Four o’clock in the morning

Well, 4:17 but I got something to eat and made coffee before I sat down. If I go to bed early, I wake up early, especially if I have leg cramps. Mf, typed craps, decided that was not a cute typo I should let stand.

I had a lovely long talk with Katie K last night, who is in the last throes of signing papers and herding bankers in aid of sell her condo and co-buying a house with a friend. You know a conversation is serious when it has words like bridge financing in it. That’s it for what I can say about it, I suppose – all the gossip was awesome but to be consistent and polite, unrepeatable. I did get to mention that someone had told me I was ‘comforting’ to be with. I wasn’t aware of the fact, when I was young and hot, that I was young and hot, and now I get to be old and comforting. I suppose it is better than being “a miserable bag of gas and fat who ought to be stuffed into a cannon and shot at a bunch of other people I don’t like” because that just sounds depressed.

Yes, I am depressed. I am depressed because Brian C., one of the most wonderful coworkers I have, has gone off to the place where many of my colleagues have already gone. No, not Australia – another high tech firm here in town. He won’t be far, blah blah blah, but never again will I be able to wander by his desk at 2:30 in the afternoon and share high jinks, low cunning, middlebrow humour and extra large whimsey. Under normal circumstances I would say Go Lad but now all I can think of is how unutterably dreary life will be without him – and he isn’t even one of the guys I normally eat with. Officially this is his last week, but I’m letting myself get all waily now.

Yes, I am depressed. Mike, the bastard, once again phoned me from Wreck and told me to run away from work on Wednesday and sit on the beach with him. Much though the prospect appeals, I gots work to do. He’s actually taking two whole weeks off starting next Monday, and after all the snaky shifts he’s been working and all the retail weirdness, I am really happy to hear that. He has a move out of his current digs in prospect as well. I helped him with the last move, or at least the hot tub move; I told him I wasn’t doing that again. Ah the hot tub. What a mess that was. I can look back fondly now; at the time it nearly killed my marriage. I was thinking about that last night before I went to bed and I had an amazing insight. The reason I bailed was not the stated reason. The stated reason was the flailing, spastic, final indignity. The real reason was something else, and of course I’m not feeling like a very good person this morning as a result of figuring that out. Pure motives are not us, and never actually are. So I am depressed because I’m not a nice person and I’m in no mood to cloak my own sins or paste over my failings. Frankly, I suck, and I only keep breathing right this moment because it would be inconvenient to a lot of people if I stopped. I also know that when I am sitting with The Music Man tonight with wings in one hand and beer in the other, this mood will completely be gone and likely not come back for a while, so nobody needs to call the Rubber Tent and save me a spot; I’ll be fine, and I know it. But wait. There’s more.

Yes, I am depressed! The back treatments, which are hella expensive, don’t appear to be working. A couple of symptoms are mildly but clearly better; my leg pain and foot numbness are clearly worse, and that’s what I was hoping to alleviate. Can’t take pills – they trigger migraines. Dave the poet says, “Sit up straight and stay the hell away from soft chairs” but that means I would have to buy different living room furniture. Jeff’s very attached to the couch and love seat but the sofa hates my back and the love seat is even worse. I have to sit on my “mushroom” – this little stool I acquired from pOp – or I end up getting up a lot just to unkink.

But wait, I am still depressed! My seven hundred dollar glasses, which I don’t actually throw around, like all my other glasses, are having the scratch resistant coating come off so my vision is full of blurs and blotches. I am going to say FUCK IT for my next pair and get the absolute cheapest ones which work, because this is aggravating as hell.

What, more depression? Jesus, woman, get a grip. I still haven’t done my 2007 taxes. As I sit here contemplating the ugly sodium light which bathes the back alley, I don’t care if I ever do.

Look, here comes more depression! Still 130 songs to write down. I started with 130, and I did 30, and there’s still 130! Whoo hoo. And I am totally stuck on the last chorus of Happy Feet. That song has eleventyone chords, goshdarnit.

Why not be happy? Katie is still with Dax! Fucking Russians are kicking proxy US goolie in Ossetia! Fucking Repulsigans are deregistering voters faster than the Obamachine can register them! Stephen Harper is clinging to power like a tick to a sheep’s belly! Iraq, Afghanistan. India and Pakistan. Khalistan. Palestinian aspirations. Salmon stocks collapsing. I’m not practicing my stringed instruments enough. There’s nobody nice and furry sleeping in my bed every night, including a cat. This sentence is standing in for the two thousand word essay I could write about what’s scraping my consciousness raw at work. My going to the back thing every afternoon means I don’t eat with my lunch gang at all any more because my hours have changed, and I won’t rejoin them until after the beginning of September. I am dreading, I mean DREADING, flying in November. I’m not quite panicking but I need to address the various issues I’m going to have while travelling or it will be a ghastly trip. No, I’m not worried about plane crashes or bs like that. Catty comment removed here. Another catty comment removed here.

Take a deep breath, this too shall pass. A friend is going through PURE HELL right now; her ex is clinically nuts and threatening her. She is making plans of what to do if he comes through the door intent on harming her and her children and she’s already talked to the cops. Hey, it’s someone else’s problem, why should I let it concern me in any way? No, she’s not a friend I see every day; I know her IRL but I keep tabs on her through Livejournal. I can’t keep it together to water my plants often enough so they are all mingy and bolting. And I want a garden in my next house? I’m insane. I can’t take baths anymore because they hurt my back. A tiny indulgence, pulled out of my life. I went for a short bike ride on Sunday – and it hurt. And the foam in the helmet has started to perish and filled my hair and eyes and clothing with crap. If I’m taking transit I can’t leave the house before six so I can’t get to work any earlier than 7 even if I wanted to on mornings like this when sleep evaporates at four am.

Why not be gloriously happy in the moment? Why don’t I just acknowledge that I’m the luckiest woman alive and that the future is a vista of endless possibilities and wonder and fulfillment? Because my fucking back hurts, that’s why, and it’s really messing with my love life. Now you know why I want to go have a beer and some wings with Mr. Music, and not just because the chairs at the Grill are as hard as a navvy’s arse. I need to talk about nothing important, and musicals will entirely fill the bill.