1:00 am

At night we light the candles and climb into bed and both of us are sleeping within ten minutes of setting our heads on the pillow. Maybe it's because we are tired, or maybe it's because our addiction to Curb Your Enthusiasm is having more of an impact than we expected, after all, he is retired. 

I want to be retired today. Mostly because I have to pack and run approximately 500 errands for our trip down south to a gorgeous acidic chemical plant. We are leaving tomorrow in a "that there's an RV" to start work on Saturday working 24 hours a day for ten days. I will be sneaking between a hotel room and the rv to be with Ronald when he has to work nights, I want to pretend I'm a secret agent and spray some evil looking person with spent acid but that is very immature. I need to use this time to write and relax. It's hard to use this as a vacation when I know Ron is going to be working his booty off amidst mud, greasy ladders, and other depressing sundries. 

In other news, Isabelle has been refusing to wake up in the morning because she is way behind on her beauty sleep. She takes up 1/3 of the bed every night, leaving me sandwiched between her and Ron with no room to move. She has quite a long mustache at the moment which makes her look very regal, if you forget she is a girl, and we took her to the vet and found out she has cooties...hehehe

morning muddle mess

After being together for nine days straight, he is gone. Teaching a class to postal workers deep in the sick veins of Oakland.  Life has sort of stopped, or gone on with me still left on the barge formulating my excuse for not coming along. All I do now is sleep and sigh about how I can't do anything, because that is all I can do. Words can never explain the pining philosophy we hold onto when we realize our insides are slowly dying, and have been for years.  But he is good, and we are still together and fighting. These little ruminations are what I have to hold onto. 

I got the strangest birthday present of my life, a real landmark, a black sweater that is Ron's size with tassels and mohair and gold buttons. Somehow, someone saw that and thought of me. I see it and think of Ron pretending he is Stevie Nick's. 

Isabelle has a new game--getting her head stuck in a little blue cup and running around until she goes into a panic from not being able to see. She is also better than ever at having accidents in the house.

Yesterday we went to Michael's to spend a $50 giftcard I got for my birthday. I bought paintbrushes, gesso, and some scrapbook things only to find out that the one bag of goodies cost $90! Lesson learned: next time calculate by price, not the amount of items in your basket. 

Sweetest

I cut my hair and love it. Confession: this is how I look at 7 in the morning after having five hours of sleep so don't judge the mascara/raccoon eyes or I will have to assassinate you.

Ron skipped his cereal this morning just so I could have the last of the milk. Even when he has to work on Saturday for fifteen hours he thinks first of his little wife who will be home all day having a weekend. That is something I never asked for because I didn't think it was possible, now it's all I can ask for. The most encompassing all I've ever had.

I woke at three in the morning and grabbed my darling legal pad where I wrote a whole page of things that make little sense right now. This whole thing is really weird, I may be the most productive thoughtful sick person on earth. Not thoughtful in a sweet way, thoughtful in the lot's of thoughts way. They race by me, ideas of us moving, I started job hunting online at 6 am. I don't know how to describe it, I think faster than I can think and process, I am jittery, my heart races but there is no happiness, no orgasmic euphoria like webmd says there can be. Damn, I miss out on even the perks of an illness. Back to another pill to settle me down enough so I can function like a human rather than a robot in a marathon. I can't stop. That's the main thing, not even for sleep, not even when I'm exhausted beyond words. I am the non-stop, I don't need to eat even, I just have to keep doing, doing anything, just moving to stop the beating in my head of thoughts like a clanging bell. And this is called a "manic episode" and yet I feel remarkably normal. That word alone "manic" means rubber rooms just because of all the movies I've seen. Now to getting up and vacuuming for I think the third time this week because I have to do something to expel this restless spasmodic energy. Oh Lord, to the dream of feeling better. 

 

"Every time you're leaving I don't know what to say"

The world is cold flutter-trembling like a dance under the sheets, but this is just a storm. A rounded mass of white I watch in the weather reports, curling into town like an invisible wandering hand. Curious like all of us wondering how things feel and taste. 

I have been diagnosed, over the phone because I was a little too smart for my own good and did my own soul-searching mathematics. I figured it out and asked my Doctor if he has too, and yes, he has but he was waiting until I had some more sleep to break the news. Well, I know now and I don't know how to react. There is no reaction, because it has been there anyway, like a nameless black shape, but still this does something to me. It changes me, how I see myself. Maybe it shouldn't, maybe it should, but I am here in this pink old skinned soul and dealing with it. There is no formula of how one is supposed to respond to illness, if there was it would be a lot easier. All I know is, I'm here, I'm sick, I'm dealing with it and going to get better, but now I'm horribly shocked and sad about it.  There is something everyone says about boot straps, but the only people I have seen say that are the onlookers.

Now onto the storm cloud hole punched day. I'm getting my haircut short short and am nervous but excited, but nervous about it. I go back and back and forth. I wish for Ron, he has already worked sixty hours this week and I miss his sweet face and words horribly. I decorated the apartment with little vintage hearts for Valentine's but without my valentine it's pretty but worthless, like so many empty bottles. 

tingle

All I can say is I slept last night. I'm still in bed rubbing my eyes and thinking, thinking, wrapped in our wine colored blanket. I'm crashing from being off the saviour medicine. I have to start over with basically everything. Even my sleeping pills don't work, I only slept last night because I had been up since 5:30 the day before. Somehow this turns into a sick story blog, like I have cancer. But it's there, in the corners, haunting like an etch-a-sketch. I will be patient because I have to be patient. I will start from square one because I have to start from square one, there is no other option, I live and seep amongst all this like a dirty fish tank. 

But to move today. I have a new painting of the beach and hate it because it isn't like the one in the lesson, but like it because I made it, I'm in a seashell conundrum about it. But now I have two paintings and now to set up my art room for my birthday, fingers crossed for money. Today to move around a bit and rescue my poor car that is far away from me with the keys stuck in it's belly button, poor car, now named George. Tragedy brings us together even when he rumble tumbles with noise and tired muscles each time I drive him, and he smells like smoke, and is always generally moody.

He is my heart felt and taking me to Vegas for my day. Not my car, my Ron. We read together every night and live amidst a survival tunnel, but it works and he is my sweet wonderful, and reason.

"when you feel so tired but you can't sleep"

I've been up since seven and then up since four and et cetera, et cetera, I can't sleep. Isabelle is laying on Ron's bed pillow half under the covers thinking she looks like him when she does this, but I know all her tricks. She snores quietly thinking she is a wonderful actor.

I have been having all the songs from Sweeney Todd in my head this week. We went and saw it by ourselves late but we ended up falling asleep and each missing little bits, then to go with Josh and Shawna on Monday and it was so much better the second time. The music and colors and blood are awesome, I can't wait to get the soundtrack and Ron and I keep talking about all the interesting nuances of the story.

My Journals of Sylvia Plath; my sacred, sweet book that I am on my third or fourth time reading has broke in half today. Perhaps it's a sign from the Lord, the tearing of the life-shattered royal curtain. Oh the destruction of my apartment kingdom. Regardless I have to buy another soon, reading half a book doesn't work so well as I tried that all last year. Putting half-read books back on the shelf because I took too much time between reading is damn depressing, partly because I know I will rarely go back and start it over which promises that the story is over. The girl in Daniel Deronda is forever in her river-soaked dress in the living room drinking tea, The Brother's Karamazov are still in there own philosophical gospel and I will never know what happens. The books are locked and frozen shut. 

And now to today. To my second day of no more soul-stitching feel better medicine. I had a reaction and am still slurring my speech a bit and having my teeth chatter quickly and uncontrollably. The sad thing is that was the first medicine I have responded to in six months of being on medication (with every two weeks changing the dose or the medicine itself), that is a lot of drugs but now that I have had this reaction I can't try anymore of this class of medication because I will have the same reaction to all of them. So now the search continues. 

newlywed

I have decided to chop all my hair off like this picture. I need a change from these eel-black twists and purges of long hair. When I look in the mirror I see the soul sunk girl I have been and I want to see something different, not remember the horror of all the things I've done, thought of, in my worst heart pierced moments, but instead see something hopeful and slightly forgetful of this recent past. A pure slate of a Catherine, with little short simple hair so all I have to do is put on bright pink lipstick, or red and some pearl earrings and be free and easy new and content. Hopefully I will get it cut this week and find some money in a mailbox to pay for it...

I'm here in my pajamas with the morning mist sparkle hardly escaping the moss covered clouds. Isabelle is sleeping beside me, very exhausted from her supposed night shift of work (which if this happens, she has yet to receive a pay check).  She is always so determined, serious, even in things as simple as sleeping-- she sighs constantly as if it requires much focus and effort. Of course it does, she is a puppy damn it and that is hard and she has a green bow in her hair which she thinks is just awful.