Less than one week to go to write posts from my drafting table in this spacious living room.
Things aren’t always what they seem.
Category: ruminations
I pay to share my feelings online.
Right as my WordPress subscription auto-renewed, I took a two-week hiatus. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? Now that you’ve renewed your fondness for me, here’s a gif I made when I meant to write a post two weeks ago:
Anger prisoner.
Tammy is good at noticing things in trees.
On Monday, she took me to Cuthbert Holmes Park. There, I saw my first great horned owl in the wild. My favorite thing about great horned owls is how they look perpetually offended: this one was no exception. Tammy also pointed out the camouflaged hummingbird nests in the trees along the trails. Upon dropping me off at my place, she remarked that my landlords had an apple tree–which I knew about–and a plum tree, which I hadn’t noticed. And a pear tree that had somehow eluded me.
To be fair, even if she hadn’t pointed out the pear tree, I would’ve noticed it today as I collected two pears off the ground when I went outside to re-pot one of my houseplants. While lining the container with potting soil, I realized that doing so directly underneath said pear tree probably wasn’t wise. Isaac Newton had beat me to the notion of gravity more than 300 years ago. Had a pear bonked me on the head, the discovery would have been one of my landlords to make: me unconscious under their pear tree.
The landlords’ daughter is in town. She was the one who introduced me to her parents via email, but it’s her partner who I know as I worked with him in Montréal. For this reason, we haven’t hung out, but that didn’t stop her from sharing on WhatsApp what her parents had to say about me. They inadvertently complimented my cycling prowess when they mentioned to her how fast I go up the hill on our street on my e-bike.
I do not have an e-bike.
Not to worry, the rest of this post isn’t going to be about how amazing I am.
Continue reading “Anger prisoner.”Lavender blender.
I’m sharing this because it’s eaten up more than an hour of my life already. The responses are simultaneously hilarious and sad. I haven’t contributed because I couldn’t think of any children’s-age-level facts that I learned later in life, only knowledge that came to me late.
In the 8th grade, one of the kids in English class told the teacher, “Get laid.” The whole class was stunned, except for me. I didn’t know what getting laid meant. Judging by how the interpreter signed the phrase, I figured it was another way of the kid saying the teacher was a dog who needed to be put to sleep. I asked a friend in class what it meant, and her explanation was, “You know, like, get laid!”
Now I know that sick pets don’t go to the vet to get laid. It was a choice insult: implying the teacher was sexually repressed because he found her demeanor unpleasant. That’s… reasonable?
No chance that kid grew up to be anything but a douche bag. As for me, I grew up to be moderately polite at best, confusing at most.
Continue reading “Lavender blender.”Sunny skies, not disposition.
Hot, sticky, and depressing: that’s been my week. I have been unwell, not physically, although I noticed a tan spot under one of my toenails and googled for info, fully expecting to get suggested treatments for what’s probably the start of a fungal infection. Instead, Google coughed up:
MELANOMA!
Melanoma? UNDER MY TOENAIL? I don’t wear open-toed shoes. MY TOES HAVE NEVER SEEN THE SUNLIGHT.
Fine, I’ll keep an eye on my gross feet. What made me cry, though, was my brain. The organ that controls me began to override my ability to think and behave rationally. I found myself in a conflict on Wednesday night and lost sleep over re-framing and re-interpreting the situation, trying to look at it from many different perspectives, second-guessing my emotions, and questioning my sanity.
“It’s not me, it’s them. Wait, maybe it’s me? No, it’s definitely them. Am I overreacting? Just go to sleep, there’s nothing you can do about it now. Ok, here’s what I could do… No. Go to sleep. My eyes have been shut for the past three hours; settle down, emotions. Wtf…”
I showed up to work on Thursday morning feeling like garbage.
A familiar piece of advice is, “Think before you speak.” For me, that could take hours or even days. In the 20 or so years since I was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, I’ve learned that the best course of action is to retreat from the public until I can function somewhat normally again.
When I told my boss two hours before my shift was over that I had to hightail it, he thankfully didn’t question my need to leave. Sure enough, as soon as my mirrored sunglasses went on and I unlocked my bike, I started sobbing.
Continue reading “Sunny skies, not disposition.”
squaremeat.com 