I'm a lover not a fighter, but I'll crack your teeth.

My arms are very angry with me. They haven't gotten a day off in over a week. Last week they were used excessively to pack, then they were used to move, and now they're getting used to unpack. In between they get "breaks" when I spend time throwing away garbage, cleaning, delivering fake doors to friends, and playing fetch with Sophie.

Sophie is driving me crazy. I know she needs extra attention right now because she's stressed about all this change, so I don't blame her, but that doesn't stop me from being exasperated. Last night she took not one, but two flying leaps onto the bed after sprinting down the hallway, landing right on my legs as I'm trying to sleep. Then at 1 am, she went crazy barking at some person on the sidewalk opening a gate. In my half-asleep state I got up, grabbed her by the collar, dragged her back to bed and forced her to cuddle. This is often my tactic when I'm angry at her -- I scratch her ears and say in a soothing voice how much I want her to shut up and threaten to lock her in the crate all night. Luckily she only recognizes tone and the only english words she knows are "out" and "hungry?" and "biscuit", so she gets the attention she needs and I get to express my negative emotions without actually taking it out on her in a negative way. This probably won't be a good tactic to use on kids, but I have some time to figure that out.

I'm frustrated with how I've spent hours unpacking and there's a huge pile of empty boxes and crates as a result, but my apartment still looks like it just got unloaded from a truck. Speaking of, I had dreams last night that I got robbed and most everything was stolen and half of me was distraught and the other half was like "oh well, I have renter's insurance -- I'll just take the check and start over."

This morning I showered for the first time since Saturday. Now before you get grossed out, I've done lots of clean-up in the sink with a washcloth every morning so I'm not repulsive. This lack of hot water takes away most of the pleasure of my hygiene regiment, so I've been avoiding complete immersion under the water as well as the act of shaving. Today I sucked it up and the results paid off. I also wore nice clothes and cologne and special undergarments, in part for the occasion of picking up Lowenstein at the airport later tonight. Of course, I forgot that I'm spending the two hours before that doing a final clean up and trash disposal in the old apartment, so I'm just going to get extremely dusty and sweaty. But I'll still be cute underneath.

Shock and awe

Great, now I need a new hobby.

( Teresa Strasser's letter of resignation )

It's one of my faults that I can't quell my past.

The best part of my day so far, by an absolute landslide, was lunch with magdalene1. But even though the competition was nonexistent, it's still helpful to have a bright spot in the day.

I had a strange near-anxiety attack when I returned to my desk but it's passed or at least the emotions are manageable rather than overwhelming. I spared my livejournal readers from the details, and trust me your better off. Just imagine a long rambling uncapitalized nonpunctuated overanalysis of my occasional "Stevie Nicks Syndrome" (stay away, come closer!). I also made a somewhat scary realization about how much time I spend with people, or at least specific people. Or at least psychologically speaking.

Oh, never mind.

thebrownhornet was kind to offer a bit of assistance to me tonight and right now I've assigned him the task of "keeping me sane" while I throw away boxes and sweep dustbunnies off the ceiling and scrub the bathroom and generally run around like a contestant on Supermarket Sweep. Seriously, that's how I'm feeling. I have this crazed "beat the clock" mentality about this task, which is pretty much par for the course for me when it comes to cleaning up apartments I'm leaving. Usually because it's midnight on the 31st. This time it's just because I want to be done as soon as possible. My energy is just too spread out right now, basically with thoughts on three apartments (the new one, the old one, and dommeyourass's which will be joining the new one). I'll be happy to eliminate one.

I'm also trying to not have too high of expectations about tomorrow morning when the two utility folks come to my house to solve all my problems and make my life miraculously better. I mean, turn on my gas and phone. At least I hope that's what they'll do. We are talking about People's Energy and SBC here, not exactly the inventors of competency. If nothing else, I suppose it means I can sleep in and get some unpacking done while waiting.

Also, Next-Door CoWorker now believes I have a disability because I no longer have cable. "What are you going to do about the VMAs tomorrow night?!?"