I have survived a week and a half of work so far and I am exhausted and not reading books or anything except on my breaks and lunch.  I am sleeping too much like nine or ten hours and I want to go to bed by six thirty but I make myself stay up until at least seven.  Basically I work for eight hours and then I come home and collapse.

I dreamed I was walking around with no pain and no limp but I woke up and it wasn't real.

Sometimes my ankles look like elephant stumps. 

I am more burned out than I expected.

BRIEF

Last night I dreamed that my feet were deformed and my toes were twisted and pointing in all different directions which would require surgery and I am sure there was more to the dream but it slipped away as dreams do. 

Back to work this week.  Tired and sore but grateful to feel productive and to be back in the REAL WORLD and hoping everything will be okay. 





I sleep too much.

Confessional Booth, part 1:

1. I have reached that point where I am tempted to take a scissors to my head and cut my own damn hair which never ends well so I am trying to talk myself out of it. 

2. My leg is totally jacked up today and it feels like it belongs to someone else like in that short story by Ray Bradbury ("Fever Dream") where the little boy feels the fever take over his body bit by bit until he disappears and is replaced entirely by the disease.  

3. My soup spoons arrived yesterday and they are beautiful.

Elliptical Orbits and other Esoterica

According to my horoscope today is supposed to be pretty stellar but so far I am unimpressed.  I am supposed to be back in the REAL WORLD of work next week and I am hoping this goes as well as can be expected and therefore we have changed some medication to smack down all the horrible shit my body tries to do to itself.  YEP.  I wrote a poem yesterday and the day before that but they are very random pieces and wouldn't work with my manuscript but that's okay.

Watching: I am getting caught up with American Horror Story Freak Show although so far this is the weakest season and I am a little bored.  Meh.

Reading: Still on The Land of Love and Drowning which is so far just okay.  I am a little disappointed with this one too but there's still time for it to get my attention.  Maybe.

(obviously I don't like anything this week and I am hard to please.)

Cooking: I made some pretty excellent fried tacos with homemade salsa and chicken soup with leeks and yesterday I fried up some breaded pork chops in a cast iron skillet because I am OLD SCHOOL like that sometimes.  The fridge is full of good leftovers this week.  I have not baked at all but I am thinking about chocolate chip cookies with coconut or almond shortbread if I am not too tired this weekend but that's probably just the effing prednisone talking. HA!

Sometimes I want to avoid all of the paperwork and phone calls that dominate my home life these days and I put shit off so I make little bargains with myself like I will make one phone call and organize one file and pick one bill to pay and then I can eat lunch or read or whatever (basically I treat myself like a two year old).  It totally works though.   

 

TRIAL & ERROR

I drove my car today without dying and I go back to work next week and my new pills are ginormous enough to choke a beluga whale. AND my odds of another allergic reaction are high because of my reaction to that last bad business so I am keeping benadryl in my purse.

Glorious. 

If I had any dreams last night I don't remember them.  The check engine light is still on so the car must see the car doctor and I must see the people doctor tomorrow despite my doctor-o-phobia.  I have contemplated every possible health catastrophe at this point so I am TOTALLY PREPARED THOUGH. 

I am going to make so much soup this week now that I have wonderful things like leeks and parsnips and those little fine soup noodles and even some fresh herbs which are a total splurge in January. 

Both the five of pentacles and the five of wands have made multiple appearances in recent tarot readings.  I am also seeing the eight of swords.  This is a time of relative instability where things have been thrown out of balance and options seem limited.  Perhaps this will evolve in the coming weeks. 

........

Listing:

Dreaming: I was an airline attendant and I was tall and slender with long wavy dark hair.  I spoke Dutch and Chinese and all the passengers on the plane had handmade wooden toys with mechanical parts.

Reading: The Land of Love and Drowning  by Tiphanie Yanique

Writing: About fear and anxiety.  WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW, Y'ALL.

Baking: Simple brownies with cocoa.  I usually melt fancy dark chocolate and make SERIOUS brownies but these were surprisingly good.
 
Watching: Falling snow and ticking clocks.  The check engine light. Also Peaky Blinders on Netflix.

Self-Diagnosing: I believe the clinical term really is Nacho Cheese Lung.

RAMBLE

Last night I dreamt I ran a feminist book club and it had a really cool name that I've already forgotten although I know it began with an M. 

Throat is much less tight and sore and choke-y so while my lungs still feel like they're full of nacho cheese this is a huge improvement.  I tried M's super powerful cough syrup but it was the texture of actual mucous and made me gag so, NOPE. Felt much less exhausted last night and Z took down the tree while I wrapped ornaments and drank some wine and this was good although the family room looks suddenly naked like it always does after that first week of January when the lights and greenery come down. 

I am very very bad a coping with uncertainty for example work issues and health issues and the intersection of these two things and wish I could just sort of fix everything myself and move on to REGULAR LIFE but I tried that already and it was a mess so ugh and whatever. 

I just realized I used to write in short clipped sentences but now I am more comfortable freewriting these long-ass run on sentences so as not to disrupt the flow of thought.  After I ramble here I have been writing poems in the same fashion so this gets me in WRITING mode.  The goal is to have a number of submittable pieces in a couple of months.  I sent out very little in 2014 and 2015 will be the year of poems and stories and other good things. 

Today there should be cake. 

Thinking about Doing

Stayed up past midnight to finish Station Eleven which I really really enjoyed and now I need to figure out what to read next.

I should also stay off the internet because now I think I have a throat infection or something because it is hard to swallow and I wake up feeling like my throat is all closed up but of course it isn't it just aches.  Maybe an aftereffect of hives-hideous rash? I need a malady free day. 

I am perpetually exhausted but I think I might still like to make a tiny intense little chocolate cake to make life feel happier.  Also a really excellent chicken soup would be good but I am without proper vegetables. 

Mostly I think about doing things but then I don't actually do them.

Better Days

Hideous Rash with 101 degree fever and chills finally finally going away.  Horrific. Was so sick I could barely move. While I am bummed about having to discontinue the first DMARD and start over I am glad to be feeling a little less like I have leprosy.  Have survived the non-holidays and the snow is beautiful today.

AND!! I have many books in the queue:

Stone Mattress      Margaret Atwood
Lathe of Heaven      Ursula K. Le Guin
Duplex      Kathryn Davis
Cloud Atlas     David Mitchell
Station Eleven     Emily St John Mandel
The Secret Place    Tana French


Finished watching Black Mirror on Netflix and I need a new obsession.  The White Bear Episode was crazy and my favorite was 15 Million Merits.

***

Dreamt of a house with many living rooms all laid out next to each other like a furniture store in a weird grid of couches and chairs and area rugs.  I was staging the house to be sold and it was quite overwhelming because every time I fixed a room I found two more that needed to be cleaned up and remodeled.  Sisyphean dreams, always recurring in some form or another.