February 16, 2006

I've discovered that I'm a tremendous crybaby.

It's not a bolt from the blue or anything; I've always been one of those people who cries in anger and frustration. Whenever I'm furious, get the wet hot eyeballs and the choky throat. I used to surrender to that funny, gasping, hiccuppy sobbing all the time. But somewhere along the line, I started holding my breath instead of really crying. But now that I've started up again, I can't seem to stop. I can't stop holding my breath, either, doubly vexing.

Last night, this stupid fucking computer crashed again. Overcome by impatience & frustration, I started to reformat the hard drive, knowing my data was all on a second hard drive. Then I remembered the pictures of Herman in her Halloween costume were on my desktop, and I just lost it. Once I settled down, I remembered I'd just killed my mail, too, and I lost it again.

I'm even crying right now. It's humiliating.

Ron's away again. He's out with Attack Formation. Their drummer fucked up his hand. I'm a little peevish about only getting him back for a couple of days (I was totally wrong about grieving in solitude by the way--I felt so much better with company). But I'm happy he's playing--his not playing music to move out here is kind of a hovering wraith of discontent, so I'm delighted to banish it any which way. But without another human person around to invoke my self-control, I have completely succumbed to my inner crybaby. And she won't quit.

On my own, it typically takes me a whole year to kill a computer; this one crapped out in less than two months. I knew I'd regret buying one of those crappy pre-loaded HP jobbies, all fat and sputtering with a bunch of garbage software. It was cheap and I was lazy and now I'm paying the price. But it's going back to the store as soon as I get a replacement. It took everything I had not to smash it to the floor in a wailing rage at 3 in the morning, but I knew even Sam's wouldn't take it back all smashed up.

So instead of smashy, I played a few rounds of Scrabble and watched a show about Japan and decided I needed to work on my humility and wished I had watched the show earlier and maybe absorbed something before wiping my hard drive, but oh well, what can you do, and went to sleep.

Now I have to decide whether to gamble on another PC and keep all my software or buy a Mac and go without. (And don't Macs come with a bunch of garbage preloaded, too?) It's a pointless question, because even after I return the PC, I can't really afford a Mac. I haven't gotten the last part of my book advance yet, and on top of the usual expenses, the heating bill on this place is sloppy, and I had all those vet bills, and I've been doing an awful lot of comfort shopping the last couple weeks--which is better, probably, than comfort eating or comfort drinking, but... actually, it's probably worse. I'm going to end up in some kind of a support group, warding off creditors and trying to explain all the yarn.

Okay, it's official. I'm not allowed to buy any yarn for the rest of the month. And no loopholes. Well, one. I may pay for auctions I bid on before making the proclamation.

The yarn is completely out of control. At the beginning of the year, I vowed to conquer the yarn. I would rule the yarn with an iron fist. But I'm not so hot with authority, even my own authority, so all the rules of course just made yarn more irresistible. I went from NO YARN to NO YARN WITHOUT A SPECIFIC PROJECT IN MIND to I ONLY GET NEW YARN AFTER I'VE KNIT SOMETHING NEW WITH EXISTING YARN to ONLY IF IT'S A REALLY GOOD DEAL to I NEED TO VERIFY DELIVERY FOR THE BOOK to just going hog wild, buying everything in sight, way worse than before the rules. It's ridiculous. A person can only knit so much (although I'm actually testing that notion).

Which reminds me, I need to contact all the amazing ladies who helped me knit. I'm months behind. I'm awful. I thought by now, I'd've graciously thanked all my knitters and models and distributed presents. Oh, no. And I have a package I need to send to Scotland as well. That one's 3 months late, I think. Fuckity fuck. And I lost my master GTD list along with my mail, so I don't even have a map for my chaos.

But I did just learn that Ron still has the Herman pictures on his camera. And the furnace is firing up again. And the cat's pretty pleasing, for a cat. She's small and soft like a rabbit and follows me around. And I do live in a lovely old school building with my very own gymnasium. It's practically a compound, really. And haven't I always wanted a compound? So there's that.

1.31.06