All posts by Iris

Of Nothingness, Followed by Drama

Me and My Life

For a weekend that held so much promise, this one has sure failed to deliver. Yesterday’s weird inability to wake up morphed into a crushing headache that seemed to grow stronger rather than weaker when I finally caved and popped some pills. Today I’m completely limp, shaky and off balance and generally blah. So rather than do anything responsible or important, I created a nest for myself on the couch and planned to have as boring a day as possible.

My plans were thwarted. I was idly in the middle reading my Expanded Diary (by which I mean a combination of tradition diary, blog posts, and correspondences with friends) from a year ago when there was a banging on my door.

That never happens. I live in an apartment building that seems to firmly believe that the best way to get along with neighbors is to deliberately ignore the fact that you have neighbors.

I had only barely disentangled myself from my couch nest when the banging was repeated.

The only other times I’ve heard that kind of knocking here were when my psychotic (and drunk) former building manager came to accuse me of deliberately flooding her apartment, and when my former neighbor (also drunk) thought I might have called the cops on her. I reminded myself that no heavy drinkers live here any more and that I generally get along with all my neighbors now, called “I’m coming,” and wobbled my way over to the door.

Here I was faced with a worried looking nurse and a completely naked, grinning 3-year-old girl. The nurse held a cell phone out as if it explained her presence entirely and asked if she could use my phone. I blinked at her. I blinked at her cell phone. I invited her in. How scary could a nurse with a naked 3-year-old be?

As she came in she explained that her daughter (my neighbor, and the mother of the toddler) was in a diabetic coma and that she needed to call an ambulance, which she proceeded to do, explaining to the 911 operator that she couldn’t stay on the line because she was on a neighbor’s phone because she couldn’t figure out how to make her daughter’s cell phone place a call.

There are just so many layers of helplessness here. There’s my neighbor, who has to deal with being a single mother of two toddlers who are too young to be able to check on her and call help when necessary. And my neighbor’s daughters, who stripped themselves naked and decided to draw a bath since their mom wasn’t drawing one for them (and ended up flooding not only their own bathroom but their downstairs neighbor’s as well). And my neighbor’s mother who couldn’t make a phone dial when she really needed it. And here I am, 15 feet away from the apartment, and I had no idea.

When she’s better, maybe I’ll see if she and her mother want me to be part of their system. I could surely go knock on her door if her mother can’t get her to answer the phone. I don’t want anything happening to her like what happened to my cousin last spring.

I’m also not superstitious, but wow… that apartment seems to be cursed. First there was out-of-control Party Girl. Then there was the guy that died of alcohol poisoning right there across the hall from me. And now this. In an apartment building that is otherwise blindingly boring, this begins to stand out as quite a pattern.

Defiantly Joyful Longies

Randomness

So yesterday I left work early, fell asleep on the couch for 3 hours, woke up so rag-doll-ish that I could hardly move and didn’t dare stand up, fell asleep on the couch again for a couple of hours, woke up with a throbbing head, went to bed, and woke up this morning so disoriented that I actually had to check the date on my computer to make sure it was Saturday.

And so, in my as-good-as-drugged state I thought I’d tell the story of my shockingly pink silk long underwear. First, let me preface this by saying that long underwear, which my family calls “longies,” comes up in normal conversation when you live in climates as cold as this one. It’s kind of like discussing your coat. People have opinions on the relative worth of cotton, silk, and marino, the pros and cons of washability, weight, price, feel, and (of course) warmth. I am firmly in the silk camp and therefore feel that the reasons for choosing this particular material should be self-evident to all, so I won’t go into them here.

The one down-side to believing that silk is the only way to go is that silk longies are on the pricey side. I had a couple of pairs of milky-white longies that I’d received as gifts 8-ish years ago (yes, longies make great gifts) and these kept me entertained by becoming more and more of a maze to put on every day. Little by little, I had to admit to myself that they were less longies with holes than they were longies with areas of integrity around the thighs and ankles. So when my mom told me she’d found Lands End longies on sale for twelve bucks, I realized it was time to plan a viking funeral for my old longies.

But there was a catch.

There was only one color of longies on sale. You could buy the milky white ones or the black ones for twice the money (and believe me, I considered it), but to get the good deal you had to take a deep breath, swear to yourself that it won’t matter and you’ll hardly ever see them, squint, and add the shockingly pink version to your pristine digital shopping cart.

As it turns out, there are several occasions during the day when I catch glimpses of my shockingly pink longies. Each time it’s a bit of a thrill. And sometimes, when I’m plowing through mundane tasks, I’ll take a moment to be aware of the feel of the silk and remind myself that only I know about the raucous and defiantly joyful color that keeps the cold away from my calves. Well, I and now you.

A Betrayal of a Friday

Me and My Life

Each week, Friday tantalizes me with whispers of resolution and release. Each Friday begins with the only meeting I routinely look forward to and enjoy, followed by days that are generally quieter, calmer, and more settled than the other four days of the work week. Projects get finished. Email inboxes fill more slowly. Students rarely panic at me. It’s as if everyone and everything is hanging in suspension, just waiting for Saturday.

This particular Friday was going to be even more special. All week I’d looked forward to it, planned for it, done a little bit each night so that I’d be ready for it, switched schedules with a co-worker so that I’d be ready for it. This particular Friday I was going to be driving home to see my family and celebrate my mom’s birthday.
This particular Friday my mom got sick and told me not to come.
This particular Friday, Pippin barfed all over everything, multiple times.
This particular Friday I have one of those annoying headaches that’s not quite bad enough to warrant drugging the living daylights out of it, but not quite NOT bad enough that I can forget about it.
This particular Friday my cold coffee, most people’s updates to FriendFeed, strange duplications of feeds from my feed reader, my cold hands, vendor emails, and a whole host of other things that don’t normally bother me are picking insistently at the frayed edges of my psyche.
This particular Friday is not living up to its promise.
Still, it’s not all bad. It’s warm outside, reaching up toward the thaw point. I’m also wearing my new shockingly pink silk long underwear, and it always startles and amuses me whenever I catch a glimpse of it. So maybe I’ll just continue quietly hiding most of FriendFeed, buy some hot chocolate to replace my cold coffee, go find my shawl, and delete anything that’s not actually important from my inbox. Oh, and figure out what to do this weekend that will make it seem less like The Weekend I Was Supposed To Be Elsewhere and more like a relaxing break between work weeks.

The voices of my day

Randomness

Tonight, lying in the dark with soft music playing in the background and about 15 tiny needles nestling into acupuncture points, the bits and pieces of the day’s conversations wove and rewove themselves in and out of random thoughts.

That sunset was deeply purple. I don’t remember a deeply purple sunset recently.

“Footnotes are at least as rhetorical as they are mechanical.”

“Silly boy.”

“I think our goals have been changed out from under us, which is why we’re having trouble seeing them.”

“This I Believe” would make a great title for a post about copyright policy.

“Are you sick of me yet?”

“Footnotes are at least as rhetorical as they are mechanical.”

I can’t believe my long underwear is hot pink.

“Silly boy.”

I hate it when people play the “you’re getting defensive” card. There’s no response that won’t sound defensive.

What would a good subtitle be for “This I Believe” … it’d have to include “copyright” or nobody would click through to read the whole post.

“Are you sick of me yet?” … silly question…

Tiredness is beginning to feel like a personal failing. Maybe not talking about it will be enough of an attitude shift to make it go away.

Or maybe exercising?

“I think our goals have been changed out from under us, which is why we’re having trouble seeing them.”

“Have you eaten lunch?”

Just a minute ago the patterns in the ceiling looked like a puppy. Now they look like a baby.

“We’ll have to watch the weather before deciding for sure.”

[time spent watching the patterns in the ceiling… watching them shift… watching them blur… blinking… watching them shift again]

“Maybe if we came up with sample assignments” … “workshops” … “that could be fun!”

“Silly boy.”

I wonder how Jesse’s presentation went. I should call and ask.

“rhetorical moves”

She wore her regular expressions skirt!!

“It’s not our collection that we’re extending, at that point, which muddies the waters.”

“So, it seems that we’re freezing the paper and then heating it, which is causing the jam. We think. At least it’s the best theory we have so far.”

This would make a really weird blog post. How would I do it, though? It’s hard to write randomness. And what would I title it? … If I write it honestly I should probably disable comments. … I should write it honestly. Mostly.

“I think our goals have been changed out from under us, which is why we’re having trouble seeing them.”

What could we do with these newer goals? … Why am I thinking about work stuff now?? … Do I always rehears my entire day when I get home? … I guess I do, though usually as I’m falling asleep.

Will I be hungry for dinner? Doubtful.

“We’ll have to watch the weather before deciding for sure.”

The baby is back in the ceiling patterns. What happened to the puppy?

A knock on the door interrupted the chatter in my head. My treatment was over. And now everything is quieter. The voices from my day have talked themselves out.

Cycles too tired to be vicious

Me and My Life

It’s nearly 8pm and I’ve been ready for bed for an hour. Or actually for 7 hours, but I couldn’t admit it to myself until an hour ago. Before I go to bed, though, I should eat dinner. But that would require getting up, and getting up doesn’t seem like a great idea, so maybe I’ll just wait for a while.

Of course, waiting isn’t likely to make me less worn out, and blood sugar is generally a useful thing to keep up. Still, no matter how much I explain that to myself, I can’t get my brain or my belly to acknowledge that they’re hungry, which reduces my motivation to get up. Which means that I haven’t eaten yet. Which means that I haven’t gone to bed yet.

I haven’t done anything else of use, either. I have a report I was going to work on tonight and a book that needs reading lest I fall behind in my book group. I have a bunch of blog reading to catch up on, too, but I haven’t done that either. No, instead I’ve been sitting here thinking about the fact that I can’t go to bed until I’ve eaten, but that I’m too tired to go eat.