Sixteen days after I wrote this, Pat was dead.
Friday, 23 July 2004 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59[I wrote this two months ago. I have no idea why it took that long.]
"All We're Trying To Do Is Keep a Lot of People In One Place While We Shoot At Them. Why's It Have To Be So Hard?"*
-:- -:- -:- -:-
I can't sleep.
That's not completely true; I can sleep at work. I can sleep here in my chair at my computer. I can sleep on the sofa, if there's a movie on I really want to watch. But in bed, in the dark--
Nothing.
Bed has all the relaxing qualities of a blank sheet of paper I'm required to fill with proof of my literary talent. I have hot flashes; then I'm freezing. I itch, usually in places like the bottom of my foot, or the middle of my back, or, if I'm lying on my side, the hip I'm lying on. Itches that require not just scratching, but major shifts in position, disturbances in the entire eco-structure of the bed (I usually have a cat either on my head, or lying right next to me. On the other side, I have Pat. When I move, everybody moves. I feel like Shamu).
And my brain won't shut down. How much vacation time do I have--is it enough for going to Media (yes) and coming home and being off the week after, while we have guests--
if we have guests--
Should I go back to my desperate house-cleaning? Maybe if I got up and washed dishes, it would make me sleepy, maybe.
Almost every item of cloth in the house is clean, if not yet put away. I could put them all away, which would clear out the living room pretty well--
I need to clean the bathroom.
(I tried to clean the bathroom yesterday and nearly killed myself. I was dusting the overhead light--which is not the overhead light that my grandfather and uncle put in, because that one burned out--not just the bulb, the whole fixture, and the only saving grace is, it didn't cause a fire, because they knew nothing about electrical wiring, nothing, nothing, nothing, and the light fixture itself burned up. So what I have in there is a hanging lamp my parents gave me for Christmas one year, many years ago, which hangs from the previous light fixture and is plugged into an extension cord that's plugged in in the hall because there is no outlet in the bathroom, except the one over the mirror that the toothbrush is plugged into. Anyway, the old fixture came loose--hanging a few feet from the ceiling by a couple of wires. I dropped the lamp entirely. The bulb didn't shatter, but it did break. I had to stand on the pouffy toilet seat lid to hang the thing back up, and I'm very afraid of heights, particularly unstable heights. I broke out in a cold sweat up there, trying to yank the old fixture all the way off, wondering if I was going to electrocute myself. I finally got it off, and got the lamp hung back up. Then I spent the rest of the day lying on the sofa, watching movies and wondering what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.)
I'm trying to work up some enthusiasm for going to MediaWest, but all I'm feeling is anxiety, about time, about getting everything done, about packing, about picking up the rental, getting Pat to the doctor on Tuesday, how much time will that take? About forgetting things, necessary things, will I get all the necessary clothes washed, will I forget the damn toilet seat raiser--again?
Seriously. Ernest Shackleton worried less about preparing to head off to Antarctica--and I'm only going one state up, from Indiana to Michigan. The only really important thing I could forget would be something to do with Pat's motorized cart. We fucking go to Meijer's virtually every day. We're not destitute. If we needed something, we could buy it. There's nothing life-threatening, or earth-shattering, that we could possibly leave behind--
What if the rental's not right? It's a full-size, we're promised a full-size, that should be big enough, right? It has to carry our suitcase, and the wheelchair, and the cart--there should be plenty of space, right? And tall enough--low to the ground cars are no good, Pat can't get out of them, not unassisted.
Will she be all right?
I worry. What would I do if--
I'm buried in ifs, bad, mean, awful ifs that suffocate. And what will people think?
I've talked about my grandmother, my mother's mother, who worried about what the neighbors thought. My mother always talked about her as if she was paranoid, although from things she's said lately, the neighbors really were talking. And much as I hate and despise the need to do things because of the opinions of other people, I know what my grandmother was talking about. She could feel those opinions on her skin, like drops of steam sizzling downward. There are days when I swear I can hear people thinking about me. And no matter how conceited or paranoid it sounds, when I think of my grandmother (and how the neighbors really were talking about our family), I can't just shake if off, can't just bundle myself up in my sunglasses and baggy clothes and go out into the world and not care. It hurts. Going out is an act of will, and believe me, it's scarier than heading off to the Antarctic, in a bikini and without Shackleton.
I was talking about something when I started this. I don't know what it was. I'm going back to the sofa.
*Flake Project X
"All We're Trying To Do Is Keep a Lot of People In One Place While We Shoot At Them. Why's It Have To Be So Hard?"*
-:- -:- -:- -:-
I can't sleep.
That's not completely true; I can sleep at work. I can sleep here in my chair at my computer. I can sleep on the sofa, if there's a movie on I really want to watch. But in bed, in the dark--
Nothing.
Bed has all the relaxing qualities of a blank sheet of paper I'm required to fill with proof of my literary talent. I have hot flashes; then I'm freezing. I itch, usually in places like the bottom of my foot, or the middle of my back, or, if I'm lying on my side, the hip I'm lying on. Itches that require not just scratching, but major shifts in position, disturbances in the entire eco-structure of the bed (I usually have a cat either on my head, or lying right next to me. On the other side, I have Pat. When I move, everybody moves. I feel like Shamu).
And my brain won't shut down. How much vacation time do I have--is it enough for going to Media (yes) and coming home and being off the week after, while we have guests--
if we have guests--
Should I go back to my desperate house-cleaning? Maybe if I got up and washed dishes, it would make me sleepy, maybe.
Almost every item of cloth in the house is clean, if not yet put away. I could put them all away, which would clear out the living room pretty well--
I need to clean the bathroom.
(I tried to clean the bathroom yesterday and nearly killed myself. I was dusting the overhead light--which is not the overhead light that my grandfather and uncle put in, because that one burned out--not just the bulb, the whole fixture, and the only saving grace is, it didn't cause a fire, because they knew nothing about electrical wiring, nothing, nothing, nothing, and the light fixture itself burned up. So what I have in there is a hanging lamp my parents gave me for Christmas one year, many years ago, which hangs from the previous light fixture and is plugged into an extension cord that's plugged in in the hall because there is no outlet in the bathroom, except the one over the mirror that the toothbrush is plugged into. Anyway, the old fixture came loose--hanging a few feet from the ceiling by a couple of wires. I dropped the lamp entirely. The bulb didn't shatter, but it did break. I had to stand on the pouffy toilet seat lid to hang the thing back up, and I'm very afraid of heights, particularly unstable heights. I broke out in a cold sweat up there, trying to yank the old fixture all the way off, wondering if I was going to electrocute myself. I finally got it off, and got the lamp hung back up. Then I spent the rest of the day lying on the sofa, watching movies and wondering what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.)
I'm trying to work up some enthusiasm for going to MediaWest, but all I'm feeling is anxiety, about time, about getting everything done, about packing, about picking up the rental, getting Pat to the doctor on Tuesday, how much time will that take? About forgetting things, necessary things, will I get all the necessary clothes washed, will I forget the damn toilet seat raiser--again?
Seriously. Ernest Shackleton worried less about preparing to head off to Antarctica--and I'm only going one state up, from Indiana to Michigan. The only really important thing I could forget would be something to do with Pat's motorized cart. We fucking go to Meijer's virtually every day. We're not destitute. If we needed something, we could buy it. There's nothing life-threatening, or earth-shattering, that we could possibly leave behind--
What if the rental's not right? It's a full-size, we're promised a full-size, that should be big enough, right? It has to carry our suitcase, and the wheelchair, and the cart--there should be plenty of space, right? And tall enough--low to the ground cars are no good, Pat can't get out of them, not unassisted.
Will she be all right?
I worry. What would I do if--
I'm buried in ifs, bad, mean, awful ifs that suffocate. And what will people think?
I've talked about my grandmother, my mother's mother, who worried about what the neighbors thought. My mother always talked about her as if she was paranoid, although from things she's said lately, the neighbors really were talking. And much as I hate and despise the need to do things because of the opinions of other people, I know what my grandmother was talking about. She could feel those opinions on her skin, like drops of steam sizzling downward. There are days when I swear I can hear people thinking about me. And no matter how conceited or paranoid it sounds, when I think of my grandmother (and how the neighbors really were talking about our family), I can't just shake if off, can't just bundle myself up in my sunglasses and baggy clothes and go out into the world and not care. It hurts. Going out is an act of will, and believe me, it's scarier than heading off to the Antarctic, in a bikini and without Shackleton.
I was talking about something when I started this. I don't know what it was. I'm going back to the sofa.
*Flake Project X