Stream of Semi-Consciousness...

I don't know why I feel compelled to blog when I can't even seem to keep my thoughts straight. I'm having trouble focusing the past few days... Not sure if it's stress, or sleep deprivation, or hormonal imbalance or boredom. I seem to have the attention span of a two-year-old; but it's not like I am moving from thing to thing to thing in some curious way. It's more like I get started on something and end up staring off into space within moments, and I could just sit there like that all day if I let myself.

I need a vacation.

Saturday I felt almost human for the first time in a while. I had a touch of the old Payday Euphoria I remember from days past... back when I always had a little something left over to have some fun with. It's not been that way in a long time. I ran some necessary errands (like picking up my progesterone cream from Whole Foods) and then indulged in a guilty pleasure I've missed... sitting at Qdoba eating chicken nachos while watching "The Office" online with my iPod headphones. I've been known to carry DVDs in my laptop bag just for this reason. Of course, "The Office" is a bad show to watch while you're eating. Because when it's good, you invariably end up spitting bits of food at your screen--and it's pretty much always good.

I have to say that the progesterone makes a huge difference in my world. My doctor put me on it a couple years ago after a few missed periods, and it's definitely helped to regulate things in my current peri-menopausal state. It shocks many people when I say this because not-quite-forty seems so young to even utter the "M" word. However, as I have read and heard from my doctor, the symptoms of peri-menopause (which I think officially morphs somewhere into actual pre-menopause) can last for up to fifteen years. Fun. And my mother actually hit the big "M" relatively early, so who can say? My hormones get no action to let my system know that they're needed for anything, so maybe all my inability to have casual sex or find a husband to impregnate me is going to have my ovaries shriveling up way ahead of schedule. In the meantime, there is progesterone, and I am in love with it.

Having lived my life while on it regularly for a while, and having for the past five or six months lived back off of it (because it's kinda pricey), I can honestly say I need it. It does way more for my state of mind and moods than my anti-depressant does, I'll tell you that. And boy would I love to just get off my anti-depressant. Harder to do when you're dealing with a pill than the liquid I used to take before I lost my health insurance, unfortunately. Also, the last time I tried to came off it did not go so well. Well, having your life torn apart by a clueless, cruel man will do that. In a time like that, your body and mind need all the help they can get.

I have felt better the past few days while back on it. It's not a magic cure for all that ails, but it does make the likelihood of tears a much bigger long shot, and that alone makes it worth it. Friday night (I think) I was sobbing so hard on my way home from wherever, that I came close to just swerving the car off the road and being done with it. And I'm not suicidal anymore--truly. It was a completely emotional, irrational, mental reaction to my body needing some equilibrium, which it thankfully has now.

Of course, it is only Andy that makes me get that way, so it's still related. I mean, even all hormonally strung-out and whatever, it's not like I just get aggravated and burst into tears over traffic, or a sappy Hallmark commercial. It's always Andy related. Driving through Boston, all the signs for Southie push my buttons. Passing the South Bay Center... we shopped at that Target... bought a duvet cover together at that Bed, Bath & Beyond (or Bed, Bath & Bite Me) as he liked to call it. I can't walk past the Family Planning aisle in CVS because I'll both see the brand of condoms he liked, and be reminded that I have no need for condoms of any kind. And then there are the random associations that just pop into my head for no good reason, just to torture me. This week for some reason I suddenly thought of the card on his fridge, made by his eight-year-old niece Hannah, which read "You are fune (funny) to me." And suddenly I could see his fridge, with the card on it, and the Kowloon postcard I had sent him, and his little memo basket, and the bottle opener his mother had bought him (not knowing it was a bottle opener, but just liking the magnet) and I could see his entire kitchen, like a 360-degree web tour in my mind... I was walking into the living, and into the bedroom, and just remembering every inch of this place that I had come to love... this place where we had shared so much... where I had let him in in ways that I had never done with anyone else. And now I've just made myself cry--progesterone notwithstanding. Moving on...

I can't seem to get off my ass to put up my Christmas decorations. I'm not sure what that's about. Actually, that's a lie. I know what it's about, I just don't usually let it bother me and I'm not sure why this year I'm so much more fed up than usual.

I hate living at my mother's. For all the good points that I could name, I just hate it. I hate that my entire existence is confined to one 14 x 14 foot space, with the rest of my comings and goings monitored by whoever is feeling nosy at any given moment. I hate that we can never seem to get organized enough to decorate the Christmas tree together, and at the same time I hate that my mother and siblings would be the ones I'd be decorating with. I want my own tree. I want my own family. I want to put on music, and sip spiked eggnog with my honey and decorate our tree--one that we went out and purchased, and smells like pine needles, and not this artificial monstrosity we pull from the attic every year.

For a while there I tried to put my own ornaments on the family tree. We all have our own ornaments, naturally. There is a huge collection of "family" (my mother's) ornaments, and then there are those that were given to us as gifts throughout our childhoods, etc. In our adult years we've all taken to buying our own keepsake ornaments and whatever we want, and so usually we get to hang our own ornaments when the time comes. Invariably, however, my mother would take down the Christmas tree on some random afternoon before I got home from work, and my ornaments would end up in the family stash. I've had a couple ornaments get broken and lost this way, and I finally decided to just stop hanging them on the family tree. They lived in a storage trunk in my bedroom for a few years, just waiting for a chance to be useful, and finally a few years ago I came up with an idea to make my own merriness in my little garret "apartment."
I'd bought this fake evergreen garland at CVS, and some mini-lights on sale at Target, and planned to decorate my room by festooning my bookcases and windows with said garland and lights. Why not, right? I should be able to walk into my "space" at the end of a long day and enjoy the cozy twinkling of some lights while I settle in for the night.

After I had hung it all around the room I suddenly was hit with the brainstorm to actually hang ornaments from the garland. I mean, it was the same consistency and look of an artificial tree--just spread over different space. So that's what I did. I hung all the bargain glass balls I'd picked up at Toys 'R' Us one year after the holidays, and I hung all my little personal ornaments from the days of yore, and I hung some candy canes, and I filled in the rest of the space with cards and photos and it looked really nice. For the past couple of years I have done this, buying a few ornaments every year (photo-frame ornaments and any type of ice skate seem to be a big theme with me).

This year I'm so behind the eight-ball it seems. It's already December 11. By the time I get everything up it'll be practically time to take it all down again. And I kind of hate doing it all alone. But what can I do? Invite my friends over to help? "Hey, wanna come over to my 'room' and hang out and help me decorate?" Like it's a college dorm? I mean, sure I could do that. There's no house rule preventing it. It just horrifies me. It humiliates me that I don't have my own space to open up to the people whose homes I have been invited into time after time. It bothers me to no end that I don't have any control over the environment--from how clean the bathroom is at any given moment, to whether my brother lights up a cigarette (which you can smell under the crack in my door if the wind blows the right way), to whether my mother and sister will get into a screaming match over something stupid and decide to let loose regardless of who is in earshot. I just can't deal with it. It's not a "company" situation, and this year I just kind of don't feel like doing the loner thing. It doesn't help that all my stuff is in a storage unit outside the house (which is a big bone of contention for my mother), so it's kind of a hassle to get it all, deal with decorating and put the empty totes back in storage until after New Year's. It's just lame.

Maybe on Friday night when I am home with nothing to do I'll decide I want to take the time, but it's not looking good at the moment.

You know what makes me mental? Food service people who wear the gloves and touch EVERYTHING without changing them. As if the gloves are there to keep their hands from getting dirty. They're there to keep your germy hands from infecting the food! Once you answer the phone--you've infected the gloves. If you ring up a sale at the cash register--you've infected the gloves. Not to mention the cross contamination of whatever food-bourne bacteria you might be passing from the gloves to the phone and cash register, etc. TAKE 'EM OFF! Answer the phone, ring up the sale, do whatever... Then when it's time to make the next sandwich, that's when you put on a fresh pair of gloves. Don't scratch your face. Don't wipe your hair out of your face. Don't smooth down your apron. These actions defeat the purpose of wearing the gloves in the first place. Oh, the things I have witnessed....

Another one is the way people hand back change nowadays. When I was a kid, I distinctly remember that consistently from store to store people would hand you your coins first, putting them into your cupped hand, and then your bills, with the receipt on top. Now it's like a free-for-all. Why did all these workers from back in the day retire without passing on this nugget of change-returning wisdom? I hate getting change handed back to me with the dollars and receipt all mixed in together, with the coins balanced precariously on top, just waiting to bend the paper money in half and spill out everywhere, like a cheap paper plate piled with too much food. And I hate the 70-foot long receipt full of coupons for stuff I either just bought, or will never use. You stand there for three minutes trying to fold it up, and put it in your wallet, along with the crazy assortment of bills, and then the change, all the while the person behind you is huffing and puffing and the clerk is looking at you in annoyance.

Speaking of which (I am now in CVS in my mind and just going right along) I CAN'T STAND when cashiers take everything out of the basket before ringing it up. Like, if I have a bunch of items in a basket, and it's heavy and whatever, I'll put the basket right on the counter. Now what any cashier worth their salt will do is remove an item from the basket, scan it, and put it into a bag before picking up the next item. Makes sense, right? So why do some cashiers find it necessary to remove every item from the basket and put them individually on the counter, and THEN ring each item up and THEN put them in the bag? Is bagging shampoo, Kleenex and a candy bar SO complicated that they really need to see everything out on the counter in front of them instead of just winging it? Oh, it makes me CRAZY!!!!!

Another things that busts me is when people assume you don't want your receipt. If I don't want it, I'll throw it away myself. Give it to me. One of the BK drive-thrus I frequent (health-nut that I am) never gives you your receipt at the payment window. Even when you ask for it. They always say, "They'll give it to you at the next window." Uh, no. They really won't. What they'll give me is the receipt that's taped to the bag, which tells the expediter what food goes in the bag. It doesn't, however, tell the purchaser what method of payment was used to complete the purchase. That receipt is the one from the previous window that the idiot kid wouldn't give to me. So if you don't remember two days later that you used your debit card (and also which of your say, two debit cards you might have used), you're pretty much screwed until you get your account statement from the bank.

Anyway... there are way more things that aggravate me than that, but those popped into my head and seemed to need venting. It's 12:12. I always seem to look up during repetitive digits. There's some thing about that, though I'm not sure what. At any rate, I'm hungry, I'm at work all alone and clearly no longer working. I think I'm gonna head home and eat.