Mental illness

I have an addictive personality. It’s true. Anyone who knows me well can tell this by asking him/herself about my behavior as regards tea. I’m also addicted to solitude; I’m easily addicted to various computer/video games (ask my immediate family about Morrowind, for example…); it took all of five minutes of the admittedly not-great premiere of Moonlight (that vampire show on Fridays at nine, CBS) to addict me; and then there is my oldest and dearest addiction, books.

Normally it’s not so bad to be addicted to books. I think most people with addictive personalities fail to take advantage of them properly. I have no compunctions about exploiting my own mental illness. But occasionally I underestimate it, and fail to make space in my schedule for it. That happened yesterday. I got back to Maura’s at 2 am and crashed, noting the presence of an amazon.com book box on my dresser. (Actually it was from amazon.ca–the book’s not out yet in the states, only in Australia, Britain, Canada, etc.) I congratulated myself going to sleep that I was being eminently sensible and not compounding my traveled-and-packed-all-day headache with a started-a-book-that-I-can’t-put-down-at-2-am-headache. The next day, I woke up and I left the box where it was; I was riding high on my didn’t-open-it-immediately willpower. Then I unpacked all my suitcases. (If you’re not nervously looking over your shoulder for the end of the world at this point, or at least for the “gotcha!” punchline, you have never seen me “unpack”–by which I mean leave packed suitcases on the floor of my room and live out of them for months after a trip is over. I have actually done laundry and then dumped it back into the (still full of other travel paraphernelia) suitcase, then defended it to myself as though it were logical, before.)

At that point I was so proud of myself I let my ego completely overinflate. I thought, I don’t have to read that book until I get the first part of the series in the mail (I own it, my dad is mailing it to me. My preference is to reread all books in a series when each new one comes out, which explains many past 3-or-more-book all-nighters). I then opened the package and there it was, my beautiful copy of Fallowblade.

[Let me take a moment to tell you a bit about Fallowblade: I've been waiting for it forever. This author has the most incredible command of the English language I've ever heard of--I'd liken it to Shakespeare except that I'm too lazy to defend myself. She is the reason I now give books a hundred pages before judging them a waste of time {not that I put them down even after judging them a waste of time--that takes truly extreme circumstances--usually I just finish them with half my attention on removing gunk from under my nails or something}--her book The Ill-Made Mute, the book that could win the "least appealing title ever" contest, was given to me as a gift by someone who hadn't read it after I told myself I'd never read it, but then one day, there it was, and there I was, and I read the first hundred pages thinking "what complete garbage, though she has an amazing command of language," and then I got a little interested in the story, and at the end there was a hook that was completely impossible to ignore so I got the next one and loved it, ditto the last book in that series. Fallowblade is from her second series--the last one in it, actually. So you're already wondering how I could resist it, right? And you don't even know that Fallowblade is also basically a retelling of my very favorite fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. Also, this author's writing is very dense--these are not read-in-an-hour-or-two novels, they're definitely treasure-every-word-over-five-or-six-hours-novels and Fallowblade is one of the longer ones.]

I left it right where the box had been, on my dresser, and went downstairs to eat and chat with people. (I might have made a few triumphant phone calls that I was unpacked…okay, yeesh, I couldn’t help it.) I took over watching the little girls at dinner and then put them to bed (without much success…Nathan ended up going upstairs after a while and basically bludgering them to bed with dire threats of separating the girls, shaving their heads, sending them to juvenile detention centers, etc…or so I imagined, sitting downstairs full of guilt at my failure). Then I noticed that I had Fallowblade in my lap. Haha. Frank came home just as I noticed this. Well, I thought, what could be the harm of reading one chapter or so? Warning bells went off. This book is a several hour book, they chimed in a rather smirky way. You’re not going to be able to put it down. You should have started it hours ago if you were going to start it.

No, no, no, I said to myself, smugly. You forget how well I’ve been doing. Did you see me not opening it all day? Did you see my glory-penguin-iron-mind-unpack-attack?

You’re an ego-inflated fool, chimed the little bells, merrily.

Nuh-uh, I said, articulately.

…

So, as anyone save, apparently, myself would guess, I did not put it down. I carried it around with me from chat spot to chat spot in the evening. I stroked its cover as I sat chatting with Frank and Maura and Nathan about how their days went. I snuck in passages in lulls in conversation. And when I went to bed, coincidence of coincidences, I was still holding it.

I hadn’t even finished the first chapter. It was midnight. Well, I did tell myself I could read one chapter…(note that I left that open for interpretation earlier with masterly equivocation, even when I really truly thought I wasn’t going to be compelled by my mental illness that day…)

The book was over at 5:30 am.

Need I say I had a blinding headache?

All I have to say for myself is that mental illness definitely runs in my family. It’s not not not my fault.

Things to be thankful for…

There are a lot of them. A lovely breeze got the wind chimes going this morning in my mother’s back yard while I was writing in my journal and sipping tea; I received a virtual slice of pie from a certain evil temptress; my sister has forgiven me for not walking her jacket downstairs like a normal person (although I challenge anyone to show me this mythical “normal person”); I have just about [nah, why be modest:] the best family ever (I am talking about my immediate as well as my extended family, of course!); I finally managed to scrounge up a third recommendation just when it seemed that all of my teachers were on their way to Argentina or somesuch; I am not sick any more; there is a piece of ambrosia cheescake, it’s just cheesecake, in the fridge; Hannah will (probably) forgive me for giving her a birthday card a month in advance, thinking it was late, and then failing to send a present within a month after her birthday, despite every intention of doing so; the spatula god is on my side; all around, I am surrounded by very forgiving people (really quite lucky, considering how much of it I tend to need); there are all kinds of lovely books out there waiting to be read by guess who; and I get to go skiing this winter, woohoo!

And, as always, one of life’s best qualities is that no matter what I did (or didn’t do) today, tomorrow is unwritten…at least from my limited perspective. Haha.

Okay, seriously now, why do I phrase it as things I’m “thankful” for, when “thanking” assumes an object. I mean, who am I thanking? I am an utter atheist (the spatula god is an exception, and he is not a “creator-style” deity).

…Well…I am a product of western culture. In translation, feel free to substitute “happy about” in place of “thankful for.”

Holy sh–!

As my 4-year-old cousin Grace squealed at top of her lungs in the middle of dinner today, provoking so much hysterical laughter from us “adults” that no one managed even to tell her, in the end, that her language might be less than appropriate for a Young Lady.

But thank the Spatula God, my computer virus is gone! (The Spatula God, as it turns out, is not an internet traffic specialist–yet. I’ve sent him to a conference now to fix that.) And Tinatsu, I enjoyed that carnival pity party so much that I may have to order with you again for my Woohoo party. Do you do upbeat events?
So, how not to be a cautionary tale in computer virus land (though as is clear in the latest Mr. Deity, which is Season 2 Episode 2, there’s not a lot you can do to prevent it if Larry draws that card, and he’ll probably be doing the macarena about your misfortune, too):

Forget Norton and Macaffee. They are not only expensive, but not as good as AVG anti-spyware, which has a full free trial, and will scan for you free forever–it just won’t give you “active protection” after the trial. For a firewall, Online Armor Free tested 100%, equal to one paid program and better than some 20ish other programs. Why not, right? And if you do get into virus trouble, and you can’t solve it quickly on your own, don’t spend seven hours a day for days and days in a row trying to fix it yourself. Go to one of the forums where you can post your HijackThis log and an expert will go over it for you and tell you exactly what to do to fix your problem. The one that helped me was www.freedomlist.com. Bless them. Spatula God, may you look upon them and their good works with favor.

Also, things not to do before going to bed:

1. Practice new mnemonic techniques.

2. Decide not to watch an 11-12 o’clock tv show so you can go to bed early, then keep yourself up wondering what happened on it.

3. Continue to practice new mnemonic techniques in bed.

4. Get really interested in the yellow patterns on the backs of your eyelids.

5. Ask yourself every seventeen seconds whether it’s worth getting up to go to the bathroom/blow your nose/both.

6. Get all excited about anything, including especially getting rid of viruses/trojans/adware/spyware, learning about cool new mnemonic techniques, plotting new short stories when your ideas have all been much longer than “short story” lately, and how close you are to the holidays when you get to see the doggies you miss a ton (I love you, Pooka and Connie!).

7. Gorge yourself on Maura’s homemade curry with gusto that wouldn’t shame an underweight bear about to hibernate, so that you can’t even lie down with any degree of comfort.

Snow!

Bitty flakes that melt as soon as they hit the ground. But it made my day.

Pollyanna says: When you feel sick, and you’ve had a couple of bruising days, turn it around! Enjoy a nice sulk with a cup of tea, curl up in bed, and when you feel up to it, take a lovely walk out in the snow.

Today was worse.

Much worse.

::cries::

And I’m sick on top of it all.

Pity party for one, please?

I thought the day was bad enough…

…what with the spyware that I STILL can’t get rid of even though I’ve literally been working on it all day.

Well, all day except for one half-hour.

That was well after dark, before Frank, Maura, or Nathan got home, so it was just me and the little girls and Ali, their babysitter, who was about to leave.

So someone knocks on the door. I look down at the tart dough I’m rolling out and the pajamas I’m wearing and give Ali a pleading look and she sighs, and goes over to the door, and about a minute later comes in with “The horses are in the road!”

Two dark-colored horses. In the road. In the dark. Now, Ali knows bubkes about horses…and my last real contact with horses was as a starry-eyed Adventure Camper. Sure, I’ve fed Frank and Mo’s horses, but only once or twice since I’ve come here, and it wasn’t exactly meaningful contact. They tried to pull the feed bucket out of my hands before I could spread it to places where all the animals could have some; I pushed them away.

I put on some shoes (no socks; no time), yell to Ali to call Frank, Maura, or Nate and ask where the halters are, grab my coat, grab a bucket and fill it with grain, then run down into the road.

No horses.

What? Where are they?

Wait, what’s that? Two cars are stopped with lights flashing, about half a mile that way…?!

End up chasing the horses quite a ways down the road before the lady in one of the cars who was following me realized that we were chasing them the wrong way. She then asks, what can I do? Go up to 478, get some halters from Ali, I say, foolishly. Then me and the horses are, yes, alone in the road in the dark, and so far they’ve basically run from me. Friendly.

I finally get Misty’s attention with some food, grab his mane, get him going back toward the farm, great, except that whoops, he’s the wrong one to get…Misty follows Atticus. Cue close call with car screeching to a halt, me jumping out of the road, freeing Misty to trot off (away from the farm, of course) after Atticus, who’s been making distance.

After a while Atticus stops at the side of the road to eat some grass, and I finally get his mane and start pulling him back the right way. Misty follows, of course. Then another car comes up behind us fast, and though it stops (barely) in time, I’ve let go of Atticus’ mane to jump off the road, so he decides to run up the hill to the wrong farm. Great. Misty follows, of course.

I don’t want to lose sight of them. I run up, trespassing, expecting to be shot or something, but they’ve lost me–I can’t find them, they ran up much faster than I could (already out of breath, too), and I haven’t a hope of finding them in the dark. Ack! But after I walk around a bit, calling their names (as if they would respond), I see some other horses they’ve sidled up to. Yay! Except that suddenly a dog is barking and the horses, spotting me, run right past me, down the hill, and into the road again.

A truck is coming up the road. My heart stops. I’m halfway up the hill still, I can’t run into the road yelling like a maniac and waving my arms and jump out again like I had been doing previously. Atticus is about to die. I am sure of it. But the car stops really, really short–I’m talking one foot from Atticus–and offers to drive behind me the rest of the way back, so the horses can’t go off in the wrong direction again. And so we don’t get hit from behind, as his lights make a really good deterrent for other cars (in hindsight, yes, it is obvious that I should have grabbed a flashlight, thank you). Yay! I grab Atticus’ mane again (he’s frozen stupid in the headlights), give him a mouthful of grain to remind him why he might possibly want to go home, then set off again. Dragging a horse by  the mane shouldn’t work, but it does as long as you really put your weight into it and don’t let up when the (stupid) horse (that doesn’t know he’d've been killed about five times tonight already without me, and could still die if things go badly…especially if I have to murder him later for giving me such grief) tries to go off in another direction or pull up and away from you alarmingly, as though he’s trying to get you under his hooves.

And then the wonderful lady who went to get the halters is back. Atticus is having none of it; he almost pulls away except that my whole body is (luckily) heavier than his head and neck, and it doesn’t occur to him to put the rest of his weight into it. Not going to try that on him again. I’ve got his mane. I’m not letting go. The fabulous lady (I never even got her name!) gets a halter on Misty, though–I don’t tell her he would have followed Atticus anyway, because I’m too worried and am happy to have someone making sure. And finally we come up on the farm and hooray, I manage to drag (stupid) Atticus up the hill. The lady gets Misty in the gate; Atticus wants to run off again, but I’m having none of it. I direct the nice guy who was following in his car to the grain and hand him the bucket; this ends up distracting Misty inside the gate enough that I manage to open it enough to pull Atticus through without Misty blocking us or running out. I spread a bale of hay around to keep them busy and content long enough for me to check all of the gates. When I get back inside, Ali and the girls give me a round of applause.

Whew!

Clearly the Spatula god was helping me with that traffic. At least one of those horses, and probably both, should really have died from one of the cars zooming up at 65 in the dark. If I had been driving I doubt I would have spotted them in time.

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen…

My computer is determined to suicide, and to take my sanity with it.

Okay, so it’s been brainwashed by malware. Fine. I tried to forgive it, to work with it, to help it heal…I did everything short of spending thousands of dollars on therapy and counseling. AAAAARGH! And not in the good piratey way!

The malware shows up in safe mode. Yep. You heard me right. I’ve been going into safe mode to run various anti-spyware/adware/virus programs; while they’re running and without being connected to the internet or opening internet explorer (as if I would ever open Microsoft Internet Explorer when there is Firefox), I get IE popups and bogus “security alerts”* and the whole system runs at about the speed of tectonic drift.

My alternatives at this junction: scream-and-begin-to-stomp-on-my-computer type actions, or hysterical tears. I’m still trying to decide between them.

*Redundancy noted.

Can I kill an entire “Crispani” (Panera) pizza in 5 minutes?

Of course! Even if the guy bringing it over brings two plates and sets of silverware (I ate with my fingers) and gives me a look like, where’s the rest of you? (Can be taken more than one way…?)

The real question is: can I do so without provoking horrified calls to the police about deranged diners?

Hard work and procrastination (combined, even!)

So on Sunday I (with help moving the matresses) switched out the bed in Jaine’s room here from a canopy bed that wouldn’t fit in the slope-ceilinged corner to a spindle bed that I believe was Tara’s at some point, rolled up the hideous bright purple carpet in excellent shape and of excellent quality that wasn’t exactly to my taste, especially combined with peachy-pink walls and light blue highlights, and had a lot of help bringing that out to the barn, then cleaned in a way that proved I am my mother’s daughter, and finally plundered Maura and Frank’s barn for lamps. (The room is now lovely and cosy [sic] with the hardwood floor and the new sense of space–room enough for a desk, as soon as I get around to it.) The internet hadn’t been working for a couple days; I decided to take my laptop down to catch the wireless at Panera and fulfill my promise of sending out my personal statement to a couple of professors who will be writing me recommendations. Then I discovered that the adapter/power cord to my laptop had died, and I was at 2% battery.

Yesterday I called Dell and spent a good hour and forty minutes on the phone with various persons. I ended up paying $60 (plus overnight shipping, $15) to get a power cord that would have cost me $130 at Best Buy. They said it would come on the 8th but IT’S HERE! WOOHOO! So now I grovel and apologize to my professors. Yesterday was also my first day of work (training: i.e. read the employee handbook).

All of that cleaning, furniture switching, painful phone call-ing (including a 25 minute call to Best Buy and making an appointment at a garage to have my car checked out/outfitted for the cold weather) was, of course, procrastination against writing. Today it will happen, though. Oh, will it happen. That’s why I hand wrote three 4-page letters, chatted with people on the phone, edited my personal statement, wrote to my professors, munched food and sipped tea, got onto my Clarion classmates’ websites and did some teary “why can’t I just write some goddamned e-mails?” poking around, did some crucial cat-petting…yeah, you really don’t want to hear it, right? Right. Now I’m off to write–just as soon as I take a shower, neaten up my car, drive off to Panera to find a place to work, and possibly stop at Staples/Home Depot/a cheap antiques store to look for a desk. (There are some in the barn, of course. They are all too small, too big, or too buried/rickety/covered in guano. Yes, yes, there is a promising one covered in guano, but I think it would turn out to be too big.)

Yep. Off to write.