Wrung Out

I have such a headache.

Today started with a third trip to the car repair place. The first one last week resulted in the mechanic telling me to take the car to a dealer because wheel bearings shouldn't go out this early so it should be covered under warranty. The second one resulted in the dealer's mechanic telling me it was more than just the bearings going out, that it would all be covered under warranty, but that they didn't have enough time to complete the work so I'd have to come back. And so I came back. I had an appointment for a drop-off this morning at 9am, and they had reserved a rental car for me to have during the day (since when don't they do loaners?).

And that was where the day started veering off in the wrong direction.

It was after 11 when I finally got to my office, after having been kept waiting, then told they didn't have a car for me after all but could get one from Avis, then having the Avis guy take forever to show up from a mile away (like, half an hour or more), then being taken back to the Avis place to fill out paperwork there, then finding out that no one knew who had my drivers license and insurance card, then finally finding it in the rental guy's pick-people-up van while he was on the phone with a friend making vacation plans, then sticking up for myself (rather uncharacteristic) by suggesting that making me pay for the day's rental was so ludicrous as to be laughable. (That sounds very brave, but I think my actual words were, "Uh... I really don't want to pay for this rental." Said with "Seriously, I want you all to die," in my tone.)

Great morning.

The early afternoon featured me being testier than necessary, followed by a phone call from the dealership saying that they'd broken the speed sensor on my wheel, that they'd overnight a new one from their distributor in Iowa, and that they'd already heard about my morning's terrible experience, so they'd give me another day of free rental. (You better BELIEVE they'd give me another free day of rental.) After having my courage worked up for me by a friend, I called their manager and secured a promise that the car would be done by noon so that I could travel as I'd planned, though even this isn't great because it means that I either put off my travel plans by about 3 hours or I take all my luggage (including the cat) with me to work and then up to the dealer. What a mess.

While I was on the phone with the manager, someone called and left a message that she wanted help with a program that's far beyond her computer literacy skills. She's wanted the same help with it every day since Friday. After half an hour on the phone with her, carefully describing (from memory) the steps she needed to take and buttons she needed to press, I finally went over to her office and spent an hour there being very, very patient. VERY patient.

By then I'd had enough, so I went home a little early, only to find a message from my doctor of which the only memorable phrases are "could be caused by a tumor" and "CAT scan." I'm supposed to call him tomorrow to arrange that. That's when the headache kicked in.

Two good things happened today. 1) My co-worker brought me some eggless pumpkin cookies, and 2) the dealer called to grovel quite a lot, offering me a 25% discount on all rentals through them forever, giving me the general manager's cell phone number which I can call "for any reason" (the mind boggles), assuring me that there have been several high-level meetings about my case today, and saying that there's good possibility the rental manager can get the service manager to give me a free routine service next time I come in.

So tomorrow I have to see about this CAT scan thing, attend a meeting I really don't want to attend, deal with the car thing, and travel for 6 hours.

What a day.

Egged

I don't know exactly how it happened, but I have a pretty good guess. How it happened doesn't much matter now, though, because it won't change the fact that I somehow got egged yesterday. And by "got egged" I mean "accidentally ingested some egg and therefore induced this mood-altering allergic reaction of mine."

My first clue appeared yesterday evening in the form of a headache. My second clue was my inability to deal with that headache like a grown-up. My third clue was wanting to argue with everyone in sight today, and complain about everything I can't argue with, and cry about all of that and everything those things don't cover.

So yeah. Just leave me alone today (and probably tomorrow, and possibly the day after). I'll be ok, and nothing's actually wrong. It's just that I might let down my guard and accidentally snap your head off, and neither of us wants that to happen.

Painting and Drawing

Remember those bags filled with snacks and coloring books and quiet toys that your mom would pack if you had to go sit and amuse yourself in the presence of grown-ups for any length of time? I have exactly that kind of bag for myself now. It's rough-woven of coarse hemp yarn, handmade by someone in town, and full of all that I could need to amuse myself quietly for hours. It has a paperback, a zine, a sketch pad, a watercolor sketch book, plain envelopes (in case I want to mail a sketched card to someone), watercolor postcards, colored pencils, paints, pencils, charcoal, eraser, pencil sharpener, straight edge, smudger, and paper towels (for cleaning up the watercolor travel case). Given food, a laptop, and a wifi signal, I could amuse myself for days.

This week I did a watercolor postcard from a photograph I'd taken last Sunday in town.

Then I started a watercolor postcard of a lily.

I was challenged by a friend to draw something in 5 minutes.

And, since I'd really love to learn to draw people, I drew as quickly as I could this morning at a meeting. People are pesky, though. They're hard, and they move. I'm very very bad at drawing people, but at least three of these four are recognizable (barely) as the people they are. The purse didn't move, which was such a relief.

I thought I'd lost the capacity to concentrate on something for long periods of time, losing track of time. I used to get that feeling while reading, or weaving, or doing any number of things, but I hadn't felt that same sense of being totally engrossed in a long long time. I feel like I'm welcoming back an old friend.

Memory Lane

The day I came to this town to look for an apartment, preparing to move here and be far away from my family for the first time in my life, my mom suggested we kill some time by going for coffee at the local coffee shop. We sat sipping our drinks and talking over the apartments we'd seen so far, and I concentrated on memorizing every line and speckle of the crazy lamp on our table in an attempt to occupy my brain with anything other than the desperate loneliness that was threatening to overwhelm me.

Four and a half years later I bought a cup of coffee, spread out my newly acquired coloring pencils and watercolors on the table, and looked up only to realize that I was sitting there next to the very same lamp. And so, for the next three hours as I set color to paper, I contemplated how much has changed since that first spring afternoon. And how little.

Open Daily 11am to 9pm

Next time you pull up to a bookstore that sells "books and resources" to the politically radical, and find that it's located next to "Sweeney Todd's Salon," be prepared for oddness. The sign saying "Open Daily: 11am to 9pm" will probably be more of an educated guess than a statement of fact, the implied message being "Well, you know, if we're not busy doing something else -- and we've got a lot going on." And they do. They're sorting and packing books for prisoners, running discussion groups about the G20, stopping the war in Iraq... The 200 or so square feet of book shelves are kind of an after-thought.

I didn't know this, though. So I was a little confused to pull up at 11:30 and find the place dark. There were people inside, and the door was unlocked, but the people seemed pretty surprised when I actually entered.

"Are you open?" seemed like it should have been akin to a rhetorical question, but apparently not.

"No, not yet."

"Do you know when you will be?"

"Usually we're open by about now, but we'll open when they get here. They're volunteers, you know."

I wondered who "they" were. The girl seemed to think I'd know. And since she was busy sorting and packing books, I thought I'd just return to my car and ponder the question from there, stopping first to retrieve my book from the trunk. I no longer trusted Them to appear soon, and yet I didn't really feel like driving the hour back to my house now that I'd made it all the way here just to see what kinds of zines they'd carry.

A heavily tattooed couple clumped by in heavy black boots, their hair styles leaving it to the eye of the beholder to decide between "bed head" and "I spent hours moussing it to look just like this." I wondered, as I often do, how piercings like the one woman had feel in -20 weather.

A preppy looking couple walked their black lab while sipping coffee. The lab peed on the bookstore's sidewalk sign.

A middle-aged woman in grey sweats and lime green crocks shuffled along next to her miniscule grown daughter.  And then several minutes later walked back and entered the darkened bookstore.  Were these They? I closed my book and glanced at the clock: 12:10. Ten minutes after the store event I'd seen listed on the website was scheduled to begin.

But no. The lights didn't turn on, so I returned to my book.

Not long afterwards, though, They arrived in the form of a diminuative college-aged guy carrying a satchel that was easily twice the size of his torso. The lights went on. A sandwich board went out on the sidewalk declaring "OPEN: 11am - 9pm." And I went in to browse zines while They talked on the phone about an upcoming meeting to discuss "the war, abortion, and health care."

Crossing the Road

I don't know how the squirrel ended up huddled under the center support of a highway overpass, five lanes of highway traffic on one side, five equally perilous lanes of traffic on the other, concrete on all sides and overhead. Having gotten there, though, is it any wonder he'd want to get back to a less concrete world?

I imagine he tried to climb the concrete supports. I imagine he spent some time calculating just how far he'd have to run before finding the end of the highway. And I imagine he even made a couple of trial runs in each direction before coming back to the overpass and desperately trying to memorize traffic patterns in hopes of finding a gap.

By the time I approached, hurtling towards him at 55mph, the squirrel passed the point of desperation. He had seen the possible futures that lay before him if he stayed and if he ran. He had begun the run.

In a series of mad, tail-frizzing dashes, he crossed all five lanes of traffic and then leaped at the concrete barrier that separated him from the blighted grass...

...and leaped again, panic mounting as his claws scraped uselessly down the barrier.

I wonder if he ever realized that he could run 10 feet in either direction and find the relative freedom of inner-city grass or if he kept flinging himself against the concrete. I'll never know for sure.

It Was A Very Good Week

It's been a good week. A better week than I've had in a long, long time.

I was in moods that ranged from decent to good nearly all of the time. In fact, things that I expected would plunge me into the Pit Of Despair let me just sit at the edge of the pit and dangle my legs over the edge.

It's also been months since I had so many days of good energy in a row. Four Days So Far!! Four days of feeling like a normal human being. Four days of walking around town at a normal human speed. Four days of skipping the cost-benefit analysis when accepting invitations or suggesting activities with friends. When I did get tired, it always felt like legitimate tiredness born of long days rather than sinister exhaustion designed to keep me from doing anything interesting or fun. This week's tiredness had none of the attendant numbness (physical and mental) that serves as disproportionate punishment for the slightest movements during my wilty phases. This tiredness would even have been pleasant if I weren't always just a little bit worried that it was just the prelude to something worse. Luckily, though, the Something Worse never materialized. I hope it doesn't for a long, long time.

What's more, everything at work seemed to go my way (a pleasant change after the last couple of months). I even made decent headway in catching up on many of the things that had gotten away from me recently. But better than that, a series of pretty intense projects that could easily have worn me out and derailed my moods served instead to reconnect me with my colleagues and my enthusiasm for our mutual goals. And it reminded me that I have some pretty great co-workers, and that we have some pretty great mutual goals.

This weekend I have a series of fun things lined up, including catching up with a friend from college, seeing a Shakespeare play, and hanging out with a couple of other groups of friends. I also plan to go through last week's list of Things I Like To Do and actually do a couple of them.

Which brings me to the best part: a gift of charcoal, pencils, and a sketch pad from a good friend, all of which arrived in today's mail. I grin from ear to ear whenever I look at them sitting on the table beside me. I couldn't have asked for a better ending to a good week.

Hopefully next week will be similar, plus an actual appetite and less of a cough.