Oh, hey, first sex in nine days. Nothing to write on the blog about, everything is still impossibly uncomfortable (the fun parts are too dry and not elastic enough, the rest of the body is tired and sore all over), but y'know, it's a start. That's why G refuses to sleep in the bed. He's not much for holding back. Let's give it another day or two. I get the papers tomorrow and the day after, I'm planning on going for a short walk. On the plus side, I almost finished the Elf sex crime chapter. Bit of a transition from suspense to revelation missing, though it is a nice anti-climax, just how I like them, but other than that it's ready for the grammar peppering. (Where I change the simple words with pretentious fancy words from the little notebook of fancy pretentious words I keep, writing them down as I find them.) 

- one - week - later -

It's Tuesday, right? One week from when the symptoms first presented. They poked and prodded me today again, and I got the results, which were very good: all but the viruses has been fixed. Even the flu's subsided, now I just have some rogue rhinovirus catching the last train out.

This thoroughly answers my question on how come people only have one disease at a time - how do diseases know their turn to strike? I was always under the impression that humans carry plenty of ticking bombs within. Well, now I know.

There's a downside to being as healthy and resilient as I am. The way doctor suggested, I got pneumonia first, or a bad cold first, but that didn't manifest, and then I got another infection, possibly the bladder, UTI, which kind of lingered, but never developed, then I got my period and had the fight at work, which shook the immune system, and then that lady with the flu happened.

Once the flu hit, floodgates came down and BAM. EVERYTHING that's been ready to have a go, went. The only thing I didn't have was a common cold. I think I have that now. Or at least some mild laryngitis, that works more on the neck than the nose area. But the blood is fine. And lungs no longer feel like an accordion full of honey.

Course I now no longer have any real muscles - other than those from coughing - left and almost no stamina to speak of. I need new shows and to start doing small treks again. all over again, from the get-go.

Doctor said: You did good. You'll be fine in no time.
          I said: Ye, thanks to you and Dr. Flemming*. How would this work without penicillin?
Doctor said: It would ... take a little longer.



* I know it's not really Dr. Flemming who "discovered" penicillin, it was plenty of other people before him, publishing plenty of other studies, but they were not white or old or rich enough to matter. Doesn't matter now. I'm really glad they did. For a couple of days, whenever something new started to go wrong with me, I just thought: tough. Like I'll notice. 

I've spent all morning wondering if I'm hungry. I haven't eaten in four days, so why would I suddenly be hungry now? Then again, my fever's down to less than a degree off kilter. Now, how the fuck does someone warm up yogurt to room temperature without cooking all the shit my intestine needs? 

Well, so my flu+pneumonia ordeal continues, day three. I am NOT feeling any better, my dear old blog, and we can add nosebleeds (from wiping), projectile vomiting of tea (due to coughing) and toothache (from insistent grinding) to the list of shitty discomforts. The energy it takes to get out of bed to pee - and then drink, because I am so parched my lips have dried and are peeling, my fever still running - is pretty much all of the energy I have. Immediately I return to bed and fall asleep again. The General has been wrapped like a bug in a sleeping bag on the couch. I am actually so tired that when he retired for the night yestereve, I was thinking: I hope he won't wish to talk, because I really can't carry a conversation right now. Then I remembered General never really talks and it was just me doing all the talking, telling him this story. (The couch is within earshot.) He had a nightmare about fighting with me, because I wanted to go outside to have a coffee date. Poor sod. He said the broken old couch is starting to grow on him and he's finding comfort in it, and then he amused himself by farting in the sleeping bag and we agreed that is probably not the best idea, since chances are he will inflate and I'll find him floating under the ceiling by morning. (We have high ceilings.) I hate the fact he's working a day shift right now. It's soooooo long without him and I have to make my own tea. He makes me food, but I haven't the heart to tell him I really have no appetite. Not to mention vomiting is a problem - I genuinely do not need to burn my throat with acid on top of phlegm, and the last time I threw up, that tea was full of medicine. I had to try and re-medicate myself once I calmed down and cleaned up the mess. It's a shitty, shitty, shitty season. Absolutely everything about me hurts, from my skin, joints, muscles, eyes, throat, stomach, chest, diaphragm, urinary works, even my fucking fingernails. Come on, you stupid bacteria. Pick your battles. 

Can you get the flu and bacterial lung infection at the same time? Why, yes, yes you can.

Ok, so it's not the flu, it's more something like a threshold of pneumonia, but holy goat this shit hurts. I didn't know an adult in this day and age can get so awfully discomforted for no apparent reason. It's not like I fell in a frozen river. Okay, ye, I remember at least on one occasion I was moist from heavy lifting and then had to stand at the cashier's, which was in a draft from the outside parking lot. I figured, okay, sniffles, everyone's got sniffles in winter. But I can't barely make it up the stairs! I went to the doctor's and he looked at my throat and

    "I think I have the flu, doctor."

    "Uh. Oh. No, I'm afraid it's a little worse than that."

But at least it's bacterial. Viral you have to weather through, bacterial you can combat. There goes my pussy flora, but at least now I know not to fuck around with my mortality. I am not the racehorse I was when it was just me, being clever at home. Crikey, imagine getting this sick this fast outdoors on a hike. When you can't even move, let alone make a safe shelter. I can't stand long enough to make myself tea. When he was tapping my back, it felt like he was hitting me with a baseball bat. 

Scary, really. 

Aww, come On, don't tell me I have a fucking flu??


I haven't had flu for fifteen years. Longer!
Why? Whyyy????

Ghosts and Jason Clarke in a dollar store stoream

Aaaa!! This time it was not a myoclonic twitch that woke me, but the General! And it was such an excellent dream!!! (When we are closing the dollar store where I work, usually something goes wrong and I am always in such an urge to just wrap shit up, because I know G is 'surprise' waiting for me outside, having come to drive me home... And somewhere out there is a shitty horror movie about ghosts with Jason Clarke, which I haven't seen, but I find him to be absurdly fuckable, so this was a ghost-horror dream with him in the role of the waiting General.)

Okay, so, we're at the large mall at night, and we're closing up our store, everyone else already pulling down the shutter doors and windows and vacuuming. Our store, in the dream, also has a little bit of a hotel on the above floor, which also needs to be cleaned a little, trash collected, utility closet doors locked, so on, but nobody likes to do it, because during the Blitz supposedly a bomb landed on it, killing the guests inside. Some kid who was supposed to collect the trolleys was also supposed to do it and also bring down the books for us to sign out for today's business. Meanwhile, I am hitting SO HARD on Jason Clarke, who is our filling-in manager; (IRL the dollar store staff is so scarce often people from sister stores come to act as managers on loan.) he's in a chair behind his desk, I am getting nearer during the conversation - we're waiting for everyone else to finish up so we can close the cash registers for the night. We have a few minutes to kill, so flirting with complete strangers seems like a good call. At some point he is telling me something - regarding the shop - as he would like to do and I lean into him, saying well, I want you to stop talking and kiss me. He responds: with all politeness he is going to decline my kind offer. If he must suffer for love, he would rather skip love altogether. I asked: so, you want me to hit you first?

         Before he could say no, I grab him by the neck - he's a large neck, but so does G and I know how to hold it with one hand by nooking my thumb against the esophagus, bending the head back. I did that thing instead of a kiss that drives my lovers crazy, when I just sort of rub my whole face against theirs, cheeks, nose, eyelashes, eyelids, breath, whole body, all of it, from earlobes to the whole jawline, fully in almost pre-orgasmic, wholesomely committed mode to the moment - it doesn't matter how resolved against it you are, there is no way you can think of anything else while I'm doing that 'kiss'. Stunned, sitting back and staring at me shocked - and that man has a good face for shock, because his eyes are so large and bright - , sweating, he's forgotten why he doesn't want me to kiss him, but our moment is interrupted because the damn kid refused to bring the book from upstairs because it's full of ghosts.

         Anxious to get laid, I run up and run into the whole array of apparitions: first the lady vacuuming turns to me and her face is a horror. She also seems aggressive and has pointy teeth: I run right through her, saying, yes, yes, I know, I know, you're a ghost. A lot of them are extremely scary, but I really haven't the time to appreciate their effort, because I have an erect Jason Clarke downstairs. I run through each room, trying to get the ghosts to realize they're dead so that they'd vanish and leave me alone. Some woman, who was supposed to babysit, but failed to save the baby, is now helping an old lady, asking: but how did you survive the bomb? ... And again, I usher them: she didn't, she's dead, you're all dead, can we please move it along?

         The book I'm after is deep in a shelf that some old lady is trying to reach - she's all packed to go to the shelter, she'd just like her favorite book. As she turns, I know half her body will be burnt, so I don't even look, I just push her away and get her book and start reading it hastily, hoping that if I read it, the ghosts will be satiated and tune out for the night. It's some kind of Charlie Brown book, but he's saying he's on his 3.413.328th day now, and is upon his 800's lifetime. I remember thinking: what the ....

         ALAS, I was reading that line out loud and the General, who was in the room, called out for me, saying he's told himself to wake me before I start talking in my sleep again. AAAaaaaaarrr!!! I was SO CLOSE! 

But ye, that's usually the end of work day in our dollar store for ye. 

I wonder sometimes, when the world gets too big (again) and I have a bad day at work, and the General begins to load the cannons, if

- is it me or is it the world? Am I a magnet for assholes in power? Should I be more compassionate to my superiors and understand their position?
- do I spend too much time solving problems of pretty elves fucking, orcs hunting, space-ships breaking down and art being judged by their monetary value lately, to fit into the Real world?

Why do I always feel like a square being shoved into a round tube?

Because wasting precious time we have on this earth is a cardinal sin, that's why.

The General sometimes has to be held back. When I fuck around and bark, it's just a retarded pug showing teeth. He is a cave lion. I am ashamed of the fact he has to worry every time he picks up the phone that on the other side I will be crying. That is the greatest millstone on him: having chosen a wife who is constantly at war with imperfections of humanity, if on a miniature scale.

I do get angry. I really do. And I'll tell you why. In the army I was the quiet little mouse, taking the shit from every Tom, Dick and Harry who had five minutes to piss on me. They had me clean toilets, they wouldn't let me out when nobody else could go to heart surgery with my father. At the chocolate studio, I watched the workers being treated like garbage and my hands bleeding from working for not as much as a single dime in the end. In the museum, I watched the girls slave without pay on the promise of employment, which was never real. At the post-office, I took shit from the superior who wanted to fuck my husband and eventually got rid of me. On the ship I cried myself to sleep every night from the abuse at the hands of Shitty Little Squeak Basket. And as of few months ago, the client who owed me money that could pay off our debt screwed me over and I got nothing - and I did nothing about it. I was just glad it's over.

So, is it me or is it the world? I am volatile, to be sure. My fuse is short, getting shorter. But is there some scientific proof that miserable employees are more effective? That treating people like dogs gets the message across better than admitting the work is hard but we'll get through together? I love the work. It's why I do the work. But I sooooo fucking hate hate hate hate hate the people. Even the kind strangers I meet for the briefest of interactions depress me. Only thing I hate more is seeing what I may turn into if I start to believe them 'this is normal'.






The answer to both questions is really simple.






Finish the goddamn fucking book.

Well, when you can't decide whether you need new winter hiking shoes or a new sex toy, it's time to invest in some literature. Fuck me but I haven't read a book since New Year's Eve shift. 

Trying out some of the new ideas, none of which are working quite yet, but, you know, it's early. I made eight bucks, which are going straight into an investment fund (read: I'm buying 50 half pans on AliExpress...) Gotta start somewhere small, ammarite? :P

MY BRAIN WOKE UP! I HAVE AN IDEA!!

I'll tell you all about it super soon, but holy noodle, what a strange feeling. To see sparks again in the old furnace ...

... please don't die out in the long winter night, please don't die out in the windy night ...

Bah, awoke yesterday through a myoclonic twitch. Amateur. I'll attribute it to new-job stress and not to my dreaming brain becoming soft. It was a funny scene (not ha-ha), resonating fervently for several minutes after. In the scene, I was accompanying a band of police officers into the apartment of a man suspected of killing a small girl. (Case was not graphically shown, but it was shown making veteran detectives nauseated.) His apartment was vast and circular, so while the investigators were entering, and I was snooping around for interesting things to photograph, as you do during manhunts, I spotted the old man trying to exit. I called out to the officers and he saw me, coming at me over and around the furniture. I tried to kick him in the stomach, but he tackled me to the floor and while I tried really hysterically, desperately, to stall his attack until someone shoots him, I was fully aware he is either going to produce a knife and stab me or try to bite me, being infected with some shitty disease. He snarled: No jail time for me! and spat right into my eye. The moment saliva hit my eye I woke up. All in all, a shitty dream.

The one from today (slept really badly) was a lot better - I was a demon hunter in Diablo III and had to use my fists to punch through skeletons' skulls, but I was good at it. When time came to kill mini-boss, some putrid fatso monster, I suceeded.

So, the new job, as all lowest-paying menial jobs go, is depressing, tiring, demeaning, bad for health and soul-crushing - just how I like them. Thing is, I have better offers. But having a better job would mean I want to settle and I would rather wither and die than settle. People who come to shop and see me there, see me in those ugly white fluorescent lights, pale, bags under my eyes, hair thin and greasy, lips dry and pale, are not even surprised. I always pick the worst jobs. It is the exact opposite of a long vacation.

The General, if at all able, surprise-shows up to come to collect me, or makes me dinner or buys me food he knows I like (these days I love buckwheat and quinoa salad and soy stake, because it doesn't make me too drowsy if I eat for the lunch break), although the other day he made yummy bean stew, bless him, and that was not the best idea - it is not easy, holding in a fart for nine hours. 

I have two methods of coping with the negative bits of the job - making shopping lists for all the shit I want to buy to stock up my hiking and drawing supplies, and allowing my brain to fully appreciate the vacuum left behind by my deep disappointment with clients of the art world. As the job has me at the main cashier station most of the time - the station providing the worst humiliation and stress when I fuck up in money terms, the brain is required to keep completely and entirely dormant: I cannot reminisce about sex of the previous night, I cannot plan ahead, I cannot conjure concepts that might drag me out of poverty and back into arts and crafts business. It simply needs to keep its head bowed low and do the dirty little job. (It's a shop of mainly Made-in-China products, so the amount of dust, fiberglass and synthetic materials easily airborne. My hands are so dry and cracked they're starting to micro-bleed.)

There is one added bonus (more like a conscious choice) to this job (The hostess at McDonald's post would pay about 200 bucks more, but then we'd all die of cholesterol within a season. :D ) The shit we sell is so freaking cute. I cannot get enough of it. We keep getting new stuff and I keep making my list longer "The first few bucks I get, this is exactly what I'm buying!" ... :D

Good thing the General has a monopoly over our finances. We would die of exposure and starvation, surrounded by buttons and bows.

This artist's impression of exoplanets just made my whole day :D

Can't I just pick one and go be happy there?

A NewYear's love letter to a beautiful red-haired photo model

Goodnight, sprite, banshee, kelpie,

Goth shy story, Joan of Arc,

goodnight poetess of morning light

inspiration, distant ambition/dream,

I cannot wait to be a witness to your tales

in 2019 (what a weird SF number),

goodnight moth, flame, gem. 

They locked me in the freezer and won't let me drive, even thought it is my plane. But where are the duckies? WHERE ARE THE DUCKIES??

... Might have overshot a little on the painkillers. 

I still had five hours of a really heavy shift, plus a family dinner later, and my headache was starting to graduate to a full blown migraine, so I opted for two safe, easy, light-on-the-tummy and free of side-effects painkillers (Analgin), which usually take care of any inflammation of pain for me... But I realized too late that my faithful supply was entirely fresh out because I gave the whole box to a friend the other day for her toothache. So, I rummaged through my other pills, only to come upon Ketonal, which said 'for pain' on the tag and I recall they gave me that after surgery.

Boy. That is some good shit. It makes sense now people take drugs. Holy fuck but was I happy for about an hour. Warm and pain-free and everyone was so friendly and all the boxes were so interesting. Every time I opened some plastic flowers or Easter arrangements, countless souls of poor Chinese workers who assemble all this stuff came wailing out.

Because I take so few of them and lately lean on the side of clean living, drugs have a ridiculous effect on me. When the General materialized unannounced to bring me the Analgin, I tried to explain they wouldn't let me drive, even though it is my plane, but where are the baby ducks, man?!

All in all awesome day. Happy New Year's :*