not insane early enough for some quality estate saleage.

The end.

Dammit dog, walk yourself.
Ok, fine. It's a damn good thing you're cute.

Relatively Sane

Sometimes it's satisfying to move a huge pile of boxes from one end of the room to the other, or paint all the white roses red, or do some other completely inane task that keeps you occupied and leaves you with some form of proof that it's been done. I never gave "busy work" enough credit. Today, I was busy all day. I was working on my Etsy shop and researching things and tidying up select portions of my house. None of it will cure world hunger or pay my bills, but it was definitely something, and it felt good. It's ok for it to feel good. My parents' version of the world, where any business-type venture is only valid and worthwhile if it's going to sustain you and your great grandchildren, is insane. It's bullshit and it's insane and I should laugh at them for being crazy. But when you're raised by crazy, the whole world becomes relative and possible and it's never quite safe to laugh at anything but yourself.

Now, I'm off to do something crazy: going with Aural Girl to see a friend of mine from Arts Camp 13 years ago at his random restaurant gig in Irving Park. Why not?

Too sleepy. Finally did stuff today. More of the same stuff that doesn't matter in the great cosmic scheme of things but matters in my little self-made universe. Dishwasher fixed. Spent my time doing things that hypothetically lead me towards an ultimate goal of creation, stability, and a place in the grown-up charade. Now, my eyes don't want to stay open and my dog won't stop whining, so that's all you get tonight.

Contemplating Consolation Prizes

Attraction. Such a strange beast. To whom and when? How much is about the person? How he acts and looks and smells? How much is about me? What I've eaten, medication cocktail, lunar cycles and personally allotted social norms?
There is a Boy from the bar who likes to hit on me in a way I don't find objectionable, particularly when I'm drunk. Aural Girl, also drunk, played cheerleader last night and thinks at least dating this guy is a good idea. Maybe. I don't see it going anywhere, but at least he's not an asshole, and I wonder if I can be attracted enough to sex itself to keep myself happy. If I can, is it worth it?

Green Mills and Fire Drills

Drinking seems like a good idea because it is the social norm and then I feel better for a few hours even if I feel worse later.

NEW for 2010: dating boys even if I'm not particularly attracted to them. I know a lot of really great guys, but I keep throwing them out of the dating pool because I don't find them attractive and/or I don't see any real long-term potential. Fuck that. Date them all. Maybe something sparky will show up, and if it doesn't, at least I'm getting some much-needed practice. Fire drills.

Aural Girl and I went to the Green Mill tonight. It was a lot of fun. I'm very happy to have a friend with whom I can do that sort of shit, last minute on a Thursday.

I Sweet Potato

Spanish has two distinct words for the verb "to be" depending on if it's ephemeral or permanent. I wish we made that distinction in English. I want to claim Popeye's "I am what I am and that's all that I am," but only in the estar sense, not the ser sense.

My heat is back on but I'm not warm yet. I'm hungry. It's easy for me to slip into the holes in my wafer shell. What can I eat and be full and think again? Ground beef. Potato. Rice. Somewhere between beef and rice should be a meal.
I get to this point where I can't think clearly unless I write. I got to that point in New York and figured I "should" be able to function like a "normal" person and ignored it and ended up crying while eating a crummy calzone because that's what I could handle. I've been me for 27 years and I keep holding out hope that maybe this time I'll land closer to average.

60 degrees in house. Why? I don't know. Can't stay awake long enough to figure it out. Dishes? Laundry? Have I been taking my pills? I think I took my pills. I just need to sleep. Sleep until the warm comes back. April? Food tastes like Chef Boyardee. Fire is warm. Make warm. I quit.

I have a dog. He is cute. I want to snuggle him all the time. Snuggle snuggle snuggle.

Responsible

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

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

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

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

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

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

Going Places

I went to New York.
I went to Cleveland.
I went a little bonkers.

"How can I leave my dog with Neighbor Guy, how can I leave my house such a mess, how can I justify spending money right now, I'm just like Neighbor Guy, I'm irresponsible, I'm inserting myself into other people's lives and vacations, I'm not worthy of friendship," came with me on the plane Sunday.

Companions

Merry Christmas.

After spending too much time knitting while watching movies and not enough time digging through the crap in my office or doing actual work, I went over and hung out at the apartment of my friend who has or had a crush on me. Not James Spader (who sent me a really sweet text message this afternoon from Christmas at his parents house in Florida...), but another boy who makes his awkward feelings known. Another Boy in my flock of "gentlemen callers." My minions. And why exactly am I not attracted to this Boy? I have no fucking clue. We had a really nice time last night, but I left his place feeling like a lesbian for the total lack of attraction I felt.

My dog is staying with Neighbor Guy while I'm in New York. I flat out refused yesterday and this utterly and completely terrified me this morning, but Neighbor Guy has been pretty much wonderful about the whole thing and even humoring and placating my nervousness. We had a trial day today, and when I left, my dog was growling and snapping and trying to bite NG's dog, who is a puppy and at least 100 lbs bigger and took the snarls to be just the most fun new game in the world. I feared the worst. NG wasn't even going to be home all day; his upstairs neighbor comes by to walk his dog when he's at work, and NG doesn't have a phone. I was going to board my dog at the kennel, but apparently they require one of his vaccinations to be done every 6 months instead of every 12 like the vet recommends, and it has to be 48 hours or more before his stay, and I didn't learn any of this until yesterday afternoon after everything closed until Saturday, a mere 24 hours before I need to drop him off.
But this may all be for the best. Neighbor Guy is reminding me why we're friends, and when I came to get my dog tonight, he was very unhappy to see NG, but seemed perfectly find with the other dog, and considering how many hours NG will be at work anyway, that's what really matters.

Now, I go snuggle with my favorite little guy. He's had a rough day.

Olive Eeew

Clear, sharp pain. Welcome back. Imagine balancing a dictionary on my head when Migraine violently thrusts a jagged sword through my left eye and up through the left side of my skull to lance me and the book like a couple of olives in a martini glass. Migraine twitches and jerks, nervous and angry, waiting for someone or something to happen and clanking my skewered olive brain against the rim of the glass. At least today I'm not soaked in gin. Clear as a bell, pain being my only distraction. Get things done, Annabell, you can do it.

Too Much Frankincense

I don't know where I've been all day. I know physically, and I even managed to accomplish the things that had to be accomplished, but it's been a day for feeling slow and zombiesque.
Maybe I ate too much Trader Joe's polenta.
Sunday was a zombie day, too, but I managed to get my butt out the door and run errands with Aural Girl. JoAnn's and Target and Trader Joe's, oh my. I would like to discuss Possible Boy's Christmas present in here, but that is something I will censor due to his possibly reading this.
Aural Girl's gift, on the other hand, is both harder and easier. My brilliant Plan A is too expensive, and I could get her the cheaper version but I'm not so sure it's worth it. Plan A1 was to get her vintage fabrics from an estate sale, since the one time she came estate saling she got an old sewing machine - the kind build into its own sewing table - with all the table's contents, the matching chair, and the contents of that chair's flip-up seat. Grand total: $25. Even before the sewing machine find, we'd talked about taking sewing classes together, so I've been on the look-out for fabric at every sale ever since. No luck. I can't tell you how many times over the summer and fall I passed up bags and boxes and piles of amazing vintage fabric because I didn't want to start hoarding fabric for myself. Now that I'm looking for it, no luck. I found some scarves that I bought, but they may be better to sell than to gift.

I think Neighbor Guy is an alcoholic.
He told me what he wants me to give him; he wants the vintage maps I got at a garage sale with him this summer. Or at least some of them. Over the summer I tried to give him the one of Camaroon/Viet Nam/that whole mess circa 1970, but he left it here. I thought about getting it framed, but he's the person who looks at the only artwork I've had professionally framed and says "The picture is nice but that cheap frame is hiddeous. It ruins the piece." So I'll get him a Jane Austen novel or something. He loves Jane Austen.

I had to lay down tonight at 7 PM. The zombie weirdness was getting sharp, like a thick hazy cloud rolling around in my head, bouncing off the sides all day that began to turn dark and thundery. I set my alarm for 8 so I wouldn't ruin my chances at falling back asleep for the night, but of course I managed to kill my alarm and wake up at 9:30 with my dog whining at me. At that point, I figured I'd be better off if I could just sleep through the night, but my dog wouldn't stop fussing so I figured he needed to go out. Coat and shoes on, I'm ready to go out the door, and he crawls back into bed. Bastard. I spent half an hour trying to go through and organize some of the crap in my office, popped my bedtime pills, again tried the perky-voiced suggestion of "out?" to Mr. Fuzzlump, and now I'm back in my office, coat and shoes on, creeping up on midnight and feeling the clearest I've felt since Friday. Still, I know my best bet is to go back to bed. I'm going shopping tomorrow with Possible Boy to get a "thank you for hosting" present for Aural Girl's parents.
Which reminds me. I freaked myself out a bit when he called. I didn't realize quite how creepy-out-of-it I was, and I'm pretty sure I sounded normal, but I was on my way to the kitchen for food when the phone rang, and when PB asked about ideas for gifts, it was all too much for my mind to handle. It was like I was still stuck in the tar and sludge of walking down my hallway towards the kitchen while thinking about what to eat (a complicated multitask in my clouded state) and then going from there to a ringing telephone and human contac gave me quite a jolt. Too many stimuli. We'd already hung up before it dawned on me that PB spent the weekend in his home town with his own parents. That I could have just agreed to join to NAMBLA by the time my brain caught up with my mouth's auto-pilot function. Is it the drugs I'm on? The migraines themselves? Something that's causing the migraines? Something totally different? I know I said I'd sit back, relax, and accept my unintentional stonerism. Then again, I say a lot of things.

Be A Part Of It

Next Sunday I'm flying to New York. Possible Boy will have already driven Aural Girl and her dog to her parents' house and experienced a big bustling family Christmas. Birdie and NBF are both in New York. So are lots of other swell people I know. And I like visiting New York. I used to want to live there, but now it feels too crowded, too nonstop, too type-A to make it my permanent residence. The Annabell who wanted to live in New York had no children, a string of not-so-seriuos boyfriends, lived in an apartment the size of a closet, wrote for a major publication, and wore spiky heals and feather boas right through menopause.
I'm not that Annabell anymore. The spiky heals and feather boas perhaps, but current Annabell craves something concrete, grounded, stable to hold onto.
Speaking of which, I need to clean up again. The Mess is back on all available surfaces. I'm finishing projects. trying to see things to absolute completion. Right now, my life is the sum of my projects. Everything is a project. Photograph things, list things online, mail things, fix this chandelier, fix and clean up those shoes, find a way to wash the lace, photograph the things that are now fixed and clean, do online promotion things, go to stores and try to sell them things, make cards, make envelopes, buy more things to sell, buy basic life necessities, make food, eat food, tidy things, clean things, call to straighten out a doctor billing issue (because at any given moment in my life, there's always at least one), pay the bills, balance the checkbook, turn a ceramic nativity into a menorah, etc. etc. etc.
My life is juggling bubbles, and since I'm the juggler, I have a huge amount of influence and control, but since I'm not a very good juggler, I get frazzled and punch myself instead of catching any bubbles.

Last night Aural Girl brought over a bottle of wine and we got silly and went to the bar. I had on a sweater dress I'd gotten from my parents for Chanukah and she was trying out her new stretch belt with satiny shirt thing and jeans. I didn't think my outfit was anything particularly special, but one of the bar regulars who has repeatedly made it clear he wants to do me (and I've repeatedly made it clear I have zero interest) thought this dress was the hottest thing ever and kept telling me so. As I flitted about the bar, talking to a few of the people I like talking to, Aural Girl stayed glued to her seat. When I noticed she hadn't moved and wasn't talking to anyone, I made my way back to her corner.
If I had my entire life on film, internal monologue included, I could find all the scenes where I was in AG's place. As we talked, I recognized that feeling and space in the universe: feeling inferior, jealous in a way that you don't wish the other person had less but just wished you could do or be what they do or are. I want so badly for AG to see that she is every bit as shiny as I am, that it's her turn to be the Pretty One, too. We're both so used to being The Smart One or The Friend. She's actually done far better than I have pulling relationships out of nerd status. I tried to remind her that for all the random boys who like me when I'm smiling, the one I was interested in wanted her. But I of all people should know, when you don't think you're pretty, you just don't believe the people who say otherwise.

Dog is warm. Night is late. Tummy is hungry again.
Until next time

Unconscious Connection

Yesterday, in real life, I couldn't find the cable to connect my camera to my computer to upload photos.

This morning, in dream, I found the cable in my desk drawer where I'd already looked. Realizing I was asleep, I grabbed onto the cable as tight as I could and tried to pull it with me into wakefulness. I did, for once, manage to wake myself up, but of course I didn't have the cable.

Back in real life, I went to check the drawer. The cable was visibly sitting on the shelf under the drawer.

Un-Cycling

Icky Lady Time again. I can't say "that time of the month" anymore because it's no longer such a standardized monthly thing, thank you progesterone-only pill that's supposed to make things better not worse. I spent insane amounts of yesterday and today in coma-mode. Dreams about being on a cruise with my family that turned into a submarine, dreams about doing things and saying things that I then wished I hadn't done or said and couldn't undo or take back, dreams about all my everyday life events so when I wake up I have to double-check my memory bank to make sure I did something and didn't just dream it. Possible Boy and Aural Girl came over to eat leftovers from Sunday night's Indian Food Extravaganza (there's a draft of a post about that night but I never managed to properly verbalize everything so in Blogland it never existed...there's just so much that never makes it into writing...too many infinite factors making up life and I want to express them all and I can't). Aural Girl has a cold. I need to go to the grocery store and thought I'd make her some mazzoh ball soup today. I went to the grocery store in at least one of my dreams. I think I did my Christmas shopping, too. Then I wake up and it's hours and hours later and I never left my bed, never changed my clothes or brushed my teeth.

To be honest, I don't entirely hate it. I hate it when there was something I had to do and missed. Today, I had enough food in the house to put off going to the grocery store. I almost finished rewiring another chandelier. I read the rest of A Wrinkle In Time. And I danced between the realities un, sub, and mostly consciousness. No fighting it, just drift and play with the wonder of wakefulness.

In bed. Left my book in the car. Dog thrown out of bar without doing anything. I want to hurry up & be ok with possible boy as just friend. And go to new york.

Good Ideas, brought to you by Technology

At 1-something AM, I was playing around on Facebook. One of the regulars from my bar messaged me. He was bartending at the bar two blocks away and it was just him and one other person and they were bored and I should totally come down there. They'd even booze me for free. I was in my pajamas and hadn't been out all day, but somehow, at 1-something AM, listening to sad music and trying not to write too many blog posts that sounded like teen-angst bathroom graffiti, I thought maybe a change of scenery would be a good idea.

It was.

40-year-old guy I'm not actually interested in buy I still find interesting was the only other person there when I showed up. He likes telling me I'm pretty and amazing and since he pays some attention to his surroundings I actually take what he says as a compliment instead of empty flattery. For all the fucked up things with the way gender roles play out in our society, at this particular moment in time, I like whatever it is that makes men spit out as much complimentary garbage as possible. I'm still always the skeptic, and I return compliments a thousand fold when I honestly believe them, but let's be honest here; at least part of me changed out of my PJs an hour before last call so I could hear boys tell me I'm pretty and all the other things I'm trying to learn to believe.

I should make stew more often. It's delicious and easy and cheap.

Dear Possible Boy,

Can we both shed our need to pair rejection with love?

Thanks,
Annabell

Sense of Smell

I smell like my college dining cooperative: bleach, onion, and cooking oil gone cold. Add in my appropriately pruny fingers and the brand of Annoyed-At-A-Certain-Type-Of-Person I'm chewing and this is a total flashback to Nameless Liberal Arts College.
Birdie, you'll know what I mean. (Token Pakistani friend, too, if you still ever read this...)

James Spader and Neighbor Guy and a lot of the people at the coop back at Nameless (and, come to think of it, in my family...good thing I have the most recent two so I know it's not just Jews...) have been seriously, deeply, validly hurt by people close to them. We see these scars, conscious or not, and sooner or later we find one another.
But I don't think James, NG, and many many other Wounded Souls ever see beyond themselves. It's not something they do to be cruel or hurtful, their minds just don't work in a way that fully and meaningfully feel for and empathize with other people. It's like the difference between being able to translate from a foreign language and actually thinking in the foreign language. Empathy v. sympathy suggests (to me at least) that you had to have gone through the experience or something comparable in order to empathize, but not to sympathize. What I'm trying to express is different. It's for those of us who can't help but care. Maybe we get labeled "too sensitive" and we still think we're assholes because we can empathize with assholes, too.
Like most things, people come in various shades. In the Wounded Souls Club, I think the wounding process shoves members to one side or another: you can't see beyond yourself and can only relate to people in terms of yourself -or- you're hypersensitive and fear the consequences of exhaling.
I'm afraid to exhale, so I can only spend so much time with people on the other side without recouping. I used to think I had to spend time with and help those people. They are my parents, a number of Boys I've Liked and even Loved, my life-defining friendships. Punish myself for thinking of myself and being a selfish, spoiled little brat and feeling jealousy and disappointment. Find someone truly self-centered and serve them, follow them, fix them.

I get points for realizing that's exactly what Neighbor Guy is very early in our friendship. Maybe I'm being too quick to judge my most blatant current Male Suitors, but every time I tell myself I should give them another chance, spend more time with them, I'm back with the sense that they're somewhere between charity work and punishment.

I've said it before, I'll say it again:
I just want to be understood. By a person I understand. Reciprocal sharing the burden of the universe. And no being mean.
Really, as many people as possible, all within walking distance, would be great. I'm getting so much closer. Stupid non-reciprocal levels of feeling with Possible Boy. Stupid him going on all these dates and enjoying himself and still having his stupid heartstrigns get yanked by Aural Girl and me not being able to be the friend he needs because I am, alas, the stupid girl that I am.

Happy first night of Chanukah. My house smells like latkes. My car died, I spent many hours with James Spader (code-name James Spader, not the real one). We made lots of latkes and Aural Girl came over and there was good food and conversation and Chanukah-ness. We headed to the bar at 11 and booze and exhaustian kicked in as Aural Girl showed she was human and Possible Boy showed up with his new girl (who I actually think I like...couldn't she just make this easy and be a dispicable bitch?) and then it was just James Spader. Instead of letting people go with things they say, I push them to the verge of tears. I'm not trying to be evil or pop the zit, and rationally I know it's irresponsible since I'm not equipt to offer a full range of psycho-social services, but tonight I didn't even know I was pushing so hard until James Spader's face and voice changed and I recognized things coming from that bitter bile pit, beyond his usual triple-think and stuttering.
I want to be there for him, but I don't want to always be around him. Maybe I need more practice to be more comfortable, but I like my friends that feel comfortable. Is that lazy?

Need sleep NOW.

Dimensions

I took physics in high school, calculus in high school and one one class in college. I don't remember how to find a derivative anymore. I've read very little of Einstein and even less Stephen Hawking or Carl Sagan. What I am reading is A Wrinkle in Time for the first time since I was in fourth grade. Here is what my brain is puking:

Imagine a computerize chess board. The board itself is second dimensional. Each turn, each piece can scan its possible moves across the second dimensional field, but can only move in the first dimension (the knight is arguable, but I don't feel like arguing). When a piece is taken in a third dimensional game of chess, a person lifts the opponents piece off the board. This depth does not exist in second dimension chess, so the piece just disappears.
Scientists seem to agree that the fourth dimension is time. Makes sense. Put together an infinite number of one-dimensional lines to make a two-dimensional plane. Infinite two dimensional planes create a three-dimensional space. An infinite recording of our three-dimensional moments creates four-dimensional time.
But!
We spend so much time with the dimensions we can touch and comprehend. We like how ordinal they are, one creating the next, demonstrated with a stack of papers and a simple equation.
We're dealing with the infinite here, people. That means, quite literally, anything and everything can and will happen.
Things can exist in the second and fourth dimensions without life in the third. That chess game existed in time. Maybe the chess game could even perceive time in a way we third dimension humans can't. The fourth dimension seems to be an easy one to pair with other dimensions. I personally have the hardest time with the first dimension. No depth or breadth or anything. Just A to B. Yes or no. It just always feels wrong.
Before I go adding in any more dimensions, I want to make it clear with the ones we have that they are less in quantitative or qualitative order and more in order the way musical notes line up on a scale. The pitch sounds higher, note requires more vibrations per second, but we don't consider the quantitative or qualitative value of one note versus another. That's how I'm trying to see the world and that'd unquestionably how we should see the dimensions. We can give them numbers but fuck that whole cardinal/ordinal mess.

Our thoughts seem to be the infinite sum of our experiences, and our experiences are our human familiarity with time. Thus, the fifth dimension contains our human process of thought, our thinking consciousness. I've always been fascinated by how people think and how it varies; pictures, words, feelings.

Quick experiment: If I write the phrase "A very tall woman walked into the flower shop," do you hear the words as you read? Envision it happening? Get some essential sense and understanding of tall woman entering flower shop? Some combination? Something completely different? (PLEASE comment at the end of this post! I think we'd all like to know what it's like in other people's brains.)
Take the infinite summation of everything in the first five dimensions: line, plane, space, time, and thought. Total: feeling. People already use the "sixth sense" to describe something that is clearly based in a dimension of non-physical feeling, so I like feeling as the sixth dimension.
Again, I emphasize that none of these are ordinal and we, being human, are like the computerized chess board that loses sight of things as soon as they leave a dimension we understand.

There's so much I don't know, so much to know, so much universe.
I don't know quite how to explain the way in which this is both a purposeful distraction from Boy thoughts and at the same time justifies and makes whole everything that is incomplete. If you could plot this point where I am right now, it is the place of the spider. There's a lot pulling me down, but I remember how beautiful the world is, how infinite, and how possible and probable do their little dances to keep all of our dimensions and senses on edge with the sweet drug of hope.

Hating Myself over Boy

There's a girl. Possible Girl for Possible Boy.
I want to be perfect. I want to be the perfect friend and perfect person who can objectively see how good it is for Possible Boy to have a romantic interest that isn't me or Aural Girl, allowing him to start separating his friendship support system from his amorous subplots. It's something I need to do, too. Logical Annabell knows this.
But Logical Annabell also has support systems stationed in random pockets around the country. And Annabell's imperfect human emotional side craves a hypothetical boy who can look at all my inside goop and understand and hold me, who has the same inside goop and wants to be heard and held back, and then kissed until all the lonely pain stops tasting so bitter because now you're tasting it on love's lips.
With Possible Boy, I ran things backwards. I was trying so hard to look shiny and perfect, I didn't let him near all the important things. Between phone sex and my disastrous long-term friends-with-benefits non-relationship, all things sex default to a setting of fun with quarantined emotions. Hell, even before I myself got near sex, these are the two versions of it that existed in my world:
1) sex for unemotional fun, power and procreation
2) sex as the extension and completion of the perfect kiss

Now the stuff that makes me feel like an asshole re: Possible Boy.
I'm trying really hard lately to do things differently and do things for myself and not treat myself like crap. To that end, it's either fish or cut bait, either see about reentering myself in the more-than-friends pool or put some space between us so I can move on.
But Possible Boy doesn't have another support system. He needs a friend, and while I'm not so fabulous that I'm the only person in the entire world capable of providing adequate and proper friendship, I do understand in a way that seems manageable by a limited percentage of the populace. Everybody has different pieces of things they do and don't see. Maybe I like feeling important, or maybe after growing up with my parents hyper-controlling every aspect of my life, it's just more familiar for me to be entirely codependent. But Possible Boy is good at the codependency thing, too. He might say every mushy thing I've said about him, only about Aural Girl. It's this wonderful chain of low self-esteem. We are human and we treat ourselves like garbage so that no one else can treat us worse.

I may have to ask him not to read this post. Will someone please tell me what to do and then blame me when it goes wrong? That's what I seem to find most familiar and comforting.

Public transportation rules. Im on an espress train thats going what i want it to when i want it to. Cant txtblog while driving. Dont have to park the el.

Esteem

I want to love myself.
I hurt myself.
So much comes so easily to me, I don't know what to do when something is hard. Things either work or I figure out another way to make it easy for them to work.
My heart hurts. Loss and loneliness and jealousy are the hardest for me to bear. When a Boy likes me, I try to make it very clear from the start if he has any chance in hell so he never gets emotionally sucked in only to be let down. Maybe that's a bit too pre-emptive. I'm fussy and not feeling particularly good about myself this past week, and I know many girls in my position would go out and flirt and get as many of their Male Suitors as possible to tell them that they are pretty and wonderful and all that. I half-assed tried to contact the Boys Who Like Me yesterday and today, dolled myself up for karaoke, and still felt like crap. I couldn't really bring myself to tease forth accolades. Because it's evil or because I don't think I deserve their shiny words? Possible Boy has a new possible Girl, and of course that chokes me with extra jealous and lonely. How can I ever measure up to anyone else with a pulse?
I hate these feelings. Why do I feed them tequila? Why do I have them in the first place?

Worm

Very long day with too much driving in Friday traffic and getting mad at myself for things and not eating for many hours at a stretch. Tequila and Aural Girl heal all wounds. My psychiatrist official prescribed a sun lamp for seasonal depression. Why can't it just be ok to hybernate? Juggling my four main doctors and eight regular prescriptions makes me want to hybernate, too. Where's that One Magical Thing or Person that can make everything improve in a constant and noticable way?

Stupid Antisocial Dog

My head is still being stupid, but I had to walk the dog and I wanted human contact, so I tried walking him to the bar. Smoking in front of the door with some friends was the bartender least likely to ever be my friend but most likely to show up as a caricature on Saturday Night Live (and, subsequently, a person I'm glad to have performing behind the taps on slow nights).
That sentence had too many clauses. A lot of my sentences do.
Anyway, my dog being my dog cowered at the mass of cigarette-tokers guarding the door to the bar, but I tried dragging him in closer anyway. Next thing I know, I'm holding an empty leash as he bolts towards home. So much for human contact.
My dog is waiting for me around the corner, neither of us particularly concerned about the other's predilection for abandonment.
Dog reattached, we headed home. Who do we see? This uber-nerdy but very nice guy who has met my dog in the past at the bar and just crouched down and ignored my little psychopath until he was ready to sniff him. So we walk a block together while he talks more than I've ever heard him, saying life is hard right now and he's dropping out of his engineering PHD program because it's just too much. I should do full character write-ups on him and the bartender somewhere slightly less public. Or can I get away with putting them on here? Stupid public/private/anonymity/being a decent human being/covering my own ass/etc.etc.etc.

Requests from the Underworld

Head hurts. Neighbor Guy shows up, wants to hang out. He smells bad and hums and frustrates me in the way that on one hand inspires me and reminds me that my depression/stagnation stuff is silly and on another hand tightens the vice around my ouchy brain. Now I'm a bit more psychologically motivated to get off my ass, but the pain is loud and clear. I took more pills. If Hades took me to the Underworld to be his bride, I think the pomegranates would be filled with pills instead of juicy seeds. One more month of winter for each one swallowed, but I agree to the balance to stave off the end of the world.

I want a really great salad with grapes and chicken strips in it, brought to my doorstep by a person who will then keep me company for dinner but only talk of soothing things in low voices and gladly eat with me in the dark, and never even notice the sink full of shnarsty dishes or whatever combination of pants and/or bathrobe I decide to or not to wear.

Persephone

Beautiful falling snowflakes
I choke myself
one sweet seed at a time
back into the underworld.

I Like the Smell of Bleach

"Don't let me forget to buy milk at the store."
My maternal grandmother said this to me once when I was little. We went to the store and both forgot the milk. Twenty plus years later, I still remember forgetting.
Other people try to forget and go to great lengths to do so. Drink to forget, sleep with strange men to forget, play guitar or parasail or set things on fire or join the army. I spend all this time dwelling on thoughts and memories better forgotten, when POOF! I just can't anymore. I can't always reliably remember what just happened, what someone said, any of it. I've been obsessing over my lack of remembering, but really I should take this as a gift. I can't dwell on what happened if I can't remember what happened, and if I stop dwelling on the fact that I'm losing my memory, I can fade into a nice worry-free bliss.

70 minutes into 116 minute-long The Man Who Wasn't There, the stupid Netflix DVD went all skippy. I tried cleaning it off, jumping to the next scene, but no, stupid DVD is stupid unplayable. I want to know what happens. Now I have to wait. Tantrum.

Today has been an eat things and watch things and make envelopes day. My dog contributes by whining at me if I don't actively engage him.

I feel less like writing and more like whining back at my dog. Whiiiiiiiiiiiiine.