It was supposed to be really cold for this game.  While it was sunny & a little chilly when we got there, by the time we left the stadium it was 38F, I’d been sitting there for 4 hours and was frozen in a  foul mood.  

They played a double-header that day; we went to the second game.  The place had filled up compared to the night before.  Apparently everyone had started drinking during the first game and kept drinking through the second.

Jackasses standing up in front of us kept yelling at  Verlander, the pitcher, which pissed me off for a couple of reasons.  Number one, sit DOWN,  asshat – like he gonna hear you from the upper decks?  Number two, more importantly, you’re annoying me.  Shut the fuck up.   This one kept on.  After he generally made a spectacle of himself for about five minutes I started cussing him back.    But eventually their whole loud little posse of fools left, to my great satisfaction.  I was able to freeze my ass through the remainder of the last two innings.  At least we won.

That excursion into the world should hold me for a while.

Detroit really looks good from Comerica Park:

 

 

 

I ate a hotdog.  

SIERRA FIREBALL DECODED: An explosion over California that rattled homes across at least two states on Sunday, April 22nd, has been analyzed by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office: It was a natural meteoroid the size of a mini-van. Analysts say the space rock exploded in the atmosphere with an energy equal to nearly 4 kilotons of TNT and might have sprayed the Sierra Nevada mountains with meteorites.


Visit http://spaceweather.com for more information.

Did you get to see it, xi?
Or feel the earth move under your feet?

But before it was, I got these:











We're rescheduled for tonight. It's supposed to be freezing cold.

One of the things I find most difficult not to do these days -- besides just not using, and that's not as hard as it used to be -- is isolate myself. Isolating is Not Good. I understand why -- for addicts trying to recover, it's important to have a support system. People around you who know all the tricks will call you on your BS. This has the effect of keeping you honest, keeping you near the center of the road.

A well-developed universal talent of professional drug addicts everywhere is the ability to not hold yourself accountable to anyone for anything. Also we have terrific gifts of self-deception. So it's a good idea to get feedback from people around you who understand, since you're not likely to listen to anyone else when you get like that.

I'm pretty misanthropic. I've never really very much wanted to be around people. I have friends one at a time. My closest friends are like me. Most of them live in other states; we're fine with this. It's actually probably why we're still friends. Those around here with me in MI (looking at you, boo) are every bit as bad as I am. It can be weeks & months we don't hang out. Or we'll have periods of hanging out all day every day. It comes & goes; they're as unpredictable as I am.

The characteristic was obvious in me pretty early. Early as kindergarten I remember hiding in this plastic playhouse & not coming out. Every day I did this. One time another little girl climbed in there with me & I gave her a fat lip. That was my first suspension (Mom had to take me home for the rest of the day.)

I haven't changed much.

& I've been in total retreat mode for days now. I don't want to teach. I don't answer the phone (well, I never answer the phone, but I'm barely even answering texts, which is unheard of for me, since this is my primary method of communication). I even go to another floor whenever H is home.

I'm like an injured African cat, licking my wounds in my den.

I'll be following this impulse to hide, here, for a bit. It's so much more stressful for me to interact than it is to disappear and this morning, this feels big. I should probably examine it. The impulse to retreat is pretty compelling right now, so I'm taking its temperature. While I can. There's a lot about this I can see clearly right now, so I don't want to lose the opportunity.

Therefore.

At least I slept a little, though -- good solid sleep. The real thing. The stuff is like magic, truly.

I never know when it's going to co-operate. This is excellent, if unexpected.

Now I'm awake and a little uninterested in everything; don't quite want to read, don't need to get anything done for class today that can't wait until I really care, don't want to deal with anything of any significance. Time for playing in piles of makeup or something equally mindless? I've been very good at mindlessness recently.

Not the same kind of fun your total destruction was, Blanche. Like most of our local demolition, this one's man-made.

I had to get up so early, and I kept myself up so late with... er... my *muse* that I feel a little bit like hell from lack of sleep. 3 hours. Don't know if I can generate poetry out of this kind of mental bedlam... so much going on, flood in the basement last night, tearing down our garage today, and the weather is FREEZING, we had so much hail yesterday there are still drifts around the house, and it's cold enough that it's not thawing at all. Crazy. And the one effing day we've got Outside Doins it's fucking cold. Where was this weather when I was crying for it?

Grah.

I just put some coffee on and it's brewing now... hopefully that'll do me some good to keep my eyes open.

'til voice posts again... God, I don't want to go to work.

When I was at USC working on my thesis I'd sometimes have days when I'd get writing and couldn't turn it off. I could go days. Literally, I'd start in the morning and I'd look up and it'd be getting light again. I'd not have eaten anything or left the room or answered the phone or anything. If I had cigarettes, I'd have burned through at least 3 packs.

I could totally keep going right now. I want to -- there's a kind of creative fire you don't mess with when it comes around. It gets its way. So I've got it right now and I have to leave to TEACH A FUCKING CLASS IN 45 MINUTES. I've already postponed the class an hour so I could keep working.

But I did get the first three verses down, & part of a fourth. I only write poetry when I'm at my most intense. It's a barometer of how bad or crazed things are. Last time I got this way I wrote "Broken Bolero", my favorite thing I've ever written. ((Besides "Surface Properties of the Moon", of course.)) I'll post it later, the whole thing, if I can find it all. I've put pieces of it up before. It's a series of 12 poems.

This is looking like it might also be epic...

Untitled so far.

Been awhile since I've gotten the bug for poetry.
Inspired now, and working hard.

Watch This Space.

... says wait.

This is what insanity looks like.

I keep hearing it: Wait wait wait...

I get some really incredible support from readers of this journal. If you're here and talking to me, especially if you've been supportive in the last few days, it has been a great kindness on your part. And a tremendous comfort to me, especially the encouragement I've been receiving about staying clean.

Thank you. With the things I've been trying to ignore, then tolerate, then sustain, then triage because the whole fucking thing turned into this big old flaming massacre of an emergency that I despise myself for permitting... your words, kindnesses and selflessness have been such a relief. I said little here about details or specifics but I did talk at length to a couple of friends and others from here about exactly what my deal was.

This is the kind of thing that's so meaningful to me that I'd never even think about discussing it in a "group" or meeting somewhere. and this is exactly the sort of situation that should put an addict into lockdown, talking it out constantly to disarm it, spending your time among people whose only purpose is to help you and help take care of you to a small (but serious) degree.

It's ridiculous that I won't do that. It's dangerous to staying in balance. I know how to combat this from the inside out. I know what to do.

Right now being here writing, online and to you guys, will have to be enough.

By the time I tried to sleep last night (3?), I felt like a great weight had been lifted. The post I made here was basically for my own reference, part of the written record I was talking about before that's useful for all kinds of stuff to go back and look at... I wanted to remind myself I'd gotten back into balance the same day I'd lost it almost entirely. Pretty quickly for me, considering. My friend Blanche & I had been texting for over an hour about shit. I lay down in a safe frame of mind. That was a gift. Because I did sleep. I woke up at 7, at 9, and then just gave up a few minutes ago again but the sleep I did get was SLEEP. Which I needed.

Because as soon as I got downstairs here, all this shit came back.

So I've been crying in my fucking coffee already. I just want to turn this shit off. Just turn it off. Only there's no off switch. And there's no other channel. And there's no remedy here, nothing at all to do but let it ride.

Still I haven't once thought about using. It's the last thing on my mind. Drugs can't treat this. There is only one solution, and that solution will not cooperate. Therefore there is no solution.

Although the sense of peace I had is not coming out to play this morning, the understanding I reached last night is still here. And that is: I'll live. This isn't the worst I've been through.

Fuck, I climbed HALF DOME. I did Angel's Landing. I hiked 5 miles over rocks in a river with a severed ACL, I think I can take a little boo-hooing.

I'll be all right.

So, as hopeless as shit seemed earlier, I feel better from having just written my way through it. Once those things hit paper, they lose most of their evil fu. The issues don't change, and the truth will remain the same... But I get compensated for the "hostilities.". In Ways.

So the hopeless loss, still there and real, gets put in its place a little bit. It's not unbearable. It's not even as bad as I thought it was.

I'll definitely live if the song remains the same.

Posted via m.livejournal.com.

Exit  Livernois from the NB 10

Need any body parts?

Traffic sucks on Livernois.

 

You might want to shop elsewhere.

This is my campus!

 

Is lovely, yes?

Open the gate, Mofo!

Let this be an illustration of my general frame of mind: I am never on time. I thought class today started at 12. It starts at 1. But if it *had* begun at 12, I was here ON TIME. That is not at all my old self.

Yeah, something's wrong, and I'm not kidding. I'm off-kilter. I'm weepy at the drop of a hat for no identifiable reason... I'd have cancelled this class and stayed home if I had an ounce of sense but clearly I don't. I don't belong outside today. I don't belong among the populace.

Feeling sort of fucking miserable, really.

Posted via m.livejournal.com.

I *was* sleeping, damn it. Pretty solidly, actually... probably because I was up all night yesterday. Insomnia is sometimes useful.

If not right now... I don't need to get out of here for about 4 hours, which means I could have slept the sleep of the righteous & retarded for at least another couple of hours. Feh. & speaking of those other than the righteous, thanks for teasing me about yesterday, J you jerk. I have to laugh at myself... obviously that's no fun. But it's the sort of thing I've always expected to have happen in a situation I have going on so it's a good example of why to stick with the just-mind-your-own-fucking-business-&-no-nosing-around policy. I usually am concerned this is happening behind a lot of things and I'll just not ever know... & probably it is, & that's just part of one situation I've gotten myself into (don't ask). Anyway practically no-one else was here for that disaster ;) & at least it didn't last.

Enough of that.

It is frigid again. Right now the sun is still coming up, very pretty; and the sky is this crisp, sharp-edged blue. More perfect sleeping weather, if only I were asleep.

I need to have a better day today. My attitude in general has not been positive. No reason other than that I'm just dragging on almost everything. Don't feel like working out. Don't even feel like writing much. Trying to make sure to stay updated here with this sort of thing; the sleep record will probabably be useful later, maybe the mood stuff too, if I track it for patterns.

Pea got himself locked in the laundry room last night, probably when I went down the last time to take stuff out of the dryer. I didn't know he was in there so he spent the night locked up. :( H said Pea was crying when he got home from work and he heard him all the way up on the first floor.

One thing about having sort of a lot of cats is that you don't always notice an absence like that. Remind me to tell the story sometime about how my cat Cain cleaned out the vents right after we moved in.

Cleaned up the journal for the typical reasons.

Decent enough day. The volunteering stuff I needed to do didn't get done, but only because the person I needed to talk to wasn't around. Maybe next week then. And that is Fine By Me.

& please quit throwing yourself through windows & mirrors...

Almost time to make coffee!

Still listening.
See timestamp.

let myself watch sb too... awesome metaphors.
I laughed at the phone.
How dare you blow your brains out. I'm going to have nightmares about that.
If I ever sleep again, which is highly unlikely
after what you just did to me.

& I can't. I need to go and be there whether I like it or not.

I really want to ditch the group and be done with it.

And I really ought to be doing the volunteer thing, as I decided I would.

Should should should. I WOULD prefer to remain under my rock.

Let you know what happens.

Bobbi Brown palettes on the right. 

These pics are purely for my own gratification. 

Coolness. I found an easy way to send pics from the desktop to LJ... I've got bunch to follow.


The tree's in front of the house. That was taken yesterday. The cat is Squirrel.