Day: February 9, 2011

Happy sigh for meals with friends

Man when the hell did I get old enough to have a friend for 45 years?  C’est bizarre, ça.

Anyway, Bonnie has a few grey hairs and perhaps her smile lines are a little more chiselled than I remember, but she is STILL BONNIE, the petite and energetic and outdoorsy and powerfully intelligent friend of my childhood who looks at least 15 years younger than her lying ass birth certificate, and she is a happy person to be around.

We watched pictures of John on the laptop and Bonnie brought a photo album which had pictures of her mom and John and various rellies in happier times.  I took some pics but I won’t post them without permission.

The Royal City Thai restaurant is assenkicken.  They must get by on the lunch trade, the joint was deserted the entire time we were there but the food was nothing short of spectacular.  It was $130 with tax and tip for five hungry adults, there was about one meal’s worth of leftovers, and there was alcohol too… gosh the soup was stellar.  Service stellar too.  Attentive without being pestery.  A find, I must say.

Keith and Kate both came AND I AM SO HAPPY about a) Paul suggesting it and b) how happy Bonnie was to see them and vice versa.  Katie got to see the only surviving picture of John on a skateboard.  I said to her afterwards that alone was worth the price of admission.  Who’da thunk it? Gave Katie and Keith rides home.  Jeff’s subpar and didn’t attend but there’s a whole host of gut wrenching bacteria writhing around the GVRD these days; I hope they don’t sink their little pseudopods into him too far.

Ziva is burning lots of oil.  I should check levels before setting out tomorrow, and I’m probably looking at engine work.  Jeebus, I ain’t paid for the last lot yet.  I have to stay alive, I have two dependents, one metal, one furry.

I couldn’t find the god forsaken USB microphone, so I bought another one.  If the original turns up I’ll give it to Paul.  I tried to buy a slide whistle but they didn’t have one. Twelve on order and no slide whistles, what’s this world coming to. I MUST HAVE A SLIDE WHISTLE. It’s impossible to be a living cartoon character without one.

I can hear Miss Margot’s stertorous breathing. I cleaned her eye gunk this morning and she accepted it with good grace (filled 10 saline soaked qtips with her eye gunk).  The second I tried to clean out her ears, World War Kitty was declared and I beat a hasty, but integumentarily intact retreat.

Anyway I have an appt. with Mr. Methocarbamol followed by a long sleep on the complaisant Millie the Mattress.  Tomorrow morning I’m going to fire up the computer, get the order of service done, and pray to the shade of Ada Babbage that the server reboot contemplated yesterday at work will make a proper workday possible.  Also, I have a one on one with my boss (who is really, really awesome, and I’d say that anyway, thanks) tomorrow.  I haven’t exactly told him anything, but I will, tactfully.  Hopefully before the half dozen or so coworkers who read my blog rat me out.  And no, ratting me out is neither polite nor accurate; I’m just shouldering my responsibilities again, and grace and temperance are threatening to bitch slap me if I don’t stand up straight under the load.

Why you should never talk about suicide on your blog

Thanks Jeff for fixing the blog, it was briefly busted this morning. Jeff continues to be awesome.

Bad language, triggery stuff about suicidal feelings (now blessedly slid by), raw emotion and yet more profanity.  At least I’m not complaining about work.  Fair Warning?

FUCKSTICKS.

I just realized I’ll never get a gun licence in this country now.  Derp.  Herpderp.  bwaaaaaaaaaaaah-ding!  Now I know I was really screwed up.  Even if I’d thought about it at the time (and I didn’t) it wouldn’t have changed my mood (people talking to me and the act of forcing myself to say goodbye to things did that).  I lost my connection to others and they plugged me back in again.  I lost my connection to my sense of my place and ‘re-place-ing’ myself helped.  And if I’d had a gun in the house I wouldn’t have used it to kill myself because after watching 79 billion forensics shows I can’t handle splatter and I would not, no matter how screwed up I was, make that much of a mess, whether in this house, or my car, or anyplace else. Gotta be tidy about it *which given how my room looks is richly comic*.  Also, many horrifying mental pictures of surviving a gun suicide attempt. Thank you internet.

I can look back on it and say what the hell happened? What I really want to do is figure out how to prevent it from ever happening again, seeing as how my poor parents were making travel plans to put me on 24 hour watch if things got worse and they really really don’t need the aggro and pOp hates the lower Mainland with a passion that is normally reserved for eggplant, the Justice Minister, anchovies and reality tv.  And I don’t want to take drugs for depression.  I have many reasons, some good, some bad, for that.  I loved Prozac (except for the 20 pound weight gain, the destruction of my sex drive and the complete absence of songwriting or creativity while I was on it, and the eight months it took my sex drive to come back after the four months I took it) and the Wellbutrin made me even crazier than I already am (just ask daughter Katie about that, she’ll give you a profanity laden earful.)

Quhat was going on there?  For three weeks food had no taste; I went all bleak and completely lost my sense of humour; Conflikt forced me to put the smile on but I crashed really hard afterwards (but of course there was some very intense and emotional stuff in there which left me thinking about death a lot, as I always do when I think about John) *and my ex’s girlfriend, who continues to live rent free in my mental attic, which by itself is enough to make the inside of my skull look like an aerial shot of a train derailment crossed with last year’s pricing model*. John died, Unca Dave died, Granny died, Gizmo died.  Bang bang bang bang.

Seems a bit much to quit going to Conflikt just so I won’t be all wooble sadface afterwards; I’ll have to think on it some more.  I love Paul in my own demanding and unrealistic fashion, and I don’t grudge him any happiness he can squeeze from life, and I am after all the one that forced the sale of the house and moved out; but it was to avoid suicide that time that I took all those steps, and I was clearly and obviously saner afterward, so it was the right thing to do and my regrets are of a practical and not emotional nature.   I just want a public acknowledgment and apology from the manipulative and charming sociopath who *this long and interesting description of his activities deleted on the anxious advice of my inner lawyer – and NO it’s not about Paul but it’s directly connected to my marriage auguring in* – and unicorns are gonna slide down rainbows and poop gold bars (clarn!) before that happens.  There you have it…. one of the REAL reasons I was feeling like offing myself and I can’t even fill in the blanks because El Slime-o might come after me for defamation.  (There are two main others, but I’m sitting with them and will talk to the dude about that next Monday). Wa wa, I’m never going to get closure.

Well sheeeeeeeit. I NEVER WILL.  I never, ever, fucking well ever will get closure.   Will I have to write a roman a clef about that terrible situation to be free of it?  Shall I turn my pain to profit?  By the Grand Hyatt Seattle I Sat Down and Wept? Uh, no.  I promised myself I wouldn’t.  Once again my standards for my own behaviour are giggling in corners and braiding nooses while saying “Shuush.  Shoosh now.”

And it ain’t about me any longer.  I have some context, it’s about the people who’d be alternately devastated, I mean absolutely screwed up for months and months, or really angry at my selfishness, or really pleased that I had killed myself.  Yes, there are people who’d be happy if I killed myself, but yannowhut? Fuck all you fucking fuckers, I won’t give you the satisfaction, and I don’t want to hurt the hordes of people who in fine Canadian fashion, jumped out from the brushy roadsides of the internet and said “Let me distract you with this SOUP!  Ya okay now you’re in a headlock let’s talk some sense into you.”  “I will HUG your bad feelings INTO SUBMISSION – with my brain!”  The point being if you tell people how you feel they can do something about it.  I have a little file of all the support messages I got and I will look at them before I do something stupid like that again.  And I know who I’ll talk to first.

In other news, I have finished the homily and fired it off to my mOm.  The homily takes place 20 years in the future.  There’s nothing like a thought experiment to keep the creative juices flowing.

I have to get the order of service to my coordinator, along with her reading.

Oh, and if you object to my swearing, check this out, also this and this.  I’m fighting pain, I’m using a class marker, and I’m being a good feminist.  If you believe any of that you’re being simply delightful, but at least I am trying to make the point that swearing isn’t bad in and of itself and that my swearing IS a marker for pain, desolation, egalitarian musings, anger, agony and childish attention getting, also sometimes it just livens things the fuck up.