I signed up for the psych ward

The other day, I decided I had enough.

I tried to explain in a civil, polite and constructive way that I'm mentally somewhat off and that I'd like to make some arrangements to make my life more agreeable but BossDad said the usual stuff people say: Take it easy, cheer up, you look just fine, don't stress over things, you're overdoing it, the world won't bow to your silly little emotions. I've been licking the edge of nervous breakdown for longer than I'd appreciate so I got angry, called my doc and told him to please arrange it.

I wanted to write an intelligent entry in which I would explain in a manner easy to understand what's going on. I'm too tired and my brain is failing me. Dear reader, rest assured that I'm somewhat stinky because... erm, I either work or I just lie in bed, I don't have a single pair of jeans that would need unbuttoning when putting them on because food tastes weird most of the time and finding, fixing and eating food is too difficult to perform too often. I'm not mentioning the dishes to be done, preferably three weeks ago. I sort of wish my apathy reached the level when I won't be arsed about getting up, it seems to me that I have a sleep deficit of 30 000 hours.

And now excuse me, I'll try and sleep.

And now for some self-hatred

My eating habits would make a dietician weep. My lifestyle would make any doctor weep, which is why I don't tell them. During the last few months, I lost both weight and girth, apparently mainly in muscle. I'm all flabby and weak, my skin got awful and since I'm getting a surgery in around two and half weeks and inflammation at the incisions is a big no-no, I'm taking clindamycin to kill the acne. At day 3, it's not working at all and for some reason, I'm all itchy and I grow spots or inflamed hair follicles or what the hell it is in odd places. Acne-like things just shouldn't happen on one's shins. Anyway, I was scratching and looking around the surface. That lost weight means a nasty flab of skin, I poked it around and discovered several ugly wide stretch marks. I had a bad time. Yesterday, a drunk kitchen help-hand yelled at me for being condescending; it was my wishing her a nice evening that nailed it, I guess. Today, my deputy told the receptionists to tidy up and one snarked back that she's going to tidy up when she decides to and that my office is terribly messy and she doesn't tell me to tidy up either. BossDad arrived later on, told me that it's all basically my fault and when I sighted, he yelled at me that I'm lazy and spoiled and expect everyone to bow to my hypochondriac feelings. And then I discover stretch marks. I started crying.

Fix all the things!

For some reason, I was productive today. Cue sneezing from all that dust raised by my feeble attempt to get rid of the mountain of things on my table. After six or how many hours, the mail is in a bag, ready to be taken to the post office tomorrow, along with an overdue book for the library. Which is a thing, it took me several months to buy padded envelopes as several events needed to combine: going downtown, remembering that I need something, recalling what it was and being in a mood for shopping. I glued the loose stone in my necklace and loose magnet in my bracelet - it hasn't been mentioned yet but I finally got enough bracelets to keep me happy. The pile of ball bands is sorted out - and to those little perverts out there, a ball band is a stripe of paper with various relevant information, and it goes around a ball of yarn. I keep all ball bands and tags since almost forever, and every project has an actual file which includes the ball bands along with more or less information, depending on my momentary level of anal retentiveness. I've been knitting intensively since 2005-ish and the files would have their own shelf if I had one; now they sit on the floor in the attic. And, there were many individual files to deal with. I never throw anything away unless thoroughtly thought out (1) so all I needed to do was to sort out a pile of various pieces of paper into neat little piles and put them where they belonged. Speaking of filing, I don't have a method in yarn storage. The boxes are vaguely sorted by colour and one type of yarn may be grouped but no-one should rely on that. I would need a lot of shelves where I could fit boxes. Or something. Now I have an issue of leftovers because I've bought several yarns by bags in a consistent manner, not just what fleabay spat out, and there are actual leftovers. Not two metres kept aside for repairs, not a heap of somehting into which a little dent was made, but one and half skein of something from a bag of 10. Since these are positively leftovers, I'm hesitant to throw them into the wild biotope my stash is and I'm not a knitter of cup cozies and other dust catchers. And then I started ripping an old sweater which looks good in pictures but is a PITA to wear, because of the yarn. Mohair and some eyelash thing together. In the knitters' hell, they're sitting at a table and ripping an endless lace shawl in long-haired mohair, that itchy bastard which is hell to wear for some people but hell to unravel for everyone. I'm slowly making dents in my stash (2) but I need to do something about the sweaters I don't wear for some reason (some reason = made with some major fault, like using fuzzy mohair). Throwing away cashmere and silk blends is out of the question so throwing it away or donating to charity is out of question. You'd need to pry my yarn from my cold, dead hands. Not only yarn, anyway. It doesn't really look that way yet but things got more orderly quite a bit. Off to do more. ---------------------------------------- (1) Do not ask. Really. You don't want to know about all my little collections. Your life and attitude to me might be pretty shattered if you knew that I have kept all train tickets from my trips since I've been 19-ish and there are worse. Do. Not. Ask. (2) Before you start laughing at the joke: I've been knitting up more than I've been acquiring in the last year.

An upside

I'm not very fond of Giftmas but I had a few days off and I brought my cat. Tähti totally needs a buddy, she's not that old so that she would need to sleep 26 hours a day. Between the sheets.

The guests are offered a bed with an extra serving of cat hair. (Yes, the bed linen is horrid. I didn't pick it.)

Let the obnoxious drunks choke on their preferred booze.

I had five days sort of off. It included half a day shopping and half a day of inventorizing... and four days of mostly crying. On the 27th, I got back to work, also known as hellhole, prison, the damn hotel and other loving monikers, and rode on the adrenaline wave. The supplier fucked up my order of tableware that I ordered in advance in case there was an unplanned delay. Well, my fault, I should have planned not only an unplanned delay but also an unplanned unplanned delay. I ordered some sparkling wine and got ten crates of demi sec instead of brut so I needed to send someone to buy said brut because delivery not worky during the weekend. The wine guy promised some extra bottles for the hassle, which were snatched by said someone; I at least guess Mom will leave some for me. When they forgot to add some meat to yet another delivery, I called my assigned representative and told him that it's not my problem whether he beats or blackmails the people who prepare the stuff but could he please make sure that I get my stuff on time next time, thankyouverymuch. He started apologing profusely that these times around Giftmas are busy and messy, to which I gently replied that I'm sure he's sorry but I have other things to do so he can explain it later on. To cut the other story shorter, we have more guests than beds, as BossDad kept promising rooms left and right without bothering to tell the reception or me or someone who would actually make sure there're beds available. I sleep on a sofa, my little cousin and his two dogs sleep on the floor in my room, Boss's buddy got moved twice - at least he's a good sport - and there's a bunch of people who weren't promised actual beds but floor space for their sleeping bags. The Chef was fired two weeks ago, a replacement is here since the 27th and I already told him in no uncertain terms that while I appreciate his insight and experience regarding various stuff, I don't want to hear it now while I'm dealing with the backlog of paperwork left by Exchef, unexpected guests, beer cooling thingy breaking down, lack of champagne and a host of things my brain mercifully deleted meantime. At least Replacement Guy got it very soon and tries not to bother me. Today afternoon, I was already sick in several ways so I went to the wine cellar to cry and cool down, which usually takes about five minutes. At which point BossDad arrived, bringing turkeys and rum and my mom wanted something of extreme urgence such as a pencil or breath mints. When I have a full-blown meltdown, the worst thing to do is to ask What happened to you, Did something happen, Why are you crying when everything is going fine? etc. A while later, when I was trying to calm down by sorting out some papers, mom remarked: I think you should sort out the paperwork to hand it over. When you go like this when things go fine.... this job is not for you. Been telling them all the time. I know I can handle crises and manage chaos. I just can't stand too many people for too long, I can't stand this place in the woods, I can't stand winter here... I'm an organizer, not a person who would smile at the goddamn clients. I actually hate clients; I mean, they're my source of income and I don't hate every person each for some specific reason. It's just people gone over my critical mass, sorry folks, you're more than four-ish for longer than an afternoon. And now, they're drunk, loud and obnoxious. Regarding those who think that getting drunk is great fun, I have quite some disdain for each one in person. Now I'm going to bed onto the sofa. Stay tuned for more whiny rants next year or some other day.

How deep I fell

I'm taking four different medications to make me sort of function. Just now, a pill of promethazine lodged in my soft palate and is releasing foul bitter taste in my mouth. This is making me sleep and I take it along with zolpidem, which makes me fall asleep. Plus 25 mg of clonazepam to make me a bit less of freakout on (unstable) feet. Yes, benzos, that addictive stuff. And, then, obviously, antidepressants. I reached 225 mg of venlafaxin per day and I'm still a wreck. Food tastes mostly like cement, with the exception of booze which tastes like nail polish remover. I'm scared and I feel guilty, sometimes I feel guilty for being scared and anxious about what's reasonably little things. Reason, however, doesn't enter my decisions on systematic basis. Kitty is lying next to me, she said Meow and farted. That's the high fibre kibble. Life would be so much easier if people could be fed kibble. One of the reasons I hate food is that I run a restaurant. I have too much food on my mind or something. Or my body just gave up and opted for a suicide by starvation, the time will show. I wonder whether I did something wrong, apart from just loitering around and not making a feather toy for Tähti. And not trying to work harder, not liking my job - some people would like to be hotel managers so much while they're wasting their life away as archivists and I'm not grateful at all even though it has many perks, such as easy life, the only possibilities of entertainment being work, booze which tastes like nail polish remover or running towards the woods, screaming incoherently. Oh, I forgot two more, one can walk down the road. Or up the road. There's nothing interesting within decent walking distance to disturb one's piece peace of mind. Now, I'm numb. Maybe it's that combo of sedatives, maybe it's just a state of mind, the other being overwhelming anxiety. I don't particularly like Giftmas. I mean, I quite enjoy those ten minutes of sheer undiluted sentiment and pathos when digging through the ornaments acquired 30 years ago, food used to be okay so let's give it a benefit of doubt even this year, gifts are of two sorts: those I procured myself and those that scare me shitless. Thus I'm getting an antique garnet necklace and a pink silk scarf, which is fine if I'm getting paid for them, and something oh-so-cool mother has been ranting about since November. I'm scared that she spent a lot of money on something I'm not going to like. I would love a good atlas of bryophytes (that's mostly mosses for those who don't go after all things green). Or a chocolate egret. (Why egret? No idea. Bald eagle in chooclate would be okay, too.) And nobody ever asks what I'd really want. Which raises an important question: what would I want? Just now, I'd want to be alone, along with my kitty. That's what I told the therapist. She shook her head and said that it's somewhat childish. To be continued, meds are kicking in.

There's something wrong with the world

I'm having rather a bad time. It's the upcoming winter, busy season at work or just general meanness of the Universe but everything I do just goes wrong.

The other day, I fell out of a tram and splatted in the middle of the road. I wasn't even drunk.

I'm late with work, which is normal because I'm not the best person for the job, if I put it mildly. Actually it seems that I'm even more behind than usual. I'm certain there's a disaster in the making, if things seem to go moreless smoothly, there's always something to happen. I guess it's not necessary to list every little failure, nobody cares about sending the wrong papers to the wrong person and stuff like that.

I can't bring myself to be interested. Not that I was ever particularly enthused about working in a hotel but I had my little pleasures - organising stuff and the like and now I don't care. It needs to be done, it gets done. Slower than usual and probably worse than the usual bad.

Well, I'm just a pathetic loser. Unable to make my mind whether I want to join the party at work or not, or to find what I actually want from life apart from ten hours of sleep.