I have been savagely conflicted about something. Often, when browsing shops like Etsy and the like, I am drawn to stacks of vintage book pages. I like old paper and those all seem so very cool. Well. 

        There are plenty really old decrepit books outside bookstores, free for the taking. They look deliciously battered and vintage. I could collect several over the next month or two and tear them up and offer them as bundles of various vintage paper pages as well. 

        I got one today. An old Oddysey. 

        I just can't do it. It feels dirty just touching them with the intention of hurting them. I'll fuck the corpse of a penguin, but hurt a book? I just can't do it.

Not diabetic after all

My mother and my husband finally chased me down, cornered me, and stabbed me with the world's smallest needle, to draw the smallest imaginable droplet of blood from my finger, to measure my blood sugar. To explain: I asked them to do this - I am ridiculously afraid of the idea of being stabbed by something small (says someone perfectly familiar with self-harming or being beaten with a rope or belt during sex play - but needles, fuck no.) - and third, I was almost absolutely certain that my dizziness is a symptom of developing diabetes. Namely, because I eat A LOT of sweets, or at least I had until recently, at which point... probably since my father's death and his gangrenous diabetic legs ... I am becoming oddly averse to glucose. The evidence of this may be a pilling of sweets in the fridge and my cookie box: I still buy a lot of them, out of inertia, I just don't eat them. I used to eat the wrapper, too. 

But I don't have elevated blood sugar. In fact, I have it oddly low, 5,5. I was convinced it's something like 17 or such. Even the General, who was forced to demonstrate the procedure before I stopped karate-begone-satan fighting them off, is within totally normal, even though he had sweet breakfast an hour before. My regime is effective.

So, on the plus side, no, I am not diabetic. But I am still hella dizzy. And may or may not have an ear infection, but that is difficult to tell in my case, as I am always half-deaf, always have oily ears due to ear pods and am already dizzy. 

I wonder if it's my notoriously low blood pressure ...? I used to be able to boost it by taking long fast walks and strong coffee, but lately I get dizzier when I'm upset? Guess we're back to wondering whether it's a brain tumour or psychosomatic. Considering my psyche, the head ought to have fallen off or have exploded by now. Have you met me? 

Ah, the General is so cute when it comes to my devious brain :D I said: If ever I run into Viggo Mortensen, I'm sorry, but there is no way I am not having sex with that man.

     And the General replied: If he agrees to it, sure.

... Yes, because raping Aragorn is just the sort of a thing I'd do. LoL. 

 Such a weird day. Almost pleasant, if it wasn't a sick day.

It is so rare for me to have migraines - I think this is the third one in my entire life. I thought it was a sinus inflammation at first, but then none of the painkillers took and I started getting all vomity, walking around with a plastic bag. I couldn't really sleep, I just sort of drooled into a pillow for most of the day. Really really weird feeling. Mum asked if my tummy aches from not eating and all the pills (as four is about 3.5 more than I usually take if the pain gets ghastly.) and I muttered it's so low on my list right now, I wouldn't even notice. 

Consequently, now that it's evening and I am feeling a little better, my brain just won't start. There is virtually nothing I can do, as I have zero concentration to speak of. Reading or watching a movie is out of the question, editing, writing, drawing, even answering correspondence from my clients. Luckily, today is not an important day and can be easily missed. Still, I had plans, simple plans, pouring gold, making some swatches, promoting some new wee palettes ... The furthest I got was watching a video on whatever happened to Balin after Hobbit. 

Brexit is annoying me, I miss Book Depository and Jackson's. I hate having money on my 'fun spending' account and having nothing to spend it on. Although Josie discovered a German company much like Jackson's and we should probably test that one. Although, what I really desperately need are new slippers. I have worn mine to literally flakes. I keep leaving bits around the house. If there was a way to order the exact same pair, I would have ordered two. Alas. Handmade, damnit :D

Did I tell you about a pretty day G and I spent trying to light a fire in the wet forest? It's snowing and melting and raining and freezing and snowing and thawing almost every day: everything is so wet, even the dry things are moist. The lesson was how to light a fire in the least favourable conditions. In theory, he and I are super ninja survivalist scouts. We watch A LOT of YouTube on the subject :D 

Now, any cucumber can get a fire going on a pretty sunny dry day. I can do it without the spark stick thingie even. But this time we took the spark stick thingie and a knife with us, and set to find some favourable kindle. There are no bitches in our forest, so G cut off a dry pine branch at the trunk, where turpentine settles the most, and he cut some shavings - onto a makeshift dry spot first, later I found an old stump and managed to pull off a large tray of dry-ish surface. Of course snow kept falling on us from the trees, getting everything wet again. 

Nothing worked. Nothing. We shaved the spark thingie and you could see how it WANTS to ignite, but nothing was dry enough. Sappy bark, needles, dead branches, nothing. I tried to dry them in my pocket, in my hand - and they did DRY, but not to igniting mod. The furthest we got was perhaps a few seconds of flame. After an hour we gave up and decided to cheat a little, tearing up an old kleenex, which, again, started to burn a little, but then just stopped. Ultimately we just decided to see if at all today is a fire-making day, we rubbed hand-sanitising gel onto an old paper crossword from the bottom of my bag and set THAT on fire - and it burnt up, leaving the bark and the pine needles and the branch shaving a little black, untouched. 

The lesson here, kids, is: always carry the damn kindle box with you. There is nothing as moist as a winter forest after a week of rain and snow. 

Is it possible to have such intense anxiety that the entirety of my musculature aches? That I've been so tense I'm getting muskelfiber? I've been doing that thing again, when I try to find humour in horror, but as we all know, that usually results in me detonating over a jar I can't open or the cat sneezing too loudly. 

Or it could be I showered yesterday and sat with moist hair in a room with the window cracked open. Sounds way better. 

You know, if it just so happens that it turns out my mum can't live without my dad, imagine the poor dude in heaven, just about to embrace his newfound youth and freedom, and her voice coming up behind him, reprimanding him for chasing tavern maidens. It would give only half a positive meaning to the phrase: they're together in heaven now. :))

Ye, that's my humour in horror. There are just some things you can't steer no matter how hard you try. 

Everyone: "Yay, 2020 is over!!" 2020: "Hold my beer."

 Fuck these earthquakes. I mean, we're just jumping, but poor Zagreb/Petrinje are 200 km away! And why - there are no tectonic shifts there, no volcanos. Why do they keep jumping??

"Nocturnal" series.

 

I gotsta say, if life ever turns in a direction where G just so happens to marry again someone else in the future, he'll be more than fully equipped to deal with any kind of mental disarray. Good news for me, not so for him, as having to hold someone's sane soul like a frail egg in your hands is a bit of a bummer.

But ye. He manages me perfectly. Whether he is just that good or whether he just sees me as a small child, either way. We had sorta Xmass dinner up at mum's place, as sis is keeping her distracted by cooking and baking to no end. Which is great, except they set the table in the living room, where, you know, dad lived out his few final days and where I haven't been able to even peek inside, yet alone step in. Sis tried to bait me by hanging my favourite chocolate on the makeshift tree, and mum snapped at me to stop making a fuss. But I had 20 days to try and work a way around it and it wasn't happening. If I had a say, I would never go into the room again. My brain is fully able to paint over certain stressful stuff, but it does have an uncanny ability to not only remember a certain thing to painstaking detail, but it also tends to fill in the gaps like a supercomputer. 

So, asking G to help me, as I am not very good with walking into spaces yet - where the heating furnace is, is also a problem - a million little items there that dad brought, used or touched. Or turned to charcoal. G took my hand and said alright, let's go. And we went around the living room, to the corners, around furniture, rounding the central fireplace, to the sofa pretty decorated tree, everywhere. Dispersing demons, making sure they don't grow. Nipping symbolism in the bud.

There's an inner G, as well. A voice of reason within me. I had an urge to secretly start buying things I know dad would love, and store them someplace secretly. Not unlike eastern religions have little shrines for their ancestors. But an inner G commented: that would solve absolutely nothing, it would just make you feel weirder. Quit acting like a freak. 

Am still not allowed to get a comfort animal, though. He says I have a bunch of animals and all they do is manage and irritate me. Fair enough.