Sunday, May 30, 2010

Oh, Pooh on Energy

"Lots of energy now -- no crash later!"

That's what the television ad says -- and yet I just woke myself up three times in a row. And it's exactly five hours later.

That's a big fat hairy crash -- and bigger, fatter, hairier fraud!

Or at least, some advertising license, dang nab it!

Oh, well...

Plus I get tomorrow off!

Sunday, Sunday -- a lovely day, delicately warm, and mildly sunny. I got up and went to the Salvation Army, after waiting patiently for it to get to be ten o'clock. Taking advantage of the half-price day, I spent $25 and got $50 worth of second-hand goods. Most of which cost 0.99, so you see. Oh, my goodness, I have just noticed for the very first time that there is no key with the "cents" sign on it, on my keyboard. Looking again ---hmmmm -- nope, nope, really not. Does this mean that I am supposed to go to the insert menu and insert a cents sign? Cuz there is the dollar sign, right there! But hey! I'm writing on my blog, so I'm online, and there isn't an insert menu on this silly site.

Anyway when I got home, Joe staggered out of the office in his underwear with his hair on end and mumble-yelled (parents of teen-aged boys who try to converse when they are not fully awake will know exactly what I mean by this verb) that Mickey was at Sully's with "the boys." So I walked over there and shared breakfast time with Calhoun and Bryson and chatted with Mickey.

Then I took Joe over to the storage locker to get the rest of his belongings out of it and dropped him off at Hannah's, and then came home.

And I would just like to mention that although I drank one of those tiny bottles of Five-Hour-Energy, I want nothing more than to go and take a nap! What a rip!

I do have that buzzy feeling in the corner of my eyes that I used to get when I took a caffeine tablet, though. So perhaps the sleepy feeling is just a feeling, and if I went and lay down, I would just lie there, with my eyes WIDE open. Let's pretend that is true, and then I can keep working around the house and act like I have tons of burnable energy, just simmering away! Dang nab it, though! I was looking forward to the feeling of being full of charging energy!

It is only two in the afternoon, however, and the rest of the day stretches out luxuriously before me! I might go see a movie!

Plus I get tomorrow off!

(Hmmm -- do you think the ungodly number of exclamation marks in this post are a result of the Energy drink?)

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Cotton Candy -- mmmmm!

What is it about being warm and dry after having been cold and wet, that is so very, VERY satisfactory? Feels so good, and yet I've never been able to describe or even identify the feeling, and if others don't recognize it from their own experience, then we are all just up that particular creek without a paddle.

I'm eating a bowl of red beans, a plate of buttered toast and drinking Merlot. Could be the Merlot that is enhancing this feeling of cozy well-being, but I don't think so. I've only had about three sips. The beans, (though I says it as shouldn't) are particularly good and very tasty and very fulfilling to my mind's tongue. Or perhaps I mean to the little chef who lives in my mouth (not unlike Tony) and is currently rolling on his back with his feet in the air and a big happy smile on his face.

I have just returned from the Saturday Market/Rose Festival, where I was hanging out with Mickey and Bryson. The mud was thick and yet very watery, sticky and very smelly. It rained on us the first fifteen minutes or so, so I was a soggy mess all day long, and yet we still had a very good time! Bryson is very brave about rides, even the really scary ones ( he went on one called the Inverter, WITH Mickey, and all the while he was beaming with joy, and Mickey was praying to be released) and we took him to almost everything there. I shared a big bag of cotton candy with both of them, and Bryson wore a pink sticky beard for the rest of the adventure.
It was very satisfying, as well. I'm happy, and comfortable, and smiling, and don't even care that now I must go and perform my chauffeuring duties for Kevin and Calhoun.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Where's Noah?

Man alive! Thunderous rainfall out there this afternoon. The parking lot is several inches deep already. Where's Noah when you really need him?

Merribun Hanniton

I just received a phone call from a Japanese gentleman, who wanted to speak with Merribun Hanniton. I asked for him to spell the last name, but he did not want to, wanted instead to make sure he had the right phone number, and while he was reading off the number, I was rapidly scanning my list of names, and recognized the one: Melvin Hamilton.

Well, if one was Japanese, how else could one pronounce it?

Don't Know If I Can Deal With It.

Tuesday morning, and a grey and chilly morning it is -- also wet. It doesn't have any of the delicate, sweet-smelling quality that the last few days have had, no Spring-like atmosphere. Just rain. It makes me think of things like nuclear winter -- I've just been re-reading some of my Angela Thirkells and in the post-war books, the people are constantly complaining about the weather, how it never gets sunny and the summers aren't even warm. I wonder if Angela herself was unaware of the existence of nuclear winter? Or even of nuclear weather alteration? Cuz she never mentions it or causes any of her characters to explain it to the village or anything. I keep wanting to.

On the way in to work this morning, at about seven thirty, I saw a few things that, while they didn't actually frighten me, made me realize how huge the risk I am taking is, the risk of being loose on the freeway in a gas-powered vehicle, surrounded by hundreds of other gas-powered vehicles, all of us doing (let us be honest here) about seventy miles an hour, and only kept from one another by our so-human hands on the wheel. A motorcycle changed lanes twice, across the road in front of me, in plenty of time, and very visibly. But there was a fine mist from all the traffic, filling the air, and I suppose it is possible that the over-sized, jacked-up truck-and-a-half on my left did not see him. Because he came surging up beside me, and was right on top of the motorcycle before he braked sharply, and skidded sideways. On those wet pavements, and at that speed, it is truly amazing that we did not all die right there, in a big pile of twisted metal and spilled gasoline and blood. The motorcycle whipped sideways off the road and onto the shoulder, the huge truck caught itself before pushing me into the slower cars to my right, and I kept going forward. There weren't even any honks or screeching sounds. Just a quiet little near-death experience.

Then, as I was coming off the freeway, and slowing down to more ordinary land-speeds, I saw some huge thing going on in the road, with many cop cars and lots of whirling lights. Don't know what it was, cuz I was driving off in the other direction, but I'll bet there were some wet and bloody people, and some at least scraped metal, if not twisted.

And yes, since my workday starts at nine, why was I on my way to work at seven-thirty? Because Joe is back. Sleeping on the floor of my office so that I cannot get to the computer in the morning, and filling the house up with unpleasant music and using my phone, since his has been turned off for lack of payment. The father of the friend he was staying with has kicked them out and made loud threats of arrest, because the friend (and possibly Joe, since he was there -- I really don't know) sold some electronic equipment to buy drugs with.

Wow.

Joe asked me to get him up this morning at six-thirty so that he could catch a bus to Clackamas Community College and take his GED, finally -- and I woke him again and again until I left the house. But when I left it, he was still in bed.

This is all getting so very Michael-like. I don't know if I can deal with it.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

No GED. Yet.

Well, it is a good thing that I got my little morning walk out of the way at about nine this morning -- cuz now it is raining like a big dog! Like the biggest of dogs, in fact, yet in such a gorgeous way that one might not even mind having one's booth flooded (thinking of the Farmer's Market.)

Looking out the kitchen window, at the trees and the pond, the air seems filled with a silver shimmer, which is actually the rain made visible. I am looking through a silver-grey transparent curtain of rain at the shivering greens of tree and bush and grass, and at the deeper, darker, dancing grey surface of the water. The steady distant roar is the sound the rain is making on the roof above my head - not the usual drumming sound or the raggedy rattle of smaller rain storms, but a single noise, all one, such is the fervor of the falling water.

Chilly, too -- I turned the heaters on briefly this morning, to take the edge off the rooms, which were sort of finger-stiffening in their temperature. After Joe and Nick left, that is.

Yes, last night at midnight the phone rang. And I allowed them to come and spend the night on the floor in the living room. I refused to listen to Joe's explanations of why they needed this ("Nick's Dad is PSYCHO!") because I knew they would probably be untruthful, and didn't want to listen to them. I told them they had to be gone by ten, and then I returned to bed, and listened to the racing, ragged pounding of my heart, until half an hour had passed and I was able to drowse off again.

Oh, and Joe has not taken his GED. Yet.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Mycroft, Schmycroft

Well, my ear infection is losing ground to the antibiotics. When I woke this morning, my ear was very nearly open -- kept popping in and out, and this evening it is entirely open. I can hear! I can hear! Hallelujah, I can hear! Still the occasional little icy-hot trickle of stabbing pain -- like a very thin needle.

However, my jaws still won't close. I can very nearly chew, though not with my rear molars, and my jaw is still vibrating rapidly. Touching my teeth together gets this very speedy jitter. That is strange, don't you think?

Today is Calhoun's birthday, and so we are going to see the Shrek movie tomorrow. I was planning on seeing it tonight, but I picked Kevin up from Fred Meyer, and he suggested it. Thus my being at home this rainy Friday evening.

Wow, just yawned widely without the slightest degree of pain, though a registration of feeling in the painful spots near my ear. If that makes sense to any of you.

I cannot work up the slightest degree of interest in finishing up the book work on the God of the Hive -- which, in your private ear, let me say was not among the best of Laurie King's novels. I didn't even particularly like it, although I did like the Woodsman. The bad guy was not frightening, the good guys were not compelling, and the mystery was not even interesting. Mycroft, Schmycroft. Who cares?

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Unmoored

Okay, this is an odd sensation. I noticed this yesterday, while I was all stoned and floating above the earth and all that great stuff, but it didn't strike me as so interesting then. (Wonder why?)

You know how when you are cold and your teeth chatter -- that unusual feeling of something happening to your body that is completely out of your control? I mean, you can clench your jaw, and that will stop it, but if you are good and cold, you can't keep your jaw from tremoring pretty vividly. (Digby!)

Well, I am not cold, at all, and much of last night I was so warm as to be uncomfortable with it (if I hadn't been so stoned) but my jaw is vibrating pretty constantly. Completely constantly, I should say. Unnoticeable, unless I set the points of my teeth together (the only parts of them that will touch, swollen jaw hinge and all) and they rattle. Not loudly or violently, but definitely, and unstoppably!

I couldn't sleep last night, after the pills wore off, and at about four I got up and showered and dressed and went to the emergency room. I was the only person in there, except for a man sleeping on a couch, and it still took three hours to see a doctor and have him write me a prescription for antibiotics. Sheesh.

But I took it and went over to Walgreen's and filled it and promptly took some and went home. And then slept all morning until eleven, and now here I am. I've had a cup of tea, I've folded and put away some clothes, and I've watched Castle. I've also spaced out and stared off into nothing for about an hour. It is strange how much being unable to hear from one half of your hearing mechanism removes you from the action! Reminds me of Susanna when she had ear infection after infection, and pretty much lived in her own little world for about a year. She was about four, too, so the things that interested her would have been sort of hard to understand anyway -- and since she wasn't interacting, it sort of set her off from the rest of us.

Which is sort of where I am much of the time, anyway, know what I mean? But this just sort of underlines it.

Monday, May 17, 2010

As a Kite By Then

Wow.

Okay, so NOW I know what it is all about!

All right, see this is day three of one of my ear-infections, and it was a very bad day. Swollen enough this morning that I couldn't hear from it at all, and I cannot chew (swollen jaw hinge) and have a fever and cannot eat, now, though I did eat my lunch, and was beginning to get sudden vicious stabs of pain, off and on, and they were BAD. Seriously bad, so that I was in dread of them even when not having them.

SO, when I got home I decided that as soon as my load of laundry was done, I would go over to the hospital and see an ER doctor, and get antibiotics, which, as we all know, work very very well on something as small and contained as an ear infection. I had been thinking - previously - that I wouldn't do that, this time, and just see how well (and how rapidly) I could heal myself, since I felt sure that it would heal, eventually. But man alive, those pains, and then not being able to chew, so no eating -- I was pretty much ready to go.

But I suddenly thought of the pain pills I had been prescribed when they snatched my gall bladder out -- damn them! -- and without much hope, I popped the last two. That was a little over an hour ago.

And MERCY. This feeling is very, very good. I mean, WOW. I had only taken those pills before one at a time, and they had helped with the pain, of course, but this time I took both of the remaining pills. And the pain is completely gone, though I can still feel my swollen state, of course -- my hands and cheeks are thrumming, I feel very floaty and warm all over in a very smooth and -- I almost said "loving" way. See? I'm stoned. A very self-contained way. I can think very well, my head is echoing slightly, I feel waves of slightly itchy warmth rolling over me, and then back away again. I feel both IN my body, and separate from it.

These pills are Percocet, so oxycodone. Now I know why people take these just for fun! I have never understood that before, since they have never done anything -- AT ALL -- good for me. Usually made me feel vaguely nauseated. But now I KNOW!

Friday, May 14, 2010

Grilled Flamingo for Royalty

So this is an odd thing lately. Quite odd, and quite noticeable, and quite late! For the past week or so -- possibly a bit longer -- I have been repeatedly falling asleep at my desk. At my DESK, at WORK.

Now, I have of course, fallen asleep at work before -- memory of opening my eyes at the computer at the MAC to find the House Committee President standing in front of me, smiling. He said, "Just when you thought it was safe...!" Which means nothing, really, but sounds friendly and amused, which I'm pretty sure is what he meant to do.

But this is sometimes several times a day. And pretty much every day, too. And that is strange, or at least unusual.

Anyway. These have all been brief (or at least I feel that they are brief -- but then I AM ASLEEP. So who knows, really) and in most of them I am at least partially aware that I am asleep. They all contain vividly real-seeming dreams. And that is the weird part. I've never been a lucid dreamer. I'm always pretty sure that what is happening in my dreams is real. And I've pretty much stopped dreaming, at least to remember. So to be dreaming of a very real situation and say to myself, "But I won't actually have to cook that flamingo for the King of the Alleyway, because this is a dream," that is unusual and very strange-seeming.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

The Moving Finger Writes

It is a pale and soft day -- there was a brief display of brilliant blue and gold, disseminating light like Cinderella's pumpkin coach (while it wasn't a pumpkin!) -- but now the sky is such a pale grey as to be very nearly white, and the air is cool and soft and damp. When it thins a bit, the light hidden behind it becomes more visible, causing the sky to glow whitely, like an overhead projector. But for the most part it is opaque and easily looked at.

I've just spoken with a VA phone-answerer -- for once a young person, who did not sound overweight, and male. A young man named Timothy. And it's perfectly possible that he merely did not have an overweight voice. I don't -- at least I don't think I do. Hmmm.

In any case, he told me that the last check I just received is the last one I will get. But he added, that if Joe enrolls in school, I can still consider him a dependent, and re-apply for the smaller payment amount, until he is 23. So we shall see. Another incentive!


Hey, the moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on! By which I mean, that the clouds are moving again (or still) and that now there are patches of vivid blue in amongst the much darker-grey cloud. It's going to be a changeable day.