Day 58

Mood up and down like a damned yo-yo today.

Started off awesome: awake well-rested at straight up seven and enjoyed it very much. It really is true that nobody ever woke up in the morning and said "gee I really wish I had drunk alcohol last night."  Did the main grocery shopping and was back home with it by 8:30 so the extra trip to the other grocery was done by a bit past nine - yes we have two not-particularly-good grocery stores which means stopping at both to get everything on the list. Anyhow that made me feel good and accomplished and things were going pretty well.

They even went fairly well when the In Laws showed up. MiL was in fine form making cracks about "did we wake you?' at half-past eleven but it was blissfully brief as Middle, when he called at eleven to set up a time, shared that he was going out with friends at 12:30 so it had to be sooner rather than later. When I asked, after they had left, where he was going he told me "I'm not; that was just to get it over with faster." Savvy kid. Make that "young adult" as nineteen isn't really "kid" any more. Extra savvy as I learned over the cake that MiL had wanted to "have hamburger and hot dogs" and make it a multiple hour event like Fourth of July...when I asked Middle he told me "oh yeah she said something about that on the phone yesterday but I didn't want it."  Good thing he didn't as I was horrified by just the prospect.  I can handle one of those events maybe once per fiscal quarter but certainly not two in barely two weeks.

Things were even looking up with the Away Team (Spouse, Eldest and the girl-beagle who as you may recall are in our other house for the summer) as the dog, who had been ailing enough for a vet visit, was back to her usual self.  Everything good, right?

But out of the blue around midafternoon "disgruntled" hit in a super big way. I was completely out of sorts, irritable, edgy, weepy and generally miserable in my own skin for absolutely no reason that I could discern. Sometimes that's "hungry" or "need something sweet" so I tried a small sweet snack...but no, that wasn't helping at all. Didn't want to do any of my usual amusements: yarn, computer games, books, stupid phone games...none of it.  Damned well didn't want to do any chores, either. Just downright cranky...and again, there didn't seem to be any root cause which of course made it worse not better. Didn't want to drink but definitely didn't want to be feeling the particular feelings I was having, that's for damned sure.  The psychic equivalent of an itch you can't scratch or the emotional version of that creepy-crawly leg-cramp sensation or as I've dubbed it in the past, serious sandpapering of the soul.

Dinner (carry-out of course) helped some but not a lot. So did just accepting "okay, fine.  I feel like chewing neutronium and there doesn't have to be a reason it just is." Again, some, not a lot...but I stopped trying to figure out a cause-and-effect so I could make the feelings go away.  I keep forgetting that sometimes you just have to live with the feelings till they go away on their own.

And they have, more or less.  I'm still not nearly as calm and happy as I was first thing this morning but I'm so very much better than I was at around three this afternoon that I'll take it.  I also managed to get the dishes done and the lunch made by 7:30 in the evening which is definitely a first in recent history. Once I got over being completely cranky about everything I realized that one of the minor specific things annoying me was that my current novel just wasn't working for me at all so I gave myself permission to just not even read another page.  Started in on one of my other library books and I can already see that was the absolutely right decision.

Funny, I was talking with the librarian yesterday about exactly that.  The book I put on hold was one I knew only by reading others' thoughts about it online and it turned out to be a surprisingly large volume. When the librarian saw my look she said "yes, it's a big one...but if you don't like it you can just quit reading it."  I laughed and said "you know you're right - when I was younger I always felt obligated to finish a book once I started it but now I've given myself permission to just stop."  The librarian allowed as how a lot of people were like that but she herself had never been that way; she was always fine with putting down a book unfinished. It seems a small thing but I think it says something about human nature all the same.

Doing this blog post has helped too - more than I thought it would, actually. Pouring it all out through the keyboard is letting it finally go, I think, or at least letting me get a better handle on things. Useful, in any case. Once again my decision to start blogging, in addition to just reading blogs, has turned out to be a good one. Thanks, earlier-self, for making that smart choice.

Time to walk the dog....