Actually, if it was barren, it would be cleaner.

I have to get this shit off my chest : this apartment is a pig sty. There is garbage everywhere because the garbage can under the sink never, ever gets emptied and has been overflowing for months now. Everything is filthy because nobody ever cleans anything. There’s no room to even put things down because Joe is a hoarder and his hoarded stuff is stacked all over the place. In theory, a third of the living room is mine but there is literally no room for any of my stuff out there. I seriously worry what effect the quality of air in here is having on our health.

The last straw was when Julian got sick. That meant all of us were sick, none of us were even leaving the apartment most of the time, and that meant we just plain stopped getting groceries at all.

So it’s been weeks, coming up on a month, since I’ve had any fresh fruit. Normally, I have a piece with nearly every meal, but that was during the Before Time. And today, I ate out last piece of bread.

No fruit. No bread. I only realized today just how terrible my diet had gotten. I was living off of junk food exclusively. Bread and fruit were my two avenues of actual nutrition.

And yet, I don’t feel like I can complain about any of this because these are all things that I could, in theory, solve myself.

After all, I am physically capable of going to the store and buying some fruit. I am physically capable of cleaning. I can bag the garbage and shove it down the chute.

Psychologically, it’s a whole lot more complicated. I have a lot of issues surrounding feeling totally incompetent and unable to do anything for myself because I suck so very hard at life and I have weird spatial issues and can’t do anything right.

And so forth and so on.

And my roomies know this. It’s why (much to my crushing shame) they have done most of the housework for all the time we have lived together.

But then Joe had his eye surgery and was off work and unable to drive, and somehow that meant no housework got done and we stopped doing Costco or really any other kind of shopping and since then everything has gone to shit.

And I feel so utterly helpless. This is the problem with being so dependent on others. I can’t very well demand that my roomies resume caring for me, something they were doing out of the kindness of their hearts.

And yet, I can’t really fix the problems myself either. I don’t have any money on my card so I can’t order groceries online. My psychological issues (plus not wanting to seem like I am rebuking Joe by doing stuff myself) preclude my cleaning up.

I might just be able to pick up the garbage and stick it down the chute.

But this place would still be filthy, cluttered, and oppressively small for the amount of bullshit Joe insists on keeping around.

It makes me wonder if I would be way healthier living somewhere else. Like maybe get a little bachelor apartment somewhere near a grocery store. Someplace nice and small and therefore easy for me to keep clean on my own.

I am so sick of living in this madness.

There has to be a way out of here.

I just have to find it.

More after the break.

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Hot and bothered

Today has been rough.

Why? Because something weird is going on in my body. I have this headache that keeps coming back and I feel too hot and too cold at the same time and I keep getting this feeling like I am being squeezed gently but firmly by a giant.

The headache is sinus-related (thanks for nothing, Reactine Complete) so I can stop it for a little while via blowing my nose and/or cleaning my ears (that fluid has to come out one way or another), but the rest of this shit is a mystery to me.

And I am worried. Not quite emergency room level worried, but still plenty worried. This is some weird and unpleasant voodoo weirdness and I have no idea WTF is going on.

Is someone holding a doll of me over an open flame somewhere? Sure feels like it.

It might be a reaction to the antibiotic I am taking, Cephalexin (sounds like it has something to do with squid). According to this page, Side effects include :

• diarrhea;
• dizziness, feeling tired;
• headache, joint pain; or
• vaginal itching or discharge.

I have all but one of those.

Nothing about feeling hot as an oven, though. And that plus the squeezed feeling is what is making me miserable right now.

Specifically, it is making it hard to think (damn you, adrenal response) and as I have noted before, a lot of what I do with my day is thinking intensive. so my actions have been somewhat curtailed.

Luckily, there are two things I can almost always do : scroll Facebook, and read.

So now I am rereading All Creatures Great And Small by James Herriot for the first time in a long time but by no means the first time at all.

I adore everything about Herriot’s books, and going back to them is like revisiting an old friend. His books are filled with warmth and wit and wholesome goodness, and reading them makes me feel safe and warm.

So that’s my little refuge in this mad, mad age. James Herriot.

Makes as much sense as anything else, I suppose.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

P. S. Couldn’t figure out where to fit this in, so here goes :

Get this. I am around fifty pages away from finishing Dragon Wing by Tracy Hickman and Janet Weis, and I turn the page, and the last fifty pages just…. aren’t there. Instead, there is a reprint of pages 19-60.

What a fucking bummer! I am the victim of a printing error. Now if I want to know how it all ends, I have to buy another copy or just plain pirate it.

Probably the latter, honestly.

Anyhow. goodbye til tomorrow.