outer-jessie's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- worst karma EVER First official hair-freeze of the year. 'Twasn't so bad. Sometimes cold is good, sometimes it feels healthy. Let the cold wash over you and kill your germs! It will also kill all the skin cells you have exposed, but never mind that. Obligatory Christmas recap: It was a rollercoaster ride. All I can remember of the bad parts right now is that I was a bitch. It figures that I remember that, and not what pissed me off in the first place. I was mad at Rob twice, which obviously means he was a pain in the ass twice, but I can't remember what he did. Oh yeah! Now I remember, but there's no need to mention it. There's also no need to mention that I was PMSing like a racehorse. That's right, a racehorse. It was stressful, and I'm not used to Christmas stress, having been a sheltered underling in years past. This year we had six events to cover in two days, which we (I) handled less than gracefully. I still had a pretty fabulous time though, even as I was sending Rob the evil eye and bleeding unexpectedly and unpreparedly at the house of someone I didn't know. My apartment is busting at the seams with new kitchen gadgets and flatware and cutlery, oh my. It can't take it. I've made little piles of things we have no place for here and there, to help the apartment ease into this transition. What isn't helping is the mondo keyboard I received from my uncle. The apartment doesn't know where to put it. I, however, think it's the coolest thing since Belgian chocolate, even though I don't know how to use it. A day of relaxing and never-taking-my-pajamas off followed yesterday, during which I was as docile as a tranquilized elephant to Rob, who had earlier declared that I needed to be declawed. In my state of mind at that time, it was not a well-received assertion, especially as it was not subtle in the least AND compared me to a cat, an insult so low I refuse to give it any more thought. To spoil my day of calm, there was of course a giant centipede sighting. What I hate is going about my business, walking around the apartment, and THEN realizing that I've just been in close contact with an ugly multi-legged creature without knowing it. I'm proud to say, though, that this time it didn't send chills down my neck and only got me to the point of near gagging, and not actual gagging. And he was a biggie too. While I stared at it and tried to determine the best way to sneak around it to fetch my all-purpose bug-killing cleaning sprays, it started crawling complacently up the wall. I was happy with my self-delusion that centipedes can't climb, but oh well, there goes that. Yes, you in the back? How can you know that a centipede is complacent? Excellent question. When the centipede does not increase its speed even while you are yelling at it and stomping, it is complacent. The worst thing of all is that I killed the centipede, and it didn't die. I shot it over and over again with Windex, and it didn't twitch or really seem all that upset. It walked slower and slower, eventually stopping for a good five minutes, and I tried to get ready for bed while figuring out how I would dispose of its corpse. I was feeling pretty ill and very guilty for torturing another innocent bug, when to my extreme displeasure, it got up and walked away. I tried shooting it with another spray that smells like mint, but it didn't even CARE about that crap, it just kept going on its merry way and escaped under the door frame. It is then when I began fearing major repercussions. There is the theory, KP implanted, that it will go home and warn all its friends about me, but there is also the underlying fear that it's planning to mount an attack with all its multi-legged kin and take the apartment by force. In fairness to the KP theory, we never did get another scorpion in our Arizona apartment, but the breed of critter we are dealing with now is like no other. In my day, which is a couple of days ago, centipedes were skittish creatures that didn't like to be killed. Now they're Viking brutes that don't get killed when you kill them. My karma is what suffers the most from all this. I do not, I repeat, DO NOT like killing living things. I'm going to install or fashion an under-the-door critter blocker immediately. I did something the other day just for the purpose of pleasing my readers, although it's not like you're going to care or anything. I passed a tiny group of carolers the day before Christmas Eve, and smiled at them, and they beckoned to me to join them, but I didn't. I thought about turning back, but I didn't. I regretted not singing with them, since singing Christmas carols is one of those things I love to do. I regretted not going back after I left the first time, and I regretted that I felt regret. I hated that I could hear the voices (ok, not exactly voices per se) of some of you guys, asking me why I didn't do it, telling me that I should, and that I still could. But I ignored you all. Then I told myself, I won't regret this forever, and I won't disappoint my friends, even if I can't go back and undo what I did, or do what I nondid. So I sang carols out loud all the way home. It was awful, it was ridiculous, it was hilarious, you would have laughed. My voice cracked and trembled and eventually crumbled over some of the notes that would normally not have been so hard, if I hadn't been so cold. I was laughing as I went, and I think I left a few additional laughers behind me. But now I'm back at work, and it's Thursday, it's the end of December, it's the end of 2001. I'm ruminating about further days off, like New Year's, for example. I need just a leetle more recovery. I should have taken the whole week off. Ah well. I was pleased to discover that I have saved up nine days of vacation time, which is nearly two weeks, for those of you who can't do such things in your heads. This means if I take a day here and there, my summer plans will be none the worse. I had some kind of hallucination today. At ten of nine, which is about the time one of my coworkers normally arrives, I swear she came in and I said good morning and my other coworker said hello. Then I swear she sat down at her desk and began clicking. I promise you I heard the rustling of her coat as she walked in, and I can imagine I saw her hair on the other side of her computer where I can just see her station, and heard her chair spin as she wheeled it around to face her monitor. But she never came in today. I didn't realize that I had concocted this whole memory independently of outside stimuli, until I had to do some work she would have done had she been here. I can't believe I made it all up. Oh my god, I'm living Memento. 10:29 a.m. - 2001-12-27 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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