Thoughtfetti

Do you ever experience whiteout vision?  When everything sort of washes out and looks like an over exposed photo?  Sometimes I get it in the morning when I first get out of bed, and sometimes it happens during the day when I'm really active for a spell and then slow down.  Human bodies are weird.
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Not related to the above, I've been laid out for the last two days.  I'm doing as little as possible today so I'll have the oomph I need for Sprout's birthday party tomorrow.  She's turning eight next week.  Yikes!
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I keep my heat set at 68 F, most of the time.  How come in the spring and summer that's warm, but come winter it's ice-cube time?
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If itchy palms means money will soon cross them, what do itchy eyes mean?
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How're you doing?

A Very Good Dog

I like dogs.  I don't have any because my life isn't conducive to them sharing a home, but I like them.  I have friends with dogs, and I get my doggo fix by visiting and loving on their animal family.

There are dogs, and there are Very Good Dogs.  Some dogs try to human, and some dogs just don't care, and some dogs just dog so damned well it's a pleasure to know and love them.  They're superlative.  They set the bar high with enviable grace and ease.  They're unabashedly, perfectly imperfect and even when cross with them, their hoomans can't help but smile or laugh, shrug, and love them.

Trip was A Very Good Dog.  I liked him.  Sometimes, when no one was looking and so my reputation for not feeding dogs from my plate was safe, I would give him a little something - a piece of chicken skin, a tidbit of meat, or the last bit of soup or whatnot.  Strictly hush-hush, of course.  Reputation and all.

I let him lick me once or twice.  You may not think that's a big deal, but to me it's huge.  I do not let dogs lick me.  It simply isn't done.  Rare exceptions.  Trip was one.

A few times I even invited him up on the couch with me.  Shh, don't tell the others.

Trip was extremely patient with the kids, mine and his family's, even when he would have been justified in a growl, a nudge, a nip.  He loved his hoomans and they loved him.

Note the past tense.

A Very Good Dog crossed the rainbow bridge today.  I was honored to be there with his people as he ended his current earthly journey and left behind grieving hearts, shed his physical form and the cancer that was killing him, and went on to whatever is next.

Many people had the pleasure of knowing him.  He was loved and he will be sorely missed.

His hoomans permitted me to say my blessing as he crossed.  Thank you for that E and K2.  I wept a little.  I am not made of stone.

I say again:

Hail Trip.  Hail the traveler.
May your journey to the other side be an easy one. 
May you leave behind all memory of unhappiness and pain.
May you carry with you all memory of happiness and love.
May you be met with joy and fellowship by those who crossed before you.
And should you return to the circle once more, may those who loved you know and love you again.
Hail Trip.
Hail the traveler.

'Scuse me, there's something in my eye.

Doctor, Doctor

I was supposed to go to the doctor, today, but I didn't feel well enough.

Wait, what?
Hold on, I'll explain.

I was supposed to go in for a regular maintenance thing, but my innards declared war on me during the night, and not going was the better option.

To be honest, I really didn't want to go, anyway.  Why bother?  Nothing's changed, and I'm just not in the mood to be lectured by someone who means well, really he does, but has no idea.

It's not cheap to have a chronic illness, and doubly not cheap to have mental illness on top of that.  I can't afford...my mother can't afford...all those meds, so I keep to the minimum and that doesn't mean injectables or extra pills.  Those meds?  Will have to wait.  Maybe forever.  Whatever.

But the good doctor doesn't get it.  He doesn't seem to understand how depression works, how it's not as simple as just making up my mind.  And sometimes I just don't want to be sternly told what will likely happen if I don't get my shit under control.

Shit under control...heh...ahem...

So maybe my innards were doing me a favor, but instead of just blowing it off I called and rescheduled.  I'll go listen to him and nod and agree because it needs to be done, and maybe one of these days it'll take.  Even when I'm being irresponsible, I try to be responsible about it.

How're you doing, dear reader?

Crummy Letters

Take 24 sheets of high quality paper.  Tri-fold them as for sliding into an envelope for mailing.  Open them.  Stack them up.

That's the pile to my left.  Just beyond that is the pile of torn-open envelopes.  No neatly sliced open bearers of documents, these, but ripped asunder with impatience fueled by the guilt-riddled knowledge that they should have been opened, viewed, signed and sent back years ago.

No, I'm not being hyperbolic.  Years.

24 letters spanning from 2012 to the end of 2018.  I suspect there are others lurking in odd corners of Casa de Crazy, waiting to haunt me.

They come quarterly-ish, issued by a lawyer I've maybe met twice...three times?  I don't know.  He's a nice fellow and I'm likely the bane of his existence, or at least the bane of his filing system.  There, in drawers neatly labelled with names or numbers or whatever he has going on in those solid, sturdy steel receptacles, is a file that isn't as thick as it should be, letters sporadically signed and returned when I find them, when the clouds part, when I remember that I really should be bothering with this, that it's a responsibility I should (and do, really, I do) take seriously, and more than take seriously, I should act seriously about it.

I'll spare you what they're about, these letters, except to say they're really a good thing, nothing criminal or nefarious, a lovely piece of legal footwork that is worthy of admiration and the scant seconds it would take me to sign and return them if only I paid attention.

Depression isn't just being tired.  It isn't just eating what one shouldn't.  It isn't just forgetting or neglecting medication or crying one's self to sleep, or staring into the nothing for hours on end.  It isn't just anger and restlessness and feelings of being of little or no worth.  It isn't just a messy house, messy hair, rumpled clothing, fighting to breathe, hiding in darkened rooms, wanting to scream, wanting oblivion.

It's not dusting.  It's letting the dishes pile up and cat boxes go uncleaned.  It's piles of laundry unwashed or unfolded, un-put-away.  It's un-mopped floors.

And it's letters unsigned for years on end, piling up grey and forlorn until the clouds break and, in a fit of clarity, they're signed and mailed en masse to an unsuspecting lawyer who will likely stare in disbelief as he shuffles through the incomplete chronology of neglect and whisper incantations to himself in a reflexive response to what could possibly be determined as a miracle...or a curse...before passing them on to a secretary or assistant or whatever they call people who patiently take stacks of papers and order them into folders to be kept until perdition or maybe slightly less than forever. 

I'd say I'll do better, now that I'm somewhat caught up again, but while that wouldn't be a lie because I mean to, really I do, it wouldn't exactly be accurate.  Intention isn't action, and it's action that speaks, isn't it?

If there is a tremor in the Force, if you see a brilliance on the horizon and hear joyful trumpets shattering the air with a clarion call, if a wave of warm benevolence washes over you sometime near the end of next week, you will know that somewhere in Redneck Central a terribly nice, wickedly smart, beleaguered lawyer just received the peculiar gift of 24 signed letters the receipt of which, I hope, he hasn't been holding his breathe for but perhaps was holding out hope.