Remember me?

This is Cathy--the bitch that invented wallpaper. She lived on my (now-defunct) water cooler for a while. I will miss her.
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So I've had this block for a couple of weeks. I keep wanting to post, opening new posts, saving things in the Drafts folder.

I keep going back to them...not remembering what direction I was going with them, and then I summarily delete them.

Here I am. Posting. Because it's the only way to get rid of the junk in my head...and also the best way to get past a post-block.

What's been going on you ask? The usual, I reply.

Work. Beer. Home. Home. Home. Lots of home.

Friday night was nice...nothing was going on, so Bill came over late-ish (10:30 or so) and we watched Turistas. The movie sucked, but it was really nice to have him here. He always seems a bit uncomfortable in my space though, which makes me a little sad.

I had all of last weekend off, and spent almost ALL of it inside my apartment. I left the apartment briefly on Sunday night to go to the park for a couple of hours, and the gym for an hour and a bit. That was awesome. But then I went back to my apartment.

Oh, I had big plans on Saturday morning. I was up and dressed and mobile by 11. I'd been showered, clothed, and smooched soundly (always a good thing). I intended to wander downtown...I'd intended to hit the park. I'd intended to run some errands, and make it to a ceilidh downtown at the Speakeasy by 2. (Padraig was playing!)

And my plan derailed. For no reason other than Me. What ALWAYS happens to my plans...I just don't know what to do about it. I got sidetracked doing absolutely NOTHING. I frigged around in my apartment for hours...I did bake some biscuits, but that took a whole hour out of my day. Then it was suddenly 4, and it was too late to go to the Ceilidh...because I'm poor, so I didn't want to pay $10 to get in for just a couple of hours.

I wanted to go out, so called around and around...but all my friends are either paired up or knocked up, so nobody was around. I couldn't even be bothered to drag my ass to the gym. (In my couple of week absence here, I've also been slacking large at my gym-going...been getting there, but rarely.)

So I sat home. I watched a couple of movies, and I sold my soul to Facebook. (Yeah, yeah...I resisted for months, but all it took was Billy to send me an invitation and I caved like a chocolate bunny in the hands of a 4 year old boy.) I was going to go Out on my own, but much as I enjoy being out, and listening to the music, I really HATE sitting at the bar by myself and having to be nice to creepy men who think I'm there for them. And I already felt like a loser because I had no friends to go out with, I didn't really want to sit alone at the bar and feel like even MORE of a loser.

Sunday was another gorgeous day. I cleaned my kitchen. I scrubbed my floor. I did some laundry. I didn't leave the house until almost 4:00 pm. I made a point of not turning on my computer until around 2 PM though, as I know that is how I waste so much of my time and energy...reading all of YOUR blogs. You guys are fascinating, but you're sucking the life out of me, and I need to exhibit some freaking self-control.

I went to Point Pleasant Park and wandered around for a couple of hours. It was amazing. It was such a glorious day...and the park was so amazing. The weather was sunny, the air was warm but crisp, the wind was virtually non-existent, and the water was calm. I patted no less than 4 wonderful dogs. I was reminded (and just in time!) of why it is that I'm so glad to live in this province.

I LOVE this province. I love looking out at the ocean...and seeing the little houses backed up to the harbour. I love looking at the Marinas and the government wharves. I feel Home when I smell the salty, musty air first thing in the morning, or blowing in off the water when I'm on the shore. It was a good trip to the park.

Then, I reminded myself that part of why I was feeling like a slug is that I had been ACTING like a slug, so I hauled my ass to the gym for an hour and a half. It was good. I felt fantastic afterward, actually.

Monday at work sucked ass.*

But then I was off Tuesday...so it should have been great! But that means that I have had 4 days out of the last 5 off. And I've done NOTHING. I've not been out, I've not been social, I've not been productive, and I've not been very HAPPY.

*There's a lot of crap going on right now...it's all of my own making, and it sucks. See the rest of this post to see why.

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So today was not a great day. And the fact that I KNOW why it wasn't a great day doesn't make this any easier to understand.

Once every year and a half or so (don't think I'm this in-tune with my psyche, it's taken a lot of self-reflection to figure out a time line) things in my life start to spin completely, wildly, and irretrievably out of control.

I usually, I think, have a pretty good grasp on the goings on of my life. Professionally, I am pretty much on top of stuff. I can keep up with my bills, albeit in a scrimp, scratch, and scrape together sort of way. I have a home, I have stuff, I have clean clothes, and I feed myself. I am usually a very cheery person.

In fact, I am usually the sort of person that annoys the piss out of people. If you ask me how I am? My answer is always 'Faaantastic!' (It used to be 'Excellent!' but then that annoying Atlantic Lotto commercial came out, and now I'm just 'Faaaantastic, thanks!') I am eternally cheerful. I am constantly smiling, I am bouncy, and have ridiculous amounts of energy.

This is why when I am actually having a rough time, I don't deal well with it. Most of the time, people don't know. I'm a pretty good actress. If you can tell? It's usually because I WANT you to be able to tell. You must be one of the very few people that I am even remotely interested in letting in a little bit. You are a very special person, because I'm prepared to let myself look weak in front of you. And to me? That's what it is...it's showing my weakness. And I'm SOOO not good at that.

So every couple of years, everything starts to spin wildly out of control. And I mean EVERYTHING. The feeling starts with one thing, but then everything else in my life seems to get sucked into the vortex of evil and spins and whirls around me like a tornado. I always manage to walk around in the eye of the storm, with my house, my dog, and the witch on the bicycle whirling madly around me. I trudge through my day, going through the motions, all the while hoping that nobody notices the green lady with the big hat cycling about my ears cackling maniacally all the way.

I am a control freak. I find the juxtaposition of this fact with my messy house, my crazy finances, and my otherwise messed up life to be a bizarre source of constant bemusement. I hate it when I can't make things work out exactly how I want them to. I don't spend a lot of time THINKING about this stuff, but sometimes it forces itself on me. Bare facts, folks, are hard to avoid.

I LIKE to control my environment. I like to have people think I know what's going on. I love that people count on me to help solve their problems. I do this for a living, and I'm pretty good at it. But sometimes? Sometimes I need someone to fix ME. And this becomes very evident to me every couple of years.

I always, before, thought that it was just a by-product of change in my life. Because this feeling usually coincides with me moving to a new city and starting a new job. I have always been able to pass off this lack of control as an inevitable side effect (or unfortunate harbinger) of change. Not so much this time. This time? I have to face it for what it is. A funk of serious proportions.

Partly it's because I spent too much time sitting alone in my apartment. But I think that part of the reason I spent so much time sitting alone in my apartment is because I get to a point where I'm afraid to move. I become paralyzed (not literally)(well, maybe literally) with dread...a dread that if I DO something, I'm only going to make things worse instead of better. I worry that I'm going to NOT accomplish something at work, or that I'm going to SAY something stupid to a friend, or that by NOT calling someone yet again, or worse--by *actually* calling them, I'm going to actually break that camel's proverbial back.

I think that the worst part of all this, is that I've never before mentioned any of it to anybody. I just trudge along, with the winds howling, and the monkeys flying, hoping that things will get better. And they usually do, eventually.

For some reason, though, this time I'm not so sure.

This is the same funk that I get into every year when I take my vacation and I don't have anything planned. I fritter away my days, kicking myself the whole time for not DOING something. I need to DO things and ACCOMPLISH things every day, or I feel that it's not worth getting out of bed. And honestly? Even if I DO manage to do something? It's still a major cost-benefit analysis that usually leans to the side of Bed.

I am in a funk. It's a funk of major proportions. I am working at getting out of it. Because it hasn't been here the whole time I've been away, honest. It's really just been brewing for the last week, and it really only just got serious over the weekend. And it WILL get better--so I'm not looking for sympathy, or empathy, or even a 'cheer up, L'il Buckeroo!'...I don't know what I'm doing. I think I'm just sharing. And that's new for me.

Anyway.

In other news... :)

I found my cousin on Facebook, and a girl I went to Elementary School with (Chrissy, remember Debbie B?), and am obsessed with looking at the snapshots of people I know (and lots of people that I don't).

Have I ever told you how much I love looking at photos? I do. I don't even care if I know the people. I just like to see people in interesting places, making interesting faces, and feeling things. I like to imagine I know what they were thinking, and feeling, and experiencing. It's a small slice of a life less ordinary than mine. Even if it's far more dull in it's reality than mine...in my imagination it's that much more real.

In other news--

My water cooler exploded. I came home one night last week to hear "BLURGLE!" I thought it was a bit odd, but continued doing my GettingHomeFromWork thing. Later, while I was starting supper, I heard it again, this time more persistently, "BLUUUUURGLE!!!!"

I looked over to the cooler, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. I walked over to it to check and see if perhaps I'd left the dispensing button slightly depressed, causing air to infiltrate the parts. I had not. But somewhere underneath the machine, in the dark bowels of it's inner wiring, something had given up the ghost. There was an ocean on my floor, and a puddle under the cooler.

I immediately unplugged the machine. I didn't want ANOTHER fire in the same complex in less than a month. I then swore loudly, threw a tea-towel at the quickly advancing tides, and picked up the machine--1/2 full water-bottle and all. I ran (read: walked quickly yet awkwardly) to the bathroom with the machine and it's contents...dripping the entire way. We stopped when we hit the bathtub, where I deposited the works. I removed the water bottle as quickly as I could so as to minimize the gushing waters escaping it's narrow neck. Then, I tipped over the cooler, hoping to drain as much as possible from its insides.

Stupid machine. I loved that machine.

It's still sitting on my bathroom floor because I haven't quite figured out what to do with it. Bastard. It was the best Christmas present I ever got, besides this computer. And now? I'm without a dispensing system. And I'm sad about that. Instead of my nightly 4 or 5 cups of plain hot water, I'm relegated to drinking green tea instead. And while it's good...it's not as good for me as just plain old water. I miss my cooler. Oh well...one day I'll be rich and can buy myself a new one.

That's not likely to be any time soon though. I have a long list of minor (and not so minor) car repairs that are not currently happening because I'm freaking broke. It's actually a very good thing I didn't go out on Saturday, as I couldn't have afforded it anyway. Bill went to the Speak, and from the limited information I received as to the rest of the night, I could DEFINITELY not have managed to keep up in a fiscal manner. (I'd have made an excellent DD though. I'm usually also quite a good sport about it--as I don't mind being surrounded by drunks so long as they're funny and not arseholes about it.)

It's 1:35 am and I have to be at work tomorrow/today for 6:30. Big day of getting beaten up by the boss' boss. He's in his 'coaching' mode, where he picks on me for a while in what he believes is an encouraging manner to teach me the wonderful ways of retail. It's supposed to be good for my career development. I look at it as a character building experience. In the terms that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Or makes me a felon...whichever. Because what doesn't kill me? Leaves me angry and bitter and riddled with an overwhelming desire to kill YOU. So if I'm not in jail at the end of the day tomorrow, I'll be the strongest su'm'bitch you'll ever meet.

It's Wednesday. I haven't seen the boy since early Saturday. I made him tell me he likes me tonight on MSN, but somehow it loses something in the text-to-head translation. Particularly when you have to TELL them to say it. Even when they know you're not having a great day.

I know he means it, but it's been almost 2 weeks since he SAID it, and I'm all about the words. I know that I'm the one that has to be stubborn if I want this to work, and I do...because I'm Happy here. But it's hard to remember to be the strong one when you're feeling particularly shitty, and kinda down, and fairly un-special to start with.

Wanna know something that made me crazy-silly-happy? *grin* I knew you did. It's stupid. But it made me grin. And it still does. So much, in fact, that I log in just to look at it. Facebook. (Yeah, I know...I'm 12 years old, get over it!) He put 'in a relationship' without prompting. Yeah, yeah--shuddup. It's cute, dammit! :P

And while I'm being all high-school (nay, elementary school) about stuff, he also called me his 'girlfriend' in a conversation at which I was not present...because he said it again when he was telling me about it. *grin* So I know I shouldn't question stuff...but I do.

I think it's a direct result of telling myself every day for 6 months that he DIDN'T like me and that I was mis-reading and mis-interpreting signals...so that now? I question everything, even though I am trying really hard not to. It's why I need the words. I try really hard to use lots of words myself, and I think that perhaps it makes him a little uncomfortable...but I'm afraid that if I don't use my words, he's not going to see that it's really an indicator of what *I* need.

Argh. This stuff should be so much easier. And it would be, if I wasn't so stressed out about everything else in my life being shit at the moment. I don't know what I'm doing with ANY of it. And that's scary as hell.

Yikes...2 AM. This is NOT going to make my day at work tomorrow any better! Woopsie. At least I have Gaelic tomorrow night...that's always fun. I'll have to remember to pack some clothes and my books as well as a lunch. Yikes--that just made getting out of bed 30 minutes sooner. I'm out of here folks! Have a Wonderful Wednesday!