Going to Bed ...

Who knew it was something you could be bad at?
I was up too late, working on calculus homework (it's not due for another week) and I knew it was time to quit so I did... quit doing calculus. Because after that the internet was still full of delights.
So finally I mustered up the will to go to bed and remembered I needed to change my pillowcase. I removed the pillowcase from my makeshift pillow, which was just a pillowcase filled with shredded latex, and ended up with shredded latex spilling out. Well, that won't do. So I ---still staying up too late, mind you--decided to sew a zipper into a pillowcase to make my makeshift pillow an official one because I do like it.
So yeah, going to bed fail.

WHATEVER totally worth it.

Cats of Valor

I was in the shower when Banzai started meowing pretty urgently at the door. I assumed he needed to use the litter box--why else would he be so urgent and insistent in his cries?--so I rinsed off and opened the door for him. He didn't come in though, he just stood there and continued meowing at me. Okay then. So we went downstairs, he and I, and there found Hazel playing with something. Well, okay, it was more like she was stalking it. Keeping an eye on it, maybe. So I switched on the light and
"Holy Crap."
It was a scorpion. I'm not sure when Timothy showed up, but he helped Hazel keep an eye on it too. "Don't touch that, you guys," I warned as I fetched a box from the recycling bin. "Seriously, don't," but they were at least showing me its exact location. The scorpion, likely wanting to get away from these creatures that are frankly massive compared to its own tiny carapace, crawled right into the box and let me deposit it outdoors. Thanks to my cats, the danger has been removed.
...And that is how I came to be out in the front yard wearing nothing but a towel at midnight.

Happy Banzai day!

I wasn't there when he was born, but it's safe to say that on or about today, my Banzai is 8 years old.

Thank you for eight years of friendship, buddy, and you're welcome for eight years of food.

I finally broke down...

And made an appointment to see my doctor. I was hoping for something along the lines of "oh yes, you have thing x and the treatment is thing y" and my disparate symptoms would be tied together and gotten rid of, but nothing's ever that tidy in real life. And as a side note, I am not really a fan of real life. It's just too exhausting. I overheard two women talking about their relationships and one of them said, "oh, I cheated on him," and it got me really wondering where people like her get their energy. I mean, it wears me out to consider even one relationship, much less extra ones on the side. I mean, really, what is the secret? I might be able to do something other than stumble out of bed and go to work and then stumble back into bed with energy like that. Shoot, with some of that vim and vigor I might even be put together enough to wear an accessory with my standard ensemble of jeans and whatever shirt isn't covered in cat hair yet..... Ugh, just thinking about that makes me tired enough to cry.

Things that make me cry

Well, okay, it might not be entirely accurate to say that these things make me cry. It's probably more fair to say that they act as triggers. I think the tears are always just about a millimeter below the surface. So here we go, in random order, reasons I've cried lately:

• Software updates
• Google ads
• Dietary restrictions
• Joint swelling
• Facebook
• The telephone ringing
• Work
• Video games
• Articles about people going through hard things, even when everything turns out ok
• The level of cognitive dissonance other people just seem to be okay with

So basically I'm a mess. I don't like many things anymore, really. And, oh yeah, the way I always feel like I need to censor myself and can't just be honest, even in a blog nobody even reads, makes me cry. It's no wonder I have so few friends; I'm an insufferable drag.

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.