The peeve of the day is my dad, who calls me and makes me angry.
The good thing of the day is that Katherine let me come hang out at her house on my break.
The sad thing of the day is that I can't do anything about it.
The candy of the day is lemon drops.
The chore I haven't done of the day is cleaning the kitchen.
The injury of the day is cat bites.
The gross thing of the day is that I'm really smelly.
The tasty thing of the day is egg and cheese and spinach and tomato strata made by Rae!
The convenient thing of the day is that my brother will let me sleep on his futon.
The inconvenient thing of the day is that my mom is trying to get me to stay the weekend after thanksgiving. I really don't want to because it will involve being around my dad, which could lead to a lot of fighting, and considering that I find my dad's bullshit to be infuriating, and because he's not used to fighting with someone who doesn't back down, I'm sure it will escalate into something dramatic and ridiculous culminating in everyone blaming me for not keeping my mouth shut. If I decline, against all my mother's protestations, to stay the weekend, while inviting her to come to my house over and over, my mom will be angry with me. She'll take it personally that I don't want to hang out with her favorite financial and emotional parasite.
Sound is basically patterns of minute changes in air pressure. These minute changes in air pressure can be generated by any physical motion - the motion of a bolus in your guts, the motion of a stick sweeping through the air, the motion of a rock sliding against another rock, the motion of a paper cone in a speaker attached to a copper coil moving back and forth over a cylinder that is being charged by an electromagnetic signal from a radio or a computer or a cell phone, the motion of the air over your vocal folds. And we have very sensitive organs to hear - our eardrums detect these minute changes in air pressure and we translate that into the perception of sound, which is a heavy carrier of meaning to our brains. We even have language based on manipulating air pressure. And that's just ears. Don't get me started on noses.
Anyway I was recently reading about infrasound and how it can cause all sorts of strange reactions in human bodies. Infrasound is changes in pressure at frequencies below the human capacity to detect them as sound - below 20 Hz (per second) or so. Apparently our eyeballs have a resonant frequency - who would have thought that? Resonant frequencies are for stairwells, right? And infrasound is generated as easily as detectable sound. Apparently it can be the cause for feelings of uneasiness and creepiness - it can even be the cause for feeling that a place is haunted. I've got a couplemorelinks for you.
Besides that. Here's another wondrous thing. I invite you all to go look at the Wooden Periodic Table Table at Theo Grey's website. He's collected a lot of super interesting information about individual elements and element samples, with a lot of pretty photographs for you to look at. I own one of his periodic table posters.
And if you're thinking tl;dr, then you can watch this video instead.
1. two cups of coffee in a day is too much caffeine for rebeccas anyway, drugs affect me with disproportionate strength 2. i have just come off a two week regimen of 20mg fluoxetine hydrochloride (prozac rebranded as sarafem, in generic form). the half-life of this drug in the body is 14 days. it can interact with caffeine to intensify the effects. TRANSLATION I've been taking a drug which makes caffeine work even more strongly on me 3. i have drank a cup of instant coffee and a half of a grande peppermint mocha in just the last three hours. I am a bit jittery. actually i am QUITE jittery thank you very much. 4. they left me at the kresge desk with nothing to do OH GOD WHY 5. the hold shelf pisses me off. no one else who puts things on the holdshelf seems to know the alphabet.
do you remember this? you may not actually remember the words. It might just be a rhythmic thing that you did before every meal. Say it out loud and you'll remember it.
Bless us oh lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through christ, our lord, amen.
also who else remembers this? I do. We never quite get how trippy our childhoods were until we go back to look at them as adults. Everything was so shiny back then and I just took it for granted. I still love shiny things. I need more glitter in my life, I think.
also I have finished my "final project" for weaving, which is a coverlet in barley corn weave, in mercerized cotton. I'm pretty satisfied with it. I'm going to make another one with different yarns and a different pattern.
Finally, I am about to show you some delicious photography. Of my loom.
A chained warp ready to go on.
Warped and ready to go!
New Texsolv tie-ups. This is as complicated as it looks.
Threading. This is also as complicated as it looks.
The scarf I'm working on.
I have decided to name the loom Thamania Jamila. This is standard Arabic for "beautiful eight".
I wove one scarf on her with crappy improvised cotton string and hook tie ups that kept breaking because I had neglected to oil the jacks or wax the sides of the shafts and I had to keep jerking the treadles and putting practically my whole weight on them to get anything to happen. The scarf survived, and turned out beautiful, but it was hard on Thamania and a pain in the ass.
Before I wound this warp I waxed the sides of the shafts, oiled all the hinges in the jacks and dusted everything. My Texsolv cord and pegs came in the mail just after I was done threading, so I cut lengths and melted ends and changed to the new tie-ups, and now she treadles nice and smoothly. The weaving seems to be going a lot faster. I need to get a wall clock for the study-o so that I can time myself.
The average adult heart beats about 60 to 100 times a minute at rest. The resting heart rate usually increases with age, and is generally lower in physically fit people.
-Wikipedia
My resting heart rate is usually about 60 bpm. I measured it last night and it was 56. I just measured it again and it was 57. I find this vaguely amusing.
P.S. My fingers and nose are really cold. It's cold in my apartment, because we had the thermostat turned down to 65. I turned it up. I've been twisting fringe on a scarf I made. I have to find that camera cord and some batteries so I can show you guys what I've been making!
It's getting to that point again - that point in the semester when I realize that I'm doing it all over again, neglecting everything. There are two problems this semester. One is that I'm a fraidy cat and run away from everything. The other is that all my classes are boring and pointless, difficult and pointless, irritating and pointless, or just pointless. I'm taking the stuff that's left for my degree requirements. Here's a run down.
Chemistry and Your World Contemporary Moral Issues Intermediate Arabic 1 Tai Chi Chuan
Chemistry and Your World is what it sounds like - a rehash of high school chemistry. I'm getting an A without trying. Rae calls it "Chemistry for Trees". It's boring. Contemporary Moral Issues sounded like it might be vaguely interesting but it's not. I had hoped to get into some kind of theorizing about what motivates different opinions and arguments, but they basicaly just outline all the arguments for various sides of controversial issues. In the discussion everyone just wants to air out their knee jerk reaction and we still don't get to discuss ideas like purity and individualism. It's irritating. Intermediate Arabic 1 is the last in a series that I'm taking for my foreign language requirement. I haven't put any work into it. It scares me a little because I'm actually retaking it - I had to drop it last spring because I was failing. I am lazy. That's why I'm not doing well. It's difficult, too, but mostly I'm lazy. Tai Chi Chuan is a two credit class that I'm taking so that I have 12 credits. I keep running away in the middle of class for various reasons. I'm probably known among the other students as "that girl who runs away all the time".
Also I have not been a good roommate to Rae, or a good girlfriend. I have taken over the study with all my stuff, and I haven't cleaned as much as I should, and so many other things.
Also, I had another PMS From Hell. The result of which is that I am behind even more on everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, and I don't have that much motivation to catch up because there's so much residual stress. All I really want to do is weave, and *insert deity* only knows how I'll make any money doing that.
So I have internet at my house now. And a functioning keyboard. These things may or may not be good things. If I can find my camera cord, and some batteries for my camera, you will soon be treated to some beautiful photos of my beautiful new floor loom. Hurrah!
So things have actually been going rather swimmingly for me, despite the stress of helping Rae move in. I have started cooking again, which makes me feel good about everything - I made root pie for dinner last night, and pancakes with blueberry syrup this morning for breakfast. I want more apple cider because during this time of year I am capable of drinking gallons and gallons of the stuff. Fall isn't QUITE here yet but the romanticism of the season is sneaking up on me. It's starting to smell like fall, and the leaves are JUST starting to turn. It was just sprinkling when I left, but as soon as I got on my bike to go to class it started pouring rain and I got soaked. I got to ride through some deep puddles, though. I love doing that.
I'm wearing my fancy sneakers for the first time in a while. My clothing is mostly hung in my closet, which is liberating, because I had been living out of ziploc bags for about two months. I'm not all the way unpacked yet, not by a long shot, but most of my stuff is no longer in cardboard boxes in the dining room.
We have a porch now which means we can have jack-o-lanterns. And we will, I'll see to that. We have mattresses now, and though they don't have box springs yet and are just sitting on the floor, having a bed of my own, which is clean and stationary, as well as having Rae sleeping in the next room, makes me feel so much better about everything.
Tomorrow I will be hunkering down for a good old fashioned sweatshop - er - production run, because I will be selling at Dally In The Alley with several of my friends. I'm going to try to make a bunch of earrings, some bracelets and necklaces, and perhaps some miscellany, like some belts or patches or something. I may be doing chainmaille and I may be doing tablet weaving and I will probably be doing a lot of simple wirework and beadwork. I will probably break into the polymer clay too. I have a craft desk now, though, and it'll be a lot easier to get things done.
After going through the fourth PMS From Hell (which includes hysterical weeping, a constant sense of unreality, and lots and lots of short duration panic attacks for at least a day and a half) in a row, I decided to call the doctor. They have prescribed me what is basically a low dose of Prozac to take for 14 days before my period. I have taken Prozac before and it helped then. I am hoping this will help now.
Moving is weird, because there's nowhere to sleep in the new place except the couch or the floor. Rae was getting a bed delivered on Friday, but because she tried to cancel and re-order it and the lady who said she'd cancel the order didn't, we're getting two identical beds on Friday, which is fine with me because otherwise I might just put off buying a bed for myself forever because I'm unable to make a decision.
I spent a whole day and two nights away from the apartment because I was having panic attacks and such and needed to be with Rae. When I came in to get my bicycle this morning Gwen was all freaked out - she'd never been left alone that long there before. Poor kitten.
I love the new apartment. It is very similar to having a house. I really want to be all the way moved in, dammit! Now!
I haven't got any pictures for you, unfortunately. But I do have a factual update.
Rae and I are in the process of moving in together. All of my stuff is at the new apartment already, and about half of Rae's stuff. She's going to move the rest slowly. I don't quite feel like I live there yet, but I haven't felt like I live anywhere in particular for the last few weeks, so that's not much of a change. I had been staying at Katherine's and Sicily's houses, and then at Rae's house.
The new apartment is made of awesome. It's owned by a guy who owns and manages a few buildings and takes really good care of them. All the fixtures, paint, trim, floors, stove, everything is new. The only things that are old and picky are the laundry machines in the basement.
It's technically a three bedroom apartment, but we're going to use the smallest bedroom as a study/studio. It's a bi-level apartment in a building with only three units, and a security system. On the first floor there's a big kitchen, dining room and living room, and on the second floor there's the bathroom and bedrooms. There's a dishwasher in the kitchen, too! I've been taking advantage of it to wash my recently fumigated dishes. We even have our own porch! I'm super excited, and excited about living with Rae as well.
I found this in my old, old journal, back when I had been living in the dorms and staying at my parents' house and working at RGIS. It was so much easier to be happy back then. I think this is nice though, and might be good for me.
the word of the day is "benzodiazepines"
the letter of the day is R, because there have been so many R call numbers on the trucks.
the color of the day is the light bright green I painted Sicily's door last night.
the method of killing of the day is dehydration.
the addiction of the day is Jimmy John's. They were selling sandwiches for a dollar earlier.
the peeve of the day is moving. I expect it'll be the peeve of the next week and a half.
the ingredient of the day is white flour.
the tool of the day is a paper clip. Lots of people have been asking for them.
the food of the day is white bread.
the sad thing of the day is that my cat has been all alone for most of the week.
the happy thing of the day is that Sicily has agreed to let me stay at her house for another night. I like staying at Sicily's house, and not just because it's not my house. Sicily is cool beans, and seeing her gives me some hope.
Up until very recently I could say truthfully that I had only seen three bedbugs. They came and sprayed my apartment again on Monday, though, and I puffed diatomaceous earth around my bathroom on Tuesday, and now that is not so true. On Tuesday night I found one on the bathroom wall. Last night I found one in my bed (!) which is the first one I'd ever seen there, and one on the living room wall, and this morning I found one on the ceiling. That's four in three days. They were all just kind of sitting there not doing anything and barely reacted when I killed them with alcohol. I get the feeling that they're doing the cockroach thing where they come out into the middle of the room to die just to creep you out. It worked - I had lots of dreams about bedbugs, about how my mattress encasements had been broken open, I had to have Harry Potter audio books on to get to sleep, and I had to get up several times during the night to turn the light on and inspect my bed for bugs. But I didn't have a panic attack, and I was able to sleep in my bed. This leads me to believe that the anxiety business I've been having is actually very likely to have something to do with PMS. I've been having crippling anxiety and depression - as in, on the edge of tears all day, unable to really feel like it's sunny outside - for the week before I start my period. I'm going to have to go see a doctor about that.
Meanwhile Rae gets back to Detroit in less than two weeks. I'm incredibly excited and I wish it could happen today instead of later because I miss the hell out of her. I had also hoped that the bedbugs would be gone before she got back, but that apparently isn't happening. I'm going to ask TJ to send someone to spray again soon, with the bedbugs I killed as evidence in a little ziploc bag. It'd be nice to be able to stop living out of ziploc bags, but it doesn't look as if I will be able to do that any time soon. Sigh.
Entry I couldn't post yesterday because my internet went down:
I've been having these really scary flashback things lately. They might have something to do with the benadryl I have been taking occasionally to knock myself out at night. I'll be doing something mundane in a familiar place and all of a sudden I'll remember, as if from a dream, the same place, only twisted, mechanical, and imbued with consciousness. Cold consciousness. And some fear, usually, because something familiar is no longer familiar, is malign. This morning I had one while I was eating my eggs - I remembered dreams of the sink, of the stove, my kitchen, and almost panicked. I've been having some bad dreams lately too, regardless of any benadryl. I think I'll stop taking it though.
This didn't happen while I was camping with my family. Maybe because none of the places were familiar.
Rae will be back in just over three weeks. Maybe I'll feel better then.
I woke up in the middle of the night because I thought I felt a bug crawling on my shoulder. I jumped and brushed at it and got up and ran across the room and turned on the lights but didn't see any bugs.
The week spent with my parents was good but now I have to get used to being alone in my apartment all over again. I don't think I like being alone anywhere anymore.
Maybe it's just that I'm afraid of my apartment now. Maybe it'll be better when I move out.
Entry for today:
I just had another one of those flashback thingies. My mom says it's an adrenaline rush. Not fun.
My brother thinks I'm arrogant because when I talk about fat discrimination issues I make strong statements and act as though I'm right. Well, I am right. And when you have strong opinions, it's difficult to discuss things without opining strongly. (Especially since my strong opinions are unpopular, I am automatically on the defensive and feel that I HAVE to make strong statements and not back down in order to maintain self-respect.) So some things make me angry that would not cause the majority of the population to bat an eyelid.
For instance, I have found out a thing just now which makes me see red. I have gotten pissed enough that I don't have the attention span to read through other people talking about it.
The CDC (Centers for Disease Control, the government's health authority) has put up on its website a calculator that tells you ("you" as in "business owners who employ others") how much your employees' "overweight and obesity" is costing you.
This makes me angry for many reasons, but two of them are (a) the use of such a calculator requires invasion into employees' privacy and (b) it'll probably lead to employers simply deciding that fat people are costing them too much money, and because there are few states that have body size as a category protected from discrimination, fat employees will simply be fired, or not hired in the first place.
So. Government endorsed employment discrimination. Yeah.
So this happened, and now it's like this. Everyone here is talking about how they can't get too close to the bridge because it's still smoldering, and how when they put water on it the water just boiled away, and all that business. I heard about it when my mom called me last night and told me, and asked me if I could see it from where I was. Notice: I am in downtown Detroit. I do not live or work in a particularly tall building. No mom, I could not see it. There was a really nice sunset though, that I saw on my way to Katherine's house.
It's going to be about five and a half weeks until I see her again. The time of Rae-not-being-in-Detroit is more than half way over. It is not getting any easier. Most of the time it's a bit difficult to be all the way happy ever because there's something wrong and unfulfilled pulling at the back of my brain, and that is the fact that I have not seen the person who I am in love with since May.
We talked about possibly moving in together when her lease runs out next spring. This is a pleasing fantasy. It includes a Rae, a dishwasher, Rae, a spacious sunlit two bedroom apartment, Rae, evenings spent watching Firefly with Rae, cooking for two, Rae, my very own floor loom, Rae, and no bedbugs.
I'm at work and it is summer, therefore my fingers and nose are really cold.
Katherine and I both have become bug hypochondriacs because of various incidents. Though I have never actually encountered a bed bug crawling on me, I have seen other bugs, since it is summer and bugs are around, and Katherine found a centipede crawling on her, so that's her story. Both of us have been, whenever we feel an itch or tickle, immediately inspecting the affected skin for crawling things. Because the idea that there are bugs at all leads to the idea: "well there are bed bugs that live in the walls and only bite me sometimes, but wouldn't it be worse if I had lice and scabies and fleas and ringworm?!?!!!" And so you have to continuously tell yourself, despite the normal random itches that you're far more aware of than normal, that no, you don't have lice or scabies or fleas or ringworm. All you have is PARANOIA.
I have woven about 25 inches of cloth on a 12 inch wide warp. I want to be in there all the time weaving. It is a good and happy activity. I'll probably spend all the time this weekend that I should spend cleaning, in the studio finishing the first project and staring my own damn project and finishing it. Because that's what I really want to do. Imagine, a class I'm excited about! I bet Urban is going to get irritated with me pretty fast.
Friday's massive triumph was when Tim came over to help me. We wrapped the couch in plastic and hauled it out to the dumpster! VICTORY. My apartment immediately seemed bigger and cleaner.
That woman talking about the garden resource program? I know her in passing. I'm also participating in the garden resource program. And that old white guy is sitting in the yard of the Trumbullplex, which is about a half mile from where I live. I used to go over there every once in a while, when they had a potluck. Less often recently. I'm familiar with these things - I'm not in the middle of them, but familiar.
Jesus, I love this city. I've been living here for about five years. I went to Chicago last summer and everything was too fast and shiny and crowded. Here, everything is familiar, and I can go to Eastern market for produce on Saturdays, or go down to Honey Bee to get tortillas and avocados and muenster cheese, and if I feel like getting myself out into the middle of nowhere to look at wildflowers and listen to bugs, I know exactly where to go, and it's only a 15 minute bike ride.
I have a feeling that I'm probably going to lose a small amount of weight in the coming weeks.
This is not a cause for celebration, but a symptom of how stressed out I've been. See, when I get really stressed out, I lose my appetite and forget to eat. And then my blood sugar crashes and I have to take myself to some restaurant and eat something with shaky hands while my stomach goes "what the hell is this?". The eating part reminds me of my mom. It's the advice she would give me, so even if I have no appetite it feels like I'm being taken care of.
Basically the combination of this bed bug shit and Rae being gone has me slowly sliding down into depression. I haven't been cooking or eating here much because I don't feel safe in my house. (Also because I've been "sterilizing" things in my oven, and I can't use it for food while I'm doing that.) I've been taking Benadryl so I can sleep without waking up in the middle of the night freaking out because I had a dream about bugs crawling everywhere.
I'm trying to remedy the cooking situation, though - I am definitely making myself some fried eggs in a minute here, and music helps keep me from getting lost in a spiral of paranoia, so I've been keeping a constant stream of one form of sound or another coming while in my apartment. I've been sleeping to Harry Potter audio books. This is unusual for me because usually things like that will keep me from getting all the way to sleep - I like silence or white noise - but I've been getting used to Stephen Fry reading me bed time stories. It helps me get back to sleep if I wake up in the middle of the night, too.
I've been going through bouts of wanting to find an apartment with Rae and have a family, because it seems like a vision of stability right now. And the fantasy includes never being alone with my thoughts if I don't want to be.
I cried at church yesterday. Music does that to me, apparently, especially when I'm in this type of mood. Hell, I'm crying right now. I have a few things that need to get done today, but I think that regardless of whatever else I do I would like to talk to my mom, and take a bike ride just for the hell of it.
I am sitting in my apartment waiting for the guy to come who will spray pesticides everywhere. There is more stuff I should be doing, but I can't do it because I don't want to be on my way up or down the stairs when the guy gets here.
There is so much cleaning to do. I didn't even realize how much TRASH is mixed in with my stuff, and how much USELESS stuff I have until this bed bug bullshit has forced me to rethink what is worth keeping. I have so much stuff I will never use, that I've just been keeping for the hell of it. And it takes up a lot of room.
I've been doing a couple things with this extra stuff. The clothing, I've been washing and putting in the Trumbullplex free box. I make sure it doesn't have any bugs on it before I put it in there. I've been just throwing away a lot of stuff, especially cardboard (great hiding place for bugs) and art supplies that have been ruined by water exposure. I intend to give away whatever I can be sure is clean, to my friends or to strangers.
This is a purge that really needed to happen. I live in a studio apartment and I have enough clutter for a three bedroom house. I should have been doing this before there were bed bugs to worry about. It's going to take a long time to go through everything but when I'm done my possessions will be so much easier to deal with.
I've been freaking out the last couple of days. I went camping with my family and it made me feel all safe and happy for a couple days. Then I came back here and kept seeing bugs crawling around on the windowsill. It's hard now for me to feel safe in my own house.
Plus, during the middle of the week I always feel frazzled because I don't have time to do anything before or after work. I work 10 hour days on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I left to go camping with my family on Friday morning, and came back on Monday evening. I haven't had time to do much of anything about the clutter in my house between LAST Monday (the first time they sprayed and the first time I saw bugs) and today. I've actually been avoiding my house because it's easier to just stay at Katherine's house and keep my "clean" clothes on for another day than it is to have to change into a new set fresh out of a ziploc bag, while not having the time or energy to do anything about the bugs, and simultaneously having to sleep in the house with them. The only reason I had a decent night's sleep last night is because I put the legs of my bed in containers of alcohol, which I can't keep doing.
So I'm all frazzled but I think that actually being able to get something done about this is helping. I'll probably spend the evening in my house, perhaps cleaning some more, but definitely putting down some DE powder, listening to audio books, taking a bath, putting on some clean sheets, and resting comfortably knowing that if the bed bugs do bite, they will have to walk through poison first.
Last night after I posted I saw a fully grown bedbug walking on the wall. It was about 3/4 of a centimeter long. I caught it in a little gladware container and put it on the windowsill - if it had walked through the pesticide, it should be dying soon, I hoped, so I wanted to keep an eye on it to see if the pesticide was working. An hour later it was looking puny and not really responding when I shook the container. Another hour later I looked and the adult bedbug had somehow given birth to an army of tiny translucent bedbug nymphs - or maybe, now that I think of it, they were bed bug mites that were fleeing a dying host? I don't even know if bed bug mites exist. In any case I'm glad I caught it because those would have gone in my windowsill. I drowned the lot in rubbing alcohol.
I tried to sleep and got about an hour and a half of paranoid sleep filled with dreams and delusions of bed bugs crawling on me. Then I woke up and Katherine text messaged me. We talked for a while (I saw another, smaller, adult bedbug and killed it while we were talking) and she calmed me down. At around 4AM I inspected my bedding thoroughly, put on harry potter audio books and managed to sleep for another three hours, maybe.
So I'm running on four and a half hours of sleep and half a shot of espresso, and shaky with adrenaline. I don't know how much sleep I'm going to be able to get in the next couple of days. My order of DE won't arrive for at least a few days, and I am going camping with my family this weekend. I'm leaving to do that at 6 in the morning on Friday. I have to bring up the laundry from the basement. I haven't seen Rae for two and a half weeks, and I haven't seen Sicily for a week. I'm on my period. Today I am working ten hours. Tomorrow, too.
Needless to say, I feel like shit, and the next few days are going to be hell. Wish me luck.
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