The cruelty of months

You know, April is just a normal boring month. The month guilty of crimes against humanity is February.  Winter continues to take its toll, the diminished sunlight triggering my hibernation instinct and the juniper pollen committing atrocities against my respiratory system, except now all the local ecosystems think it's springtime, so the weeds and wildflowers are also waging biological warfare against my well-being. Ugh, thanks a lot, NATURE. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother trying to preserve you.

February

I have a countdown widget on my phone to remind me that life is still worth living. February is a hard month because we're still in the dark days. And for me, dark days are especially dark.

Lately I've been feeling tired in a way that goes way beyond any ordinary fatigue or sleepiness. I'm so tired that I don't want to sleep. I want to be dead. The trouble with sleep is that after a while you have to wake up and I know for certain that I can't handle that. I won't stop being tired, and I'll just have to go around doing normal things, getting tireder and tireder. Working, eating, walking and talking. Thinking.

So I tell myself I just have to hang on. Only a few more days until we cruise, and then I'll get to charge up on all the sunshine I need. Will it last me past the cruise? I'm hoping so. I need to store up enough sun on our cruise to get me through the rest of these dark days of February.

Sometimes, if I were anyone else but me, I would punch myself. I steal things from myself and hide them--and manufacture false memories of where they are. Tonight I was looking for my precision screwdriver set (the NICE one, since I have two and the crap one was easy to find). It wasn't on or around my desk or in my toolbox, which is where such a thing would normally be. So I thought about where I had seen it.... Oh yeah, my entertainment center! I could see it so clearly! So I looked there. And looked again. And I kept on looking in places where I remembered seeing it and not finding it there.
I did eventually find it--in a place I had already looked--by hulking out and smashing some stuff.
I still haven't found the charger to my electric shaver. My shaver got low on charge, so I went to get the charger from where I knew it was. In fact, I knew there were two of them there.
Ok, certainly at SOME point there were two of them there.
I've done the same drill as for the screwdrivers, but it just hasn't turned up in probably over a week. So I know that the me with the other brain has hidden it away somewhere SO CLEVER that nobody else--especially the me with THIS brain--can ever find it.
So frustrating.

November

A few weeks ago, I wondered whether I should write a novel for NaNoWriMo or knit a sweater for NaSweKniMo. The reason it was an either/or proposition is that they are of course both November, and while in theory a person could write a complete novel AND knit a complete sweater in a single month, there are extenuating circumstances, such as that I have a job.

And so I made the choice I always make when confronted with two options: do nothing instead.

Happy _____________

Tomorrow is my birthday, but my family is making today "My Birthday Observed" for reasons of scheduling. That's fine by me. But today marks a very special anniversary: Exactly one year ago, I was leaving the gym and spied something small and white darting around the parked cars in the lot. When I realized that this was a kitten and it was alone, I started trying to catch her. I enlisted Rachel and Dad to bring some smelly wet food and a carrier, and once they showed up with the goods, the actual capture of the kitten was easy.

We weren't planning to KEEP Hazel-- we already had three cats, so we were going to just foster her. But she started purring when we brought her in, and didn't stop for several days. How can you say no to a sweetie like that?

And so, what would have just been the day of her rescue turned into the date she got a permanent (purr-manent!) home.

She has grown to be pretty big at about 12 pounds, though she's still tiny compared to the boys. And even though she's the youngest cat, she has the oldest, biggest voice, and lots to say.

We love you, Hazel!!

And also Happy Birthday to me.

I have failed...

So, a couple of weeks ago, I felt a strong and certain calling: write.
And here I have been, not writing. I was elated, ah! I know at last what I am to do with my life! What a relief!
In my excitement, I sort of forgot to actually start doing it.
Oops.
I'm terrible at not sucking.

Thursday was my work-from-home day, but I ended up not getting much work done because I was busy with my real full-time job: Going to medical appointments.

First off, I had to get blood drawn. I've gotten blood drawn many times that didn't result in any consciousness-related problems, but this was not one of those times. There was a spot of trouble regarding the needle actually getting into my vein, at which point I mentioned that I might like to lie down.

I didn't get to lie down as quickly as I would have liked, so I slid right on out of the special chair and into some alternate dimension until I was pulled back by the sharp smell of ammonia. It's always weird when I faint like that, because it isn't the same thing as sleeping, really. I guess maybe I go immediately into the dream phase of my sleep, but it mostly feels like I've just moved into another reality, and I never want to leave. I always hate it when they wake me up--today I had to smell ammonia, sometimes it's rubbing alcohol, sometimes they just say "Angela, wake up!!" repeatedly. Huge drag. How am I supposed to get any sleep around here?

But the nurse in charge used this as a teaching experience for her assistant: "And now you've seen a classic vasovagal response!"