My Missing Month

I feel like an entire lifetime has gone by since my laptop broke. And it's only been a month and a half? Maybe longer? That's definitely the lifetimes of a few things. Bugs mostly.

Let's see, here's a partial list, in order of things that I can remember....

1) Oh, I gave Nina cat away to Beth, in preparation for my move next fall, and I miss her terribly a lot. I hope they are getting along. Eddy has still not figured out that the intruder cat is gone. I wonder if she ever will. That cat is crazy, her little mammalian brain is broken and I probably did that, and yet I feel no guilt whatsoever because I feed her. It's a fucked up master/slave relationship. I'm starting to not believe in pets. 

2) I got into schools! Someone actually wants me! I'm still waiting to see if they want me enough to pay for me. But this time next year I'll be living in North Carolina or New Orleans, depending. So that's terribly exciting, right? WRONG. It's just terrifying. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. I have to pack up my apartment in like, a month. I have to fix a bunch of things before I even think about telling my landlord I'm moving. I have to throw out everything I own. Then I have to find a place to live, and a part time job, and a place to LIVE. Sorry guys, I don't have time to say goodbye to any of you. Just assume I'm gone already.

3) I went shooting some more. I'm still pretty good at it. This will probably be a handy date skill to know either place I move to. Yes, I have date skills. Knowing how to shoot a gun. Knowing how to eat fish you don't like. Drinking scotch straight. Not immediately screaming at someone when they try to argue about healthcare with you. The thing is I really like being good with a gun, because I've been so scared of them my whole life. I don't find it stress relieving or empowering though, I don't get a rush from it, other than the rush that you normally get from being pretty good at something. I don't stand there and picture people I hate when I'm shooting, which is what one Arizona lady told me she did to keep her emotions in check. See, that's terrifying. Somewhere out there, someone could be shooting a gun repeatedly into a piece of cardboard visualizing you. This is vaguely like knowing that someone out there is always masturbating thinking about you, somewhere. I can't decide which one is worse. Is it better to be hated or objectified? But that's not me. I'm too busy trying to hold my wrists steady and not fuck up and shoot the cable holding the target, cause they charge you a lot of money for that.

What's funny is I'm WAY better with a real gun, than I am playing with a fake video game gun.

4) We went to the beach for the first time of the year. It got cold and rainy as soon as we got there, sprinkled in fits and starts for about fifteen minutes then stopped. Those of us who stuck it out saw this amazing thing happen once the sun came out again - the beach steamed? A fog rose up from the sand and drifted around the feet of all the people wandering around,  sort of whispered it's way among the dunes and barriers, then faded away. Beach ghosts. I didn't know that happened!

5) It's been beautiful, sunny, and warm most days this Spring. I've had the windows open since March. I feel cheated though. I had planned on this being my last Northeast Ohio winter, and I was going to be a full snow bunny, I had plans for building an igloo, all sorts of snow painting, snowshoes on the lake, ect. NONE OF IT HAPPENED. The lake never even froze. I'm assuming this means I will be able to go swimming by May. Let me rephrase that: I will be swimming by May. If Lake Erie doesn't want me to die of hypothermia, it better get it's shit together.

6) I took off a whole week from work to write. Doesn't that sound dreadfully romantic and artistic and dedicated? It wasn't. It was fucking horrible. The first half of the week I sat at my computer trying to write a commercially viable romance novel to sell, and ended up writing a lot of scenes about past one night stands that all came off as really weird and fucked up. I had convinced myself by Wednesday that absolutely every time I've had sex, it's been unnatural. Then Thursday I woke up from  a great story dream. I love those morning, most of my good stories I dream first, so Thursday was great, and Friday. Saturday I started to get pissed off again. By Tuesday, when I had to go back to work, I had 6 chapters each of two different books, and had no fun whatsoever the whole week, and I'm pretty sure I gained 5 pounds and a lung tumor. But I still want to be a writer, barely, so there's that.

Mostly not having a laptop has meant I've been doing a lot of inconsequential stuff - shows and bars and sitting around watching Netflix. When it first happened, I tried to be positive, and told myself it was good to have a vacation from the computer, the blog the facebook the twitter. But you know what happens when I'm not constantly writing down my thoughts? I stop thinking. It's the weirdest thing, but totally true. My brain atrophies immediately. Without a laptop, I'm just a norm. A fat bored kinda mean norm who sort of hates everyone and also her own face a lot. The internet is my prozac it turns out. Whatever, those days are behind us. I have a fucking whole apartment to pack up.