'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.