(no subject)

I was sitting reading quietly with my seldom-seen cat glued to my legs (I had been eating rice crackers and Laughing Cow Cheezbits, and he had been scamming Cheezbitbits from me), when there was a tremendous BOOM that caused everyone in the room to jump.

Yes, a terrible storm! Completely without warning! Cat is now hiding under the bed. He hasn't even stood up straight to walk since getting frightened out of his little wits. Poor thing.

I guess I'm going to go back to reading. I was going to go out in the morning to pick up some stuff, but since the place I was going is pretty far away and I'm not even sure they'll have what I need, I might as well just stay home. But I'm mildly bored with reading right now... I like to play music and to burn candles and such to read by. It is very pleasant. For some reason I am not taking much joy in it. Maybe I will go light some candles in the other room and try to accomplish things instead.

(no subject)

I have not had a good night.

Since my sleeping is all wound around again (this is what happens when you are sick, when you have nowhere you have to be except at home, when you sleep a lot and have friends you like to stay up to talk to - sleeping becomes very arbitrary - ), I decided to stay up all day today. Or at least I will try; I may be too tired in a few hours, but right now I'm still going strong and an infusion of caffeine wouldn't hurt either. I'm wanting one of those fruit&yogurt parfait things from McD's but... they're from MCDONALD'S, for crying out loud. I could just go over to the grocery store and buy fruit. anyway, fruit is still o-u-t in my diet. it's technically OK but i've been having icecream every so often and I don't want to push the sugar levels. I ate grapes the other day, which was legal, but other than that I have been SO GOOD. taking my pills, using stevia in my tea, drinking almost nothing but water. no hooch, certainly, not even soy milk.

I cut SOMEthing on one of my legs. I have my knees drawn up to my chest and I just noticed that they were bloody. I took a shower a few hours ago, this must be a relic.

Anyway, I'm so restless. I still have a million things to do, but they're not fun enough to overcome the inertia and the vague sense that I would be horribly depressed if I thought about it enough. That Way Lies Dragons. I start to get a sick feeling of being about to open a door with bad things behind it, a lot, when I think about the future. It's just anxiety, it's just panic. Things swirl.

I am not a sad girl, I am not naturally sad. Maybe sarcastic and venomous under pressure, maybe a little too ironic. But it's in my nature to want to laugh and have fun, not to fall apart. I don't like people to see me crying. Anytime I think of it... if I am... I get more upset because I'm being mad at myself for being upset. So I try to be either quiet or kindly or delightful. & sometimes my kindliness or jokiness is miscast by others. & sometimes I'm irritable, though not the fabulous crank I was before I A) divorced myself from the cause of much of my crankiness and B)met my friend Paxil. & I'm pretty sure that everyone my age is just as stuck in their own head as I am sometimes. Everyone tells me that everything improves, year by year, after you turn 25, and that you couldn't pay them enough money for them to be under 25 again. Hah!

(these desired improvements are why I am on this impossibly restricted diet, but when am I going to see results? I have just enough energy to become bored and restless and panicky? that's not right! i don't want to go from depressed to anxious!)

So, my great plan of the night, of the past few nights, has been to buy some hair so I can make myself some dreadlock falls. I need to blend like three colors to get something approximating my current haircolor, but it's OK. I'm too cheap to have someone make these things for me. It has become tremendously important that I find the supplies (some of which I already have, most of which I don't), as soon as possible. Why? To fill up some empty time, to make me feel like my whole youth isn't being wasted in illness.

Just right now I want to sleep until I wake up somewhere else, feeling better, without a gigantic "to-do" list stapled to my psyche, with a good idea of the answer to the Big Question (yes, yes, contemplating yet another career change). I know this isn't healthy and I'm not going to wallow in My Pain, per se. But I get confused when I try to think of ways to deal with it - and when avenues discarded because they aren't currently possible for me start to pile up, I get that vague panicky feeling. It's not the same as a real panic attack, it's more the sort of thing that I got as a kid when waiting in line for a haunted house at Halloween or something.

Interesting to note that the haunted house so paralyzed me within the first fifty feet or so that they had to SHUT IT DOWN, APOLOGIZE, and LEAD ME OUT THE FRONT DOOR before they could start the music and turn off the lights again.

I had a point when I started writing this, I'm sure.

It must simply be that I feel so aimless and cannot find an aim really appropriate to my current (ever-changing, too, pleh) strengths and limitations. I hate it about myself that it is usually others who prop me up and point me in a direction. The last time it was a man... in the sort of relationship I've sworn to myself not to repeat. I have to make my own way, not be encouraged in my strengths by guys who... well, by guys of any kind. Let ALONE guys who suck every bit of emotional strength (not my best point to begin with).

and there is no convenient artistic conclusion here, no turn of phrase that will make it any more comfortable for me... or the people who read what I've just said.

accomplishments

they are small, but...

I got my mom up in time for her hair appointment & lectured her about what she was thinking of doing, which was cancelling her highlights because she "can't afford them". I pointed out that you certainly do not cancel your highlights an hour before your appointment if you expect to remain on good terms with your hairdresser, and that if she wanted to cancel, she ought to have done so a week ago. Because it's ripping off the hairdresser, who could have been working on a paying client if you had given her any notice. This rationale worked & I dropped her off for her appointment & headed off to terra incognita.

The fake hair store! It is a paradise! It is run by a cranky Hispanic man in late middle age, who is nonetheless nice to me. Today he tried to get me to buy a switch of beautiful wavy human hair for $30, which I couldn't afford and didn't want to mess up, anyway. But such a lovely thing, it was nice to look at and matched my colour very well. I bought some bags of cheaper hair & some wig spray and left. This made me happier.

After that I drove up to the fabric store, but got stuck in awful traffic on the way, and almost ended up intentionally ramming my car into the rear end of a van that... well, let's just say the driver had executed an astounding bit of stunt driving just for the purpose of cutting me off. I turned up Placebo louder and dealt with the fact that it was going to take at least ten minutes to go one block.

Got to the fabric store and waited in a long line of dodderers*** to get the two yards of trim I needed, and then walked up the plaza to the new anime place, which is really and for truly a paradise. They have visual rock cds, so i love them now. $15! no longer will I pine over $35 import cds! hah. I bought a vinyl cutout sticker for Utena in the brightest pink imaginable. I might go to some of their screening nights, too. It is woman-owned and the stock impressed me.

After that I drove in the rain and bad traffic to pick up my Momster, whose highlights look really nice, and we went out for lunch, & then FINALLY deposited this huge check she'd been sitting on for a while... well, not exactly. She wanted to open a new account at a new bank with it, and wouldn't go without me. So today was the day I got dragged in and played Edgar Bergen to her Charlie McCarthy, going over the brochures and telling her which accounts she should get. She used the check to open a new account and now everyone feels better. (the reason it wasn't deposited at the longtime bank is that they are total thieves and they suck. do not bank at bank of america; they will rob you blind. that's my two bits of daily advice.)

Now that has been accomplished and I'm home thirsty and tired with a headache. I did everything I wanted to do today & I feel better than I did this morning when I was ranting about inertia and panic and so on. Rock.

***I don't know a single person who grew up in Florida who isn't at least mildly ageist. A lot of older people here are really impossibly rude... bad drivers, completely oblivious to the presence of other customers in stores, etc. But these people were probably just as rude and irritating when they were 20, so I know it's not fair to blame it on age.