Darkoshi

I haven't bought wall calendars the last few years, from lack of finding ones I particularly like, and/or lack of time to seek them out. Instead, I've printed out monthly calendar pages from timeanddate.com, and attached them to old wall calendars with paper clips. It lets me revisit pretty calendar images from prior years.

I have a box of scrap paper where I put papers that are blank on one side. December's calendar page was printed out on the other side of a flyer I made back in... 2009... when I found puppy Zorro in my yard. "Found a little lost puppy [ phone number ] FOUND PUPPY".

It may be the last of those flyers I've finally used up. I'm not sure. I sort of want to use them up, not to get this sad strange feeling every time I see one of them.

It is surreal, Zorro having shown up in my yard, been a puppy, grown up, lived a full life, died, so many years, and me still having these flyers in perfect condition... as if it was just the other day.

Some days it takes SO LONG to write down notes about my day in my daily notes file, because there's so much to write. That is even without waxing poetic about anything; with hardly editing it at all, just typing what I remember in the hopes that it will make sense to me later if I ever read it again. Later on I still sometimes find that I forgot to include some important things.

Oh Gosh. I just remembered another important thing about yesterday to write down. It's something I plan to post about eventually, but not now.

After yet another small difficulty to deal with today*, my mind threw out this lyric:
"Adversity, what have you done to us..."

It seemed quite appropriate. I wasn't sure if the lyric was "to us" or "to me"; the latter would rhyme better.

I had to look up which song it came from.
It's from Spirit, by Dead Can Dance.
The actual lyric is "Adversity, what have I done to you" (which never made much sense to me).

*The 3rd in a row, not counting a bigger stressful event on Tuesday that I'm still worried about. And various other things.

Oh wow, per the YouTube page for that song, Dead Can Dance is still on tour. I didn't know they were even still performing together. I'm not sure if it's still the same members.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXo-XsdeXI4

The person I hired to reseal the sunroom roof has finally finished the job, this morning. He came down with the flu in the middle of it, so I don't fault him too much for the delay this time. (Though I do still fault him on not getting back in touch with me last year when he was supposed to do it the first time.)

Something I wasn't expecting to see, upon getting out the ladder to take a quick look at the roof, was a lot of insects stuck and struggling to free themselves from the still-tacky silicone coating. Ten or so stuck insects in the section near the edge where I was looking, and likely many more across the rest of the surface.

I tried to help a few of them get free. But even after being freed from the surface, they still had the sticky stuff on them. My efforts may have made it even worse for them. The first one might have survived; it disappeared after cleaning its legs for a while, so I'm not sure. The 2nd one died. Apparently nail polish remover, even the natural kind made from maize, is toxic to insects. I suppose the most humane thing to do is to leave them stuck to die that way, rather than being partially squashed, dismembered and/or poisoned. Or maybe a quick death by poison would be better. I don't know. I just don't know.

Does this mean I wouldn't ever have a roof resealed like that again? No, I probably would do it again, if it needed to be done. But it pains me. Does anyone understand how I feel? Does anyone else comprehend feeling empathy for insects? When they don't even feel it for pigs or fish or chickens or cows?

I was going to drive back in to the office to work the rest of the day there, but now I've spent so much time on this, I'd better work from home.

Sometimes I feel it would be better if I only posted creative interesting things. If I left out the boring, rant-ish, whiny, and/or unimportant posts. If my journal were inspiring and intriguing rather than mundane. If I didn't use it simply as an outlet for whatever was on my mind at the time. But then there wouldn't be many posts, and it wouldn't really reflect my life, which is mostly mundane.

.

I don't recall having allergies as a kid. Not the runny-nose, sneezing, itchy eyes kind of allergies that I started getting as an adult. Yet when I was about 10 years old, I had a persistent cough. I was tested for allergies, and was given some kind of desensitization treatment.. shots or skin patches; I don't recall it well.

I never quite understood how having a cough could be due to allergies.

Yet a couple years ago after having been sick, and still having a persistent cough and sore throat, a nurse told me it was due to post-nasal drip. That surprised me, as I usually only notice post-nasal drip when it is thin and runny - like when I'm having a runny nose kind of allergy attack.

The kind that makes my throat itch, by contrast, is thicker. It's just now in the last few years that I'm able to recognize this sensation. Realizing that my throat is tickling due to thick slime oozing down back there, as opposed to tickling for an unknown reason. It's odd that this wasn't something I was able to recognize to begin with.

..

I'm staying up late to see Boy George on Jimmy Kimmel... Hadn't planned to, but upon hearing that BG would be on, I figured I shouldn't miss that, right? Like old times, staying up to see an appearance. Gosh, how long is this show? Figures that he'd be the last person on.

Aw. Just one song, and not even an interview.

I've listened to clips from his latest album, but none of the songs really appealed to me. This one he sang didn't either.

..

Yesterday while eating lunch, something buzzy flew into my hair. I put my hand up and flinched away when I felt something up there. So I brushed it off with my sandwich container. I turned to look at the picnic table, and there it was, some kind of cute bug. Looked like a youngster. I blew at it, and it lifted its front legs (arms? pincers?) up in the air as it to ward off an attack. So then I let it be and ate my lunch. But I turned back to look at it several times. It didn't move away. I began to feel a camaraderie with it.

Such a small thing. And yet it has a brain. What is it like, to be that insect? What is it thinking? Is it watching me? Is it feeling camaraderie with me too?

It's all in my mind. That feeling of camaraderie would quickly vanish if I saw it doing something like eating another insect.

..

It's so hard, living. One has to feel compassion for anyone who's managed to stay alive, to make it so far... to stay fed, stay clothed, live to adulthood, and everything else. Even if they aren't making a very good impression. Even if they're arguing, or drunk, or conniving, criminal.

..

Break on through, break on through.

How can this life be anything other than a puzzle to figure out? And if so, it isn't without merit to wonder who made the puzzle and why.

Or this life could be something without any meaning at all.

It's all up to what one manages to believe.

..

There's an odd smell in this room. Like... old cat litter, maybe. Seems to be coming from the brick wall. Or maybe from one of the electrical outlets. Or maybe the edge where the brick wall meets the floor. I wonder if it is related to the rodent in the wall, though I haven't heard it in a couple weeks.

Six inches of Snow have Fallen. It has stopped snowing. Zorro has pounced in the snow and eaten it. The Olympics ceremony has been watched. The heater is on. The power is on. 2 cars are in the garage. I get acid reflux when I lean over the table too much and stay up too late. Something is keeping me from going to bed, but I don't know what. A train is whistling. My half-done taxes are sitting on the floor. There's a bread-machine I was given at Christmas in the other room; I haven't even opened the box yet. I suppose I could make bread. But not now. The Christmas tree is still up, and its lights are on. The train is whistling again, fainter, further away.

I feel like I'm floundering along through life. I make it through each day. Today I washed my hair, put more caulk over the cracked caulk in the bathroom, and vacuumed. And showed my brother and his partner my house. Floundering, because I don't have a goal. I can't think of any goals. Just being alive and surviving is time-consuming enough, without also figuring everything out when it seems there are no definite answers.

I have a cold. Pity me, for I am miserable with dry chapped skin and a runny nose and a sore throat. It could be worse, though.

Qiao said I should write that not only does he not make the bed, but he stays in the bed while I make it. When I sleep alone, the covers don't usually get very messed up, and I don't feel much need to make the bed the next day. I can just crawl back under the covers the next night, and they're still pretty much in place. But with Q, they always seem to get messed up. There's wrestling and tickling and protecting myself from ticklings, and him getting hot and throwing half the covers to my side during the night, and stuff like that. Maybe I'm just too much a perfectionist, that makes me want each layer to be positioned and aligned right.

While at the grocery store, I saw the aisle of red and pink Valentine's Day cards and thought of getting Q one. But a lot of the cards mention "love" and such (as one might expect), and I realized that I am still not comfortable with saying that I love him or giving him a card with those words. It does not seem truthful. Why don't I feel love? Shouldn't I feel love? What is it, that I feel? I'm ok with saying that I like him a lot. But love is liking someone very very very very very much, right? And I'm not sure I like him *that* much. I don't like anyone that much. Should I? Shouldn't I?

I wonder how much sex my brother and his partner have. I assume they must have sex. Would he be in a relationship with her, if they weren't having sex?

I am back to wondering if guys really only get into relationships for the sex. Maybe based on the not-rape page I read. So some guys will "use" females for sex... but if they do that, it would also make sense for them to get into long-term relationships with females in order to have ongoing sex. So is that why they get into relationships? Is there any other reason? Is that the main reason?

It bothers me when Q talks about his ex, as it always seems to be in a negative light. How can you think so badly of someone you were involved with? I know he's going to think that way of me too someday. Why am I involved with someone who can't see that there is good and bad in everyone? And that someone isn't just all bad. As if everything she did was done purposefully to make his life miserable. Like he was the victim of this horrible evil mean woman. Well, if he was, wasn't it his fault for staying in a relationship with her?

Is he messing up the covers on the bed, just in order to make me miserable? Is that how I should think of it, one day when we are no longer together?

.

Let's call my brother Bro, and his partner Pard. So I happened to mention something about my dad to them, and about my dad's wife, and Pard seemed surprised that my dad was remarried. She seemed to find it hard to believe he had found anyone who would put up with him... as if Bro had told her so many bad things about my dad, that Pard too sees him as an all-bad person. Yes, I know that my dad did not necessarily always treat Bro well, but I think he was trying to do what he thought was best. That does not make him an all-evil person. People often don't get along, but does that mean they are horrible? Everyone is horrible, in ways.

I guess it means one is getting older when, looking at old photos or videos such as from the 1940s, the people seem mostly like people today, in spite of the black&whiteness and different styles of dress, instead of it all seeming incomprehensibly ancient and alien.

Forestfen disappoints me sometimes by forwarding me emails full of fallacies and/or unsupported statements, as if she believes and agrees with them. I would have thought she would be smarter than that.

Then again, she is Christian too. Why should I be surprised. But in terms of targeting certain ethnic or cultural groups and blaming them for various ills... I thought she was smarter than to read prejudiced rants masquerading as truths, and to forward them on as if she agrees with them.

I was thinking the other day, living life is hard. That's why so many people are strange and/or unpleasant, and/or live in unpleasant ways, from my point of view. Their strangeness is their adaptation to this difficult life. No stranger to them, than my adaptation is to me. I felt a sudden compassion for the whole of humanity while thinking that.

I'm sad because he doesn't make me feel the way they did. And because even the way they made me feel didn't really mean anything, because it wasn't mutual. People can do things that make you feel all wonderful and special without even realizing it; without even intending it; without even understanding it. So how special can those things really be? It's all just a fluke. Doesn't mean anything. Nothing means anything.