silverai

I wrote this thing as a daylog write-up for another site, so it's less blog-like and more article-like, plus in the interests of narrative I played up some elements, omitted others to flavour the truth, and stayed gender neutral. It's all true though. Read on below for the thing.

A few days ago, I couldn't get my wedding ring off.

I take my ring off quite often; before showers, before massages, before particular kinds of exercise. This time was before a shower, so after a few attempts and methods, I gave up and showered with it on. I've had it off several times since then, but it was certainly a warning for the future, and so now I must make a decision.

I got married 6 years ago. At the time when I received the ring, I was 5 kgs* less than I am now. At one point, I successfully made an effort to lose weight by reducing carbs and dairy, going down to 22 kgs under where I am now. The ring was loose then, but still fit fine. I like pasta and cheese though, and decided I preferred the delicious food more than I enjoyed being slim. Now after a number of years of slowly gaining weight, I have regained what I dropped plus more, and I am the heaviest weight I've ever been.

Over the last six months, the ring has more and more often given me a little trouble to get off occasionally. Slowly I've watched the last couple of kgs adding on these last few months, knowing it was going to get to a point when my finger was too big for my ring, knowing I was going to have to decide to lose weight again or get my ring resized. For many, this would not be a tough decision. Socially, losing weight is the only answer.

I gained weight again because I consciously chose food. It was a decision I weighed up (pun intended) the pros and cons on before deciding about. It was not born of being lazy, of not being able to lose weight. It was literally because my happiness at eating a wide variety of tasty and delicious things was important to me, to be able to enjoy any food at any time in any amount without having to refuse things due to a diet. To be able to slowly eat another helping because the taste was amazing, even though I was already physically sated. These things are important to me, even though it is socially taboo to think that way.

I had just woken up, and due to time constraints I needed a shower straight away. My body was hot from sleep still, so my finger was swollen from the hot blood. Ordinarily, I get up and potter around with no purpose for a while, allowing myself to slowly wake up properly. My blood has usually cooled by the time I have a shower and I can easily take my ring off. Not that morning. I tried to ease it off, using tricky motions that can sometimes work. Sometimes it sticks a bit but then comes off still. Not this time, it stuck and stuck quite solidly. I pushed the ring back on my finger quickly before the blocked blood could swell my finger more and make it impossible to remove my ring without medical intervention. Next I tried running it under cold water. The water wasn't cold enough, and my finger was still extra swollen from having had the ring stuck solidly once already. I did not have time to wait for my blood to cool or to go try ice. I showered with it on instead.

I am loathe to resize my ring. As much as I have consciously chosen food over weight, I still did enjoy being slim. Liking one thing (food) does not preclude liking another opposed thing (slim). Now that the possibility of resizing my ring is staring me in the face and demanding to be seen, it makes me realise that despite my decision for food and lack of action for diet, there is still part of me hoping to get slimmer again, or at least drop 5kgs. That part doesn't want me to resize my ring. That part of me wants to do the socially acceptable answer.

It is one or the other, and a decision must be made.

*5kg is roughly 11 pounds.

Just signed in for the first time in years, as a friend of mine has commenced a 100 day challenge and is using dreamwidth to track it, and I wanted to comment on a couple of posts. Then I trundled down memory lane on my own posts for a while, which was interesting. Looks like I need to update my journal style though, as either changes to dreamwidth have made it interact badly with mobile viewing, or it was always bad for mobile viewing and I never noticed before due to previously always being on my PC. Current style has a single word per line, which is painful.

Next I hit up my reading page, wondering if any of my friends still posted. Apparently they do, about things I am interested in, and I should totally attempt to remember to check back every week or so to keep caught up.

Edit: Found the thing making my journal style terrible, it was as simple as drastically reducing the value for "Size of left and right margins". Yay! I like the green and the left sidebar, so I'm glad I get to keep them.

About a month or so ago, Zig announced he was planning to go bushwalking for two or three days. So this week he took Thursday and Friday off work, and started out on the Bibbulman track from Mundaring Weir yesterday morning, planning to be picked up from Brookton Highway on Saturday evening. I wasn't too worried about him going alone because 1) he had a phone with good reception and GPS, and 2) Zig is resourceful. I was going to miss him, but I was also looking forward to some time at home alone. Last night, he called to say he was going to cut it short (the track had more 'hills for no reason' than he thought it would) and would get picked up this evening instead.

I found myself unsettled. I found myself less able to enjoy the time alone I still had left, instead dwelling on the time to come I would miss out on. I'm finding myself resentful. It's annoying to feel this way, but I feel this way anyway. Time alone occasionally can be rejuvenating, and I had settled into expecting it for two nights, only to have it, as it were, snatched away from me. I hadn't quite realised how important time at home alone was - before he left I was more missing him in advance, although there was still looking forward to time alone a bit.

Zig doesn't go out that much, and I'm often with him when he does, or out somewhere else myself instead. Time alone at home doesn't happen that often for me. I think I'm going to encourage him to be absent from the house for a couple of hours at night sometimes, visit his friends or family or something. Because clearly, if him coming home early has affected me in this way, it's something that matters more than I thought.

There was a Facebook meme going around semi-recently, where someone would give you a year and you'd write about what happened. Somebody sent me "2001", and I earmarked it for later, since I felt I would do it more justice outside of the restricted FB character limit. Finally got the motivation for a journal post...that particular motivation can be so slippery sometimes.

So, 2001: a Revisitation.

I was 19. I had been in a relationship with Zig since 1998, and so I was now currently living with Zig at his family's place - we were in a place called "The Studio", separated from the main house by an open-air passageway. We still shared the family dinners, and the bathroom in the house.
I was doing Year 12 at Cyril Jackson, having finally gone back to complete Yr 11 the previous year. It was good to be around all my friends who I'd met the previous year, and many of those friendships still persist to today. I was also on the student committee and the 4 or 5 of us on it organised a smashing medieval ball for everyone at the school, we did excellent work!

2001 took its rough turn about midway*.

Zig and I moved out together to where we are currently still living and renting, just a couple of minutes down the road from his family home. Spent the last of the estate money from Grandad on a washing machine so that we didn't have to keep handwashing (I'd dwindled the money down by living off it for the previous year or so)(oh, and still have that washing machine, yay!). Shortly after, the Yr 12 mid-year exams took place. I was in the middle of an English exam, staring at an essay, and I just got to thinking "why am I doing this?" over and over. So I collected my things, stood up, and walked out of that exam and out of Yr 12 entirely. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and was completely at loose ends.

Hm, and now I'm writing this, I think all this time I've been smooshing 2001 and 2002 together in my head. I went to write the second half of year 2001, and then remembered it couldn't possibly have happened in 2001 because I didn't get my license until half-way through 2002. So I guess 2001 wasn't so jam-packed as I was remembering. I guess I was just at loose ends for most of the rest of the year? I think I got onto Centrelink payments at some point too (and lost them the next year).

And that was 2001.

*Which wasn't as rough as I thought, since 2001 and 2002 are now separated in my brain again, heh.

A lot has happened since August. I've been stressed out, had upheavals in the life around me, had low points, made concious decisions to do things differently, and have made big breakthrough decisions about how I do things and live life.

Starting small, and recapping a little on the last post, my legs: Doc sent me to an allergist, who was also an immunologist. That guy applied the label fibromyalgia to me. Being aware of this has made big differences, knowing what's behind stuff helps me to forgive it happening, helps me change my reaction to them. I'm only on the lower end of the scale of what it can be like, it doesn't affect my life in a huge way but they reckon my legs are just a part of that, along with my occasional drops in energy. I've also noticed that sometimes I get hyper aware of things touching me, my clothes, the bedsheets, people touching my arm, etc. Knowing what is behind the hyper-awareness helps me not be irritated by it, helps me process it and to a certain extent ignore it. Back to my legs; for a while I was staying off excessive sugar and off alcohol on work nights as I found that they could sometimes trigger my legs. Since then I've discovered that drinking water at the same time as the alcohol reduces the trigger a lot, so I guess it was the dehydration doing it mostly. I also do 1-2 minutes of stretches before bed and take an Advil along with my Lyrica tablet at bedtime. My legs haven't stopped me sleeping for a while now, my gameplan that was slowly worked out over a few months has been effective.

So how have things with my health and life looked over the last year or so? In May or so I quit the big band. After that I had shoulder issues so I didn't go to the brass band either for a while. Then I had sleep and energy issues what with my restless legs and all during which I didn't do much of anything except work. So after that got better I decided I would drop the brass band also, although I'd still be available for the occasional performance. Sometime in Spring I stopped going to the regular steak nights with friends and only went occasionally. So very slowly all my commitments were cut down and removed. In September and October I ended up being insanely busy and stressed. I don't remember all the reasons why, but there were a number of things going on. In November I spent to first half simply wiped out, and the second half trying to get some wedding plans done while barely semi-recovered. Also in November my closest friend left to live in Canberra. December ended up full of stress for various reasons, including work being busy, having no replacement at work (I even ended up working because of it while I was way too sick to do anything much), social commitments, present shopping, and lack of my friend. Was feeling very wiped out towards the end, but was barely hanging on with the promise of the Xmas break as a light at the end of the tunnel. Well. Xmas break I was very wiped out. But I still dragged myself to a friend's birthday and various Xmas gatherings and necessary shopping and such. There were a few times when I didn't do anything, but I was so wiped that they were as effective as mosquito bites. So January 4th came around and work started again. I tanked. Completely and utterly tanked.

Suddenly it was all too much. I had dug into my energy reserves and hit the end. I hadn't even realised I was so close, although in hindsight it was pretty bloody obvious. But the stress and the lack of adequate downtime and lack of support and lack of any replacement at work still after such a long time and no sign of anything being done about it and the usual insane busyness that happens at work after the xmas break. Yup, I tanked. Big time. I was crying at work. I had anxiety all the time. I was dragging myself around with no energy, managing to somehow get through work each day then surviving the drive home before collapsing in a pile of tears and drainedness. I was miserable and there was no light at the end of the tunnel. I was very close to a nervous breakdown, but narrowly avoided it. The end of that first week saw the beginning of clawing out of the quagmire, of inching away from the cliff edge. This happened with learning that there were finally plans in motion for a replacement. There was no good timeframe, but even knowing something was happening was good. The next week I find out that I could actually get my usual Thursday off after all. That was a blessed relief. I still had to go in and open up shop and close at the end, but in between I was free. That day off turned out even better, with my temporary replacement deciding they could also close shop. My temp replacement and I are friends, and he decided that although he had issues with doing my job, he was prepared to do them anyway so that I could have futher time off. So I took the following Monday off too. Oh joy, oh bliss! Having two days off in a row with no commitments, no pressures, no requirements. The peace I felt on that Sunday was amazing, it was nirvana. That week I was still crying a lot, still had anxiety, still had no energy. I was having trouble at bedtime because going to sleep meant that suddenly it would be time to have to drag myself to work again, and it was almost unbearable. But it was getting easier to cope, and things were very slowly improving. Zig flip flopped between being amazingly supportive and leaving me dangling alone as he is fairly self contained and semi-expects me to have the same skills. There was an amazingly supportive moment when he told me during a crying storm "Just quit. This is affecting you so much, just quit and we will deal with it". However things had improved enough that I kept hanging on.

It is February now, and things have changed. There have been ups and downs, but every day the cliff edge gets more distant. Things have changed for the better, and I have changed my approach to my life, and I am conciously paying attention to what I'm doing, how I'm thinking, what my reactions to things are and doing my best to change them. I have a replacement now, and was able to take a week off work recently which I filled with rest and relaxation, with restorative processes, and a few catchups with select friends. A couple of days after my holiday the anxiety finally stopped. I have a casual helper for two late afternoons a week as well as Saturdays, which helps a lot. And I have a plan to quit in May/June, which took the last month and a half to slowly form into a concrete plan. I don't have anything lined up after that, but that doesn't matter. Zig is being incredibly supportive of this plan, and the plan makes sense on many many levels. I am not sharing this with anyone at work (other than that one friend/colleague), I will most likely pass in my notice in April or May, and will allow enough time for someone to be adequately trained to take my place. I am fairly certain that I will have left before my wedding day in June.

There are a few months between now and then. I am using this time to adjust myself, embrace myself, put things into practice, create habits that allow me to perpetually support and love and nuture myself. I am using this time to notice how I interact with the world and improve upon it, to take personal responsibility for everything I have done for my life to be how it currently is, and to use that personal responsibility to finally change things for the better. I am adjusting my reactions, my expectations, my vibration. I am doing this so that whatever comes next in my life will be different and improved, so that I don't find myself in the same situation again, so that "same shit, different bucket" is not what I find my self doing. I am making these adjustments with the deep inner knowingness that every small thing I change brings me that much closer to an alternate future, to a happier and more fulfilling place.

I am connecting with myself. I am connecting with the faeries. I am opening to the universe and its myriad possibilities. I have a mix of feelings, but I've needed to do this for a while. I have tried before and not succeeded, but now there is no option except to succeed. I have hit so close to the lowest I can get, and I cannot accept the idea of being there again. Change must happen, and it is up to me to love myself and treasure myself enough to go through the painful and joyful process of reaching towards myself and my potential.

So I eventually got to the doctor, maybe 5 weeks after onset of crapness. He knew all about restless legs, and prescribed me a drug called Lyrica, which makes my nerve endings not care about my legs complaining, thus meaning my sleep is not disrupted and I get get down to theta and delta instead of just REM and back up again over and over. I've been having fabulous sleep these last few weeks, and life is a bit more normal. I'm still trying to keep socialising down a bit, as part of me still feels overloaded. But, you know me, I end up socialising anyway! A little less socialising than "normal" though.

My credit card debt was high before I went to Europe years ago, and went even higher while over there for 5 weeks. Since then, I have paid it off to about the level it was before I went gallivanting, but for the last year or so the total has remained about the same. I'm kinda sick of the debt, so I've starting budgeting a heap more strictly than before. Strict budgeting was depressing me quite a lot before (as normal), but I've hit a good groove these last couple weeks. Buying lunch and dinner all the time, plus often a pie for breakfast, was a big part of the budget spenditure. Now, if Zig doesn't cook dinner and has already eaten, I go home and eat nachos for dinner instead of buying take-out, it works out to about $3-$4 for the meal. I've been eating healthier lunches, which is cheaper than buying it everyday. Food during work is a tin of salmon, small tub of yoghurt, baby mesculan salad (the packet lasts a week), an apple, and mandarins from my bro's tree. Plus 2-3 pots of herbal tea. Breakfast has been oatmeal made with rice milk (to reduce dairy intake) and some honey on top. Other budget cuts include not spending as much going out and about, and reconsidering my urge to go to shows (such as The Cat Empire playing soon which I would love to see) against my desire to get rid of this debt. I still feel frustrated to some extent, I feel like I should see greater rewards sooner if I'm restricting myself so much, however I KNOW that I'm getting somewhere and I just have to keep believing it too. Part of me despairs when recurring costs like chiropracter and health tablets are a constant drain, and other costs are coming up such as birthdays and my Halloween party and then Xmas! Plus I'm to see an allergist specialist at end of September that won't be cheap. That's no excuse not to keep trying though, still better to keep the spenditure down so that the costs don't make the card total go up higher than otherwise.

Zig's 30th birthday party in July was good to begin with, then was upsetting, then ended alright again. Basically, the first ever fight happened at one of our parties. The people who started it were not normal attendees, and are not welcome back again. I feel terrible for my friend who turned up 20 minutes before shit happened, and copped the worst of it. However the guy who punched him despite Zig standing in the middle playing mediator? that guy broke his hand. So my friend, Zig, and I feel a little bit better that he didn't get away with it. Wish it had happened at Halloween or even just a normal birthday party, not at Zig's 30th. Nevertheless, it happened and is now as resolved as it gets. Still heartsore over it when memory occurs - after getting to sleep that night I had terrible dreams before waking that shook me badly.

In lighter news, we've had a stray rabbit in the backyard off and on for weeks. It's a big white fat one, with one ear up and one ear flopped. I discovered he had a taste for lavender only after my three little plants in pots got eaten to within an inch of life. They are now planted in the garden (finally, after months!) with little triangular fence fortresses made out of the fridge shelves which Zig pulled out of the beer fridges to make room for fermenter kegs. We also discovered why the rabbit seemed to like the cat, and the cat seemed to dislike the rabbit. After noticing the rabbit always going towards the back of the cat, Zig experimented by holding the cat still. The rabbit went behind the cat...and then hopped _onto_ the cat. The cat was not amused and swiped at the rabbit. Hasn't stopped the rabbit still going for him, or the cat teasing the rabbit by sitting on a chair out of reach with a paw ready to claw. Two Mondays ago, so Zig told me, he saw a lady in the front yard peering into the back at the rabbit. He asked if she wanted it back and she said yes and expressed concern that Zig wouldn't be able to catch it. He caught it the next day simply by picking it up (animals always seem to be at ease with Zig). So he took it down the road to where it lived and gave the box with the rabbit in it to the girl there. He told me so that night when I was home, and mused that perhaps we should then take down the lavender fortresses. I told him better to leave them just in case. Just as well, since the rabbit was back again in the morning! Zig said that he wasn't going to bother catching it again, since they couldn't be bothered making things good to keep rabbits in. They haven't come back and asked for the rabbit again yet either. Rabbit doesn't hang around quite as much as before though, which I'm sure the cat is happy about!

There's yellow dandelion daisies blooming on the roadside. I don't care what the weather does, those yellow dandelion daisies always mean Spring is here to me. When I see them, I get nostalgic for Bindoon. I grew up on a hobby farm in Bindoon, and the long driveway had masses of yellow down the sides in Spring, it was so glorious! Seeing the daisies makes me think that perhaps it's time to take a roadtrip to Bindoon someday soon.

Now, if you've read this far, then you will get advance notice of my Halloween party this year! This year's theme is Masquerade, so time to get masks organised and brush up on your mysterious air. It will be a week earlier than when other Halloween parties may be - it is on Saturday 23rd October. The usual deal applies: at Zig and I's house, dinner and beer provided, a few of your friends are welcome with you if you let me know for catering and courtesy purposes.

I have an irrational love of boxes. I don't really use them, even the cool ones that I wish I did use somehow, but something inside me goes "SQUEEEEEE!" about boxes, especially the small cute ones. I have a little useless pile of them at home that I can't bring myself to get rid of, although I try not to add to it.

The last few soups I made in the slow cooker have all had this odd taste to them that detracted from the flavour horribly. The second last soup I made, I didn't put in any of the previous things that I thought might have caused it, but it was still there. Thus, I worked out that it was the half a bulb of fresh garlic I put in for the last several - the slow cooker made the flavour come out way too strong and changed it from a straight garlic flavour to this sort of manky taste. So, I made soup again last night, and put in a single teaspoon of the crushed type from the bottle, and it was perfect! This is a relief, as Zig had pretty much said he wasn't going to eat any more soups I made. I just have to convince him to have some of yesterday's leftover soup for dinner tonight, since he went out last night and escaped trying any then!

Still tired, but behind my eyes where it doesn't show on the outside to the world so much. I'm mostly functional otherwise and can almost forget I'm tired occasionally. Still affecting me though, I wigged out and cried a lot on Sunday, and get a random flash of "must cry!" a few times through the day - just a flash of feeling, no actual tears. And my legs are still bugging me which is annoying. There's this thing on tonight that I'd love to have gone to, but I'm staying home and will get an early night instead, since I might be staying up a normal amount tomorrow night and I had a normal bedtime last night and an hour short this morning due to Zig chronically sleeping through his alarm and me not quite awake enough to be able to turn over and wake him up after I realised he wasn't getting up - I usually give him at least 20 minutes before bugging, since I doze 20 minutes past my alarm too (on purpose).

When I was so "over it" about the wedding due to all the brain arghs about guest list and therefore venue etc, I stopped reading the offbeat bride website. Started reading it again about a month ago, I was about 17 pages behind! Read it slowly-ish, just caught up today. When I feel more up to it, I'll dive back into the ning forums for offbeat bride again, but I think that's going to be a big effort since I've got 684 unprocessed email notifications about new threads and comments on the groups I've joined, etc. So, I'll put that off a little longer until I have a lot of time and feel like I'm capable of the huge mental effort. Good to catchup on the straight blog website though, hoorah :)

Right, well it's been a while. I think many of you identify with the feeling of having things to say but never getting around to typing them up, I know I certainly do!

So, I went to Melbourne as per my last post. That was awesome and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I made myself a list of everything I particularly wanted to do (of which there was a lot), then noted it in a table of the days I was there and when the place was open, along with the address and phone number on the side. I noted which particular things I'd be doing which particular days, and then used the table to keep track of it all and work out what I could do and how it fit in as I went along, crossing things off as they got done. I got quite a lot of things done that way, and had many fabulous experiences. I wore sneakers for most of my trip, and walked a lot! My legs ached quite a bit and stopped me sleeping properly to begin with, but my Dad was awesome and reminded me that tonic water was good for that sort of thing (something to do with the quinine in it) and that helped me a lot. I discovered a magnificent cocktail bar called Polly when I was there, I loved it so much that I ended up there three nights out of the week I had available. You felt decadent just walking in, here's what it looks like: http://pollybar.com.au/

I've completely cut ties with the big band I was in, there's a lot to THAT story but I won't go into it, and I'm feeling a lot more free and less stressed because of it. Meanwhile, I hurt my shoulder somehow coming up to maybe two months ago, which has meant I haven't been going to my other band either since moving the slide in and out would exacerbate the issue. I shudder to think of what my lips are going to feel like when I do pick that trombone back up! This shoulder is annoying, it both stops me from doing stuff, and is costing me money at the physio every week. Along with my chiro and massage every week lately instead of fortnightly, due to my spine not playing nice, a significant amount of money is being sucked out of my budget lately, causing things to be quite a lot tighter than normal. Plus I finally found a magnesium supplement that suits me, but it's $40 every two or so weeks, yet more money. I do not feel good about myself when I'm forced into a position of watching my finances closely and seeing them dwindle so quickly, but that's life and there's not a shit load that one can do about it.

So, it's now less than a year until Zig and I have our wedding, which is pretty awesome. We used vistaprint.com.au to create fridge magnet save the dates. They say "Who can remember a date when it's so long away? It's closer than you think! 11th June 2011 Z & H". Cos they are fridge magnets, people can easily just stick them on the fridge, so they won't get lost and people can glance at it whenever they forget since it's been so long *heh*. The guest list issues are still kicking my butt, so I'm only giving the magnets to family and very close friends. Things are very likely to change in a year anyway, so the final guest list can wait until actual invitation time comes around, maybe 2-3 months before the date. But the magnets are way cool.

Zig and I went to Margaret River FarmStay in May. It was my christmas present last xmas, he knows I like the holiday getaways with him :) It's become a tradition that when we go away I create a gourmet platter style dinner, which we then snack on for several days. You can see the yummy food if you click this sentence. At the far end, there's also choc honeycomb, choc truffles, and that big bowl is fruit salad (Zig LOVES fruit salad, so I made it especially for him). We went and somehow crammed a huge amount of activities into three days (two nights) while we were down there. One of my favourites was the shearing demonstration at the Yallingup Shearing Shed, it held a lot of nostalgia for me and you also got to feed the sheep, and bottle feed lambs too! I skippered Zig for two breweries on the way to the farmstay, and two the next day, and then he skippered me for the Happs winery on the way back. I thoroughly recommend the Happs Pale Gold, which is a tasty white port for $20 a bottle.

I had a meeting with the boss before I went to Melbourne, hadn't had one for a long time and it was due. Since I never get lunch breaks in Myaree (it was supposed to be temporary and somehow never changed, for 1 1/2 years) we've arranged that I get a day off a fortnight instead. As I mentioned to him, I've sort of gotten used to no lunch break, but I've never figured out the issue of not having any days off. Y'know, since I work 5 1/2 days a week, there isn't much time to get things done while places are open. I've now had three or four days off in total since I got back from Melbourne, and it's been luxury. Still feeling the squeeze of not enough downtime to a certain extent, but nowhere near what it used to be before I trimmed a lot out and got these days off.

I've been feeling like I want hugs a lot lately this last week. The trouble with this is that I don't feel comfortable hugging people really (except Zig). What a sad state of affairs *heh*. I got reminded today that "...Exercising gratitude for what you have instead of focusing on the negative side of your circumstances can greatly influence...." which was a "oh, yeah, duh" moment for me and has helped a lot already. So, we'll see how it goes. I reckon I've probably just been feeling down and woeful mainly because of tight budgeting, but remembering that damn I'm pretty lucky cos there lots of cool awesome things about my life really helps negate that feeling. So, yeah. Something.

On Saturday morning, I dropped something to a friend on my way to work, and was running very short of time. So I backed out of their driveway pretty quickly, glancing left and right as one should. Unfortunately, I didn't look behind me, and some very annoying person had parked on the opposite curb directly across from the driveway. So, I was completely at fault, but it was very irritating. I got out and looked at the damage, and it was kinda nasty, so I grabbed a pen and paper and quickly wrote a note and stuck it under their windscreen wiper before dashing off to work. "I hurt your car, I'm sorry! Running late for work, can't stop" and my name, suburb, and mobile number. They finally called me on Wednesday - said they'd been in the field, so only noticed my note when they drove that car again that morning. Luckily, many years ago Zig insisted I get third party insurance. Not the compulsory third party, that covers different things, but the actual third party that you purchase that covers other people's cars. So it only cost me $300 as the insurance excess. I woulda driven off if it was a light scratch, but I couldn't do that with that much damage.

A police officer knocked on my car window while I was stopped at traffic lights on Wednesday morning. It's a funny story, you should ask me about it next time you see me :)

I've been shorting myself of sleep a bit lately. I could rectify this by going to bed at the proper time, but I spend so much time doing stuff, that when I get home I just wanna unwind for a bit before going to bed. Which perpetuates the problem of not having enough sleep, coping less well than I should therefore, so taking more time to myself before going to bed, etc. I feel ripped off going to bed early, but right now I'm going to bed too late over and over.

Can you tell I really really would like a nap right now? I'm a little overtired. Thought I'd write a rambly LJ post instead, and complain about how tonight will be an even later night due to band. I've decided I will be quitting that band in April. I told the head guy that I would be quitting after the performance we are committed to in end of March, and then after that I'd be focusing on being responsible to my own well-being instead of committing fully to the band.

I'm going to Melbourne in April! Flights have been booked and everything. Get to see an interesting city and catch up with a dear friend of mine. Part of me is all like "yes, I'll get a break then!" but a wiser part of me knows that I'll end up doing lots of awesome things and be wiped out when I come back still. I need to severely cut back on my social commitments for a while - which is a bloody sight harder that it sounds. Where does the week go? I blink and all my weekly commitments are happening again, and then awesome once-off things are happening on the days off which I don't wanna miss, and boom, I've overloaded myself again. Dropping this band will help a lot with that, once less "have to" commitment recurring every single damn week.

I love what I do, but I wish it was easier to be a mini-hermit crab at will occasionally. All these wants and expectations and once-off oppurtunities and everything. I love what I do, but sometimes I wonder why the hell I do it. It's stressful, it's straining, but it's fun and awesome and wonderful.

Ok, rant over now. I gotta resume putting stock away.

Why Valentine's Day is important, to all of us. This is not just a day for couples, even if that is the mainstream interpretation:

http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/566312.html