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January 16, 2020

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Lord, I Was Born a Ramblin’ Womaaaaaaan

What is this place? Is this some kind of blog or something? I have no memory of such things.

Listen here, I have a lot going on in my life and just about nobody reads my dang blog anyway. So that’s my whole excuse right there.

So what have I been up to since April?? Well, honestly, not a lot. I did do some traveling, though, and since that almost never happens, I felt it was a good idea to document it briefly in a blog. (I say “briefly” because I could write a lot more, but I didn’t. Even still, ’tis not brief.)

In October, I got to go to London with my aunt and cousins. It was my first time being there, of course, and it was amazing. It was so cool to be in the city that is the setting of so many books I’ve read. Also I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many fancy cars in all my life. I think just everyone in London drives a Bentley.

I got to experience the classic afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason’s which was delicious. That place has about fifty floors. Okay, so it’s more like five, but still, that’s a lot, okay? You know I bought a nice selection of loose leaf to bring home. I don’t remember when I made the transition to loose leaf, but it’s amazing what a difference it makes. At the tea, we each had our own pot, so they did it the traditional way, which involves just putting the leaves straight in the pot to brew. So when you pour it, you have to use a strainer that sits on top of the cup to catch the leaves. Normally, I use an infuser because I’m generally only making a mug of it, you know. So it was a fun experience.

Then we also went to the oldest bookstore in London, which is called Hatchard’s where I obtained a couple of books. I mean, tea and books, what more do you really need? I wandered around the store for quite a while before I finally landed on a book I knew nothing about. It was in the fantasy section, prominently displayed as though it was a famous book everybody knew about. EVERYBODY BUT ME, APPARENTLY. I’ve never seen this book on the shelves in any bookstore I’ve been to and I have spent hours haunting the fantasy section of bookstores. I don’t know if this is because I wasn’t looking for it, so I just didn’t notice it or if it’s just not as well known here. It was actually three books in one and together they are called Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. I really feel like this oversight was my own fault somehow, but I swear on my life I’d never heard about this trilogy until I saw the behemoth sitting on the shelf at Hatchard’s. It caught my eye because it had such a cool cover. What can I say, I’m totally guilty of buying books just because they look pretty. But in this case, I actually looked it up before I purchased it. I was just going to buy the one book, but then I spotted a Haruki Murakami novel I didn’t have yet, so I grabbed it on my way out. I mean, was I really expecting myself to only buy one book? Laughable.

We also saw Hamilton, which was just as amazing as everyone says it is. I cried through the entire second act even though I already knew what was going to happen. This was not surprising to me because I always cry at plays/movies/concerts/weddings/commercials/moving Youtube videos/random Thursdays. It doesn’t take much is what I’m saying.

There were a lot of little quirky things that were just different because I was in London. Obviously everybody is driving on the other side of the road, which wasn’t as disorienting to me as the drivers sitting on the other side of the car. I mean, what is going on with that?

There were also those red telephone boxes everywhere. I wonder if they’re still around because they’re so iconic and people like to take pictures with them. I doubt many people use them for actually making phone calls anymore. Then again, we’ve still got a few pay phones around, so who knows?

And I really loved how soda came in a little glass bottle. It was so cute, I was like can we have these in the U.S., please? I just like cute things, okay. Also food-wise, I can now say I’ve had fish and chips in London. Twice, even! I also had pheasant, which was so good.

We went to Buckingham Palace, but they only do tours in the summer, so we just stood outside and took some selfies. We did get to go inside Kensington Palace, though. They had an exhibit about Queen Victoria, who lived at Kensington as a child. Guys, Queen Victoria was tiny. They had a few of her dresses on display, ones she wore as an adult woman and they looked like they were made for a little girl.

We also happened to be there when they were doing some historical vote about Brexit or something, which was cool because there were a lot of protesters. They were mostly just walking around with EU flags and shirts and stuff, but it was pretty neat to see.

I could carry on about London – we were only there for three days, but I saw so many things, I could probably write another several paragraphs.

In December, I went to Georgia to visit my sister for Christmas. It would have been great if we didn’t all get sick about halfway through the week. First I got a terrible cold and then I got double pink eye. I haven’t had pink eye since I was a little kid. Holy crap. My eyes were just producing pus like you wouldn’t believe. It was dripping down my face. And they got so swollen, I couldn’t open them all the way. It was terrifying because I looked like some kind of goblin. It was also annoying ’cause I had to wipe the gunk from my eyes every two seconds and even then I could still barely see. Needless to say, we went to an urgent care and they gave me some drops, which cleared things up in a couple of days. Thankfully!

However, it is now the middle of January and I am still coughing. I feel fine otherwise, but this cough just won’t go away. It’s terrible and annoying, especially at night when I’m trying to sleep, dang it!

It was really great to see my peeps, though. Georgia was nice and warm. I haven’t been in a warm place for Christmas since we lived in California. That was back in the nineties. So we’re talking like twenty something years, yo. Though December is supposed to be less humid than the summer, but my hair was still a massive ball of frizz. I basically kept it in a braid the entire time because it was just POOF.

Also, people in Georgia are super nice. When I went to the urgent care, the nurse and doctor felt so bad for me they kept saying “bless your heart”. And not in that way that implies they think you’re slow, but like a genuine expression of sympathy. It was adorable. I can’t tell you how many people just waved at us or said hello or just starting talking to us. I always get nervous around friendly people because they’re so nice and I love it, but I’m so awkward. I feel like it makes them think that I think they’re weird or something, but really I just think they’re great, which makes me more awkward. I know, I do it to myself by overthinking. Alas!

Anyway, I’m home now, obviously. Cleocatra spent an entire hour meowing at me when I got back from Georgia. It started as it always does, every day of my life, which is where she stands by the front door and when I come inside, she stands there and yells at me for a bit. I always say it’s like twenty minutes, but it’s really more like two. I thought she’d stop after the initial two minutes, but no. I went into my bedroom to unpack my stuff, so she followed me. She has a little bed that’s like a cave and she crawled into it so she could sit inside and meow at me from within. Just constant meows. I finished unpacking and went into the kitchen ’cause I was hungry. So I was microwaving some food and I could hear her, still in the bedroom in her bed cave, meowing. I wasn’t even in the room! I finally sat down on my bed and she emerged from her cave, meowing still. She finally stopped after she crawled into my lap. Then for the next few days, she would meow whenever I left the room, even if she followed me out of it. Like, okay, I’m not going anywhere, calm your buckets!

Now everything has settled down, mostly. Though I have Things going on, but I’ll write about that later. I feel like this blog is long enough as it is. Needless to say, I wish to travel some more when I can. It might be a bit, though, since I totally wiped out my PTO with all that traveling this year. Oops! I regret nothing.

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March 22, 2018

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The Amazing Totally Cheap Miracle Cure!

Are you feeling down? Is life just not what you always thought it would be? Do you feel like there’s got to be some magic switch to make everything better?

GUESS WHAT THERE IS!

AND WE’RE GONNA SELL IT TO YOU FOR THE MEASLY SUM OF ONE TRILLION DOLLARS! YOU LUCKY DOG!

*cough cough*

Sorry, sorry. I got into Crazy Infomercial Announcer mode.

When you start to feel like you’re doing Life wrong, what do you do? You look for a Quick Fix. That’s just our culture. We want everything and we want it right the hell now.

Not too long ago, I was in that state of doubt. I wanted to know what I had to do to make all of my dreams come true. I mean, I was thirty already! Shouldn’t my dreams have come true by now? Clearly, I was living life wrong somehow. I needed to find the Mysterious Key that would unlock the Dreams Come True Achievement.

Since I don’t like talking to people, I turned to books because of course I did. What genre do you read to find the Cure? Self Help, naturally.

I was convinced it had something to do with how I was thinking. How does one think correctly?

As it turns out, all the Books had to tell me was that I should love myself. Easier said than done. Their suggestion for making myself love myself was affirmations. Basically, tell yourself you love yourself all the time every day until it’s true.

I’m sorry, but that mess just did not work for me.

It’s almost heartbreaking for me to admit that reading a book did not solve my problem.

Only now do I realize that reading books did not solve my problem because those books were not the Truth I was searching for.

Maybe those were the Truths some other people have sought. But not I. I was looking for something else. I was waiting for that AHA moment. It never really showed up, but I slowly worked myself to the YEAH, OKAY moment.

So I’m here to dish out the Miracle Cure you’ve all been searching for.

Ready?

Here it is:

You are flawed. You will always be flawed. Your flaws are why people love you.

That’s it.

Yeah, I know it’s anticlimactic. I am extremely disappointed about the lack of magic spells and fairy dust. However, if I’ve learned anything, it’s that the answer is about ONE TRILLION times simpler than you think. The problem with those self-help books telling you to love yourself is that they never address the fact that you need to love your flaws, too.

The thing you’ve been missing is simply the realization that you are not missing anything. Your flaws, your uncertainty, your searching hands in the darkness, these are the things that create you. Most often, these are the things people love about you.

The magic spell is acceptance. Accept yourself the way you are, right now, in this moment. Maybe you don’t have the high paying job you want. Maybe you have a tendency to overthink things to the point of causing yourself to have a panic attack. Maybe you don’t floss. It’s okay. It’s okay to love and accept these things about yourself. It won’t always be this way. Life is always changing. You need to let go of your expectations and allow yourself to be. The past taught and shaped you, but you don’t need to live there. The future is unknown and you don’t need to live there, either. You need to live right now. You need to love this moment. You need to love the fact that you are alive.

You don’t need a miracle cure because you are the miracle, exactly the way you are.

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December 8, 2017

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Don’t Be a Sisyphus

Seriously, don’t do it. Sisyphus was apparently a big jerk so he got doomed to an eternity of pain and suffering.

Okay, okay, I’ll summarize Sisyphus, just in case y’all don’t remember your Greek mythology.

Sisyphus was a King in ye olde Anciente Greece. Known to be the craftiest of all, he had a habit of killing people, defying the Gods, and doing all in his power to avoid death through trickery. Eventually, though, the Gods were like, “Nuh uh,” and managed to drag him down to Tartarus after many shenanigans. Once there, Zeus enchanted a boulder so that Sisyphus would have to push it up a hill only to have it roll back down again… for all eternity. ‘Cause the Gods don’t be foolin’ around.

Sisyphus was the worst. Does he truly deserve an eternity of boulder pushing? I don’t know and it hardly matters since this is mythology we’re talking about here. Whether or not Sisyphus was an actual person, I have a hard time believing he’s still pushing a boulder in a non-existent Underworld.

However, there are loads of people who have their own metaphorical boulders that they’ve been pushing for years only to have them roll back down again. Unlike Sisyphus, they don’t understand that what they’re doing is completely pointless. They have a firm belief that they will eventually get to the top and that the boulder will someday remain there.

Allow me to crush your hopes and dreams. Your boulder? Ain’t never gonna get to the top of that hill.

The good news is that who gives a fuck? I mean, seriously. Let me give you an example of the no fucks given that should be employed in this situation.

Using my own life is always easiest, so let’s go with that.

Hello, my name is Christina, and I’m a writer. I’ve been trying to finish a novel for ages and yet have never managed to do so. My boulder always crushes me as it goes back down the hill. Very painful. I have to wait for my broken legs to mend before I can get back up to continue pushing.

My boulder? Writing a novel.

My legs? Actually my confidence in my own skill as a writer.

While I wait for the legs, I study up on boulder pushing. Or in this case, on how to write a novel.

The problem? Everybody has their own methods of boulder pushing. So I end up pushing my boulder using bits of methods from all of them. Every time I start pushing again, I change the method based on what I’ve read recently. Or sometimes I just start over and do it exactly the same way.

The result? No results. Broken legs.

Guess what, though? That boulder is really made of my insecurities. All these years, I thought I was pushing my novel up that hill. Wrong! My novel is the hill! And its completed manuscript is at the top! That boulder is just a wad of doubt and outside influence. That boulder is me clinging to the idea that a writer has to do things a certain way and has to be a certain person.

Upon discovering the boulder was useless, I was able to fling my fucks out the window. Unlike Sisyphus, I can leave the boulder at the bottom of the hill. I can just walk around it and climb up the hill boulder-free. And eventually get to the top, where I can hang out with a finished novel.

There is actually a second option, too. I could walk away from the hill entirely. I could decide that writing a novel is not something I care to do. I could say, what the hell why is this so tied to my own identity, I give up goodbye. I’m gonna go be a bus driver, which turns out to be my true calling.

Not really, but my point is that you could do that with your own hill if you so desired.

My recommendation? Don’t be a Sisyphus. Get rid of your boulder. Walk away, walk around, or hire a burly construction worker to jackhammer it out of existence.

More often than not, the boulder is not something you need to contend with. You don’t need to take that thing with you anywhere. Whether it’s your insecurities, as in my case, or someone else’s expectations saying you have to do this specific thing or maybe your perception of what the world wants you to be. You don’t need any of that. Look seriously at your hill. Is it something that you chose for yourself? Is that hill representing something that is a true part of you? If so, realize the boulder is just doubt trying to keep you back from being your full self and walk around it. If not, realize that this is not the hill for you and walk away.

It’s okay. It’s okay to choose your own path. You aren’t a jerk like Sisyphus, so there’s no need to torture yourself as though you were an angry Zeus.

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August 27, 2017

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Crazy Town Update

I would like to start by saying thank you to everyone who commented on my last post, both here and on Facebook, giving me encouragement and letting me know that I’m not alone. It means so much to me and I love you all for being so supportive.

Now, you may recall from my previous post that getting off of this medication caused me to experience something called “head zaps”, which while annoying, weren’t painful. That was the case for the first few days of the week. Thursday, not so good. Friday, getting worse. Saturday, unbearable. Not only did they become far more frequent and intense, but they were getting painful, too.

Saturday night, I’m desperate for relief, but I’m SO DETERMINED not to take the pills again. So, as I always do in times of crisis, I turned to Google.

I was looking for advice on how to reduce the effects – anything I could do or other things I could take that might make the head zaps less horrible. I think my Adderall really does make a difference, which is why I was able to function at work at all this week. The problem is that I can’t take Adderall at night if I want to sleep. Plus it’s not like I use it to treat head zaps and I still need it for it’s actual purpose, so it isn’t really a good solution.

The only thing I could find was people recommending fish oil supplements. Although I don’t understand how that works, I didn’t give a shit and was willing to try any damn thing. If they had said to smear peanut butter all over my body, I would have done it.

So I slowly make my way to Smith’s which is open 24 hours and super close to my house – I don’t think I would have made it too far – and buy me some fish oil. That mess is expensive! What am I paying $25 for? Some guy scraping oil off of fish? I’m sure that’s not how it works, but fish oil just doesn’t seem like something that should cost so much.

Anyway, fish oil prices aside, I went home and took some. No change, but I’m not sure how long it takes to make a difference, so I go back to my Google search to see if there’s anything else I may have missed.

And then I find a tapering schedule recommended by a doctor specifically for Celexa (I take the generic citalopram, but it’s the same thing).

This schedule? EIGHT WEEKS. 

The one I did? Three.

Now, I made up my own schedule, so perhaps that was part of the issue. It’s not that I’m not seeing someone for these meds – I am, but our focus was on the Adderall, not the citalopram. She recommended I try to stop taking it, that some people experience head zaps, but she didn’t say much about it beyond that. 

The thing is, I’ve been taking this medication for years, so of course I’m more likely to have severe side effects when trying to stop taking it. I thought I was helping that with my three week tapering schedule, but it turns out you need to give each dose reduction a LOT more time so your body can adjust. 

At this point, I realized it would make a lot more sense for me to start taking the pill again and try this longer tapering schedule. I would rather do that with the chance that I can successfully get off the pill with minimal withdrawal symptoms than try to suffer my way through the horribly intense ones I was having. 

Stage one is taking my regular dose for a week, letting myself get used to that again, then alternating days with the lower dose for a couple weeks. Then you just kind of do that while reducing each dose until you get to the end. If I follow the schedule I’ve got set up now, I won’t be fully off the drug until mid October. Which is perfectly fine with me because I woke up head zap free and I haven’t had one all day. 

I took the Knight Bus out of Crazy Town, but only for a week’s vacay. I’ll be stuck behind the world’s slowest sloth on my way back in, though, so it should take me seven weeks to get back to where I was. It’s cool, speeding in on a moped was clearly not the way to go. I’m more than happy to try again.

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August 23, 2017

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Welcome To Crazy Town

I have a thing I do that I’m sure I picked up from somewhere else that involves calling everything Something Town. I don’t remember where this comes from, but I do it a lot. 

This post is actually about why I’m living in Crazy Town, not how often I say Something Town. 

You see, about six years ago, I started taking a medication. It was supposed to help with feelings of anxiety. It did its job, I got better, end of story. Except that it wasn’t the end. 

After I got better, I continued to take the medication. For six years, as mentioned previously. I did this because I was terrified of returning to the place I was in pre-medication, so I figured it was safer to just continue taking it. What harm was there, right?

There wasn’t any, not really, until recently. And it wasn’t so much that the medication was causing problems as I just found out I had other problems that needed different meds so I might as well get off this other one that I don’t really need anymore.

Okay, no problem, I thought. I’ve been stable for six years! Nothing can possibly go wrong! In fact, I might even feel better!

The hilarious nonsense we tell ourselves, right?

As it turns out, it probably will be better for me in the long run to get off this particular medication. In the short term, though, I am FREAKING OUT.

For the last four weeks or so, I’ve been steadily decreasing my dose in an attempt to reduce the physical side effects that I know come with not taking this drug.

I knew about them because I would occasionally forget to take my daily dose and I would be sad about it later.

I couldn’t even begin to describe what this weirdness feels like. They call it “head zaps” and the best way I’ve seen it described is that it feels like you’re getting little electric shocks that start in your brain and shoot down your body. It’s bizarre. Pair that with dizziness, headaches, and a bit of nausea and you can see why I was doing what I could to keep these to a minimum. 

This past Sunday, I took my last dose. I am on day three of no dosage. I get zapped pretty regularly throughout the day, with really intense zapping, dizziness, and headaches in the morning. The random zapping isn’t so bad. It feels weird as hell, but aside from when I first wake up in the morning, it doesn’t really hurt.

HOWEVER.

My emotions are a train wreck. As if getting zapped wasn’t bad enough, I’m experiencing the entire spectrum of human emotion within a twenty minute time period.

Most of the time, I’m irritable and pissed off, which is not my regular mode of operation. I’m generally a cheerful lil person who enjoys things like rainbows and chocolate sprinkles. I’m human, though, so of course I get cranky sometimes. This is more like every little thing just grates on my nerves. “Augh, the sky is blue and I’m just so irritated about it!”

The reality is that the irritation is caused by nothing, so my mind tries to ascribe it to something so it will make sense. At first, it was just every dang thing. But then I realized that this was probably a medication withdrawal side effect. Now I can feel irritated about nothing without freaking myself out because I know where it’s coming from.

There are two other such emotions that seem to come out of nowhere. One is anxiety, which makes sense since that’s the thing this medication is supposed to help with. But suddenly I’m anxious about… well, nothing.

I’ll be sitting there, freaking out in my own head, about nothing. I can’t explain it any better than that. 

The other one is random crying. This isn’t an emotion so much as a weird physical reaction to any emotion, no matter what it is. As you probably know by now, I’m a cryer anyway, so at first I figured this was just more of that. But I think it’s actually increased because it’s my way of dealing with emotions that come from nowhere.

Though I did have a couple hours of random happiness in there, too. I’m not sure if that was just me being me or not, though. Mostly, I’m just in a state of perpetual peeviness.

The good news is that these symptoms will eventually go away. In the meantime, I’m renting a condo in Crazy Town where I probably work as a grouchy barista, drawing frowning skulls on people’s lattes and crying any time a Bob Marley song gets played on the coffee shop radio.

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August 5, 2017

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Weekly Observations: A List

1. Cutting a pineapple feels more like making a sacrifice to some unholy entity (e.g. Satan). It pours its life liquid all over everything while you cut it into little pieces. And then your counter is sticky for a while.

2. I have learned that there are actually people in the world today who believe the Earth is flat. Even though science proves that it isn’t. Apparently, all science is invalid because there are no set rules and the facts can change. Instead of understanding that this is due to scientists continually learning new information and updating what they know accordingly, these people have chosen the route of idiocy by deciding this makes all science null and void.

3. Sometimes expressions that I used to use and then forgot about come back with a vengeance. This time it’s a word I used to use in place of swearing – Bach. I’ve been saying it under my breath at work a lot this week. Yes, I’m taking a composer’s name in vain. How could I be so blasphemous? I dunno, I like to think that Bach would find it humorous, so somehow that makes it okay. After all, this is the guy who said, “If I decide to be an idiot, then I’ll be an idiot on my own accord.”

4. Whenever something happens on Game of Thrones, every other Facebook post has something to say about it. I end up feeling like I’m missing some important historical event because I don’t watch the show. (Note: I know it’s a good show and I do intend to watch it one day. However, I want to read the books that are out first. I keep putting it off because they are ENORMOUS.)

5. Last night, my cat threw up her barely digested dinner all over the couch. I found myself torn between concern for her well-being and a sense of irritated despair at the thought of trying to clean the vomit off the fabric couch.

6. I signed in to Evernote for the first time in at least two years. I found a note from September 2014 that said only, “Do you think my consumption of vegetation is so horribly lacking that a single baby carrot can make my intestinal tract start broiling in a storm of digestive discomfort?” I have no memory of this, so I’m not sure if I was talking to myself or not.

7. It seems I’m only capable of keeping one room in my house clean at a time. At the moment, it’s the kitchen. Dishes? Done. Counters? Clean. Floors? Mopped. My bedroom, though? Laundry piles everywhere. Bathroom? Counter covered in various hair accessories. Living room? Empty Amazon boxes strewn about the floors which haven’t been swept in who knows how long. But, damn it, my kitchen’s clean!

8. I refuse to say that this list format of weekly observations is going to be a regular thing because whenever I do that, it never happens again. So don’t hold your breath.

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July 23, 2017

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On Being a Cry Baby

“Some people say, ‘Never let them see you cry’. I say, if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.”

-Tina Fey

I came across this quote the other day and it spoke to me on about a million different levels.

The thing is, I can always cry. Not on command or whatever, I ain’t no actress, but I just happen to cry a lot. About everything. Happy? Sad? Angry? Hungry? I cry about all of them.

Normally, it’s no big deal. I tend to feel everything about a million times more than is really necessary, so I believe it’s just my body’s way of coping with being overwhelmed. It’s actually very helpful. Once I cry for a bit, I end up feeling what I’m supposed to feel – level one instead of level one million.

The problem is when it happens in public.

I can remember several specific times when I have cried in public. I could go into the details, but I don’t want to put you to sleep, so I’ll just summarize.

Movies are always a problem, whether I’m at a friend’s house, on my own, or in a theater. They don’t have to be sad for me to cry about them, but if they are, hoo boy it’s like freakin’ Niagra Falls up in here. I can remember several different movies off the top of my head that I’ve seen in theaters where I cried a lot.

Music often moves me to tears, too. Once again it doesn’t matter where I am or what the song’s about. Sometimes just a pretty melody will set me off. Though, like movies, if the song is sad, I’m far more likely to act like a broken water pipe. So I have cried at a few concerts. Next to complete strangers who were probably close enough to get my tears on them.

Books and plays will cause trouble, too. I listen to audiobooks while I work and I remember crying for an entire chapter. There I was, sitting at my computer, typing away, with tears streaming down my face. Fortunately, nobody walked by and saw me. And plays? Once I went to see Les Miserables at Hale Centre Theatre and I cried through the entire second act. (To be fair, Les Mis has both a sad story and incredible music, which is basically a double whammy.)

I think you get the point.

In nearly every instance, someone had something snarky to say about it. Perhaps this is why I have always been embarrassed about how much I cry in public.

And that’s why this quote is spot on. It does terrify people. I think that’s why they tend to scoff at it. It makes them uncomfortable when a stranger cries over something they view as unimportant, like a movie or a song. It also makes them uncomfortable when a stranger cries because they’re in pain.

People who know the crier are also terrified, but usually because they don’t know how to help.

So listen. It’s okay, you know? If you’re the one who’s shaking in their boots about a public display of emotion, just chillax. Everything is going to be okay.

If a stranger is crying, it isn’t your business. Unless they look like they need help, leave them alone. In my case, I just need to let it out. I’m just overwhelmed. I’ll be fine once I’ve stopped. I don’t need a stranger making snide comments or giving me weird looks. The only thing I want is to cry judgment free so I can feel better.

If it’s someone you care about, just be nearby. You don’t always have to fix it. Sometimes there’s nothing to fix. Once, I started crying for no reason and I just couldn’t stop. I was living with my parents at the time. I went upstairs for dinner, told them I couldn’t stop crying, and attempted to eat my soup without sobbing into my bowl. When the tears finally slowed down enough for me to think, I realized I was just overly stressed because I had been working overtime every day for the past several weeks. It became too much, I was overwhelmed, and my body responded. In a situation like this, the crying person doesn’t need you to fix anything. They just need to get out their stress.

There can be times when something really is wrong, but let the person cry before you try to work it out. When I’m crying, I don’t need someone trying to talk to me logically about an actual problem. I’d be fine with a hug or maybe a rum & coke, but save the problem solving for after I’m done dehydrating myself. I’ll be far more likely to actually hear what you’re saying.

In fact, unless I ask you to stay with me, leaving me alone, letting me cry, and not judging me are the best things you can do for me in that moment.

Most of my family and friends already know this because they’ve experienced these instances over the years. I’m mostly writing this with the hope that some non-criers will read it and perhaps understand us criers a little better, whether it’s someone they’re close to or a complete stranger.

Strangers are the only ones who have made me feel bad about crying, though, so I guess it’s mostly for them.

I normally wouldn’t care except that I’m already a puddle of emotional goo when this happens so when people get judgy it makes me feel like I will never amount to more than a weak puddle of goo.

So listen up you emotionally intolerant mother truckers! Quit doing that. My crying ain’t none of your business. And I’m not sorry for causing you discomfort with my emotions. If feelings make you uncomfortable, you need to re-think who the weak one in this situation is. Just do it somewhere else so I can cry in peace, got it?

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July 17, 2017

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Oddments

Sometimes weird little amusing things happen in my life. Usually, these little oddities end up as Facebook posts, but since I have this blog now…

I have two from the last week that I wish to share with you lucky souls.

The first is a voicemail I received from “No Caller ID”. A lovely computerized lady-voice tried to talk me into calling her back. I’ve written out her short but sweet voicemail here for you all to enjoy. You’re welcome. Be sure to read it quickly and in monotone.

“From grants department you have been approved for grants money of nine thousand dollars. I tried to call you and inform but cannot reach you. Please call me urgent on this number 555-555-5555 and collect your grants.”

That’s obviously not the real number she left, but I don’t want to be responsible for someone calling it and trying to claim the $9,000 in my name.

They probably ask for your bank account number and routing information so they can “deposit” the “grants money” into your account, but they just take out whatever you’ve got in there instead. If I did somehow fall for this (I won’t claim I haven’t fallen for a scam in the past), they’d only get maybe forty bucks anyway. I have two accounts that are through the same bank and are linked together so I can keep my bill money and my spending money separate. I only know the account number for the bill account and all my bills have gone through. That forty bucks is my gas money for the next two weeks.

The lesson here is don’t fall for voicemails from robotic lady-voices that have “No Caller ID”.

The second thing happened at midnight several nights ago and I remember it clearly because of the RAGE it produced.

And by RAGE I mean mild annoyance.

You see, it was midnight and I was in bed, trying to sleep. I have a hard time sleeping anyway, mostly due to a highly active brain as well as delayed sleep phase. I have found various tricks to help me so it isn’t as much of an issue as it used to be. Sometimes, though, things happen that are beyond my control. This was one of those things.

Some FOOL was in the parking lot, having some kind of HOUR LONG jam session on their CAR HORN.

It went kind of like this: BEEP. BEEP. BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. BEEPBEEPBEEP.

I’m sure it wasn’t really an hour long, but the point is it was much TOO LONG. In fact, it shouldn’t have happened AT ALL. If my theory is correct, whoever the honking was aimed at wasn’t likely to respond anyway. And if the person WAS drunk, they shouldn’t have been in a CAR in the first place.

The other option is that it was NOT a drunken fool, but just a JERK who thinks it’s okay to get out of hand with a car horn at midnight.

This is the kind of thing you get to look forward to when you live in a condo (or any kind of living) complex. People seem to think that parking lots are places where it’s okay to hang out and/or be noisy at any time of the day or night. This may be true if your particular parking lot is by a Taco Bell or a Walmart, but not so much for living areas with parking lots. Next time you’re thinking of participating in a parking lot hang out, perhaps keep this in mind. The residents won’t thank you for it because they’ll probably be asleep.