Robert Manners

Wallowing

Sorry to leave you all hanging on such a grim topic, but I got all busy and shit. Well, not busy so much as unavailable. I had nothing to say on Saturday, and was so involved with slowly and desultorily tidying my living room and strenuously not cleaning my bedroom, I wouldn't have had the time to say anything if I'd had it to say. By the time I got back from church and had my nap on Sunday, I wasn't up to thinking much... I just watched television all evening, read bits and pieces of Right Ho, Jeeves (thanks, Anonymous Sympathizer, for the tip) and then played The Sims a while. And today I was at this very long, completely inconvenient (at the Airport Hilton, miles from my computer, the withdrawal symptoms were fierce and at one point I had to resort to playing Rummy on my Palm Pilot during a lecture on Prop 56, the Budget Accountability Initiative... vote Yes in March, sweetie) but nevertheless rather entertaining union-staff training seminar for work; there were three really cute men there, too — which, added to the free breakfast bar and free lunch, and the other giveaway freebies (thermal nylon lunch-bags, rubber stress-balls printed to look like planet Earth, luggage tags, and about a hundred different pens), made the day pretty goddamned bearable.



But here I am back, suckling at the electronic teat of the CompuMaster at home, after dinner out and grocery-shopping with the Grandmother, and I felt I really ought to just "check in." I was trying to write every other day, and managed to do so for two whole weeks; but like the rest of the things I've been intending to do lately, it didn't quite work out as I had planned. And it's not like my plans are unrealistic, either... I'm just not doing anything.



There's this fine line between "taking it easy" and "wallowing." I have a feeling I've crossed that line. I don't want to do anything, I don't want to go anywhere, and I don't want to see anyone. I do do things, and go places, and see people, but only the things/places/people I can't avoid easily (because avoiding things/places/people on purpose would constitute doing something). To make things more difficult, all this shit keeps happening to me that make my messes so much worse and my inactivity so much more noticeable.



First off, last week as Caroline and I were headed to the store to pick up some bread, I ran over a chunk of asphalt that had come loose from the street in the rain and punctured my tire. So not only did I have to change the tire (which always makes me feel terribly butch), and not only did I have to take half the crap out of the trunk to get to the spare, but I had to take the time and energy and $130 I can't really afford in order to take Miss Jane down to get a new tire. In my usual manner, though, I drove around on the doughnut for four or five days before I remembered to actually do it. While the tire-man was checking my other tires, he noticed that one of my brake-shoes was worn to a nub and would have to be replaced soon, another expense that I definitely can't afford right now (although it did solve my dilemma as to whether to buy the black thigh-high boots or the Suzanne Somers marquise and brilliant mesh bracelet for my single January Treat... I now cannot afford to buy either).



Then, this weekend, my cousin Kellie moved into her new place, and I sent off the dressing table that goes with the bedroom set Grandmother is loaning her (you remember, the one I don't use and wanted out of my room to replace with a chest or bureau or shelves or something?)... but I had to liberate the dressing-table (or vanity-table, if you prefer) from the drifts and dunes of my Mess. When one portion of my Mess is forcibly disturbed in this manner, it makes the whole Mess ever so much worse, especially since the thing that was removed from the room hadn't been shifted or even cleaned out in ten years. There was a ton of stuff in that dressing-table I'd completely forgot I had. And now it's all over the room, along with all the other stuff that was all over the room, and I can't fucking stand it... but I haven't the energy or afflatus to do anything about it.



Also this weekend, coming back from church, the shoe wore completely off the brake on one wheel, so it's making this ghastly noise and no doubt destroying the calipers and increasing the repair expense exponentially every time I stop the car... and I don't have the time, much less the financial resources, to either get the brakes fixed or to not drive the car. I can take it in on Wednesday and pay for it Thursday, but not before, and have to drive to the airport tomorrow and to my meeting and other places, grindgrindgrind all the way, and it's making me crazy.



I need to call my sponsor tomorrow, I haven't talked to her in a whole month and I miss her. I haven't called her in all this time because A) I wasn't at work when the little alarm reminding me to call her went off on my work computer, or if I was there I was too busy to actually stop and do it; and B) because I haven't done a single blessed thing toward my sobriety this month aside from just not drinking (which is simply the barest minimum), and I am somewhat disgusted with myself and don't want to have to admit out loud what a dreadful sponsee I am being.



All last week I didn't do all the filing and catching-up at work that I should have done and planned to do and wanted to do. I was too busy reading about serial killers and compulsively re-editing blog entries, not to mention reading all of Lance Arthur's archives (and loving every word of them). And now there are these two days at the training seminar, out of the office, and Wednesday the semester starts, Thursday is the first executive board meeting, and the whole thing is getting started before I finished up last year's messes.



I have a big Court show coming up soon (The Winter Extravaganza, 4 p.m. Sunday January 25, the Bench & Bar at 11th at Madison, Oakland), which is required of me as Royal Crown Countess and which I am supposed to co-host with the Royal Crown Count, and I haven't been in touch with her or with anyone in the Court to find out what I can do and what I should be doing and what they want me to do. I don't even know what I'm going to perform. I don't know what I am going to wear. And I am irritated with myself for being so lazy about it and also terrified of doing a bad job... and just as terrified of doing too good of a job, if you can credit such insanity.



I haven't fallen asleep before 3a.m. in days despite getting up at 8 a.m most days since the beginning of the year. I keep forgetting to call a friend I have been trying to remember to call since Christmas. I've only been to the gym once all year, though at least I have a bag of gym clothes in the car. I keep forgetting to plug my cell-phone into the charger. The inside of my car is as dusty as a pharoah's tomb. I have hemorrhoids. My eyebrows are growing wild, I have a tiny blackhead on my nose, and there is a hair tickling in my ear that I can't find to pull out. I am out of socks.



That whole overwhelmed feeling is here with me. And I just don't want to do anything. I'm wallowing.



But whatever. Nobody wallows as well as I. I'm going to bed now, (a bed on which I have to share space with about twenty books, a load of laundry, and several stuffed animals, so that my sleeping-space is only three feet wide... I might as well just have a twin bed fer chrissakes), as I have to get up grotesquely early to drive my broken-braked car to the Oakland Airport Hilton for the dubious pleasure of a couple more free meals and a few ganders at the three cute guys at the conference (oh yeah, and that whole professional development thing). I hope you're having a lovely day, and that if you are also wallowing you are enjoying the hell out of it. Kisses!