It was an ordinary Thursday.
Continue readingWant/Need
There are needs, and there are wants. Sometimes the lines between are clear and sometimes, not so much.
I need air.
I need water.
I need food.
I need shelter.
We all need air, and water, and food, and without them we die, slowly or quickly depending on how much we get, or don’t, and the quality of what we get. Air? Great! Air laden with CO, CO2, sulphur dioxide? Not so great. Ditto the safety of our water and food supply. Shelter can keep you comfortable or save your life, and the lack of it? Inconvenient to fatal.
The fuzzy lines in between can be really interesting. For certain values of “interesting”.
Continue readingOut of Nowhere
I wrote this yesterday at a friend’s suggestion. Well, most of it. I might tack on a little at the end. Or not. The point is…
It helped.
5/31/21
I do not know what this is. Or I have too many suspicions about the what and the why and none of them make sense or all of them make to much sense. I was fine.
I thought I was fine, anyway. And then last night I decided hey, I have room in my calorie budget for ice cream! So out came the remaining half-pint of Cherry Garcia, and the ice cream scoop, and the little pottery tea cup that’s just the right size for a recommended serving of ice cream (this kind, anyway), and I realized again that I’d intended to buy the brand of scoop with the “antifreeze” in the handle so it could cut through frozen-solid ice cream, which this was, and had instead been seduced by the robin’s-egg blue of the handle into buying an ordinary scoop which was god-damn not making sufficient headway on my recommended serving size of Cherry Garcia.
So I dumped what little I had scooped out back into the carton, added a large spoonful of Nutella (actually I call it Nutella-analog because it isn’t the original but I like it better), anyway, a large spoonful of Nutella on top of the half-pint of Cherry Garcia, got a spoon, sat down on the sofa and at the whole damned thing.
And then I logged it on Noom, finished my day’s “lessons” on the app, saved the day’s progress…
…and followed the ice cream with a peanut butter-and-honey chaser.
Went to bed.
Remembered to turn off my usual weekday-morning alarm. Went back to bed.
Slept okay.
Got up when my “weekend” alarm went off. Noticed that Houdini is once again showing signs of the UTI I’d taken her to the vet for a couple of months ago. Made coffee. Enjoyed coffee. Enjoyed reading a magazine or two. Enjoyed not being at the office.
Got VERY depressed.
Maybe it’s that I’m finally making at least a little headway on the book I’ve been planning to write for most of the last decade. Maybe it’s knowing I have to find a way to get Houdini back to the vet, which wasn’t cheap the last time and is likely to be more expensive this time (x-rays? Ultrasound? More antibiotics, almost certainly. Please, no special food because it’ll be times three since I don’t have anywhere to feed the cats separately).
No progress on consolidating my storage, and I wrote some about that debacle on Saturday and despite knowing it’s past, it’s done, it happened the way it happened and there’s not a damned thing to be done about it because that was what happened–but maybe some of this is revisiting frustration from then, so maybe writing about it was a bad idea, psychologically speaking, but then again maybe it’s better, writing about it maybe is a good thing, exempli gratia, “Better out than in,” as Hagrid said to Ron about the slugs, and oh, good comparison, maybe?
Thoughts like slugs, slow and slimy.
***
And at this point Ev pinged me to see how I was. And I told her. And we talked for an hour, this after I talked with Cody while he was doing yard work, which is the conversation during which he suggested I try journaling to see what, if anything, came up.
I’ve been afraid to start writing, I think.
I’ve been afraid to start writing.
I did a lot of middle-of-the-night spilling of guts on a particular website back when life was going to hell, and I’ve gone back to gather up all that as fodder for the book, because hey, why write it twice? But reading it has always put me right back into that fearful, frightening headspace, and I think dredging some of it up on Saturday is what started…whatever it was that “began” with Cherry Garcia time way-too-much and ended with thoughts like slugs.
On the plus side, I stayed on track, food-wise, on Monday and today (so far, today, anyhoo), and still managed to lose a pound since last week, which makes…imaginary drum roll…
Forty-three and a half pounds done and dusted. 🙂
Ev made a good suggestion about Houdini, which was to call the vet’s office and ask if they could just send me (or let me come pick up) a course of antibiotics, since she’s already been diagnosed. Made the call this morning, and the guy on the desk said he’d leave a message for one of the vets to call me.
No call back today, which has me irritated on Houdini’s behalf, so I’ll call again in the morning and see if I can get anywhere.
Things are a bit better, or at least my worry brain has gone down to a dull roar. I’ll take it.
Not Nice, Mice
As noted last weekend (if we’re friends on FB, as noted last weekend; if not, then it’s news to youse!), I went back to the broken-into storage unit today to (a) see if I could clean up enough of the mouse mischief to (b) determine if anything was actually stolen.
If mentions of mouse poop are not your thing, feel free to skip this entry…
Bucket
I started my usual walking-update post on FB this evening. For those of you not on FB or not friended/following me there, today’s info was:
Walk? Yep.
Distance? 1.6-mile loop, flat.
Time? 31 minutes.
And then I emailed my manager and direct supervisor and said I wouldn’t be in today–woke up sweating like I’d already taken my walk and feeling like last night’s dinner was contemplating a…return appearance, let’s say.
I think it was my body’s way of enabling a mental-health day. Because last night’s coaching call dredged up rather more than I was expecting.
Talk/Walk
I’m tired of talking.
Okay, if you know me, you know I never get tired of talking (although I also love listening…). But there is at least one thing I’m tired of talking about.
Dream Oddities
The first thing you should know is that I rarely remember my dreams. No idea why–I assume I dream with the same general frequency as other humans–but unless I happen to wake up at the right time, my sleep might as well have been as empty as a TV turned to a dead channel.
I think I stole that simile from Neil Gaiman. Or is it a metaphor? I dunno, but I never metaphor I didn’t like.
366 Days of Gratitude and Good Things: Day 110
I don’t know why this popped into my head yesterday, but…handwriting. I like writing by hand, I like writing in cursive, and I have no idea why. Okay, maybe I have a couple of ideas…
366 Days of Gratitude and Good Things: Day 109
Back when things were going to hell on a buttered slide (the handbasket was neither big enough nor fast enough), I spent a lot of time trying to find new homes for most of my cats.
Embracing Homelessness 