Psychotic break

So, if it seems to you like this is just becoming a dream journal in which I remind you biweekly that my headbrain is still as messed up as it has always been, then you're right, because last night I dreamed that Houseboy was a meth addict and when I confronted him about it he was all "No, I'm not, I'm just experimenting, and I don't even do it that much" and then he snorted some meth, and I had to say "But you're doing meth RIGHT NOW, right in front of me!" And he just shrugged and then pulled out the baggie of meth (which in my head, apparently, looks a lot like rock salt) and a spoon and started spooning it into his mouth, and I was all "OMG, I don't think that's how you're supposed to do it, I don't even know if that is better or worse, both in terms of getting high and in terms of dying from being a big drug addict, FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE STOP IT WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?!"

But anyway the only reason I'm telling you about this is because Hedgehog today accused me of being in a "silly" mood, and I had to look back over our chat to see why she would say that, and I realized it was because she kept talking about totally normal things and I kept saying things like "When you say Mac it reminds me of mac and cheese!" or "You're a dirty sociologist!" or telling stories about how my mom used to say "Do you want sugar, honey? Or honey, sugar?" when she made me tea, and so really by "silly mood," she was just being nice and really she meant that I had reverted to being a four year old who just said whatever random thing came into my head, and so I decided that I should share this story on a blog because I really haven't done enough damage today.

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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

Is it November already?

For all you living in normal climates with "seasons" and everything, this may come as no surprise, but it seems as though fall/winter has snuck up on me, probably owing to the fact that it's still 70 degrees outside and I think I saw tulips on my way in this morning, but we went ahead and ended Daylight Savings Time anyway, so on the first of November we can wear shorts and t-shirts as we sit out on the back porch in the dark at 5 o'clock.

Not that either the warmth or the darkness affected me much this weekend, since I had my first multi-day migraine in a while, so I was mostly hiding out under the covers with a heating pad, which is also warm and dark I guess so come to think of it there's a theme here of some kind. The theme is actually that just because you think the migraine is gone and you're so very proud of your drug regimen and all doesn't mean you can sit around eating Snickers for dinner because it turns out that WILL catch up with you. This time last year I was in the middle of that elimination diet to find any food triggers and had to track down candy without high fructose corn syrup or dairy or nuts or wheat, which I assure you was delicious in a really boring fruit-flavored kind of way.

Anyway, what that means is that I'm now in that post-migraine fugue state where I sometimes can't remember my fingers and if you are harsh with me I might burst into tears or just stare at you with that dead-eyed Paris Hilton look until you question the very foundation of reality.

Paris Hilton is still the hot gossip right?

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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

I've never done this before

It's called TMI Thursday and you're supposed to share a story that is Too Much Information. I figure every day on my blog is too much information just by virtue of being a blog by a nonfamous person with a totally uninteresting life (see the last 190 posts, approximately), but I guess this kind of TMI has to do with telling stories about your naughty bits, which I may have mentioned yesterday I don't do, but I figured since today I'm going to talk about my armpits, maybe it actually qualifies as a traditional TMI in that not everybody wants to read about my armpits.

Anyway, today is one of those days where I actually don't have meetings or class in the morning and although I have about 20 articles on social promotion and graduation requirements to read, I'm just not doing it, even though they're sitting right next to me, instead I watched The Price Is Right and then put on a dress for today and was thinking of wearing my cute boots because it's not 123 degrees outside, but then I realized that what I'm wearing is sleeveless, and although I shaved yesterday apparently that's not quite good enough anymore. Once upon a time I could shave and not worry about it again for a day or two and then still not shave for a day or two after that because I wore something with sleeves. And then also I use this stuff called "Nads" that's like wax and is supposed to last longer than shaving, but lately it isn't really lasting that long and since the doctor always feels your lymph nodes during the yearly physical I decided to shave yesterday to be polite to her, not that she really cares but I imagine a situation in which she goes to feel my lymph nodes and goes "How can I even find them in all of this?? You'll have to come back after you've learned to care for yourself properly and by the way you DO get graded for this, and you're getting an F."

But I guess what I'm saying is that I'm wearing a sleeveless dress on a sleeved-up lifestyle, if you know what I mean. If you don't know what I mean, ask Craig Finn, he can explain it to you in between drinking and yelling to himself. I actually think it means something about heroin, which only applies in the sense that people who use a lot of heroin probably shouldn't wear sleeveless dresses and neither should people who aren't willing to groom, like me.

Anyway, I've got a cardigan and a distaste for changing my clothes, so I'm off to class.


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Explosive inferno of awful

So, due to certain circumstances wherein there were happenings in which it transpired that Houseboy and I had to drive all the way the fuck up to Chicago and back down in just over 24 hours, and haul shit around and complain about stuff a lot, and plus it is a certain feminine time that is not the happiest for everyone, and I'm not talking about prom, all these things coincided to make all the vessels in my head expand and flood my brain with blood. By which I mean I had a migraine. Which sucked. But what did not suck was when I went to enter it into the handy dandy little tracker I have on Google docs, and I realized it has been 43 days since I had to take Imitrex brand imitrex. In memoriam of this momentous occasion, in which medical science prevails, I bring you the Top Three Migraines That I Can Remember. It's possible there were others that were worse, but I blocked them from my conscious brain.


#3: Camping in Wisconsin and rain during the day leads to tent time with bug spray, which it turns out will cause problems if taken externally but even more problems when taken internally. Finding a dark and quiet place in the woods is not that easy if you have any concern for bears.

#2: A hotel in Times Square for a work conference means incessant noise, pollution, lights and seventeen kinds of funny smells. Prescription drugs don't quite cut it so I head out into the city that never sleeps to find Tylenol PM, which completely unironically is impossible to find. By the time I track down an open drugstore that has any damn stock, I decide that I'll need at least five to get any relief. That feels kind of like constantly clawing your way out of a slimy pit only to discover that at the top the whole world is on fire.

#1: Three straight days, about four more doses of the magic drugs than are technically recommended, a little shaking and vomiting, and a personal record for holding my breath under water because that seemed like a good idea at the time. I don't even remember much of this one except that it had no known cause and I thought it might literally never end.


So, with that let us all give thanks for the makers of Propranolol, who would win the Nobel and the Pulitzer and the Teen Choice awards if I were allowed to vote in any of those, but since I'm not they win a new award I just made up, called The Understatement of the Year Award. Propranolol: you're pretty all right. Thanks, dudes.


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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

How to be a responsible underage drunk

So, because in high school I was not "cool" and didn't like to "drink and drive" and didn't have parents who "let me drink in the basement" and lived in a small town where the bartenders knew I "wasn't 21," I didn't have a lot of opportunities to drink and those I had I didn't take advantage of.

Anyway, so I got to college, which was in the Big City, by Minnesota standards anyway, and I lived in a dorm, so I didn't have to drive anywhere to get liquor, and I knew people with fake IDs and siblings who were over 21 and bartenders who didn't know me from anyone and might have believed I was 21 if I wanted to get a fake ID, which I didn't, but anyway, the point is that I made the very carefully considered decision that drinking was cool and I was cool too and as long as we all went about it in a responsible manner, all things would end well for all involved parties.

This decision was made on a dorm room floor while surrounded by half filled bottles of various liquors dropped off by my friend's sister, who was just tickled that her little brother was taking the plunge into alcohol experimentation, and so gave us many many options to choose from. My roommate and this friend* and I chose vodka as our drink of choice with peach schnapps as our chaser. My friend's sister had neglected to drop off any shot glasses, so my roommate and friend were using small plastic cups, while I chose a measuring cup, which as the night wore on seemed more and more brilliant, as I became more and more convinced of my ability to exert absolute control over my own levels of drunkenness.

This might have been before I decided that I was dizzy sitting on the floor and the chair would be safer. It might have been before we decided that being in the hallway would solve all our problems. It was definitely before everyone on the floor decided that they would join us, including the RA, who was definitely on things besides vodka and peach schnapps.

This obviously set up weeks and months of all levels very controlled and responsible partying, which included:

• Establishing and codifying a ladder of intoxication that began with "buzzed" and ended with "blasted" and had a bunch of other levels in between that I no longer remember,
• Drawing an intricate Drunken Makeout Map with lines connecting all the people on the floor who had made out with each other while drunk,
• Some girl who might not even have gone to our school wandering into my friend's room and trying to steal the liquor, but first trying to cut the screen off the top of the Bacardi 151 bottle and slicing her hand open and then running out into the street before we could even try to help her,
• Wandering into a local band's practice session in the dorm's basement and narrowly saving one of the band member's daughters from drinking a rather large glass of "juice" that was actually about 14 kinds of liquor mixed with just a little Sunny D (that we had brought in with us),

And lots of other stuff, I'm sure. Those were just the most responsible things we did. And I have REMAINED a responsible drinker. Yesterday, one of my very best friends in the world, who we call Sweetbreads**, was in town for a wedding, and we started drinking at three in the afternoon because we're badasses like that. And we passed out at 10:30pm, because we're 30 years old like that.

Wooooooo.




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* Incidentally, I had known this friend since I was eight and he just happened to choose to go to the same college as me, which I didn't find out until a week before orientation. Just a random sidenote.

** In-joke alert: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetbread

Two Weddings and a Funeral

Highlights of my cousin's wedding in rural Maine:

• Before anything began, before even my first drink, I bent down to get something out of my purse and smashed my head into the back of a chair, so now I have a bruise on my forehead implying raucous drunkenness that never really came to fruition.
• My uncle leaning across the table to ask my sister "What's that between your BOOBS?" in reference to her tattoo.
• The early no-show for karaoke which resulted in my deaf cousin (the bride) stumbling through "Summer of '69" by herself until she was bailed out by the everyone present in a terrible cacophony of off-key singing
• All the cousins from my side of the family collaborating on Monster Mash (my choice)

So, in the spirit of Way Back Tuesday, I was going to tell the story of the first wedding I ever went to or something, but then all I could remember was something about some organza and champagne and being really really bored, so I decided to tell about the first funeral of someone I knew.

I was about 10 or 11, and the husband of the organist in our church passed away. It being a congregation of about twelve people, and my mom being the priest, this was one of the Adults In My Life, so I went to the memorial service, and my parents even let me go right up to the open casket in that whole "check out the body" time. I was interested to find out that dead people look a lot like alive people, but sleeping and with darker eyelashes, and I was leaning in to see what they smelled like, when I was also interested to discover that they talked like alive people too. Except that they talked about themselves in the third person.

Then, his wife answered him, and I realized that the voices were actually coming from behind me. Turning around, I discovered the organist and her husband standing behind me. I figured then that the thing in the casket must be one of those wax sculptures like we had seen in Ripley's Believe it or Not and the organist's husband had faked his death and then been so ballsy as to show up at his own funeral and talk about himself in the third person, and everyone was playing along.

My mom told me that he had an identical twin, and that was the man I met at the funeral, but I still think my explanation was better.



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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

Can I call in sick on my last day?

Dudes, I have a cold. I know, right? Will the world ever be fair and just? I have about four sick days left, and in any other week I wouldn't even have thought twice about it. I'd have called my boss early enough that there was no way I'd have to talk to anyone but his answering machine, said "Boss man, I have the sniffles and work is just too much for me right now," and then started to cry and maybe have a coughing fit or something.

But no. I only have five (four and 3/4) days of work left, so apparently it's bad form to call in sick. Because, what? I'll get fired? They'll call up Vanderbilt and be like "Just a warning, your new student TOTALLY called in sick in her last week of work. That's the kind of person you're letting in to your program now. You're welcome."

Speaking of getting fired, at my first job out of grad school, my best friend (who worked there with me) quit and then went back to her desk, got a phone call, and was informed that they were firing her instead. They sent security to escort her out and everything. Oh, and p.s., it was her birthday. Thus began my illustrious career that I am now attempting to escape by going back to school again.

Also, no matter what your big sister tells you, butterflies and moths don't bite, not even if they're really mad at you for pulling the petals off a flower. I'm on DayQuil.

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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

Imaginate!

So, this is me on my last days of work:

Why do I get to sit here all day every day for the last three years basically minding my own business except for when other people want to mind my business and sometimes when there was a datamergency and I had to stay at the office until all hours of the night, but the point is mostly I got to read the Internet cover to cover every day as long as I got my work done, but now all of a sudden when I'm going to be leaving for good people are all up in my face every two seconds with the stupidest of all dumb questions that ever existed and also they hire someone who thinks it's totally ok to ask me if he can have my Argo card when I go with all the money still on it, since I won't be using it anymore, seeing as how I'm moving away from the universe.

/Deep Breath

I ate a Dove chocolate thingy and it told me to take a deep breath.

Also, this morning there was a crazy man who came into our office yelling about his GED transcript and smoking something that was not a cigarette, and we work on the 11th floor and we're supposed to have security, but apparently he told them he was GOING TO TALK TO THE BOARD and so that's the magic words to get to go wherever you want.

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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

Swine Flu

So, I've been sick for about eleventy days now and it's getting really old.  I'm back at work today, since I'm once again able to breathe through my nose at least every 10th time or so, and people have stopped having "subtle" conversations nearby about the swine flu.  It's actually a good thing I got this disgusting cold that won't go away at this particular time in our nation's history, since the two times I tried to come in to work last week I got the nastiest looks, and even my boss basically told me to go home because the last thing they needed was my pig-loving ass to get everyone sick.  

I tried to tell him I don't eat meat and I hate Mexicans, but he wouldn't listen.

Anyway, as a tip to Way Back Tuesday, the last time I missed this much work due to illness is when I was 25 and had bronchitis and worked for a nonprofit full of old people who informed me that this was just the beginning of my gradual health decline.  They've been mostly right on that front, but they were definitely wrong about the prune juice.

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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

Jesus Came to Earth Covered in a Chocolate Shell

So, I'm religious and all, and some might even call me Pretty Religious, since I go to church every Sunday and I even teach the little ones about our Lord and Savior as a Sunday School teacher.  This being Lent, I'm extra serious about Episcopalianism, and we're coming up on Holy Week, when I'll get even more for serious, and attend church a lot even on weekdays.  As a matter of fact, I'm so Episcopalian that Holy Week is my favorite time of year, even over Christmas, because it's so dark and ominous and I get my feet washed, which is ticklish and uncomfortable, and your religion should make you uncomfortable at least once a year, in my opinion.

Anyway, all that is to say that Easter is fairly important to my Belief System, and the raising of The Son of God from the Dead matters a lot to me, but fuck if I'm not going to just become an atheist if I can't find a Cadbury Creme Egg pretty damn soon.  

I'm aware that they are just chocolate filled with icing.  But that icing is white on the outside and yellow in the center, just like a real egg!  And they come wrapped in foil which sometimes sticks to the egg because some of the icing leaks and you have to suck on the foil to get all the sugar and then it touches your "tin soldier" fillings and makes your whole head feel a little funny, like you're communicating with aliens.  

And besides which, Jesus likes them.  I'm just saying.

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My Discs are Clearer Than Yours

This morning I had to go visit my doctor because she needs me to pay her $20 to tell her that my medication is working just fine, thank you, may I have some more. Obviously this annoys me and I'm displeased at having to go, but then she had a 3rd year medical student with her, and he sat in on the appointment, so we got to do all kinds of fun stuff that we might not otherwise. Since I have the brain problems, she did the "neuro tests," such as looking in my eyes and banging my knees and making me push against her hand with my face and do the polka and etcetera.

Anyway, since she was showing the medical student all this, and he got to do it after her, I learned that I have "unusually clear discs" and that you can see the back of my eye very easily. I don't know what that means, but I'm taking it as a compliment. She also said I have very good reflexes, and I thought about asking her why I suck at sports then, but I figured she was just referring to the fact that I almost nut-kicked her medical student when he used the little hammer on my knee.

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Spidercat! Spidercat! Does all the things that a spidercat does!

This morning Houseboy and I took the Neurotic Cat into the vet specialist way out in Buffalo Grove, Illinois to turn him radioactive.  Apparently they blast him with some kind of isotopes and that will make him less angry and pukey and skinny butt-ed.  On the way out there I let him out of the cat carrier and he puked, looked out the window for a really long time, and then made a break for it, via the back of Houseboy's head.  

Also on the way up and back, I paid a dollar (each way) to drive on the absolute worst stretch of road (not counting the Pennsylvania Turnpike which isn't really a road so much as a state-sponsored death trap) that I've ever had the pleasure of paying for.  It was actually amusing how as soon as we passed the tollbooth, it went from nice pavement to bomb zone.

That's as much of a segue as you're going to get into this week's reading, featuring: Anarchy!  First, I read an article in The Believer from some other month that is not this one, about a guy going undercover with the Anarchists who were protesting the Republican National Convention in Minnesota last year.  From this I learned what I already know: southern Minnesota is mostly corn and water towers, anarchists do not bathe as regularly as the rest of us, and the Anarchy Movement is kind of an oxymoron.

Similarly, A Girl Among the Anarchists, which was originally published in 1903, didn't really challenge my assumptions about Anarchy or Anarchists.  Most of the "characters" (this is loosely based on the real lives of Helen and Olivia Rossetti) are doing very little outside of writing and publishing tracts on Anarchy and debating with one another what Real Anarchy is and occasionally stealing shit because ownership of property is a false construct, or somesuch.  About 2/3 of the way through the book, the "Girl" of the title somewhat ironically lays out exactly what I see as the problem with Anarchy.  She is describing two brothers who stole all their employer's money and took off with it, because 1) they don't recognize private property, and 2) they needed it.  The employer then shot himself:

What they lacked was moral strength.  Under ordinarily good influences they would have acted in an ordinarily proper way.  They had not the force of character necessary for handling the Anarchist individualist doctrines, which, excellently as they may work with men of character, are fatal to weaker men.

(p. 206)

It seems obvious to me that not everyone would act in a moral or thoughtful way if they were left to their own devices.  If completely "freed" from  any understanding of obligation to our fellow man, how many of us would still feed the poor or refrain from stealing whatever we want, or even pause at a stoplight?  Maybe I have a lower view of human nature than Anarchists do, but it seems to me that she is here acknowledging that issue.  And as long as there are some who cannot handle "the Anarchist individualist doctrines," then it's a system that cannot work, because it is a system without any recourse or solution for those who don't fit in.  In fact, it's not a system at all.  

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You're a bum, You're a Punk, You're an Old Slut on Junk

Sadly, the Pogues did not play Fairytale of New York when we saw them, probably mostly because they didn't have a female singer with them, so it would have required Philip Chevron (aka, the coherent one) to affect a high voice, which would be uncomfortable for everyone.  

They did, however, play this song, which I love:

I shot that on my cell phone, which isn't the kind with a good camera or anything, so I'm going to guess that doesn't violate any copyright laws.  I saw other people there with real cameras, and I will name names to save my own ass, if I have to.

So, anyway, this is all meant to show you how cool I am, because I like Irish Folk Punk, and I own a cellphone with a shitty camera.  You know you want to be me.

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No Movies; Drugs

So, I had a lot of tv watching to do this week and didn't get around to seeing any movies, although Houseboy promised to take me to see "My Bloody Valentine" for his birthday because it's in 3-D and my favorite dimension is the third dimension.  If you're lucky, that might be your movie of next week.

For this week I would just like to share an awesome bathroom experience, because I know you all like poop humor.  Except this story doesn't actually involve poop.  But you can imagine people "reading a magazine"* while you hear this story if you like.  Anyway, yesterday I was at work (I know, right?  You're already fascinated), and I started to get a migraine.  (Oh horrors!  The drama!)  Since my little pink and red pills, I get these less than I used to, and they're not as bad or long-lasting, but I still don't like to try to think about racial gaps in standardized testing while there are moles eating my brain.  So, I went to the bathroom to take my old-new abortive medication (that sounds political, but it's not), which is being called Imitrex Nasal Spray (TM).  What I like about this drug is that it gets into your blood really fast and then makes its way to your brain really fast because that's near to where your nose is, and within minutes you don't feel like you'll probably die.  My only complaint (before yesterday) was that sometimes it runs down the back of your throat and tastes like dead monkey sweat, but compared to the brainplosion, it's totally worth it.  

The other downside I discovered yesterday is that if you go into a bathroom stall and make a loud and long snorting sound, and then come out sniffling and rubbing your nose, your coworkers will look at you askance and will definitely not at all think you're a cokehead from now on.  

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* This is the only episode of "How I Met Your Mother" that I've ever seen, but I will admit that I laughed.  NPH, what a mensch.  

Boredom is making me stupid

So, I've developed this problem lately where I'm required to go to a lot of meetings that I have no interest or stake in.  These are hours in which I'm supposed to be learning about the projects my coworkers are involved in, or how to use a simple computer program, but instead my mind has started drifting into another world and more or less blacking out on whatever's going on around me.  Now, this isn't really a problem per se... at least four out of five of these meetings I sit and stare into the distance thinking about what a fish crossed with a horse would look like and get shaken out of my reverie by people wrapping up their notebooks and coffee and leaving the room.  It's the fifth out of those five meetings in which my boss turns to me and goes, "Well, what do you think?" and I go "Uhhhhh.  Seventeen would probably do it?" and hope that has anything to do with the conversation.  This has started to make me look bad.  And drawn attention to my vacant looks in the rest of the meetings.  

Since I can't guarantee any way of actually focusing and becoming a better employee at this point, I've decided to just use that time for a little personal business.  Today I started a short story in our staff meeting.  Maybe next week I'll get to work on some sketches or do some knitting.  

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I am badly in need of Viagra

Another possible title for this post: don't click on things in your junk mail folder, even if they are from admin@ or say re: or you're really really tweaked on meth and having a hard time focusing on your work or complete words. It appears that admin@viagra.com and I are becoming bosom buddies, if the number of times he's responded to e-mails I supposedly sent him in the last week is any indication. As a matter of fact it's really something I should put on my list of growths and accomplishments for the year that I have someone with whom I communicate so regularly. Before the administrator of Viagra.com I only had Houseboy, who is legally required to interact with me on a daily basis and can't even break his legally binding agreement on account of the Great and Powerful OZ, or the Da Vinci Code or something along those lines.

Oh, I have other friends, but generally I'm pretty shitty to them and try to avoid their phone calls, and when they invite me places I stand them up or I tell them I have quilting to do that weekend and then actually spend the time on the floor of the shower, speaking to the silverfish. So mostly they don't e-mail me every day with updates on what's going on in their lives and business like this new associate of mine, and certainly they don't hear from me every day, like it appears has been going on in this case.

Now, since I don't actually remember writing any of the e-mails that Mr. Administrator is replying to I have to say that our friendship is probably largely based on a mutual admiration of pharmaceuticals and/or sleepwalking, but as long as Houseboy doesn't notice me slipping off in the middle of the night, I'd say this friendship has potential. It involves no conscious work on my end, as far as I know I've never had to leave the house, and there's no larger circle of friends that I have to pretend to like or pay tribute to in the form of dinner parties or infant souls.

I think I'll go ahead and add him to my address book.

Huffing Paint

Disclaimer: If happen to know me and know you are from my hometown, please recognize that if you are reading this right now it is most likely because I like you at least well enough to not avoid you completely, which is saying a lot. Therefore, don't take anything you're about to read to apply to you. Probably. Thank you and have a nice day.


So, I was interacting via the world wide interwebs today with an illustrious alum of a certain small town high school which shall remain nameless (though certainly obvious), and she informed me that our 10 year high school reunion is coming up. Two things are obvious in this: #1 That is simply a falsehood and the bitch should watch her mouth in the future, and #2 I dropped out of that school so I'm unlikely to be invited, even if it were true. Which it is not.

Anyway, it started me off on an unfortunate train of thought about how important it is that I am better, smarter and prettier than all those losers I grew up with, and how difficult it would be to explain that to all of them at a beer bash in Richter's woods. I'm pretty sure it would involve new jeans and some sort of t-shirt that says "I'm good at math and make more money than you and I live in the same building with 'people of color' and don't even freak out about it and I can walk to an art gallery and a coffee shop and where I live it smells like people's shit instead of like cow's shit." And you can see where I'm having a hard time here.

So, mostly then, I was thinking that rather than bragging about living in a city I hate or doing a job none of them would understand, or marrying a man who is neither Czech nor related to anyone in town, that I would find some sort of "I've never huffed paint" angle. I could work on showing all the ranges of emotion I'm still capable of feeling and expressing with my face or saying complete sentences with minimal slurring.

I think we're on to something here.