sometimes you can't win for losing

Sid called today. First words out of his mouth? "Hey, uh, are you spending anything this weekend?"

What do you mean, Siddy?

"Are you going to be spending any money this weekend? Because Rome was expensive. So if you've got to buy something, wait until I get paid again."

OH TEH IRONIEZ. This from the man who made it abundantly clear that this deployment was the perfect opportunity to put some money away. I checked our bank balance. Last week, we had over $2,000 in there. Today? $200.

He spent at least $1,000 without batting an eye. It wasn't like he had to pay for lodging! What the hell was he doing? While I realize he wanted to have a good time, I'm sitting at home talking myself out of buying a $70 shirt! How is this fair? All the money I've taken out has been for the car insurance, groceries, and other utilities. I've not spent a single dime on a gift for myself yet.

I'm...just a little pissed off right now. Just a little. Maybe just a teeny-tiny bit. Maybe.

Was I going without just so he could buy hookers in Rome? Jesus. I was like "Sid, I need to pay the rent! I'm going to the doctor! The water bill is due!"

"Yeah, it'll be fine, I'm getting paid on, like, Monday."

So that makes his thousand dollar splurge a-o-friggin'-kay, does it?

an admission

For about five or six years now, I have been tired. Exhausted, even. But it was always something I could ignore: I could always get up and do the things that needed to be done, and the fact that I was tired was nothing more than an inconvenience.

During this time, I noticed my muscles hurt. When I shaved my legs, the pressure of the razor on my flesh was painful. When I started dating Sid, I became aware of the fact that his arms around me sometimes was pretty hurty. If he got to tickling me, I would laugh for a few seconds, but then it would start to be really painful, and he didn't understand that my begging him to stop wasn't because it was tickly.

About three years ago, it started to hurt when he would hug me. He'd just come up and wrap his arms around me and I would have to ask him to stop. Sometimes he'd just playfully run a finger down my arm, and I'd say "ow, that hurt!" and he would reply "but I barely touched you!".

I think it was about this same time, I started feeling foggy. I can only describe it as an exhaustion so total that my mind simply fades out. I don't feel smart anymore: I struggle for words, and my joy - my writing - is nearly impossible because I can't focus for long periods of time. I feel dull and listless and stupid.

And I've put off seeing a doctor because I'm afraid. I'm afraid that I will be told that this is all in my head. Sid tells me that all the time, and he has no idea how damaging and hurtful that is; to be told that I'm tired because I don't "get up and do things." To be told that I claim to hurt just because I "don't want to be touched."

I bike ten miles a day. I do yoga. I can swim faster and farther than Sid - and he's pretty fit. I do get up and do things, every day, even though I feel like it's going to kill me. And I wish to high fucking heaven that I could be touched by my husband without feeling physical pain. Why would I make this up?

My menstrual periods are spotty and irregular, and no matter what I do, my weight is just sloooowly creeping up. I am never warm. This is not how I should be feeling, this is not normal. I don't feel like the same woman from even a year ago. I feel like shit, utter fucking shit.

And even though I'm sick of feeling this way, and I've called my doctor, I'm terrified. I'm afraid it's nothing. And yet I'm afraid it's something. And even though I hope with all my heart that I will finally have answers, I dread hearing an actual diagnosis.

I am so scared.

in need of a stiff drink

For whatever reason, I can't stop being anxious about everything. Literally everything. I couldn't go to bed until 4 o'clock this morning because I was absolutely convinced that if I went to bed at the usual time, something bad would happen. Never mind I don't know what that something is, it was something and it was bad. Had I not been so damn tired, I probably would have stayed up until sunrise, but exhaustion won out and I very reluctantly gave in to it.

Last night, I was so sure there was someone looking in at me through the crack in the blinds that I had to go window to window through the whole house and make sure all of them were closed, and there were no gaps. The broken blinds in the kitchen freaked me out so badly I couldn't even walk by it, I ran with my eyes shut tight.

What the fuck am I so fucking afraid of? I don't even know, myself.

good times for all

I've been freaking out recently about the recession: how bad will it be? Does this have the potential to become as bad as the Great Depression? And I keep telling myself, you know, even if it is every bit as bad as some people are saying it's going to be, we have friends who'd be more than willing to pool all our resources together and find a way through this. Worst comes to worst, Curt stays in the military, and a few of our friends come along for the ride, and we grow a garden to stretch food. It would suck, and it would be less than ideal, but I don't think we'd be living in tents.

And then, in the middle of all this deep thinking, Sammy walked in from the porch (I left the door open because it's nice outside) and startled me right back to reality with her moaning, shrieking meowing. As soon as I'd got up to see if she was all right, she threw up grass. Everywhere. It's no wonder her stomach hurt, as much green as that cat puked up! So then Knut decided she was going to belly up to the trough and then hurl up a hairball. That cat had stuffed herself like a damn turkey, and here it is all over the rug with a big old hairball winking out of the middle of it.

Good times are being had by all.

a response for Wolfy, because I already posted once

Why Are Your Poems So Dark?

by Linda Pastan

Isn't the moon dark too,

most of the time?

And doesn't the white page

seem unfinished

without the dark stain

of alphabets?

When God demanded light,

he didn't banish darkness.

Instead he invented

ebony and crows

and that small mole

on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask

"Why are you sad so often?"

Ask the moon.

Ask what it has witnessed.

random snark

Over the summer, when Sid and I were talking about having a baby, I joined an online community called BabyCenter. It seemed like a friendly place, and it had lots of helpful information, and lots of helpful, supportive people. I had thought that when/if I got pregnant, it would be something like my support group; seeing as I don't have many friends with children, and my parents (my mother especially) are not the kinds of people you can just ask advice from, I thought it would be a good place to ask questions and talk to women going through some of the same things.

Seemingly overnight, this friendly, supportive community has been literally split. The powers that be have decided to beta-test a new forum, and not everyone was invited. A few people were invited, and those people were allowed to invite others. Well, the ones who never received invites (like me) are understandably pissed. The forums are dead! Everyone's posting on the "new site" and suddenly the place seems like some elitist junior high clique.

Anyway, I don't like the direction the site is taking. I think the beta-testing was very poorly handled (deliberately excluding half of a tight knit community usually is!) and from what I understand, it's got a very "MySpace" feel. I hate MySpace.

Another site I loved did the same thing. Bolt. Bolt decided to make all these great changes, and start a new site with forums and it was just like MySpace. The old, original Bolt was left to fester and was finally shut down. The new Bolt wasn't very popular, and it, too, was shut down. I see BabyCenter headed in the same direction.

I don't think I'll be going back.

not the easiest thing in the world

This deployment, while certainly not the worst of them, still sucks. This time, I know that there may be whole weeks that pass before I get a single email from Sid, and I know that he won't be able to call home even once a week. But that doesn't mean it's easy.

He emailed me some pictures when he hit port, and they had the opposite effect he was hoping for, I think. I got jealous. I got downright pissed that he was somewhere so beautiful, drinking wine and watching flamenco dancing, while the most exciting thing to happen to me in recent days was having the mailman drop off my Netflix movies.

I told him as much, when he deigned to call home for a few minutes. Really, I've got no right to complain about the short telephone calls. At least he calls. A five minute phone call maybe once a week is the most human contact I have outside of the cashier at the grocery store.

My fucking god, how sorry is that.

I can go a full damn week without hearing another person's voice.

Cory comes over as often as he can, but it's unfair to expect an 18 year old guy to stop by a woman's house if there's no sex involved. Let's be honest. I'd never fuck him. He knows it. And he's got things he needs to do besides come over twice or three times a week to entertain another dude's wife, and eat popcorn and watch crime documentaries.

So be it. I'll eat popcorn and watch crime documentaries alone.

I'm just so fucking lonely! God, I hate typing that. But it's the truth.

struggling

I am in a really bad place right now, emotionally, and I keep searching for reasons why. But does there have to be a reason? I keep telling myself it doesn't matter why I feel the way I do, there doesn't need to be justification. This is how it is, and I must work through it.

Lately, I have felt very helpless. It was such a small thing that started it, too, and it's just snowballed. We took out a loan for Sid's mother, whose credit is in the shitter (her husband had a heart attack a few years ago, and all their resources are drained in the effort to pay the astronomical bills from it). Navy Federal Credit Union then made everyone involved jump through flaming hoops to get everything done. Sid deployed before all the paperwork could be completed, so I had to finish it as his Attorney-In-Fact. I had to mail in copies of the Power of Attorney documents, and this is where shit hit the fan.

The printer wouldn't work. Normally, this wouldn't be a huge deal; Sid would fix it, or I would putter around until I figured out the problem. Well, he's not here to bail me out, and I tried everything...the printer simply wouldn't print. After three days of insisting I could get it working, I gave up. The paperwork had to be mailed, and I had to admit defeat, walk to the library and make copies there.

I pride myself on my independence, so this was a bitter pill to swallow. Suddenly, I felt like I was not capable. All because of a printer!

Then, last week, Cory asked for my help in completing a project for school. He wanted me to record him doing a step by step presentation; a how-to video. I agreed, as it was something to occupy my time. Only problem is, my digital camera doesn't record sound, and I couldn't find Sid's cameras. He's got three, and there's no way he took all three with him on deployment, so they've got to be around here somewhere, right?

I tore the house apart, and unearthed his Olympus. Not my first choice; I would have preferred the Canon, as I'm more accustomed to using that one, but anything in a pinch, right? The Canon seems to have dropped off the face of the earth; Sid insists he left it here, but I can't find it anywhere, and I even searched both cars and the attic. So Cory comes over, and I record him, and now I find I don't know where the USB cable is so that I can transfer the video to my PC and burn it on DVD. I can't find the thing anywhere. The USB that I use for my little PowerShot, and the Canon, doesn't fit the Olympus. And I can't ask Sid for help, because, you know, he's not here.

Another frantic search ensues. After a day and a half, I realize I can use the memory card reader in my desk. Well, great.

It's broken. It freezes up and crashes my computer. Every. Motherfucking. Time.

And Sid is not here to help me. I feel stupid and useless. Normally, when he's around, I do these things all the time with no problems. Now that he's gone, it's like nothing in this house wants to cooperate with me.

Now, I have a huge problem with asking for help. My mother drilled it into my head that I needed to own my shit: that is, deal with my own problems without dragging anyone else into it. Any time I asked her for help with things, I got a rant about how I was stupid, and I had a brain like a sieve, and...well, you get the idea. So it's hard for me admit I need help and actively seek it.

Well, I admit, right now, I need help. And there is no one here to help me.

And I feel stupid. Like I have a brain like a sieve. I feel like a fucking child. And I hate it.