37: That's why the game is called Solitaire

Oh, why not.

I've got a lot on the go lately, between applying for jobs that don't exist and mentally gassing myself up to be rejected in my bid to become a flashy writer over night (seriously, why do I delay doing things? What am I afraid of, besides rejection? Success?) I am writing, both about comics and other things, some of which nets me some small amount of pocket change but not as much as I'd forecast. I really thought I had a few hits on my hands but the returns have been pretty modest.

I spend a good portion of every day at the computer, and I have no idea what Mel thinks I am doing here. Hank gets hyper and I play with him. I had been taking him for 2 walks, but lately I started feeding him first thing (which is what he wants anyway) and waiting for him to ask me to go. But I don't know about all this extra energy he suddenly has, whether it's a reaction to his allergy meds, or weight loss, or cabin fever. He gets the zoomies around noon or 1, and I try to work it out of him, but sometimes it's a little destructive -- he stomped on Mel's hand, leaving a bruise, a few days ago, and yesterday he took a flying leap and overshot the bed, crashing to the ground (he played it off like nothing, but it was quite a distressing sight.) In the past few days I have been lending my Excel expertise to Mel's project trying to help her get a scope on the erroneous data she's working with, which keeps seeming like it's more and more of a problem. I told her to tell her bosses I'm available for $50/hr.

I drink lots of coffee. I stay in my pajamas until 10:30. I play too many games on my phone, extracting literal pennies a few times per day. Hardly the most profitable possible use of my time but better than making actual zero, right? As I said I am applying for jobs, but it's hard to know what's real and and a match for my abilities and needs. In general I feel an air of uselessness and low self esteem because of this. But if I was working at my old job, things would be worse. I knew it would be tough. So did Mel but she might be surprised just how tough. As always the problem with me is that I don't know what I want to be, I just want to go somewhere I fit. That was the benefit of the old job. Once upon a time.

The Christmas season kind of snuck up on us. I mean, we could see it coming in the distance, from Halloween and when we decorated Mel's parents' tree, but now Christmas is... a week away?? And it feels like we are behind. We decorated our own tree very gradually, in stages, and in fact it's still not done because the star has not been put up, and Mel noted she wants to fill in some spaces with Christmas balls. Mel has been doing a lot of knitting and listening to audiobook, which is incompatible with other Christmas activities, especially since she needs to be present to advise me how I am stringing lights or hanging ornaments wrong. This is the deal with being married.

I wrote all of the above yesterday. Let me continue my train of thought and then tell you about the rest of that day.

One thing that really snuck up was our anniversary. These days, that day is fraught with a lot of heavy emotions that have nothing to do with getting married on that day or our love for each other, but because it simultaneously marks another, darker anniversary. It's a really fucked up thing and it always puts us in a tough headspace so we don't celebrate as joyously as we once might have. There was some discussion about what, if anything, we wanted to do. Mel had a long weekend and we were doing lots of relaxing and in the end we decided just to keep that going and not force ourselves into having a good time we did not want. We'd been out a lot lately, we've been active, it's fine. We had a quiet dinner and decorated the tree (partially.)

Tuesday, Mel had a nail appointment, so we went to the mall for the evening. I couldn't do a walk-in to get my hair cut so I just walked around the mall and did some shopping for Christmas, then we picked up some good to go, and let it get cold while we talked to Unc and the twins on the phone. Yesterday afternoon I went out to bring the snow tires to Nonna's place for storage, and to have a little cup of coffee with her. Then it was a long trek home. I elected to skip the highway and go up to Dundas, which felt like a good call once I got there as it was a quick jaunt from Third Line to Guelph. Then I still had some errands to run, picking up books from the library, a prescription at Shoppers, and then dinner of Sushi. I thought it would be smart to just go down Brant from there but there was an accident backing up traffic I sensed something was amiss from the looks of the intersection at Upper Middle but wrote it off to my own regret. It ended up taking me twenty minutes to get halfway to the sushi place, to the site of the accident. If I had taken the "long" way around by doubling back to Guelph, I probably could have shaved 5 or 10 minutes off that. And Mel was at home starving (although she was pleasant about it) because she'd only had an english muffin with nutella to eat all day, having had her breakfast late and skipped lunch.

Ah well, such is life.

There's always more -- I've been messaging with an old co-worker about how things are at the office, and that stirred up a feeling or two -- but I think I've done a good job emptying myself out for this session.

Keep on rockin'

-Scotto