Too much. I need to decompress.

Friday I cleaned like I've never cleaned before. I went through the piles and lumps and stacks and ridiculousness of my office and transformed it into HDS's room. The craft closet is still a craft closet, my "to file" bin is still outrageous, there's still one pastic drawer unit of crafting insanity, and several boxes of miscelaneous I've yet to go through, but compared to a week ago, it's an entirely different room.

SHIT SHIT SHIT.

Phone just rang. I had an appointment to get a hearing test for research people. I never put the appointment in my phone calendar, the final resting place for all things transfering from memory to schedule. I feel like such a jerk. I also feel extra frustrated because this is one more piece of "too much" I just couldn't carry and don't  see why I can't do it, too, without brain matter sloshing out my pores.

So I cleaned HDS's  room and most of  the house barely in time for HDS and husband  (Cheeseburger Sam? Hot Dog Ashley?) to arrive a day early. I wanted the house to sparkle and for HDS's room to look ready and inviting, I wanted her to walk  in and feel welcomed. Instead I was frazzled and hadn't gone to the grocery store or made her a set of keys and I still haven't mopped, but there was  nothing  to be embarassed about and I had worked hard  for many many hours and accomplished something visible.

My dog and I are both awkwardly adjusting to a roommate. He sniffs her legs, follows her aaround, then turns around and barks like she's a newly intruding burglar after his food and warm spots. I'm trying-too-hard step-mother wanting to do and say the right things but not even sure what those things are. There's conventional wisdom, there's my gut, and then there's HDS and my shared flavor of crazy sauce that we have to  be really careful  not to splash  all  over the walls and eachother.

There  are some big things happening right now for my vintage/antiques/buying/selling enterprise. From  an objective standpoint, right now I should be filling my shop and marketing  like crazy.
But I also have to go to my  cousin's graduation in California this weekend.
My dog has a vet appointment this afternoon so I can kennel him if he's not BFFs with HDS by Friday.
Catalogue. Photo. Research. List. Repeat Repeat  REPEAT.

I need my computer for everything. HDS didn't bring her computer because it is a giant desktop. What's the protocol for sharing? What's the protocol for me making sure HDS has what she needs? This is where I end up being weird.

The house is already a mess again. It's raining and my priorities list has cleaning the house pretty low. Writing wasn't  even on  the  priorities list but became an obvious necesity when I was  ready to curl  up into a little ball.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Getting Help

I  scoured the inside of my fridge. Something smells. It's clearly inside my fridge, but it's none of the individual foods. I hope my neurotic cleaning takes care of the stink.
My counter tops are visibly dirty.

My mom really wanted to come over this week to help me with anything that needed helping and have me try on clothes she and my dad bought at a store they love that just went out of business. I had a few projects that I wanted to get done before HDS got here and my brother is home for the summer.

I wanted to finally hang my dining room chandelier even if that was all we did.

That's all we did.

But it's up and it's beautiful and my dining room is finally beautiful and ready for dinner parties and the arrival of HDS.

I enjoy basic creative problem solving, working with my hands, doing things myself, etc. My mother was clearly trying to be helpful and said more than once, "It's your house." Trying is good. Still, she complains, shoots her misery from the corners of  her eyes and sighs. She makes sure you are well aware of her martyrdom, being there and helping you out. Then when she's really sick of waiting, she offers to take my cousin out to dinner if I have him do it.
We are not bribing my already overworked cousin with a meal to come fix my chandelier.
This is why I feel weird asking my friends for help. It's this whiny bored refusal to use the thought and energy to do anything. Then as soon as a task or project gets labeled  "I can't," it's devalued and outsourced.

I feel weird asking friends for help because my family doesn't return favors in kind or kindness, they use money. I'm trying to figure out how to be a good, real, equal friend.

Tonight was what I imagine my life "should" be.
I cleaned, photographed, researched, and listed things to sell on Etsy.
I walked the dog.
Then I went to the bar and was socially awkward among the socially awkward for several hours of healthy human contact, food I didn't cook, and and alcohol I only occasionally had to pay for. I hung out with girls and non-prospective boys and watched people play bags and tried to learn to play bags for real instead of having to giggle and flirt to hide my embarassment.

Birdie came to visit Friday night and got to see all the wonderfulness that is my bar. Neighbor Guy was completely shit-faced and thought Birdie was the hottest woman he'd seen in his entire life and could say little more thant "You are so hot!" He's still convinced she's "mixed" (racially) and would gladly go straight for her. Then tonight Neighbor Guy is following around this "straight" guy I don't particularly like as a person. I escaped the bar a bit earlier than necessary because I got sick of the two of them.

I hope the grocery store is open tomorrow.
Is it supposed to rain? My feet itch.

What I learned from the LOST finale

Black people don't go to heaven. Even if they marry white people.

Morning Downs and Ups

The president of my condo board is a complete dick, as proven by this morning's round of emails. There's a lot of hot-headed self-centered bullshit in this building, and having grown up in a nest of hot-headed self-centered bullshit (frequently wrapped up in it myself) I now like to play peace ambassador whenever possible. But in Condoland, I know so little about the process and the rules and everything, I don't stand a conscilliatory chance.

Reading nasty emails full of personal attacks was ruining my morning when my brother called.
At 10 AM he was drunk.
It was the last day of finals. He was at a bar.
Ah, college. Memories. The bar staying open all night right up until graduation the next morning
My brother's call drastically improved my mood.

HDS coming to live with me is such a godsend. I need help right now and an HDS roommate friend is perfect. I hope i can be at least a little good for her, too.

Hard-Headed

Yesterday was a really bad day with lots of awake pain.
Today is worse. I try to unravel the pain like it's a tight, rigid riddle--release this muscle, swallow this pill, concentrate on this simple activity. Minutes are hours as I sit and breathe and dance across the surface of this hard hurt inside me.

State of the Onion

Thursday was my birthday. I'm 28. The last several years I've been having trouble remembering how old I am; each birthday I'm not sure if it's that birthday or the next one. This year, I know I'm 28. It means very little, but it's comforting.

I'm still feeling like crap a lot. Still having good days, too. Good parts of days, bad parts of days. For awhile I was working and sleeping like a normal person, up and down with the sun and churning out fairly regular accomplishments without much regulation. Then it thunderstormed and I slept 15 hours and haven't gotten back on track since.

Today hurts like it should rain again. I didn't expect to spend much time with my friends on my Thursday of a birthday, but another weekend alone in the dark and quiet sucks. I feel so out of touch, seeing the people I'm closest to feels like dropping in on the lives of vague acquaintances.

Well fuck now I'm sulky teary. Maybe letting it rain from my eyeballs will relieve some of the pressure I can't control in the greater atmosphere.

Dear Boy, I don't want this much power; it's not attractive.

One Pille, Two Pill, Orange Pill, Blue Pill

I messed up my pills this morning. Really weird. I have dreams where I just keep putting pills in my mouth without realizing it until I notice my mouthful of pills and spit everything out and worry about what I've already swallowed and what I still need to swallow. This morning, reality felt closer to that than it ever has before.
I went to take my pills as always. I start on the big capsules and then take the little ones, so I grabbed my norotriptyline and downed my most recent dose: two. I went for the next vial and realized I'd  just taken my norotriptyline. That's a night-time only drug. Fuck. Not worth making myself puke (I've never done this in a finger-down-the-throat way, only by mentally allowing my body to let go when it was already nauseous, and I wasn't nauseous, and I didn't want to change that). Fine. It's not going to kill me, I'm just taking it 12 hours early. Now where's the Prozac I was reaching for in the first place?
And having just taken two norotriptyline, I took two Prozac. Not on purpose. I wasn't consciously aware of my mistake for a solid minute, then, boom. I'd taken two because I was compensating for the two wrong pills with two right pills. Prozac fucks me up. I wondered if I was asleep, dreaming this. When my teeth fall out I know I'm asleep. Elementary school reunion is a dream, too. No, this time I was awake, but not for long. I was extremely careful with the rest of my drugs and then took a whole as-needed lorazepam to hold back the double-Prozac jumpy crazy weird shit and anything else unpleasant.
I fell asleep for real and for hours. So much for Thursday. I hear Fridays are nice.

I wore my shirt backwards all day today without noticing.

In college, Post Modernists were PoMos, over-educated hipsters

Oh, oh, silly PoMo
So we don't know what's  real
So?
I, too, have days in which I lash out in outfits
We are so rebellious
Twist up in the meta meta meta
Every generation has us
So so subversive
Can instead we laugh?
Not hate ourselves but laugh?
Twirl our perception of perception around in our fingertips
Love every echo of the meta meta meta
Lose ourselves in it, instead of thinking about trying to lose ourselves in it.
PoMo, let go.

I don't want anything touching me right now. I get like this around the Imparting of the Red Sea, where everything feels icky. I only want to eat smooth cool foods and wear slips and my lingerie/chemise things all the time.
Ok, now I  can't fucking think or write. I have  all  this  writey crap in  my head and getting it down isn't working. I feel electrically charged. The way people describe before they get hit by lightning.

Frustrated.

Roach Attack

Roaches were living in my dishwasher.

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

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

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

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

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

I did a lot of good things today. Icing on the accomplishment cake: staying awake past 10.

Spiky

Sooooooooooooooo...
I've been up since 6:30 AM and I've been doing stuff the entire time. Cleaning and laundry and shopping for May gift-getters and at around 10 AM I was going to take a nap so I could get back to a normalish sleep schedule but then I wanted to sweep every possible surface before I took a nap so I could mop after my nap and then it was noon and the pain showed up and I hadn't taken my pills yet and I needed to eat and while I was eating I started doing stuff on Etsy and putting together pretty collections of possible gifts and then it was the afternoon and I had to do the one project I absolutely had to do today and then my psychiatrist called to say he actually had gotten the lab results fax and my nortriptyline levels were high (duh shit, this is why I'm crashing most days when the sun sets and in a content but shaky stupor during my awake times). At some point I blinked and it was 6 PM. I made dinner. Now it's approaching 9 and I'm still quite alert, unshowered, and need to go to Walgreens to get my new lower-dose prescription nortriptyline before it closes or I go to bed, whichever comes first. Before I can go to Walgreens (3 blocks away) I have to drive to put air in my tire (1.5 blocks away) which has been soft since before the last time I drove, two weeks ago. Tomorrow morning at 9 AM I intend to be at a demolition sale in Park Ridge. I may be a little bonkers, but it's an easy drive.

Oh, good, it's raining. I'm being 50% sarcastic. Good for my head, bad for walking to get the car and then finding the car a new parking space. And that whole putting air in the tires thing. Maybe I'll get up tomorrow at 6:30 again.

The rest of my week has been a blur; everything  feels blurry. I haven't seen Aural Girl in some ridiculous amount of time.
>>Insert note: thunder and lightning outside, so my dog has to be touching me: my legs are crossed and he's resting his head on my elevated foot.<<
I only saw Possible Boy last Sunday for grocery shopping. And I feel like I haven't seen anybody, including myself, in ages. I've seen My Twin (new official code name for friend from junior high and high school with whom I'd lost touch and now we just started meeting up weekly downtown) but in my dreams I frequently see people from my past so something about it feels surreal. It's wonderful, but surreal. We used to say we were twins back in high school because we'd say the same thing or think the same thing all the time. People used to say we looked alike, and we had similar builds, but I'm blonde and pasty white while My Twin is deep mocha African-American and uses her hair an art medium. Still, we held ourselves the same (despite her dance background) and had the same speech patterns and we fed off eachother like Hall and Oates or something. Then we went our separate ways, I thought I'd failed her by being too young and self-involved...Ten years later, we've both changed and grown up and gone through a lot, and the same stuff that made us "twins" as kids seems to have ripened into an older but just as twinny version. I go around collecting people I like and identify with; My Twin was a cornerstone of my collection.
And then I got snippy over the use of the word "meta."

On most tv shows, characters go through some trial or tribulation and learn some life lesson, but things have  to be set back pretty much to zero by  the end of the episode so that you don't have to worry about the continuity and congruence of the episodes. I think I'm a little like this, too. I was reading through posts from last summer to see if I'd already given My Twin a code name, and it's the exact same thing day after day. Posts individually may seem like they mean something or are going somewhere or like perhaps I've really learned my lesson this time, but the accumulation is no more than pencil shavings, and I'm not using a pencil.

Life is so weird. Place your bets now on whether or not I'll make it to the demolition sale tomorrow, if I'll make it to any other sales, and who will go with me. I'm giving 5-to-1 odds I'll have a male or no companion. Who knows a bookie?

Things I Couldn't Make Up

Posted sign near the beach I like to go to with my dog:

Rogers Park is a strange patchwork of socioeconomics that changes in blocks, pockets, and next-door neighbors. I live in a huge gorgeous condo that's full of married couples starting families, pets, and retired  people. Across the street is a gorgeous building owned and operated by a slumlord who steals electricity and does all kinds of shady things including renting to pedophiles and drug dealers. The drug dealers don't bother me since I have been known to smoke pot so I have no right to insist the source stay locked away from my lucky white self. One of the dealers seems not to have a phone or doorbell, so to get a hold  of him you stand outside his window and yell his name until he lets you in. I'd be annoyed, but it's so fucking funny and it drives my neighbors so crazy (these are the people who want to disallow satellite dishes because they look  too "trailer park") I just laugh and laugh.
Across the street in the other direction are perfectly decent apartments. Nice brick three-story building, well taken care of, reasonable rent.
Next door is a three-unit condo building with the most amazing patio garden area in the back. One unit is owned by a very nice gay couple in their late 30s. One unit is occupied by a single mother and her three(?) grade-school aged kids. I heard they were renters and not owners, but it's entirely possible people assumed the family only rented because it's a Hispanic single mother. One unit is owned by some shadowy male person no one ever sees or discusses.

The street Howard is a few blocks north of me. Howard is a notorious Rogers Park pocket of general goods stores and currency exchanges loitering people of color. For as much as I complained about growing up in Oak Park, it gave me a lot of perspective on fear, race, class, and people. I'm still skewed way over on "Lived entire life as a little white girl" side, but seriously? I walk down the Howard strip with some regularity. I'm just as likely to run into an asshole, a dog lover, and a person who smiles at me in the nicest parts of Evanston as I am on the crappiest parts of Howard. People are people. Then you cram them through different sets of life experiences, and they engage those experiences in different ways. But they're still people. We're all people. How the hell did the imperialist thing stay so popular with light-skinned people for so long?

Anyway, what got me started on this whole big rant: the name of the fairly new community center built on Howard? The Willye B. White Park and Community Center. Seriously. The message to "at-risk youth?" B. White. I won't even go into that she was a black Olympic athlete, blah blah blah the only way to be black and famous is to be an athlete.

Maybe Molly the Ferret ran away from home to escape the pressures of a patriarchal all-albino society.

Sprunky

I don't know why I thought I'd feel better today, or why I'm surprised to feel like the same pukeshit yet another day in a row. I showered this morning; the sidewalks are wet outside, too, and maybe I felt the weather break and expected a reprieve. Still, it's spring, and even without the added stress of finals and life-changes that served as rationales in years past, it's a physically rough season.

An Avocado with Parkinson's

Bad shakes. Shakes on the inside, too. I still went to the barbecue held in honor of Neighbor Guy's birthday. No booze, wonderful food, and just NG's best friend, best friend's boyfriend, Possible Boy, Aural Girl, and myself. I was in no shape or position to pull on NG's demons, but I guess I was in no shape to realize that, either. Still, nothing happened, no plunging off on any emotion. I wanted to walk home with NG, but I was too shaky just washing the pie pan I brought, so PB and AG drove me to Walgreens and home. They were very quiet in the car, and I felt like there was something they wanted to say but stopped themselves from saying in front of me. Commentary on NG? Commentary on my dealing with NG? Commentary on how they've never seen me this bad?

The last few days I've been more outwardly sickly. I see my psychiatrist on Tuesday so I haven't bothered calling to say "Bad things are flaring, what drug do you want me on now? More of something? Less of something?" I think the pills are burning holes in my digestive system. The upside to my migraine's latest manifestation is that for once I actually look sick; my friends don't have to ask me how I'm feeling, and the rest of the world is less inclined to expect me in the usual flow of things.

AG is coming over tomorrow to help me clean my house. My mom keeps offering to come out on a Monday and I was ready to call her because I knew I needed the assistance, but I really didn't want to deal with any of the other stuff that comes with my mother especially when I'm not doing well. A year ago, my mom was my only option. Now, I have local friends who are all happy to do anything for eachother.

My life is a really great avocado with a few rotten spots.

Happy Birthday Neighbor Guy, Deleted

I wrote a 1, 712 word post about today. I went to Cambodian New Year and three garage sales with Neighbor Guy. We had fun. Writing about it was a word-purge that took an hour or two. Minutes after I posted it, Neighbor Guy called. Drunk. And of the many things he said, the only one I can repeat is that he didn't want me telling anyone about anything he said today.

I'm not a journalist, I don't use real names, but there are people who know or will  meet Neighbor Guy who also read this blog, and I would feel guilty if I didn't remove the post.

The only safe paragraph:

Cambodian New Year was too big an event for the temple itself, so it was held at the nearby city college. We walked in to parents with young kids and fussy babies out in the hallway; huge tables filled with Styrofoam bowls of noodles and curries and desserts and things don't translate; and monotone call-and-response chanting over a microphone. The two monks wrapped in orange sat on the raised platform with the whole room facing them, but I saw they didn't have the microphones. Two of the genuflectors at the front, dressed in white and posturing a bit higher on their knees, lead the chants.

Maybe someday things will  change and I'll post the rest.

I feel like I'm on a slow moving tilt-a-whirl. I keep eating, like that's going to fix anything. More likely another storm tonight. Maybe that meteor that fell from the sky in a flash last night (I didn't see it, but it's on  the news...probably landed in Wisconsin) is sending me alien signals. I'm rooting for alien signals; then there's a chance they can fix this shit.

If my writing sounds even more bonkers and fragmented than usual, it's because I keep getting distracted  and pausing to drop my shoulders back  and close my eyes and breathe from my diaphragm.

Let go. gooooooooooooooooooo

Friends and Taxes

Very late. Very tired. I need to change the way I do my accounting so next year's taxes won't be Adventures in Approximationland. I could be deducting way more than I am, but if I don't find any 2009 repair reports on my car's mileage by the time I take my pills tomorrow, fuck it. Not sure if that's the socialist or the motherfuckinglazy in me, but either way.

___ and  I met up downtown at the Art Institute this afternoon. We're going  to try to make it a regular thing, since she lives in Berwyn and we never see eachother. We understand eachother's weird shit. We're made out of the same shit. The universe is an amazing place.

moblogged from Kingston Mines

Its a good thing im feeling well & enjoying unbelievably good music. Not wasting my time on drama or misalignment. Im here & theres plenty of wonderful.

Addendum: 1:08 AM. Home now. AG was tired and a bit fussy tonight, mostly at PB. Why do I feel like "Mom, Dad, I hate it when you fight," and the impulse to "fix" every recognizable hurt and sadness I think I see on PB's face? When did my protective side show up? I don't want it to be a narcisistic protective side--my mom does that a lot and I have, too, in the past.

Um, I had two drinks and I feel like I'm writing with rocks for brains.

Also, I made fairly clear but not particularly intense genstures in Ken's direction that were well received. The world is full of maybe.

Computer and Beetle Ramblings

The internet lets me get lost in my head until my body is just packaging. I can do a million things and go a million places and never be bored. It's an extension of my infinite internal narrative--streams to swim through and around and around. I have a keyboard to take minutes: receipts for the time I spend, justification for overthought after overthought.

Walking the dog on the beach today I watched the waves reaching higher and higher and lower and higher up on the sand. Where the highest waves left foam lines on the sand, I saw ladybugs. Mostly dead ladybugs, wings slightly open and bodies at weird angles to the ground. Did they wash up with the wave? Were they in that normally dry area and caught off guard? There were a few still alive. They were more orange than red, so I'm hoping they were what we called "Asian Death Beetles." In college, a non-indigenous swarm of these ladybug look-alikes took over everything. My friends' room had ceiling corner completely black and moving. And Asian Death Beetles bit. I liked insisting they were close enough to ladybugs and making wishes when they showed up individually, but I could never really like gobs of them or their rumored harm to local ecosystems.
This morning's beach massacre looked more like Asian Death Beetles. Maybe it's a sign.

I've been snoozing my pill alarm for an hour now because I haven't wanted to get up from the computer to go take my pills. I wanted to finish this, and I apparently wanted to spend more time lost inside my head. It's beautiful out today. I need fresh groceries. I also need to figure out a weird thing on my taxes and then get them effing filed. That's back at the computer. Pulling myself up, away, go face life.

This is Migraine

Yesterday was bad. Migraine-wise.
I was in a wonderful mood in the morning. I got things done, took the dog for a long walk in the beautiful spring weather, felt like I could kick the world's ass even if my head hurt.

Around noon I needed to lay down from all my morning ass-kicking. I then spent the next five hours dreaming about how dizzy and sick I was, waking up to a sweaty and exploding self chugging water and thinking, "Why? Did I take the wrong pills? Is all this from that tiny bit of chocolate I ate yesterday? It's beautiful out! Why? Why? Why?" I'd be back asleep dreaming angry things again, screaming at my father, then out somewhere stuck and incapacitated and helpless.

Around 5:30 I woke up for real. The pain was clearly pain instead of all the other things that make me crazy.

I have no memory of anything between waking up and the storm, even though it was just yesterday. I know it was already raining when I walked my dog. I may have been on the computer or eaten or done any number of mundane tasks, but I can't find it in my memory. I know people block out terrible things that happen and chronic pain leads to memory loss and all of that. It makes sense that I unconsciously refuse to imprint anything during a migraine. Still, it's very creepy to turn around and see nothing where your immediate past should be.

Then the storm broke. A real one, not just in my head. Thunder, lightning, my dog completely terrified. I felt guilty my dog spent the sunny warm part of the day snuggling me in bed and the stormy gross part of the day staring at me trying to accomplish something. But the storm justified my migraine; it was an echo of my experience earlier in the day. The hail against my windows had me giddy with gratification; it was my migraine, now escaped and showing the rest of the world what it had done to me in the afternoon.
I wanted to scream, "Do you see that? See that hail? See how hard it's pounding? Do you get it now? Do you get it? Now you can see it! Now you can feel it too!"

When I woke up this morning, it was nice out again. My head predicts another night of rain. A little bit dizzy, a lot of the weird zapping from everywhere, a lot of feeling like I haven't eaten even though I'm eating.

I had to go to the post office to mail a package. The sun was warm and shiny. I stood directly facing it and closed my eyes. It felt wonderful to have something that singular and bright and all-consuming. All the sharp little light sources that press and buzz and ache and tingle were nothing. This one beautiful source did not hurt. It felt healing and buttery. Then I crossed the street.

Now? I miss people. I'm saving my shots for tomorrow so I can go see Billy Elliot with Possible Boy for his birthday, so tonight I ride out the pain again. My house is a complete mess and I hate it so hopefully I'll be up to cleaning some before I crash completely. Otherwise, it's another night of convincing myself I'm this strong warrior, doing things that look like I'm a productive member of society, watching Hulu and DVDs when all I want to do is watch Hulu and DVDs, and making small efforts to contact friends with lives somewhere outside my head.

I've been pouring my energy into my Etsy stuff so writing anything else seems so...is there a form of the word "ennui" that I can stick at the end of that sentence?

I still have excellent friends, and HDS is actually coming to live with me for at least this summer, which is pretty fucking fabulous except I'll have to start using my storage space downstairs as a storage space instead of using my office as a storage space/haven of disarray.

I'm trying not to play out every possible scenario in my head with regards to boys. If my head needs a project to keep it busy, I will think about my house or come up with some other life riddle that doesn't involve imaginary boyfriends based on real people.

My parents are insane. My mother's mother is incredibly negative and my mom frequently complains how negative her mom is. I've made a much larger generational improvement and I'm still 27.

My eyes let in too much light. The world shines too bright and then i dont know what to do in the dark.

Blue Fairy

Today I am sure I am dreaming.
Or some form of divinity and/or order is shouting, "How much more do you need to prove the chaos isn't random? It may not be fair, but there is pattern and order and control."
My wishes keep happening.
New wish: the knowledge and strength to make decisions and some sense that I know what to do and how to do it.
I don't mean this to be cryptic. I mean I have a really hard time making decisions over everything and if there isn't a clear, logical "answer" I get stuck.
So, message to whatever keeps giving me everything I want: that's what I want.

I want to poke my uterus with a stick

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

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

Later

I have all these stories to tell, but I'm very full of food and I want to make with the asleeping now even though it's only 10:30. When the fire department finally breaks down my front door in three days, they'll find me and my dog have turned into giant gelatinous blobs of goo. Like spontaneus combustion, but far less spontaneous and we will be glerb instead of poof.

Neighbor Guy says he loves me, that im his dearest friend. He loves the idea of me. No respect for the real me, though, just the version in his head.

I'm lying in bed naked, stoned, farting, and eating an all-natural strawberry popsicle.

If A Double-Majoring Liberal Arts School Student Hasn't Already Written It...

Each movement of the musical composition examines a different theory of the ontological argument (more or less, proof of the existence of God).

A movement in which each instrument that requires two seperate movements to create the sound and the pitch is played by two people. So a violin has one person moving her fingers across the fingerboard while the other person bows the strings, a trumpet gets one person moving valves and one to blow in the mouthpiece, etc.
A movement, same setup as the last, but while the people doing all the fingering of the instruments are masters and know the score, the people responsible for the sound-making are blindfolded.
A movement, same setup as the last, but now the people don't actually know how to play the instruments and are just learning.
A movement, same setup as the last, but the sound-makers don't come out at all. The entire thing is done in silence but with every note fingered out.
A movement with no instruments
A movement with no people
A movement with two conductors, one giving the correct beat and one giving the wrong beat.
there could be a bazillion movements.

Yes, as a matter of fact I am stoned. Least crappy I've felt in weeks. I'd taken absolutely everything else and done deep breathing and muscle relaxation and I was sitting in bed with my head burried in a pillow because I thought if I could push my face in deep enough it might get a little bit darker. Pot, bowl, matches, all within arms reach, probably shoved in my nightstand the last time I did this (not even two weeks?).
A few puffs of smoke and I start to relax the knot that's been holding in the black sludgy poisin.

Stop writing Enjoy the stonediness.

big hurt

Pain is BAD. Hit a blood vessel for the second time ever when giving myself a shot this afternoon. It didn't even phaze me this time; just annoyed I had to keep a wad of toilet paper soaking up the blood until I could get a better bandaid.
Pain is so big only its hem registers so long as I'm still and distracted. I try to be aware of the present when I'm not in pain, right now is the opposite. Anything to distract from the physical and the now.
I was shaking like crazy earlier. That stopped. Just PAIN. I've taken all my drugs. Would pot help? I have an 8:30 AM appointment tomorrow to see my psychiatrist because I've been so crappy. If I didn't have to be awake so early I'd be stoned by now. Need to schedule more biofeedback. It's been months. Need to accept my parents' money, be a grateful disabled leech.
Want to give myself another shot directly into my skull. I need another soft distraction. More food? I'm not hungry, but tasty things are a nice positive sensory experience. Where's the guacamole? Where's the chainsaw?

Don't touch me

Today was one of those strange days in my body where I'm in pain but I feel like doing everything, so I did everything. I did not clean the house or take the dog on an extra-long walk, but otherwise I feel pretty fucking accomplished for a scrambled egg brain.

I organized all my vintage maps by region into folders in two small plastic boxes.
I went to an estate/demolition sale that kicked ass. $7.50 for stuff that I can sell for $100+ and it's all easy to mail.
I purchased key ingredients for the completion of two of my ongoing projects.
I went grocery shopping.
I took photos of some of the new things I got at today's estate sale and almost completed getting them listed online.

I'd planned to go to the bar and listen to the Irish band and be social, but I'm completely exhausted. My logical processing ability started its downward decent a good six hours ago, and at this point I'm likely to bite anyone who touches me, possibly including my dog. When I first got back from all the running around errand stuff and I was light-headed and woozy and trying to breathe and re-establish myself on this plane of existence, I looked up and there was my dog, sitting tall in the middle of the dining room, staring at me. I stared back. It was perfect.

Now I don't want the computer touching me, either. I don't usually get like this. Weird.

Yes, I'm driving to my parents' house in a few hours

Moblogged from the bar:

Cute stranger who tells me im pretty? Run off to a trainyard with captain negativity? How best to know im alive? How best to be happy tomorrow?

Ran off looking for a diner with Captain Negativity AKA Chain Boy. Talked about depression. I got to be the beacon of hope and understanding. I keep waiting and poking, hoping to uncover more outside his vacuum of misery. I thought about kissing him just to see if it would be the magical quick fix he imagines. It didn't feel right. He'd still be a frog and I'd still be locked in my tower.

My head behaved itself very well tonight. I'm very proud of it.

Faces

I just posted an elementary school class picture on Facebook. Going to tag the people who are my Facebook friends, I notice trends:
29 students in the class
8 are currently my Facebook friends
3 1/3 African-Americans in the entire class, all of whom are my Facebook friends
3 of my 8 tagged friends are gay/bisexual
2 of my Fb friends were the other huge dorks that annoyed the hell out of me growing up. Both of them are gay
The third tagged lesbian I still see occasionally and I like very much; we could be reality friends.

Ken's photo is next to mine. The pictures aren't in alphabetical order; I'm guessing they're in whatever order we chose to stand in line because I'm also next to my fifth grade best friend, Ken's best friend is on his other side, and there are mini clique clusterings across the page. I've known him for 20 years. He remembers things about me I'd forgotten, times when I tried to conquer the world at age 10 and was too wrapped up in fighting evil to be a kid or be happy or notice what anyone else was doing.

Now Ken is working to fill the world with good and caring for everyone around him. Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
How?

Took a Walk

A black man in a very red hat wearing a red and black winter coat stood facing the street, shoulders square to the building and sidewalk, like a lawn ornament. I expected to see a dog in front of him, doing his business while the man waited, not wanted to watch. There was no dog. The man didn't move. He reminded me of a lawn jockey. The thought offended me even as I smiled at the parallel.

At the beach, a white man in a brick red coat was giving a tour.
"Chicago is down that way. Northwestern is a few miles up there. This here is Rogers Park. There's a dog beach half a mile down there. Daniel Burnham in Chicago. Lake Superior."
It took me a minute to realize he was alone and directing his commentary my way.
I smiled, I nodded. I didn't want to be one of those people who just smiles and nods. Sometimes we let our inner monologues bubble over so that someone else will say, "Yes! I understand!"
He walked over to a large shadow and asked it a question I couldn't hear. As I got closer (it was on my path) I saw there was another man sitting in the shadow.
"Don't listen to him, he's a homeless alcoholic," said the tour guide.
"No, he's a homeless alcoholic," said the homeless alcoholic.
There was no one else on the beach. It felt like spring under the warm sunshine. We had a "conversation" about the weather in short declarative statements.
"It's beautiful out."
"There's 14 inches of snow."
"There may be snow."
"It's beautiful now."
Then, "You're Katie Couric and I'm your husband Robert. I built this lake just for you, Katie; Lake Superior."
I said, "Thank you," and resumed my walk.

On the way back, my dog scared a mess of pigeons off someone's lawn, but a single tawny dove stayed behind. Smaller and thinner than the wounded dove I couldn't save last year, but there it was--a dove.

The lawn jockey had moved to a different street by now and walked very slowly. He must be hot in that thick winter coat.

Take a Walk

Neighbor Guy called. We had a nice chat. Then he asked me to walk his dog. Neighbor Guy was too tired and lazy and didn't feel like it and really wanted me to take the dog to the dog park or something. Pissed  me of a lot. He wants me to take care of his dog during one of the few precious moments I feel ok? I told him directly that I feel like shit most of the time and I still walk my dog and he can walk his own fucking dog on a day that he feels a little tired.
He said, jokingly, "I can't believe you used profanity with me!"
I asked if he understood why I didn't appreciate his request.
He said yes, I was very clear and direct.
Then he immediately started up again trying to get me to walk his dog.
I said "Fuck you."
We didn't talk much longer after that.
I'm aware the world revolves around Neighbor Guy, but even after I explained my feelings, his rude obliviousness was too much for me to swallow before lunch.

explain yourself

I tried very hard to explain what it's like living inside my head to my therapist. She didn't understand and admitted as much. I write with the hope that people will understand and tell me I'm not crazy. She told me I'm not crazy, but she's saying that before understanding the thing she's valuing as sane.
If I can find a way to show her life in my head, maybe she can identify ways to make it more pleasant.

Now, my body is demanding a nap. I don't really want to be napping if I'm going to sleep at a reasonable hour tonight, but I'm going to fall asleep typing if I don't lay down.

In bed. Under water filled with molassas. Too much amitriptyline? Why would spring hold so heavy? Eating tons of fruit all morning. Where is my energy? Life?

I'm going over to Possible Boy's house to talk. I don't know what I'm going to say or what I think I want to hear, I just know I'm churning up dark things inside that can't be allowed to continue. These are my friends. Letting them know what's bothering me so they can be there for me is a big part of friendship. I'm much better at monologuing into the general cosmos and waiting for someone to pick up on it, which may be why I also take stab-in-the-dark guesses at what other people are really thinking or feeling when they pause too long on a name or touch an object a certain way.
I need to talk to Aural Girl, too, but I think seperately from Possible Boy.

When I'm playing a game or writing something or fixing a picture in Photoshop and I mess up or don't like the way it's going, I start over. Wipe the slate clean and start fresh. I have that impulse with chunks of my real life, too. All of my papers and filing crap, I just want to restart and have everything that's everywhere right now go away. I want some sort of  reboot on my doctors and medications. Another one for my vintage/antique inventory, now that I'm finally getting a sense of what sells and how to sell it.
I guess I try to start things over a lot. I think of how many jobs I've had, things get too tangled and I get too frazzled and all I can do is curl up into a ball and run away.
Is that so terrible? I know it should be. Put that on the list of Terrible Things I Do along with forgetting to pay bills, being jealous of my friends, and punching old people.*
When I can't feel and think the things I want to feel and think, I get very upset with myself. Control. Should. Get me out of here.

*(I don't really punch old people)

Disbelief

Dear Annabell,

Being human and being alive is hard. Some times and some things are harder for some people. You are doing a good job dealing with now. You are working really hard. Dark clouds may say otherwise. You may say otherwise. But I can see the progress, I can see all the things you do and try and think and push every second of every day. I know how hard you are fighting, and even if you're going nowhere or fighting in the wrong direction, you deserve a lot of credit for your effort and your experience. You are a deeply wonderful human and I am proud of your humanity.

Love,
Annabell who needs to believe what she writes

Wish I Was Irish

Happy birthday, Hot Dog Sam! I am ever so glad you are alive!

I've been feeling like shit all week but today I made it out to the St. Patrick's Day Festival at the Irish American Heritage Center with Possible Boy, Aural Girl, and AG's other friend. So much to say about everything but the Puky Death portion of the Migraine Beast came to kick my ass right at the end so this has to be quick.
So much joy. So much to watch in other people. So many good feelings.
Also, jealousy. I want what other people have. Not things, emotions and  people. PB and AG being all in love, I build up that hard nasty knot around a gaping hole. Being around them reminds me what I lack, but they were the closest, brightest friendship filling that hole and I miss them. I wish I was better at sucking it up.

Great music and great energy.
A woman fell and I wasn't sure if she slipped on a wet patch on the  floor or if she was drunk and created the wet patch when she fell over and spilled her drink. She fell again later on the dance floor. Her friends spun her around  and around. The features on one of her friends' face looked like they'd been spun around, too.

A small man of at least 80 danced circles around everyone. Jigged and reeled and jumped with his mouth agape and his tongue bouncing and his eyes serious but enjoying every minute of it.

So much more............

No One Understands Me Like My Barometer

The fog inside my head spread out to cover Chicago.

I missed therapy this morning. First time I've completely missed a session. It sucks for my therapist because I know she'll often schedule me on a day when I'm the only reason she has to go to her office, but today even as I apologized I didn't feel my standard penitence and guilt. Wednesday we'll talk about ways to keep track of everything and remind myself and stay organized and all of that, but fuck that and fuck every well-intended coping mechanism. I've been poking around some of the other migraine/chronic pain blogs out there. All these things that make me feel crazy and worthless and alive and everything else get echoed across the internet. It's the stuff that makes it hard to take care of yourself when you most need to take care of yourself, the helplessness, the outlook adjustments, the assertions, and the thin shadow puppet "normal life" stories we project to distract and amuse ourselves. So I'm sorry to anyone I've inconvenienced with my disease, but try living with the uncontrollable monster that causes such "inconvenience," the guilt and frustration of constantly messing shit up, and the uncertainty as to whether or not anything you do has any kind of impact or if you're just being tossed around.

Some days I can cope with no control. Today was not one of those days.

Thank you, Aural Girl, for coming over and bringing me food and human contact. I don't think I even asked how her fucking trip was. She just did this huge thing. I was very lost and self-involved in fogland. The humus is delicious.

yes, still

I'm at serious diminished capacity. I started to fix my slow internet and generally clogged computer stuff, but this time I stopped myself. If my brain isn't working right, I screw things up. This is how I messed up my finances. I get major points for recognizing the feeling and not doing things that might explode. It's like handing off the car keys when you know you've had too much to drink. Trouble is, with neurological fuckedupness, there's no measure. I can't count empty bottles or shot glasses. There's no breathalizer. I do things all the time to check my cognitive abilities, like puzzles and touching my fingers and thumbs together in patterns. I also watch how much my hands shake. Right now it's a lot, but I still don't know what that means. I write because I want a record of my thoughts. I don't want to lose them. Apparenly, hypergraphia is tied to migraine and siezure sufferers, Dostoevsky being one of its heroes. Makes perfect sense to me.

cloud formations

I tore through my house, ready to declare war on the alien race pushing towards our planet with increased frequencies. I wished I'd showered as I thought of facing the apocolyps unclean, dirty underwear...Where is that noise? I looked out the window and people just walked past. They couldn't hear it? They didn't know? Is it my vents? My vents only magnified the pressure from outside, higher up, something above. Into my bedroom, dark safe bedroom, I opened the window. In that instant I saw myself as a crazy lady, jumping from her third story window. I wanted to stick my head out but the screen was down. People still walked around outside, not looking up at any sort of spectacle. No Independance Day. No V. Rain. That's all it was. Rain.
This feeling, this pain, stimulus depravity, sensory overload--it's so far beyond current comprehension levels. It could be anything. It's like trying to explain a sphere to a piece of paper. I can't even explain the hurt of the rolling, frustrating strangeness, the dull ache, and the complete unpredictability of when and where I can and want to be "normal" and do as much as humanly possible to make up for these days when I feel like Yoda drooping his shoulders under the weight of another disturbance in the force.

Too much light.
Audiobook time?

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: