Protected: I’ll Do My Time

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Unsleepability

Quiz time. Stolen from Amanda.

I Am. . . a mess
I Want . . . everything that I should want at this point in my life
I Have . . . the world’s greatest cat
I Wish . . . I could see my friends more often
I Hate . . . when people say they’re going to do something but do not do it
I Fear . . . summer gas prices
I Hear . . . the sweet sound of silence from my downstairs neighbors
I Search . . . for something unexpected every day
I Wonder . . . how long it’s going to take
I Regret . . . every time I ever hurt someone I love
I Love . . . thunderstorms
I Ache . . . every time that he goes away
I Always . . . floss every day
I Usually. . . am late to work
I Am Not . . . the fastest boat on the ocean sometimes
I Dance . . . while cleaning the apartment
I Sing . . . in the car, in the apartment, and in my cube when I forget that people can actually hear me
I Never . . . saw blue like that before
I Rarely . . . drink soft drinks these days
I Cry . . . over stuff I really shouldn’t, and don’t cry over stuff that I probably should
I Am Not Always . . . as respectful as I should be to the people I love
I Lose . . . at least three hours of my life every week to meetings
I’m Confused . . . about what some people expect from me
I Need . . . to be sleeping
I Should. . . not be so self-destructive sometimes

Today’s Lesson

Always, always, always carry spare keys to car and apartment. Always.

It Reminds Me of You

You know who you are.

Sometimes I swear I don’t know if I am coming or going
But you always say something without even knowing
That I am hanging onto your words with all my might
And it’s alright
I am alright
For one more night
Every day

Unexpected Truth

Never thought I’d find so much truth in any musical involving puppet sex, nonetheless enough truth to define almost every relationship I’ve had up to this point.

There’s a fine, fine line between together and not
And there’s a fine, fine line between what you wanted and what you got.

But there’s a fine, fine line between love
And a waste of your time.

Oh, sigh.

On a lighter note, don’t put your finger there!

PUT YOUR FINGER THERE!!

Song of the Day

Long before we ever touched
Long before we knew too much
I wish we were strangers again

Long before we ever kissed
Long before I ever missed you
I wish we were strangers again

I want yesterday to come back again
Nothing is as simple as I once knew
Why can’t everything be the way it was
Before the day that I loved you?

Long before the afterglow
Long before our tears fell slow
I wish we were strangers again

Friday Five – A Little Pick-Me-Up

I know this is a few days early/lots of days late, but I’m needing it right now. Originally, this was going to be the top five most hurtful things anyone has ever said to me, but I’m rebelling against my own self-destructive tendencies in an effort to avoid the therapy couch. This list turned out to be slightly more challenging to come up with than the aforementioned version, but I still had trouble narrowing it down. That made me realize how fortunate I am.

Five Sweetest/Kindest Things Anyone Has Ever Said To or About Me

5. “You are my hero.”

4. “Figured I would go ahead and emotionally slap you around, to avoid you having to do it to yourself.” (In what I perceived to be half-jest)

3. “Leslie would have killed the guy; [my sister's name here] would have sat there and been killed.” (In reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings)

2.”We’re in this together, whether you like it or not.”

1. “I’m your biggest advocate.”

Honorable Mention:

“Even though you’re fat, I still love you.”

“She’s hard-headed enough that she just might make it.”

“You should be proud of her; her lips are sealed, everyone trusts her.”

“I will never leave you alone with my children, I promise.”

“I’m totally going to leave you alone with my children.”

I will refrain from crediting those who doled out these blessings. If you see something you recognize as yours, ku-dos, and thanks; you touched my life in a way you may never fully comprehend. I can only aspire and hope to enrich your lives the way you’ve enriched mine.

Protected: Being Numb

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My Cat is a Damn Genius

Sitting on the table directly in front of me, facing the computer, she heard the vet technician I have on the phone say her name and turned her head in response.

Ah, Life

Hello, Jefferson Animal Hospital; Goodbye minimum of $101 to find out why my cat keeps upchucking.

Walk the Line Until it Blurs

I just heard this song on the radio this morning and it has stuck with me all day. It so perfectly echoes the most painful sentiments I’ve been entertaining recently. Even if you’re not a fan of country music, you gotta admit, this is pure poetry. Lyrics here.

Diagnosis of a Kitteh

The scene: Arriving home extraordinarily late for work at 9:30 pm. Lack of kitteh presence at door raises acute suspicion. Strange, metallic smell of blood opens veritable floodgates of adrenaline. Inspection reveals dried drops, trails, and smears of kitteh-sneezed blood covering the floor and lower nine inches of every surface and structure in apartment. Kitteh emerges from rarely-used cubby hole often referred to as The Sick Bucket.

Cursory examination: Kitteh appears sluggish, but relatively alert. No blood present on kitteh nose. Kitteh paws suspicious shade of pink, indicates kitteh has bathed blood off said nose. Eyes unfocused, tail droopy. Kitteh prefers to sit with feet drawn underneath body, does not wish to be held, cleaned or petted. Wiggles when picked up. Indicates either normal temperament or discomfort. Unsure which at this stage of examination.

Further examination: Kitteh food bowl shows typical indentation in “food heap” indicating kitteh has eaten normally throughout the day. Water level higher than normal indicates possible dehydration, which may imply impending kitteh constipation. Subsequent examination of litter box, having been freshly cleaned roughly twelve hours previous, reveals no evidence of number one or number two. On tile floor beside litter box, the primary suspect: kitteh hairball. Kitteh appears to have moderate interest in playing with kitteh-appropriate toys, as indicated by half-hearted batting and biting at Mr. Ribbon. Moderate-to-high interest in playing with kitteh-inappropriate toys, as indicated by prolonged batting and swatting at examiner’s spectacles. Upon prolonged observation, kitteh visits litter box in attempt on number two. Several minutes pass with no success. Constipation suspicions confirmed. Immediately after, kitteh visits food and water bowls, eats small amount, and drinks large amount. At one point, examiner takes high-powered, close-range kitteh sneeze to the face, with no blood evident in the expelled mucous. Promising.

Treatment: Still-sluggish kitteh receives warm washcloth bathing of paws, nose, chin, and chest. Very unhappy. When kitteh cools off, will administer 4cc’s CatLax kitteh laxative and hairball formula, despite obvious bad timing. Approximate time for kitteh to reach said state of cooled-downedness to be 24 hours. For now, kitteh is cuddled, chin-scratched, kissed and loved and nuggled, then left to her own devices with the knowledge that kitteh will make self as comfortable as possible. Initiate clean-up of the scene (I now know what it would be like to clean up after a gruesome murder).

Outcomes: Kitteh spends one full night sleeping on stomach atop random box in kitchen. 24 hours after incident, kitteh appears healthy and has returned to normal behaviors. Prognosis: excellent.

Insight: And people tell me I don’t know what it’s like to have kids. A cat. Sneezed. In my face. And the only thing I thought to do was to see if it was bloody or not. I’m pretty sure I never even washed it off.

How Many Stomach Flus am I From My Goal Weight?

Wow… if I lost two pounds every time I stayed up all night with my head in a toilet. . . wait, no, that’s so not worth it.

As an aside: Who’d'a thought that there was a REASON my doctor forbade me from eating sugar? One sugar cookie from the Pah Kitchen and I’m in hell. Or, rather, hell has taken up residence in my stomach.

My Empire of Dirt

When words and blood are not enough to expunge the torment, there’s a place I go where so much pain feels normal. I found there today a man who had outlived all of his children and his wife. He died over 100 years before I was born, but I cried for him. To have lived forty years after so much that you loved had gone. . . and now to have only this, a forgotten, weather-beaten stone as a testament to the kind of life that must have been.

Suddenly I didn’t feel the normalcy I had come in search of. How much greater must his pain have been when he stood in that exact spot in 1845 and buried his one-year-old daughter? Then two years later, his five-year-old son? Or his wife? Or the son who was struck by lightning just a few years later? Then what must he have felt when he stood in front of that stone as I was doing now, loving people so far beyond his reach? Lost to so much meaninglessness, struggling to overcome it.

I kept him with me as I searched for greater sadness and instead found quite the opposite. A woman’s dying words, expertly carved underneath her name: “If this is death, how sweet it is! It is such a joy to die at peace with this world.”

Stone. That’s all that we can hope to become.

There is no greater sadness than that. But I think maybe that’s the greatest struggle we have to overcome: to give it meaning. To build something greater than a cracked, ignored monument. Stone. Does that last forever?

Terrestrial peace. That’s all that we can hope to achieve.

The video above ran through my head for the rest of the day. There he is, surrounded by so much of everything a man could want, so much beauty, so many riches. And none of it matters to him. All that matters is the life he can’t live over, the hurt he can’t undo, and the regrets he can never rectify.

Nothing matters if you’re living a joyless life. Because you can struggle, and cry, and fight, and rationalize, and justify, and “just wait and see” for the rest of your life, and when the rest of your life is over, all that will exist of that life is a stone, overgrown and nondescript, tucked away in a corner of the world and forgotten by all who would have sought to know you. When staring death in the face, no one has ever regretted not having more misery in his life. Reality is as subjective as truth; both are what we make them. Don’t keep living the life you have – live the life you want. The first step is to decide what that is.

Wherein I Turn Out to be a Huge Hypocrite

Sorry to anyone I drunk texted tonight.

Wherein Nothing Goes According to Plan

The next person to drunk text me will have their cell phone crammed so far up their ass that it will tickle that little dingleberry at the back of their throat when it rings.