Not Dead, just Dead Tired

Hello my six readers, I am alive. Writhing on the floor with concern, you were, I'm sure.

Fear not: body and soul are still one.

I just needed time to get used to the upped amount of meds. Against Dr E.'s advice, I've continued taking the full amount in the morning instead of splitting the dose to half in the morning and the remainder at night. I didn't rebel against the advice out of some knee-jerk reaction or I-think-I-know-better attitude, but more out of concern of forgetting to take the second half. Some nights I work, others I don't, not a real regularity of schedule. Plus I can get distracted by shiny--- oooh, look! Headlights moving across the wall, anyway, what was I saying?

So, I must peak on the meds somewhere in the middle of the afternoon because come dusk, I'm yawning like an English major in an Economics class (or maybe that's just me). And the touches of nausea--blecch. When I finally make it home, I just crash the fuck out. I fight to stay awake, but to no avail. It has gotten better the past couple of days though.

Also, I'm trying to get some things done around the old apartment. I'm trying to fix up my section of the Corner Quad in hopes that Saint Nicholas soon would be there...I mean, in hopes of starting to invite people over. I'm entertaining the idea of entertaining. Maybe a couple of co-workers or a few friends, maybe even at the same time for drinks! One co-worker has been asking when I'm having her and hers over for drinks this last week, and it got me thinking that I really should. I'm just not 100% digging on the way the place looks as of right now.

On top of cleaning and rearranging, I'm stressing on this change of venues for my meds and therapy. Being without Health Insurance, I must go where the system pushes/allows me. I've set up an Intake Interview May 23rd at one of these places which is scary enough, but the place is also in a skeevey area (above a liquor store--both sad and convenient) and the interview takes place one week after my last Primary meeting. The lady on the phone said there is a waiting list of like 3-6 weeks or something after the interview until treatment can start. I think. Just the idea of running out of meds scares the shit out of me. I do not want to go back to the situation I was in for the last two years. She said to show up early to fill out paperwork to get a Medical Card which I am sure I won't qualify for since I work.

Oh well, we'll see.

Other than that, I've been getting back into my Playstation2; playing Killzone and NCAA Football 2005 (Ohio State Buckeyes Rule!) in the afternoons of my days off. And trying to catch up on my neglected New Yorkers and trying to (finally) read The Prince, but slow going on both counts.

This was a nice thing to wake up and discover today (see last paragraph). Thank you, again, Young Manhattanite.

Okay Lilly is waving at me, telling me it's time for bed, and Pertney is already asleep. Talk to you all later.

Hey Buddy, got a light?

Just kidding, there.

Pass (on) the Camel Lights; as of 8:26 p.m. tonight, I've lived smoke free for two years. That's TWO YEARS with out a Camel Light or a parliament or a Basic Light or a Dunhill. Wow, and smoking was such a part of me, an extension of my essence. My stick figure self-doodles always included backwards O.U. cap, glasses, goofy grin, and a lit cigarette sticking out the side of my mouth, or held in stick figure fingers. A pack-a-day man was I. Pack and a half if the bar scene played out fun that night, or my friends were low. Always had a spare for a friend or newly met cutie. Huddled outside smokefree parties on a deck, balcony, or back alley, making small talk with other smokers around the keg. A sense of community, an ice breaker.

Here's me talking about it at my year and a half anniversary.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em *sigh*

Sigh. There are my old friends now. Ride on, faithful Camel. Ride on, naked man in Camel. Ride on lady-giving-Oral in Camel. Ride on, my old favorites. Nay, these aren't tears, I just have smokey memories in my eye. 

My friend Harsh is going to NYC on Wednesday. Color me jealous. I''d love to have drinks at The Spring Lounge, The Gonk, and somewhere in the LES. Washington Park in early summer sounds fun. A kiss at 9:33 p.m. on top of the Empire State Building. Holding hands in at The Guggenheim. Sigh. Someday, right? Someday. 

In a few minutes it will be Monday Morning

you look at the clock and realize Sunday only has a few minute-hand clicks left in it. You must go to bed as you feel bone-tired. You can't really remember the last couple of days, not that you've partied any, just tired and slept through a great chunk of the past couple of days. You remember Friday, in a vague sort of way. You remember working, selling shit and saying hello to hundreds of nameless, blurry, white faced, blonde-haired people. You remember yawning a lot near the end of your shift, and the nausea you feel when you get tired and haven't had enough to eat and the medication coursing through your veins starts to get to be a little too much. You yawn and clock out and say good-bye to some co-workers, then stop at the Starbucks entrance to chat with one last co-worker, Harshly-Yah!, about the fact you are still filling in for her a couple of hours on Saturday morning. And the topic moves to your blog and her blog and about some technical issues, and you say you're not sure how that works, but you'll look into it when you get home, and you yawn and a customer asks Harshly-Yah! a question and she "dismisses" you, so you smile and leave. Head home, get home, pet the kitty, drink some tea and cold medicine because you can feel something coming on, turn on the TV and immediately you doze off on the too small couch. You awake to watch Third Watch, then doze off again, then check your email and attempt to post something (anything) in your blog, but the Internet bores you tonight, so you go to bed and dream about nothing.

Saturday comes and you hit the snooze button like fifteen times, get up, drink coffee and get ready. The drive to work is dreamlike as the coffee on an empty stomach feels like it reactivated the cold medicine you drank last night on an empty stomach and you're stoned again. Work drifts by in a dream and all these faces and questions (questions you've answered a thousand times) zoom in and out at you as if in a fog seen through an erratic and out of control camera lens. And a couple of your co-workers seem extra nice and you almost miss one or two of them even as they're standing a foot in front of you talking with you, but everyone appears as though you are seeing them out of the corner of your eye. You feel mellow and focused, but blurry and as if there is a warm wet wool blanket wrapped around your mind, you feel nostalgic for things that have never happened and you want to hug one of your co-workers becuase you love the way her blonde hair plays of her black glasses, but that would be weird because you barely know her and she lives with her boyfriend, so you don't. And you're working hard, ringing many things up, selling, sales pitch, information giver, helping co-workers wrap gift boxes, but it feels like you've only helped like three customers the whole time you've been here (11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.), but no one seems to notice, so that's cool. And your thinking you would love to go back to the breakroom and eat all the semi-frozen hazelnut mousse S.R. made/brought in today, but that would be so selfish and pig-face, so you don't.

Then Harshly-Yah! shows up from her niece's B-day party, its 2:30 p.m., and you suddenly feel really weird, odd, out of place, self-conscious about how out of it you've felt all day, so you chat, wringing your hands nervously, then take off. The rest of the afternoon you sleep (again) on the too small couch, Lilly curled up at your butt barking meows occasionally when you pet her in a half-awake daze. You watch TV, but can't recall what now, and check your email, reply to a couple of friends, but blow off the rest because you just can't think clearly anymore tonight and really nothing is happening that'd interest them. And you go to bed.

Sunday comes around and you feel much clearer. You get to work ten minutes early, before the manager shows up to unlock the door. And work is full of semi-crazed customers and you hang in Gourmet selling things you know little or nothing about, and you can't find three things and have to ask the department manager each time, but she's pretty cool so it's not a big deal. You sell like $2000 worth of shit, most of it a table and chairs set, so that makes for a cool day, and suddenly it's time to go/clean up and you slice your own finger cutting through the plastic on the Extras Set of 4 Dinner Forks, mutter "shit" and wrap your finger in tissue paper, looks like toilet paper on a chin, blood seeps through in tiny bright dots, life flows out tastes like copper. And you're saying good-bye to everyone and in the car driving home. Lilly is yelling at you, so you play with her and her favorite shoelace on the green living room rug and she me-ows meee-ows at you and swats the string and chews on it when she snags it out of your hand. And you doze off (again and again) on the too small couch watching TV, then check your email, but reply to no one. And now Lilly is reminding you that you have to work tomorrow and you need to go to bed.

So you do.

Whacked-out on cold medicine

No post (of any substance) today.

I am riding the crest of clarity, then falling into the trough of Zombism. I can breathe clearly now, could inhale every single Marching Bolivian right now, if I were so inclined (um, but I'm not). And the aches? They all oozed away as I dozed off at the beginning of Dateline, but awoke in time for Third Watch. Could Sgt. Cruz be hotter? Sad to see that show go away.

Time for beddy-bye.