Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"If I could think that I had sent a spark to those who come after I should be ready to say Goodbye." -- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Sunday was not as productive as Saturday. I'd hoped to finish fixing the problem on Sheepie's computer, deliver that to Bowie, and drop in on my mother. I did none of that. Saturday's productivity was largely painkiller-assisted; Sunday I wasn't hurting so much but I was moving slowly and easily distracted, and realized that my choices were to take more drugs or go back to sleep. Perhaps I should've taken the drugs (though I've run out of ibuprofen, and they don't work as well if I don't take ibuprofen with them), but I'm still twitchy about using narcotics too much or too often, so I was hesitant to handle two days in a row that way.

I crashed at 17:00, not having set the VCR to tape Alias. I woke briefly a few times when Perrine came in and started clawing the box spring. I accept that keeping a cat means that some things are going to get scratched, but there are a few things I still try to convince her not to shred. I'd fallen asleep on my left side, so I didn't have to wake up enough to roll over -- I just reached down and swatted in her direction or grabbed her skull or her paws (whichever my hand found first). I woke for real at 20:30, convinced it was either Monday or Tuesday morning and that I had overslept and missed something important. (Tangential distraction: Why can't I set the LEDs on the front of a VCR to 24-hour time?) It eventually dawned on me that it was nighttime, but I remained groggy for a while. I set the VCR and went downstairs to feed myself and Perrine. I've been up but not especially functional since then. I've got to call BGE and pay my electric bill with my ATM card over the phone before I fall asleep again, so they don't cut off my power this afternoon. I'm nearly out of airtime on my phone though, so I'll have to unplug the modem and use the landline ... and the touch-tone phone on the landline is hard to hear and annoying. (I've still got a rotary-dial phone that works really well, but I can't use it to interact with the automated payment system.)

So I keep thinking I should take something or go back to sleep, except that I really don't want to take something, and I'm not really sleepy right now, just headachy (and achy in other places, just not as bad as yesterday) and slow. I absolutely must go grocery shopping in the morning -- I've got little enough food in the house right now that I wind up standing in the kitchen in a daze, trying to figure out which of the available options I'm closest to almost being in the mood for, and I'm out of chocolate. (It doesn't help that the Prilosec seems to be less effective lately, so I'm also trying to figure out what's going to be least uncomfortable in my stomach. I'm hoping this is temporary.) I'm trying to figure out from the pattern of muscle aches, joint aches, headaches, thirst, and nasal discomfort, whether this is "just" a big fibromyalgia flare, the beginnings of something flu-ish, or the leading edge of a nasty spring pollen season. (I haven't noticed buds or blooms on trees, but the tree I usually notice first blew down during the hurricane.)

I still keep noticing how pretty Perrine is, and the particularly dance-like ways in which she moves sometimes. I expect cats to be graceful in general (though there are exceptions), and most of the time Perrine moves in simply ordinary feline ways, but there are these arching leaps, higher than she really needs to clear what she's jumping over, that I find mesmerizing. I also like watching her hunt. Saturday night she was crouching in the kitchen sink, staring at the stove, and something about her posture made me think that she was using the sink much as she might use tall grass, as a sort of blind.

still_asking and john_tangent dropped by Saturday night to say hello and show off some niftythings they had with them.

I'm behind on email, LJ comments, and snailmail, and I've got a couple of tasks in front of me that -- between the sizes of their first steps and the way I've been feeling -- just seem completely overwhelming so that I keep being afraid to start them. I'm going to have to figure out what to-do list items I can reasonably just punt. OTOH, I'm completely caught up on dishes -- one of the signs of how well or poorly I'm coping in general -- a welcome change from the past month. And I finally managed to download the cool tune that realinterrobang recently pointed out. And I entered the stack of bills that I'd kept not getting around to into a spreadsheet so I can see just how much trouble I'm in (it's bad). That's when I noticed the cut-off notice from BGE -- when I was sorting out finances on Saturday. Whoops.

For the past two months, traffic on my web site has been noticeably higher than the level it had been at for about a year or so. At first I thought it was just a random bump, but it's been two months ... I wonder whether I've recently picked up some new inbound links or something. The only problem is that last month I used nearly twice the web throughput I'm supposed to get for free from my ISP. I'm usually a little over, but this is more than a little. Fortunately they've never gotten around to charging me for the excess (though they mention the price in my nightly traffic summary); still, I'm afraid to count on that.

And that's probably enough procrastination for now. Time to unplug the modem and pay my electric bill.

badmagic mentioned rather pointed graffiti he'd seen. (Hey, somebody take a photo for me, ok?)