February 2002 Archives

because i am not well and at work anyway even though i'm not well (did i mention i'm sick? i don't do sick well.) so anyway, i found get your wurtzel on, which is based upon this nypost gossip which is all lifted from tom tomorrow which i had no idea was a weblog until just recently.

now, reading about elizabeth wurtzel is a great way of taking my mind off stuff, because no matter how bad my life is, at least i'm not her.

in other (unrelated) news the stress just got worse. but, there comes a point when you just stop reacting, i'm almost there.

this afternoon, as i walked through the warehouse towards the soda machine, the shipping guy asked, �how are you?�. now this is a friendly, kind man, who doesn't ask that question at all rhetorically, who would have listened patiently and sympathetically if i had suddenly answered the question in full, excruciating detail. however i (believe this or not) have some image to maintain. no, i do. really. so i replied, �ahh, pretty good� in a philosophical tone, with feeling. i noticed that my voice had that husky edge it develops after days of sick stress. i knew the shadows of the storage area masked the puffiness of the recent good, hard cry i'd had. my walk picked up a little extra bounce, as i fancied myself a sexy and mysterious woman, a woman with a past, and secrets. it occurred to me that in that past, i never thought to conceal my secrets, and lived life raw and open to anyone who asked, even to those who did not. and today, they are shared only on a need to know basis; most everyone i know is blissfully ignorant of what i'm going through. and this is how it's supposed to be.

i think it was the sound of my own voice that got me here, on the other side of the worst of it all. that lovely, raspy little wisp of a voice that happens after the stress has released itself in various forms, a little asthma here, a little screaming there, a little crying in the bathroom. and in the aftermath of all this, when i heard myself saying, �ahh, pretty good�, i realized that i believed every word. of course, if you look at the facts you'd realize i'm bluffing, but trust me when i tell you, i am good. i mean, if you heard it yourself, you would believe me too.

and really, convincing myself was the most important hurdle, and now, it's behind me.

stupid words

is what i'd answer if you asked if i'm ok. not really not ok either, but definitely an off day. i suspect that the physical symptoms are more stress related than anything else, my mind has the ability to take my body hostage and do it harm if its demands aren't met.

the mind's demands are most assuredly not being met. this is only temporary and entirely subjective; i will get over it when the mind changes, not when the facts change. the facts don't change much, the mind changes all the time.

k, so all my scripts ran out a long time ago, and occasionally i do need them, like now, and so i use the kid's liquid albuterol to crank the ole bronchial tubes open. (breathe, oh, that's good, yes) however the burning scalp and the shaking hands and the bouncy keyboard make this one hard entry to type.

and it's too late to be this amped so i take the benadryl because the beer is an insufficient central nervous system depressant (is the monitor shaking or is it just me or is it one of those so cal mini-quakes? you never know. or at least i don't.)

it's all legal, baby. no, can't be busting me under any influence at all, it's all totally legit. all quite reasonable. i take one thing so i get O2 to the brain and the other to counteract the side effects and the beer i was gonna drink anyway. so there.

i wasn't supposed to be posting nonsense shit like this. i don't like to think of myself as the sort of person who listens to assholes telling me to raise the bar but something in me wants at some level to not suck at this, or just to suck less, even though i've never been really in any danger of being recognized for actually writing as opposed to ... oh whatever it is i do here.

the benadryl has so far not kicked in, but did i need to tell you that? maybe one more for a total of two, or else no sleep for me.

"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too," pundit Ann Coulter told this month's meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference. "Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors."

no, i didn't make that up.

yesterday, at the beach, my son wanted to play in the water, and he didn't want to take �it's too late� for an answer, so i told him we didn't have any beach stuff, that we'd have to come back.

i confess: i was not telling the truth. i'm more prepared than a damn boy scout.

in the trunk of my car:
· large, quilted beach blanket i got from mountain dew for saving enough of their soda caps.
· several towels (douglas adams was so right about always having a towel. trust me.)
· solar/hand crank powered am/fm radio that gets a handful of decent stations.
· jumper cables and rechargable car starter you power from the cig lighter.
· (note: driver carries triple A card and cell phone, we are safe in the buick)
· change(s) of clothes.
· car care products, no less than six containers of various ways to engage in automotive vanity - like new, hardly used.
· old purse, grooming products, fragrances.
· rain ponchos.
· and some other stuff, i'm sure. my trunk is like that. i can spontaneously go to the beach at any moment and lay on a blanket and listen to rock'n'roll and have clean, unsandy clothes to change into when i'm done, and if my battery dies, i'm ready. it can rain, i'm ready. the only forseeable things i need to add are canned convenience food, a can opener, and bottled water. i've always wanted to have a fire extinguisher too, and a first aid kit and maybe some tools, not that i could fix things with them but you know, just in case.
· oh, and this thermos. but that's all.

years ago, chris and i ran a coffehouse downtown, best time of my life. i have a few moments i remember quite clearly from the old insomniac, one of my favourites being when a member of a local shakespearean troupe performed one of shakespeare's sonnets (randy ole goat, that bard). first he explained the triple entendres to us (see footnotes), then he recited this:

SONNET 135

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy 'Will,'
And 'Will' to boot, and 'Will' in overplus;
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea all water, yet receives rain still
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in 'Will,' add to thy 'Will'
One will of mine, to make thy large 'Will' more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one 'Will.'
· · ·
will= his name, of course, and carnal desire/naughty bits, and will power
hide my will in thine - lotsa puns here
no fair beseechers= no applicants for your favour
· · ·
oh, and thanks batgrl for finding this sonnet for me!

i've decided i need to tell the story of the insomniac coffehouse years. i need to scan some newspaper articles, mostly because it seems surreal even to me after all this time, and i want no doubt in the matter. it's a story that needs to be told. oh yeah, no doubt did play there. among others. it was [insert superlative of your choice here].

as they say, stay tuned.

i was on my way to drop off my daughter at work downtown when three very, very large helicopters flew by very low overhead. after dropping her off i took a detour by surfer's point, to see what i could see.

the first thing i saw was that an asshole had parked his rather unremarkable truck in such a manner that three spaces in a very crowded beach parking lot were taken.

then we wandered down to surfer's point, down the rocky, eroded beach path, and my son had great fun picking up rocks and throwing them at other rocks. during this time the helicopters were flying in a circular pattern over the water, from several miles offshore to right over the beach and back. (note to self: next time i get a really good deal on a used digicam, i will make sure it has a zoom lens).

we got down to the point, where people were sailboarding. looks fun. would have pics but (see note above). we then discovered an interesting structure made of driftwood, perhaps a vacation dwelling of Primitive Beach Man, or Beachopithicus. the circle of rocks in front of the open side suggests a place to build a fire, but no evidence of recent combustion was found, which suggests that as time went on, more sophisticated tribes, Homo Beachus, for instance, discovered that fire drew too much attention to their partying activities. in any case, i'm planning to go back there next weekend and hang out in the cozy little driftwood cave, let my son play with rocks and sticks and sand, which he really does love to do, as evidenced by the way he howled all the way back to the car when we had to leave.

about halfway back to the car, noticed quite a few people drawn to the helicopter activity, which seemed to have settled to one place. one copter, quite far offshore, hovering low. i hope they found who they were looking for and that everything worked out alright.

bobby burgess has a talk with his younger self:

i guess i'd kneel down to myself and be like, "ok, listen. no, listen. sit still. stop that. stop that. stop that. bobby, stop that. this is important. look at me. are you listening? ok, remember how you liked mint chocolate chip ice cream? why don't you eat it anymore? that's right: it starts tasting like nothing if you keep eating it over and over. see, some feelings feel good and some feel bad, but you need both so that they contrast. i don't know. it's like, you have to get hit in the face by the tire swing to know how good not getting hit in the face by the tire swing feels. yes, i know it's confusing. but about running around in the backyard like an airplane, it's fun for a while, but it fades to the point where it's like painting the same colour upon the same colour. think of pleasure as a liquid, and think of yourself as pouring it into a bucket that has a bunch of holes in it. it seems like good feelings don't last unless you work to make them last--regenerate them in some way. you know, find different sources to keep the bucket from being empty. otherwise, you'll get bored and whine lots and lots and stomp your feet and throw things and growl and sleep lots. oh, instead of 'boredom', you can look smarter by calling it 'ennui' but you'll learn that later, since you like to browse the dictionary so much. and brush your teeth, and don't only look for the facts that support your preconceptions."

bunny haiku... yet another instance in which davezilla rocks my world.

but wait, before you go -- oh darn, i've forgotten. must not have been that important then? no, i forget important stuff more often than unimportant.

no really, i had something to say. oh yeah, i made a blog for those randomly generated blog poems, it is here.

oh, & if you want to see a work in progress involving MT & an excellent site design, go visit chris, he has coffee and cigarettes. he loves the comments too, (don't we all?), so do pop in & say hi.

see, i'm here telling you about all these places like i want you to go away, which i don't, i just have nothing to think right now.

the paintings of Louis Wain illustrate his descent into madness:
Neuroscience Art Gallery: Art by Psychotics - Louis Wain

here's some more of his paintings. crazy, man, crazy.

[via sixdifferentways]

so my daughter was like, just walk down the street and get the car and come give me a ride and i was all, no, i'll be ready at five-ish, like i said. so she was like, oh, pleeeeeease, mommy? so i was like, i'm not even dressed and she was all, what? and i'm like, since we got the second computer and they're on this network sharing the dsl line and there's, you know, the internet and all, so on saturdays we sit around the house in our underwear on our computers. then i was all, and you know what? _lots_ of people do this, it's way fun.

and she said, mom? you're weird.

i really intended to give this place a design, & ended up just fooling with the stylesheets. i did actually make up a separate blog for the poem generator, but of course it looks about the same as this does.

boring. still just defaults.

probably going to continue to change things, over the next few days weeks months or however long it takes me to have an actual idea.

everyone has talents. some paint, some compose great works of music, some write the epic poetry.

i nap. it's a talent borne of years and years of sleep deprivation, and the resulting exhaustion that overtakes me in the middle of the days following being up till the middle of the nights, most every night. vicious cycle, yes, and yet, it works for me. i know if i were to force myself to stay awake all day, i might get to sleep at a reasonable hour, but when i do that i wake up no less than four times in an average 7 or 8 hour sleep period. yes, this is a disorder of sorts. i don't mind at all, so i have sought no treatment.

because i can nap, oh my yes i can. i can nap in my car at lunch, quite comfortably, due to cushy leather buick-ness of those back seats. i can nap in the bathroom, believe it or not. i have this down to a science. i always get back to my desk before the 15 minutes it takes my monitor to go dark from inactivity. if anyone ever questioned this i could claim it just takes me a while to do my business, and who would object? it's never come to that, but i have my excuse at the ready, just in case.

most importantly, i can nap amidst utter chaos. i can nap on the couch with the cat infringing on my space, the tv on nickelodeon, and the boy-child playing computer games on nick.com with the annoying, repetitive sound effects loops.

these are all alpha-state naps, not quite asleep, just in the deep numb tinglys and early dreamstate spacey mental images incorporating, at some level, the sounds around me, which leaves me able to respond to the world around me if necessary. i developed this talent when i was working three jobs, one of which was driving a taxi at night. during the quiet times i would lay down across the front seat and turn the radio mostly down. i would doze, and the sound of my cab number was the only thing that would interrupt my doze. unfortunately, as time went by and chronic exhaustion took its toll, i would be roused by the cab number but momentarily unable to figure out what it was i was supposed to do (pick up the mic, depress the switch, and say my cab number back to the dispatcher as an acknowledgement). luckily, at that point it was time to quit anyway, the day job got more lucrative and i had the camaro i was working myself silly for (oh, i miss that car).

this sleep schedule allows me to be on the internet until late every night. i had a good hour and a half, half-asleep on the sofa earlier this evening, and now that the rest of the house has settled down, i get peace with my computer till all hours.

fumbling around. too much to think. more than i can say at one sitting, or even if i had a day, a whole day just to myself with this computer & some peace, in which to let the flood of words rush out onto the lighted page & save them & release them as time & attention spans permit. oh, i could theoretically write, right now. but realistically, i can't.

i would like to write about weblogging friendships & what they have done for me, about the seventeen count 'em seventeen links i have saved to add to my already overwhelming list of blogs to read. the past two, three days i have gone through that entire linklist over there in the sidebar, more or less, along with some others. this is excessive, i know. it ate up all the time i might have devoted to projects i have pending, but that's what it's meant to do, isn't it? distraction. diversion. the giving & receiving of attention. the taking of attention from the matters at hand, which tend to stress me anyway. this surfing is only a shifting of the stress, really.

i had almost the inspiration for an actual design, i am about through with these default templates i've only just shaded in & lived with for the two months six days this blog of mine has existed. it begain as an experiment with movable type & quickly got out of hand (imagine that! i mean, who knew?). now it is... this, another part of the too much i have to do these days. i love it, i do.

& with that i'd like to thank you for visiting & reading, & then go & get myself some rest, not right away mind you, but soon. maybe it's rest that would clear my head enough to express all these too many things i'm thinking?

Ventura, CA, 02/20 -- at approximately 12:45 pm today, a call came into the newsroom, but this reporter was unable to fish the phone out of her purse in time. big damn mess, that purse. when the subsequent voicemail was checked, it became urgently clear that a disaster of epic proportions was in the making. the muffled but frantic voice on the recording was none other than your mild mannered correspondent's teenage daughter, who had lost her cell phone.

so, lacking a phone booth, she ducked into the storage closet & emerged, seconds later, as SuperMom. with the mad energy of PMS coursing through her veins, she bounded out the door for the closest Radio Shack, only to be thwarted by her arch-nemesis, Mahmoud the Bored Clerk, who resisted her superpowers with a shrug & �well, i can give you five bucks off on the reconditioned one, but that's all.� SuperMom would have crushed the vile fiend but she was in a hurry, ok?

back to the office to regroup, knowing that there would be no cheap way out. several phonecalls revealed that the only real solution to the problem was to purchase another phone, which would actually cost less than the early cancellation fee to disconnect the service & reconnect at a later date. super problem: any price was too high. way, way too high.

just in the nick of time, the boss wanders back into the office, so SuperMom resorts to the only proven superpower she had left in her arsenal, the X-ray Tears of Distress. the boss, helpless to resist, offers the necessary financial assistance, and SuperMom is off to the Sprint store where she confronts the kryptonite of indecision. two similar, different, identically priced phones. one the same model as the poor little lost phone, one a newer and smaller model. Senior Sales Associate Todd steadfastly refused to make up SuperMom's mind for her, so finally, after calling him back as he headed off for the storeroom no less than twice, she settles on the familiar phone, the same sparkly blue perfect teenage phone that inspired the initial gift-giving. just because it's not the newest model, doesn't make it any less perfect.

SuperMom whips out the Amazing Debit Card, secure in the knowledge that it takes a day or so to process, plenty of time to cover the transaction. SuperMom plays bank float like a fine instrument. she returns to the office, trimumphant, & plugs in the sparkly new phone.

later, sparkly phone rings. mild mannered reporter picks up. disappointed daughter's voice says, �oh, i dialed your phone�. �no, you dialed yours� is the reply, & the teenager squeaks the same squeak of joy she squeaked when first presented with the marvelousness that is a perfect teenage girl cell-phone. removing her glasses & for a moment nearly revealing her dual identity, SuperMom smiles contentedly.

a view. from the mall across the street. life's good.

oh yeah. one more, or really a few more things: i have been regularly using the poem generator linked in the sidebar, & saving the results. the last three, slightly edited, are featured in �more�. i am going to make them their own blog, they are that wonderful.

...when you would otherwise feel quite fine.

yesterday, breakfast: sausage egg & cheese biscuit
yesterday, lunch: 2 jack in the box tacos, 3 stuffed jalape�os
yesterday, dinner: most of a large bean rice & cheese burrito
today, breakfast: the rest of chris's burrito from last night
today, lunch-ish: a breakfast burrito, extra salsa
today, afternoon-ish: the rest of my bean rice & cheese burrito from last night
today, dinner: couple bites chow mein. tums. pepcid.

blech.

the twisted fucks wonderful folks that brought you bad samaritan now bring you:

bad samaritan: the next generation.

i would tell you about it but then you might not go see. go see!

also if you would, toss a link to the new bad sam in your blog, because daypop & blogdex need to know about this too.

this morning, as i was hunting around for something for my son to wear, i was worrying that i'm traumatizing him, wandering around the house in a t-shirt & undies. the t-shirt is long, but that's not the worst of it. we're kind of an open door household, & he sometimes sees me changing my shirt too. now i know that underwear covers approximately the same thing as bathing suits, & in my case, probably a lot more than some things worn in public. but still.

these are things i remember being distinctly traumatized by in my youth. i remember cold bay area mornings, my mom would get dressed standing over the heater in the living room. the shades would be open & i would be horrified -- "motherrr, people can see you". she'd always claim people can't see in, but that was little comfort to me.

i remember my dad wandering around the house in a t-shirt & tighty-whiteys. this is not something an impressionable girl-child should have to see, but it was like a car wreck, i couldn't not look. i shudder, remembering.

& yet here we are, in spite of all this, one of those underwear-in-the-house households. in fact, when my son is done with being outside for the day, the first thing he does is get rid of shoes & pants -- t-shirts & undies for everyone. admittedly, this is comfortable. & usually, i wear a long skirt during waking hours, & at least chris wears those long boxer/briefs, which are almost like shorts. but still. when i get up in the morning & am fumbling around like a newborn puppy, eyes closed, whining softly, when the last thing on my mind is finding suitable attire, i worry that i am traumatizing my son with unnecessary views of my undie-clad butt.

when chris's mom still lived here, i'll never forget her wandering around the house in a short nightshirt. she has bad knees so she bends at the waist & i'm here to tell you, nobody should have to see that. nobody. childhood traumas don't necessarily end in childhood.

in so many ways, i disapprove of this. but still, we do it.

so technically this is the (by my calculations) seventh entry in which if it weren't for song lyrics, moody pictures of trees & clouds, & instances of having a really big buzz, i would have had nothing. i have not actually had any original thoughts or written anything in some time now. my cat is holed up in the closet & so i can't take pictures of him at the moment unless i want you to see how messy my closets are.

i would go take pictures of stuff outside of the house but my foot hurts (big piece of glass, yesterday). kind of excellent symbolism of the way things are going.

i'll have more nothing for you later on, feel free to not stay tuned.

in addition to his regularly hysterical column, dave barry is covering the olympics. funny stuff.

well, i ate jack in the box tacos, fell asleep on the couch, woke up (ate some tums) & decided i needed to get out for a bit. so i went to the pier at sunset & took enough pictures to stitch together & make one of those 360� picture thingys of the pier. (that's a java applet & if you have a slow connection, be patient). please excuse the variations between the pictures, i really should have gotten there earlier or ... well, there's a whole camera manual i've not even opened, presumably i'd be able to do a better job of this. as it is, i'm encouraged & will continue to try to get more of these panoramic scenes.

ok, & here's my cat drinking dirty dishwater which he prefers over bowls of actual fresh water. & yes, i didn't do the dishes today. i didn't feel like it, ok?

ok. so i discovered jeff buckley singing �hallelujah�. ordered the CD but got impatient (imagine that) & downloaded �grace� as well. listened, read the lyrics. read this bio about him. put the lyrics & the facts together...

lyrics & excerpt from bio are in �more�.

share the fantasy:

me: [posts something breathaking]
· · ·
commenter: give me back my breath, bitch.
me: no, mine now
interested third party: i sense a moment here
me: a momentary lapse of reason
commenter: that binds a life for life
· · ·
hey, it could happen right?

well, the song i was obsessed by yesterday (& continue to be today, i now have versions by three different artists on my hard drive & several CDs in the mail) says a lot about my outlook.

i also took some pictures yesterday, on my way home from work, of a couple things i saw that felt familiar, somehow. first there was the way the sun couldn't quite break through the clouds, & then there were these trees. i wonder if any of this was related to the sugar crash i was no doubt having. for instance, consider what i had for breakfast (& the rest of the eating day wasn't any better, i assure you.)

& now i am in the throes of the unmitigated stress of friday evening staring at that solid yellow DSL indicator, which so far isn't keeping me offline but is making me plenty nervous anyway.

other than that, i've not got much to say today.

all evening, the dsl indicator flickered from green to yellow, but generally the internet was up, slow & funky, but up. then right after midnight, it went completely down.

i woke up this morning & asked the morning person: do we have internet? (these were the first words out of my mouth). �yeah� (i brighten) �but it's yellow. & i couldn't load the whole weather page� (oh).

i actually got to work before 9AM today for the first time in i don't know how long. briefly, at home, i tried to get the email to download. nothing. just... yellow nothing.

i want my little green icon back. i'm scared.

it has been a day. i think i work better to music, but i'm thinking maybe for future reference, note to self: not this music. however i have pretty much managed to slake the seemingly endless thirst for this song that woke up with me this morning, out of one of those damned annoying dreams. damn them.

well, maybe there's a god above
but all i've ever learned from love
was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
it's not a cry that you hear at night
it's not somebody who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

hallelujah...

~leonard cohen
(for lyrics in full, click more)

we have fleas. they really bother the other two residents of this house, but me? they bite me, fall off, & die. well no not really. but just now there was this one little guy on my arm. tried to pinch him, he escaped. then there he was on my knuckle, but got away again. each time, nibbling me just a bit, not that i'll notice, i may be allergic to everything, but bug venom barely phases me. bees, fleas, skeeters, & even a couple brown recluse spiders, which though the bite got nasty, didn't otherwise affect me. however by the third time this one tried to drink from the nectar that is me, he was sufficiently drunk, & i caught him & drowned him in a cup of water (with a little soap in it to break the surface tension of the water). can you feel the love? i knew that you could.

happy valentine's day. i love the way people are celebrating this. mg gives us linky love (well he gave it to surreally, not me specifically, however i'm not bothered a bit. this is after all just my obscure personal journal). paige gives cooment *smoooooch*es & writes extremely stimulating prose. ali sent an e-card which reminded her (& me) of hoopty (a streaker, nach). mark sent me some crack.

batgrl examines the roots of valentine's day, mentioning kare d's idea that we should be wishing one another �happy decapitation day�. cool. & here's a guy beating himself up with a puppet, which has nothing to do with anything, so there. so, from the romantic to the erotic to the psychotic, the internet is filled with valentine's day love, & it's not even v-day yet! [sigh]

so i've been subscribing to the morning fix by mark morford for quite some time now, it is hard to imagine a morning without my fix. i am much better informed these days, for instance, just now i found out that rosie o'donnell might be gay. [gasp] who knew?

good thing about having a weblog is that when you got nothin', well, there's always something out there somewhere. today, i give you mark morford, a personal hero of mine.

ever dislike someone intensely, on sight, immediately? like, the second you see him jerk his dirty, ratty-looking toyota corona into the next lane & weave past you with his puffy hair & swerve his ugly piece of shit car back & forth as he comes to an abrupt stop in the next lane, several car lengths ahead of you? & then as he's sitting there even though nothing changes around him, not the light, nothing, he's lunging forward, & when the light turns green you get in behind him so you can continue to avidly dislike him for a few more blocks? repulsed by the the way he leans his frizzy-haired head into the swervy turns, tailgating everything for no reason, weaving back & forth as if barely able to contain himself from passing (illegally)? & then you get right behind him at the light & you notice his registration expired last year & that for some reason pisses you off even more (even though you yourself have a long history of lagging on such things)? no? well, it happened to me this morning.

there is a slight possibility that i'm in less than a good mood.

so, i drove downtown, took some pictures of the pier, which i didn't like too much. drove back, stopped at von's for donut holes & bananas. left the store, successfully ignoring the teen challenge lady stationed at the exit to solicit spare change to fund drug rehab (hey -- i need my change -- for drugs*). got home, walked in the house, set purse down, kid attacks me for his donuts. they're right h... wha? uh, maybe they're in the car. no.

yeah, back at the store.

this is not the worst i've done. there was the time i went through wendy's drive-thru, paid for my burgers, drove home, pulled up in the driveway, looked down, no burgers. very, very sheepishly returned to wendy's to collect them.

these types of things are just so fucking embarrassing.

*(note that i was perfectly straight, sober & well rested both times. i'm kidding about the drugs you know.)

[later]
maybe the reason i'm so absentminded is the midlife crisis i'm having right now, at this very minute. more on that subject here.

around four, the headache set in. not pounding but piercing & sharp, though not focused into a particular point.

i blame microsoft, the system, the media, & all the other various & sundry powers that would be, for paining me so. how am i supposed to figure all this out, conform (at least minimally) to accepted standards of behaviour, & either cope or ignore the pressure, respectively, all at once? especially when it grips my skull so tightly & makes me want to fold my arms on the desk & lay my head down & escape by blaming faceless institutions for my issues.

there is no escape. nor should there be. & the entities i've blamed are entirely unrelated to the real reason, which is just as intractable as the generalized, vague forces described in the prior paragraph. but it's easier that way, & does not interfere with my quality of life (as it stands, nothing to go shouting to the heavens about but better than nothing). speaking in terms intended to obfuscate the facts while still acheiving release is more challenging than literally addressing the issues.

the desired end result is (hopefully) a post which is piercing, sharp, but not focused into a particular point.

starting out buoyant, irreverent, & springy with hope.

inevitably, there is more to it than that.

so Jon had some things to say about getting old, rather prematurely i might add. not only is 40 not old, he's not even 40 yet, according to his bio. so this got me to thinking about the whole process, & i am forced to conclude i'm completely ok with 40, or, well, technically 41, but close enough.

do i wish i was 30 again? no. do you know where i was on my thirtieth birthday? that's right, jail. (apparently it's against the law to write lots & lots of really bad checks). do i wish i was 20 again? no. do you know where i was on my twentieth birthday? either do i.

actually come to think of it the 40th birthday was not so great. it caused a good many older people to go on & on about how not-old i was at the time, yadda yadda yadda. at the time i honestly didn't want to hear about the stuff that falls apart in the fifth or sixth decades of life. i still don't. i figure i'll be better off not dreading things too vividly.

now, my 41st birthday was the best ever, by far. & so far this year, i'd have to say that my life's better than it's ever been. i've made vast improvements in almost every aspect of my self & my life, & yes there are still some major items on my improvement agenda, but i believe i'll be able to manage. now, i don't know if my belief is based in some youthful delusions, or a sign of my diminishing capacity, or founded on actual practical rational facts, but i don't think that matters, because these days i am first & foremost a pragmatist. i take things under advisement with grains of salt, & i don't discount the possibilities just because i'm not holding my breath. i'm still the same crazy dreamer i've always been, but i'm much more grounded than i've ever was.

the only real objection to being this age is physical, & most of my regrets involve not appreciating this body of mine back when. if i could say anything to 20 year old me, i'd tell her, dammit girl! you're not fat! stop hating your body!

not that she'd listen. but that's what i'd tell her.

so i was on my usual evening errands & on a whim took a side trip up the hill, & took a few pictures. [sigh] someday i'll get better at this picture thing, i think i'm just always in a hurry. i need to get out of the house more too. it's gorgeous around here.

i've been spending most of my morning reading this. i don't think i'll get very much done today.

competition in the airline industry.

euphoria to despair, one moment to the next. all the time. if i am bipolar, i have the shortest cycle imaginable. not sure why this is. healthy/whole to fragmented/sick in seconds. tired, wired, excited, numb, rush, crash.

i imagine myself at some point in the future looking back on all this & wondering how i survived. at that point i will be contented, fulfilled, complete. i think this is possibly only an insane fantasy, considering the present facts, & my history.

there are a few constants within these wild mood swings & they may in fact be the causes/inspirations/reasons why this happens. emotions, unrequited ones, quite powerful ones. obsessions that colour my days psychedelic 60's hazy bright, occasionally exquisite but more often than not disturbing & chaotic. i'm in something here, & what it is isn't good for me, but better or worse, here i am.

overall, i am quite delighted with the situation & have high hopes for the eventual poem or two, this is where they come from. this place, this mess, right here/now. i worry that this delights me, but better or worse, this is me.

it's a quiet night on the internet & i'm preparing to click over to chat, to fill the rest of this evening & distract me from my self. i do love this life; better or worse, it is mine, what i have created &/or brought upon myself.

historically i have gotten some flak for my obsession with lowercase letters & the &. sometimes i don't get any flak at all so i go find some & bring it home. radical bender (an interesting site i found in my referrer logs) muses about this oddity, & i feel once again compelled to defend my tendencies.

i like it because i think words are prettier that way. it actually takes quite a bit of effort to switch back & forth between the two types of typing, as in, between business & personal. sure i could code this weblog to make everything lowercase but sometimes i do use caps, say, if i want to raise my voice. this lowercase thing is really my soft southern california accent & little girl voice (the one i use when i want something, & am not pissed for not getting it yet).

so, in not as many words as i'd like it to have been, that's why. i could go on, but i won't. i'm absurdly happy right now because things got very fussy around here earlier so i angrily bummed a cigarette. i lit it, took two puffs, & realised, i don't want this thing.

i suspect i will have to be desperate for change in order to be its instrument, however i have my ways of making things happen, passive-agressively letting things happen to me, living by default. if anything is going to change i think that last part ought to go first. i am not saying i could be in control. i would just like to be less careening out of control down the pavement of my good intentions.

the question remains, am i desperate yet? & what, exactly would it take to get me there, & do i want to go there first to get where i'm headed eventually? do i need the detour through rock-bottom before i get to getting better?

i remember the swimming part of the dream (dream hangover still firmly in place, incidentally) -- i remember feeling concerned that i'd be too short of breath, but jumped in & found i had no trouble. nice direct symbolic connection -- i see it now. how did i not earlier? ahh, this is a good sign. it is.

so the current tangent i'm off on seems to be these issues with quitting things (like smoking) & other attempts at abstinence. i have a problem with abstinence. i will struggle for moderation in ways that seem excessive, but i maintain they are not, simply because i'd be failing then, wouldn't i? ok then.

i find posting a lot helps but the precipitous drop in comments has me concerned that i'm getting boring. oh well fuck it. this is my therapy & as such it does not have to be interesting all the time. if this is tedious to you, well, come back another time, things change around here. it's always so different from one week to the next i often wonder, what IS my purpose here? i always fancied that if i had a site with a central theme, it would be more expressive. expressing my difficulties with focus as a way of defining who i am, maybe. hmm. what exactly am i saying?

i am not sure but i'll know later when i come back to re-read this. read between my own lines. that's another reason i'm here, writing this, it is the ideal medium for what i just described. especially the ediiting part. i try not to do too much, but when i need to, i really do need to.

i'm going nowhere with this? maybe not. we'll see.

had them before, even blogged about them before. kind of an all-day malaise that follows certain dreams. not dreamlogging this one. there were extremely wistful passages & names were named. other parts were more entertaining. let's just say that in the blogalympics in vegas, the part where you have to swim through a pool filled with large bunnies & teeny, tiny, sticky frogs? i'll kick all your asses.

other, unwritten-about aspects of this dream will be conscious shadows, fading as the day goes, but never entirely. did i mention extremely wistful? it's going to be a long hangover. maybe i should dreamlog the whole thing, in an attempt to get it out of me? or not..

i'm not a nervous wreck, i'm not frantic. but i can feel the craving, a fierce & urgent energy. i ran out several hours ago, more or less on purpose. yeah, again. hey, i'm trying. don't know if i'm ready but i'll take all this trying as a good sign, if you don't mind. & recently, even in the times i wasn't trying, the idea has been there, & these things are all new, well, new to this particular episode of quitting.

how many times have i quit? three, for periods of several months to a little over a year. four, if you count circumstances beyond my control. always, the giving it up was wretched, the going back was bliss.

i don't know where i'm going with this. how about, to bed early? yes.

oh, i love the internet.

so, i get this email. lady desperately searching the internet for dale earnhardt checkbook cover & found this entry on old surreally, & she emailed me. now, the company that makes the checks (which i have, or chris does) has a site that that is all in java server pages & virtually unsearchable, so once again the power of the personal weblog surfaces in that she was able to find someone with the actual item that knew the company that sold those checks that... emailed her right back with the pertinent info. i just love doing stuff like this. makes me happy.

speaking of happy i have just completed making individual archives for all the surreallists, learning more everyday about utilizing the power that is Movable Type.

& later tonight i have another internet related project to do, that is going to be such delightful fun. i can barely wait, but i must. timing is everything. (stay tuned, this is going to get good).

i love my job, remember? so i'm supposed to be eagerly chomping at the bit to get on over there, right? there's just a lot of things i can't seem to be able to decide. should i lay down on the couch for just a few more minutes? wolf down some chocolate covered espresso beans? just get my lazy behind up out of this chair & go for it? take the time to write a post about something, that actually has a point? but what, exactly, would that be saying? what should i do? & while i'm at it where are my keys? my phone? should i put the side back on the old puter before i haul it into work, so they don't think i let it sit there with its case wide open all the time (which i do)? or should i just type a bit more meaningless nonsense into this text box, click save, & be done with it?

i should.

chronic lack of sleep sneaks up on me & knocks me out for awhile:

9:00 fall asleep on couch
12:00 wake up, check email, consider getting in chat, surf a little
12:30 go to bed, have a little trouble falling asleep, but not too much (i was ready to let myself get right back up again & get on the computer if i couldn't sleep)
2:30 wake up from nightmare in which my kid was taken away from me becasue i was asleep on the couch
3:40 cat jumps on bed. i get up & have a cookie, come back to find cat has taken over pillow. cookie in one hand, i grab cat with the other & remove him from my spot
4:40 son crawls into the middle of the bed, makes himself comfortable.
6:50 wake up feeling almost refreshed, thinking, this sleep thing could be a post, consider getting up & blogging, then think, naah
7:50 all the creatures are stirring, i stay in bed
8:50 finally drag my ass out of bed

times are approximate. memory is hazy, but most of them for some reason had sevens after them. i think. in any case, this is pretty typical of my sleep patterns, minus the outside interruptions -- i never get more than a few hours sleep at a time, & live by my naps. i love naps.

i'm feeling pretty darn perky right now. i think i'll have a cappuccino & some of those chocolate covered espresso beans & see what that much caffeine does to the well rested mind & body.

i am so excited i can't even think, or, maybe that's just how i am most of the time anyway. in any case, i have received a blorgi for Benevolent Web Presence (so my bribes of sneaking into the templates in the middle of the night to do good web fairy things have been accepted! excellent! fits in with my nefarious plans!)

that's me. nefarious & benevolent, all in the same breath. wheeeeeeeeee! thanks Bob.

so i see that Skarlet says she should be chosen most caffienated blogger in the anti-bloggies, while Ezrael challenges her claim, & Batgrl takes a somewhat scholarly turn on the subject & provides some interesting links to caffeine resources (she is also the sponsor of the prize for the award). i can see this is going to be quite a race. i don't suppose that the cappuccino machine in my kitchen & my view that chocolate covered espresso beans are a perfect breakfast food would put me in the running? naah. i'm a java junkie, sure, but i'm not in the league with these wired folk.

funny how frustration passes, & the resilience of the spirit of friday is renewed with a simple drive across town & the subsequent successful installation of a long lost friend (my webcam). odd that the whole subject of adversity has lost its lustre amidst the warm glow of hornsby's hard cider, coupled with the fact that it's gotten late enough for my evening energy to kick in.

i did have some pretty significant success this week, not the accomplishments themselves, but their aftermath -- rewards. in some ways this does feel a bit uncomfortable. i've only ever had one other employer that was this enthusiastic about me, & frankly, they were crazy. no really. 60% of the staff had diagnosed, but treatable mental illness (it was a nonprofit mental health services agency).

i often regretted leaving there, because subsequent employment, much like employment prior to that, had this tendency to end badly. i have some eccentricities, putting it mildly. trying to conform to my environment only ever worked for a little while, eventually the �real� me came out & then got thrown out, or at least convinced to throw myself out.

surprisingly enough, the fairly normal company i work for does not hate me, even after 2� years & eccentricities aplenty. in fact, my clients seem to unanimously love me, in spite of the fact that at no time am i not learning on the job as i go. thankfully the field i'm in (the internet) is such a constantly changing thing that learning as you go is the only way, really.

god, i love my job.

i really feel for people who have it too easy in this life, because when things turn to shit, they have no coping tools. much the same way as it is for the person whose network practically installed itself, so that when that person's child right clicks the wrong thing & deletes something crucial, well, that person is utterly unprepared to deal with the situation.

almost two hours of unmitigated stress followed by a last desperate attempt to get internet to a computer that completely ignores me when i reinstall the network adapters -- direct hookup to that ever-handy USB modem connection. it worked. kudos to telocity/directDSL for working over the ethernet & the USB, simultaneously. old puter will get hauled into work on monday to have people who know what they are doing fix whatever ails it. i'm spectacularly underqualified.

& now a moratorium on posting about computers, for at least the weekend (we won't even get into the unrelated memory weirdness).

now, back to the subject of adversity building coping skills or character or whatever. there is a downside to this, that is, if a person has had many too many bad times in life, that person will develop a tolerance for adversity, & in its absence, will find it difficult to deal with too much goodness. so it is with me.

possibly more about this later, after my nap. my head hurts.