I miss not having to think about what my blog post title would be.

Anyhow, heya nice people! Today’s been a bottle of good and bad things that has been shaken in a paint can shaker for a few years, so I am in what one might call a mixed mood at the moment.

But don’t worry, the bad stuff isn’t really bad, just irritating, and the good stuff was great!

Here’s a rough itinerary of my day :

10:43 am – Joe, Julian, and I depart for my therapy appointment. Damn I love living so much closer to it now. We got there with six minutes to spare. Fab.

11 am – Therapy. I can’t say it’s been going super well lately. It hasn’t been going badly, mind you, but I can’t shake the feeling that we are not really connecting with what’s really wrong. It’s up to me (as I am the person I can control) to fix that by trying to come in with something deeper and juicier than just whatever is on my mind that day.

I mean, that’s what this blog is for.

I know that I have times when I feel very wounded lately. Stricken, even, like I got struck with a poison arrow and my body is fighting the poison and losing. I think I have reached the ragged edge of a particular inner precipice. This pushing myself into being more active is, of course, meeting a lot of inner resistance. I feel like my inner steamroller is crushing a lot of ice lately as I try to rid myself of all the gunk and junk and unexpressed spunk in my mind.

Take that how you may.

It’s like I have to let the coldness out. Decades of self-induced numbness have to be overcome and for that to happen, I have to open myself up to let the coldness out and the sunshine in. I have to melt. Spring must spring.

Wrong season for that, I know. Relax, it’s a metaphor.

And I need to somehow tame my unchecked superego. My therapist was right about that, mine is out of control, and is completely dominating my id and my ego. Basic Freudian theory says that this is clearly out of balance and unhealthy. It’s almost like I am one of his patients with an internalized super harsh German parent to deal with.

Which is rich because I had the exact opposite kind of childhood.

Oh right, my day.

12:10 pm : We arrive at the UPS store. I got a notice that there was a package waiting for me. You can’t pick up a package at UPS without photo ID, which I lack, but luckily Joe was with me and it was still cool. It doesn’t have to be your photo ID, it just has to be from someone with the same address, so, no prob. I am handed an intriguingly large Amazon package. What could be in there, I wonder?

12:25 pm : I go shopping at the IGA. Normally I am a Safeway or Save-on dude, but my mother sent me a $20 IGA gift card, so I happily pick up some stuff. Some snack crackers (CHEESE NIPS YO!), some eggs, some half-and-half to use in baking, and a fresh bottle of peppermint/mint extract for baking things that are all minty and stuff.

Have I mentioned that the combination of mint and chocolate does wild things to my brain? It’s beyond delicious.

Anyhow, I gather my items, go to the cash register, and hand the nice hunchbacked lady (not kidding) the gift card, only to have her look at it like I just handed her a picture of me blowing an alien. Oh dear, she had never seen that card before. I had no fear, because the card said IGA right on it, along with some other brands like Sobey’s. (Side note : we have both back home. )

She scans it… no dice. Not recognized. She scans it again…. nope. Tries a third time at my insistence, then tells me that the card, which says IGA right on it, doesn’t work at IGAs in BC.

Because apparently, the trans-Canada magic that makes IGAs work can’t make it over the Rockies. Works in Alberta and the rest of Canada, but not in BC. In BC, IGA is owned by totally different people.

Well what the FUCK. I am clearly growing more pissed off so she calls the head cashier over. She tells me the same thing. I keep saying “But it says IGA on it!”. She eventually gets her manager (the store manager, I assume) to come over and also say the same damned thing. At that point, I figured I am not going to get a fresh answer from anyone, so I pay for my stuff and go.

But I am still mad about it. Why? Because the gift card was a gift from my mother. So them rejecting it felt a lot like them rejecting my mother. The shock of it all and the emotional connection plus the sheer illogic of it all combined to make me a lot more forceful and insistent than I usually am.

In fact, I think I scared the poor little hunchback woman (I am large and hence frightening when mad, especially to itty bitty people like her) and I feel bad about that. It wasn’t her fault that the system made no goddamned sense.

Oh, and the kicker? Turns out that, according to the manager anyhow, the gift card will work… at Safeway. Where I normally shop. Mother fucker.

On the plus side, when I came home and opened my gift (which I had been instructed to do by the sender), it turned out to be a whole big set of every baking pan I asked for this year! w00t! 🙂

So now I got 2 eight inch round baking pans, a one-dozen muffin tin, a roasting pan, a loaf pan… and two more I don’t recall.

I also had a frustrating time involving locked doors, stairways, and a parking garage, but whatever.

That’s all my words for today. I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow!