Notes on a madwoman

I bought new sheets today - but not just regular old sheets. Fleece sheets. Fleeeeeeeece. I saw them somewhere last week and have been dreaming about them ever since. When I spotted a gorgeous set at Costco today for just $31, I grabbed them.

They're going to take up a stupid amount of room in the linen closet when we're not using them, but it'll be worth the annoyance during the warm months to be cuddled by a queen size mattress-shaped teddy bear all winter long.

I took my dad to dialysis today. We needed someone to be there to make sure the shot he was getting wasn't a duplicate flu shot. He has a lot of trouble hearing and even more trouble remembering, so he came home on Monday afternoon with sketchy information about the nature of the shot.

Always one to escalate the seriousness of a situation beyond reasonable levels (particularly if I have an entire night to think about it), I decided I needed to make sure he was okay myself.

And the sheets, they came later. A carefully planned reward.

I can't figure out if this is a healthy coping mechanism or just a crutch. But whatever. I have new sheets!!!

Fleeeeeeece.
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I've been clenching my jaw like a madwoman on crack lately. Not that I know what a madwoman on crack would actually do with her jaw, but I suspect at least some of the time there'd be some vice grip action going on.

The last time I was at the dentist I was soundly chastized for my grinding activities. So much so that she actually took a picture of one of my more seriously worn teeth and blew it up on screen so I could get a really good look at it.

It was bigger than my head. Alarming for that reason alone, frankly.

She then proceeded to show me one of her own perfectly formed, pristine teeth - the same one as the mangled, head-size one still leering at me from the computer monitor.

It was horrifying and humiliating all at once.

God, I love doctors.

I'm kind of hoping I get a lecture on grinding at my next appointment (which I need to make soon so they'll stop leaving messages for me in that cheery, "it'll-be-quick-and-painless-and-really-fun-and-happy" dentist tone they use when they're trying to lure you in for a cleaning). I might need to explain to her - at length and in great detail - exactly why I'm a helpless slave to the grinding, especially now.

I bet that would be even more fun than taunting someone who grinds with your magical, perfect tooth.
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I neeeeeeeed to start getting some exercise. I need exercise way more than I needed those sheets. And probably more than I need to go to the dentist, truth be told.

The stress is killing me softly. And fattening me up nicely.

I reward myself a lot - with fleece sheets sometimes, but more often it's with chocolate. And I really must find a better way to cope with the stress of worrying about and caring for my parents - and then worrying about what bits of my own life are sliding while I'm preoccupied with them.

I worry all the time. Then when I do something hard, I reward myself with crap I shouldn't eat or stuff I don't need to buy. Then I feel guilty. Then I worry about that for a bit, then I go back to worrying about whatever it was that I was worried about before I decided I had to reward myself.

And so on, and so on.

I'm clearly in a downward spiral of chocolate eating and sheet buying and endless worrying.

Maybe I'll go for a walk tomorrow morning after a good night's sleep on my new fleece-y sheets. Which are, of course, chocolate-coloured. I'm nothing if not consistent.

It's like Monday all week long...

Today at a light I found myself stopped behind some big brown minivan/SUV type thing with a cute little round bumper sticker that read, "I love my twins!" in happy red lettering.

And all I could do was shake my head, look to the sky, smile and admit defeat.

You go me, God. You got me good.

I'm so wracked with anxiety over my dad's health that I have to concentrate on remembering how to walk. Breathe. Blink. I'm hurting from missing my little boy so much that I'm surprised I'm not actually bleeding.

So, you know, good to know some happy family out there loves their twins and feels the need to tell every car that happens to be driving behind them about their familial joy. Couldn't have lived another moment without knowing that the brown minivan/SUV people love those rascally little twins.

I would have loved mine too.

There's never a good time of year for someone you love to be seriously ill. Never. But right now? My God, my mental resources are so depleted from the double whammy, I don't know what to do with myself.

So I've been walking. Somewhat obsessively. I found a site that lets you map your routes and then post them in a training log that adds up your accumulating kilometers and keeps track of the number of calories you've burned to date. This is the perfect thing for someone who desperately needs to fixate on something she can control.

11.6km so far this week.

If only I could outrun my fear and sorrow I'd be set.

Heading back

What. A. Day.

I'm all done with being a grown-up. Someone get me a flux capacitor so I can hightail it back to 1977.

ASAP.

Please?

Please, no more

Suddenly and without warning I found out that we're waiting to find out if my Dad has cancer. The bomb dropped on Tuesday. He might not. He probably doesn't. It could be a medication he's on that caused the false positive. It could be a couple of other things, according to the good doctor.

But it could be cancer. It could.

And today I took Lucy to the vet to have some dental work done. In the end, they took out four teeth. Four more teeth from my impossibly sweet and now nearly-toothless companion.

The receptionist laughed when she answered the phone at 1:04pm. She said she knew as soon as it rang that it would be me - calling as soon after 1:00pm as I could - asking how the surgery went.

She was kind. She clearly deals with animal-loving lunatics all day long. But make no mistake, I presented myself as a complete nutcase today. Without question.

The thing is, I'm worried that my Dad has cancer and I had to surrender the only tiny little thing I have in my care to the cruelty of dental surgery and the uncertainty of anaesthetic.

I am a nutcase at the moment.

I would cry "Uncle", but I just don't have the energy.

What's my first line?

I had a dream last night. An annoying, recurring dream. Different characters, same plot.

I'm in a play - last night it was The Sound of Music - and I'm woefully ill-prepared. I know none of my lines and the curtain is about to rise. My fellow actors think I'm joking or that it's just a spectacular case of stage fright, but they don't understand that I truly don't know a single word. In most of these dreams I'm pretty sure I haven't even seen the script, let alone read it.

They carry on completely unaware of the true nature of my panic, and I desperately ransack the backstage area looking for a script that I can somehow tuck into my costume and read from while I'm on stage. Allegedly acting.

I never actually get to the stage. I wake up searching for a script and worrying that I don't have single clue what I'm doing. That I'm going to ruin everything for everyone and look like a collosal fool in the process.

I would like to think that these dreams that see me ill-prepared for a scripted performance mean that I'm living my life day by day, not obsessing about the future, not trying to orchestrate things that are simply beyond my control.

But from my state of panic in these stress-ridden dreams, I know this is not the case.

I think instead they're reflecting my anxiety at feeling like I'm the only one who doesn't seem to know what the hell is going on. Kind of ever.

I'm watching other organized lives around me as they follow the plans they made and somehow managed to stick to, fate and happenstance aside. And there's no way I can keep up with them. There's no way I can be as prepared or as calm or as sure as they are.

I've lost my script.

Goddamn it, I've lost my script.