Another Month

Wow, February 1st. Good-bye, January. Glad you weren't as sucktastic as last January. (Too much cold weather + truly shitty job = hellllllll, y'all.)

So the twin asshats of insomnia and anxiety have been having their not-so-fun way with me. I've had that squeezy-chest-I-can't-swallow feeling too many times to count lately, and after sitting down and thinking about what's what, it hit me that I have one of those difficult anniversaries coming up, if you'll excuse the psychobabble. February 3rd is my MomMom's birthday. She would have been 92. While the simple fact of a calendar day had escaped me, I guess my psyche was keeping tabs and sending up a flare: Pay attention, you. I sat down with the leather-bound book I've been keeping since she passed on and wrote about her for the first time in over a year. I wrote about the passage of days, the way life goes on, the way my life has changed in ways big and little. I wrote about what my wise friend Pam called the process of rebuilding my life and myself around the empty space left by her absence. I wrote about the fact that in a deep-down way I can barely explained, I'm a different person now. Grief: it's not for sissies. And it can't be ignored, or it will sneak up on you and give you a psychic wedgie.

I'd like to say that the squeezy/no-swallowing sensations magically went away once I faced up to what's going on inside my head, but that's not the case. Maybe I'll see a change once her birthday comes and goes, quietly, unmarked by all except those of us who still grieve for her lost smile, her silenced laughter.

Death, you can just suck it, and suck it hard, you bastard.

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One of the benefits of insomnia (find that silver lining, damn you!) is the chance to experience what you might normally miss. While sitting up this morning at 1:30, I heard two owls hooting softly to each other outside in the front yard. I think one was on our roof, the other in our neighbor's tree or porch roof too. They hooted at each other for a good 20 minutes, maybe discussing the upcoming presidential election and the fact that it's almost time for The Walking Dead to return to AMC. Their mellow altos made me sleepy, and I slept for a few more hours and woke up smiling.

Work killed all my happy owl feelings.

Day job, you can just suck it, and suck it hard, you bastard.

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I haven't been happy with my weight and my lack of exercising for a long time. I suck at dieting. I hate keeping up with points and grams and calories. So in lieu of something formal and program-like, I'm just trying to make better choices. Since I'm not going to become a vegetarian marathon runner (as a sarcastic endocrinologist once suggested I become, or consider gastric bypass), I'm trying to coax my cranky self into exercising a little each day. I already take the stairs at work, park far away from stores to walk, all that happy horse-pucky. Tonight, I did something called crunchless abs, which made my hibernating stomach muscles yelp in shock. Then I got on the floor and worked those outside stomach muscles (more shocked yelping; I distinctly heard my obliques shout, "THE HELL IS THIS?"). I finished off with downward dog and mountain pose and some bellydance snake arms.

It pisses me off that from a physical standpoint, I feel so much better after a mere 10 minutes of really mild exercise.

*grumble grumble* Now I have to keep this crap up. Because it works, damn it. Crap.

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Knitting class started up Monday, and there was much yarn fondling and chatter. Our instructor brought a skein of yarn made from New Zealand possum fur. The Kiwi possums are domesticated and spoiled rotten, much like our cat. I'm sure they have staff on hand to peel their persimmons and wave palm frond fans over their fuzzy little heads. A classmate brought in a skein of roving in the most enchanting shade of seafoam blue-green. She was working a thick cable down the enter of the scarf she's making from this fiber. She had to keep slapping my hand away from her work because I couldn't stop touching the roving. It was so soft and lovely. I started on my first pair of socks, intended for my sweetie. I'm using double needles, and I managed to get the stitches cast on, divided, and joined without any bloodshed or weeping. I sort of overlooked the line that said to work in 2x2 ribbing, so the cuff is short a ribbed row. Oops. Things were going swimmingly until I pulled the work out of my bag to get in a little knitting yesterday and saw that several stitches had dropped off a needle. Grrr. I tried to get everything back in place, but I really think I need to FROGGIT and just start over. 's okay.

Peace out, cub scouts. oxxoxoxoxo