'Cuz I Said I'd Explain It

I probably, in the previous post, should have added one small codicil to my "spring in Chicago" note, namely this:

Spring in Chicago is one of the best...blah blah blah....UNTIL it gets to be about noon, and the temperature crosses the 80-degree mark and the building you're in STILL has not got a firm grasp of the concept of "air conditioning", and then the clouds come and trap all the gooey, sticky air in places that also contain ME. THEN I start thinking longingly of days in January.

But I'm still happy.

Slightly less-happy than yesterday, however, because honestly: who WOULDN'T be happy under the following circumstances?

It's like, 9 AM and the sun is shining and you're STILL awake--not "awake again" but STILL awake, as in, I have not gone to bed--because the night before was spent in long phone-and-IM conversations with a guy who, despite various of his flaws, is apparently crazy about me (yes, I mean CR--I suppose I didn't get too far into that whole story, but rest assured that all is well, mostly, and the bits that aren't awesome are those that are outside our control at this time.) and playing computer games, just hanging out and acting like .....well, like an unemployed person, or a college girl, or someone who didn't have to get up and go to work the next day, which I didn't. (Didn't what? Didn't have to get up AND didn't have to go to work. Now, if THAT's not the combination to aim for, I'd love to know what is.)

And so, when CR and I finally hung up, and after THAT when we finally signed off on the IMs, I thought about going to bed for an hour or two....but instead I just moved my car reservation up a couple of hours and drove to the clinic. In front of the clinic, there was a guy who asked me if I, or anyone I knew, would be interested in buying a washer and dryer. I told him no, thanks, and continued in.

And when THAT was done, and when I had finished my little bit of grocery shopping (You know, I love Peapod, but there are a few items they just don't have: Lipton Extra Noodle Soup With Chicken Broth is one of those items. They have the REGULAR noodle, but not EXTRA noodle. There's a MARKED diffference) I drove home, and dropped off the car, and carried my groceries upstairs and put them away amidst a congregation of thoroughly excited cats; and then I played Bejeweled for a while; and some hours later, I finally yawned enough times that I realized: time to go to bed.

Now see, the thing about me and sleep is, it tends to grab me rather suddenly and drop me in my traces. So for instance, when I woke up this morning, I found in bed next to me two chocolate Easter eggs I was unwrapping when I was suddenly attacked by somnolence. Fortunately they were still wrapped; I've had this happen with unwrapped ones, as well. And chocolate eggs? Are NOTHING, mess-wise, compared to a Little Debbie Swiss Cake Roll. I never realized I made a fist in my sleep, until the first time I woke up with cream filling oozing between my fingers.

I woke up a couple of times between yesterday afternoon and this morning; but not many, I'll tell you that. And really, I would have been happy sleeping for a couple more hours, but it was time to get up and bumble through another workday. Since yesterday, really, involved way more "playing hooky" than "absent for a reason", I felt guilty enough to go in and act like a good employee today. (I had asked last Friday to take Thursday as a vacation day; I told them I'd made a doctors' appointment before my schedule had been changed to Mondays off instead of Thursdays. Really, though, I just knew I was going to have to go to the clinic, and wouldn't be in the mood to work. Now, we're not OBLIGATED to give a reason we're going to be out, but you kinda get the stink-eye if you don't.)

And yeah, there's something about not-entirely-policy-based absence that makes the morning seem a little sparklier, even in spring, even in Chicago. There was a lot more to the Happy than that, but since there are bits of it that trend toward that big "TOO MUCH INFO" zone off in the corner of the conversational map, we'll leave that one alone.

I will say this, though: I can't wait til CR comes back from Bumblefuck. He's got about three more weeks, he says, before everything's ready to go: his physical therapy overwith, his tax refund in hand, and that pesky little hospitalization his doctor wants, completed. (She wants to put him in the hospital to find out why his blood pressure is completely off the charts. Every time someone takes his blood pressure, he says, they try to admit him. Finally his doctor talked him into agreeing to go; now, it's just talking him into actually DOING it. And it looks like THAT task falls to lil' old me. I can't blame him for balking; I'd balk too, if I thought I was gonna hear the sort of shit he thinks he's gonna hear. And he can't blame me for nagging him, a little; if it was me, he'd nag too. Hell, he was practically ready to start nagging when I told him what MY blood-pressure was (135 over 82, but that was in the dentist's chair mere seconds before a large needle was to be jabbed into my jaw and a molar pried out with extreme prejudice. ANYBODY's B.P. would be a little high at THAT point, am I right? Yesterday at the clinic it was 127/80, which the nurse said was just fine.) I worry about CR; some of it is stress, but he's ALWAYS under stress. He worries more than anyone I know--and that's saying something.) Once all those things are done, though, he's coming back, this time for good. And then.....well, then -I- start getting to be the worried one, the one who's under stress. Because when CR comes back, everything in my life will be perfectly tolerable....except the Mom situation. The Mom situation is going to get ugly, possibly even UUUUUUGly. But I'm willing to stand up for myself, this time; hell, I'll be forty years old in a little more than a month, and if you can't live your own life when you're forty, when CAN you live it?

Til then, though, I think I'll just continue being happy.

Cryptic, But In a Good Way

Later on, perhaps, when I've actually been to sleep within the preceding 26 hours (a criterion to which now does not conform), I will be able to explain more about, offer reasons for, or otherwise expand upon, the following statement. But right now, once I have a Motrin and a Pepsi, I plan to be entirely unconscious within minutes, and so I will say only this for now:

What an awesome morning. Spring in Chicago is one of the best reasons to wish for a long life, and just at the moment I might be willing to give the human race in general the benefit of the doubt (except for the bitchy meat-department clerk at the Ashland and Roosevelt Jewel store, who was just unnecessarily bitchy when I asked her a basic question. Some people really do not like their jobs.)

In summary: Right now, I would have to say something very unusual for me....I think I'm HAPPY.

Several Dozen Emotions

Okay, I'm back.
Emotion number 1: Fucking OWWWWWWWWW. I have a root-canal scheduled for Friday. So necessary is this root-canal that I actually called the dentist's office today and asked if I could move it to an EARLIER day. MAN this thing sucks.

Emotion number 2: Gah.
Today, for basically no reason at all, I got snapped at by Mister Christian--you know, my evangelical cube-mate. There are six people in my area, and since we all share a total of three cubes, we are necessarily in very close quarters. And so the custom has evolved that if someone says something interesting on the phone, even if it's none of anyone else's business, it's pretty much free for the commenting--because if it was so damn private, what the hell were you doing talking about it at your desk, which is basically stationed on top of five other people? That's what cell-phones and the end of the hallway down by the window is for--for private calls made out of earshot.

So today, in keeping with the regular norm, I asked a perfectly innocuous question about something totally non-personal which had been said a moment before, and I got my head snapped off for it. "I mean DAMN, will you mind your own business???" was one of the bits I remembered--and again, it's not like I'd done anything that hasn't been done to me a dozen times, nor gone anywhere NEAR the lines that have already been crossed about twice an hour. And my first thought--uncharitable, yes--was "oh, THAT's a Christian way to handle it...." He gives more respect to his kids--and I know, because he talks to them on the phone at least four times an afternoon!

Now, at the end of the day, because I am a doormat and because I feel personally responsible for always making everything better even when there's the slightest possibility that I might have been wrong, I apologized for not minding my own business; and after a minute or two of justifications, rationalizations, and the rest, he finally admitted that he's had a lot on his mind and he might just be short-tempered lately. I managed not to say "Ya think so???" which took an immense degree of effort. So: agnosto-paganoids 1, God-fearing churchgoers, 0.

Emotion number three: giggly twitterpation.
Yes, I'm even making mySELF sick with this one: it's a CR thing. We're absolutely sickening, I swear; all sorts of cutesy schmoopiness of the sort I most despise, all done via IM because: he went back to Boogerhump, IN last week, and I am (emotion number 3.5, here) desolate, in that spectacularly annoying way indulged in by those who know the person they miss will be coming back in a relatively short time. Of course, there's a decent chance this could be replaced tomorrow by REAL desolation; he has a doctor's appointment tomorrow which may change all our plans and annoy the crap out of both of us indefinitely. But for the moment, I'm sticking with the happy side of things....he was here for ten days and it was absolutely fantastic. I had forgotten how comfortable I am with him, and vice versa. We watched a lot of crap TV, talked until I lost my voice, listened to his music for hours (he brought a lot of old soul music and R&B, and I finally (god help me) listened to the entire TWELVE chapters of R. Kelly's "Trapped In The Closet", which made my stomach hurt (from laughing...mostly) and led, as many things with CR and I will do, to a discussion of racial and gender politics. Except we never CALL it that, of course; it's more like "...And this is another thing that annoys me about white people," (said by me, usually) or "And this is how stupid men are..." (usually his words). I was happy while he was here. I'm still happy even though he's not here now; I'm more motivated than I've been in a while, more focused, full of more plans.

Emotion number 4: wistful.
Because, you see, I remember feeling like that once before. I was a lot younger then; and a lot of things have happened since then...but I feel as though there's a chance I might able to go forward anyway. I realize how totally off that seems--that I have to be with someone in order to consider moving forward--but this may be one of those things I have to learn to accept about myself even though I don't like it very much. There are a few of those, mostly things I really cannot change; my non-morning-person-ness, my stubbornness, my insistence on arguing every possible point. I can keep all of those in check, if I try very very hard; but it's an effort, and it's painful, and even when I do my best it doesn't always help. And really, at my age, it might be time to work on changing the really SERIOUS things that need changing--like my fifteen years of apathy and guilt, and the total cessation of all but the most basic survival activities: working, eating, sleeping. That's no way to spend fifteen years; there are things I want to do, you see. And even if I can't see myself succeeding all alone, I can see myself succeeding now--because all alone, all I can think of is what might have been, whereas now, I can think about what IS.

There's more to this post, really...lots more, and I hope I'll get to it tomorrow. There's still "terrified", "resentful", "vaguely amused", "wildly hopeful", "screw you Mister Jerkface" (yes, that IS TOO an emotion), and a fair bit of "righteous indignation"--and probably a few more I'm blanking on, because it's already midnight. But I will come back to them, and in parting tonight I shall leave you with this gem of wisdom:

"OWWWWW. This tooth HURTS, dammit!!!!" --Gladys J. Cortez.