Super PMS Batman!

...yeah, well, what do you expect with me drinking hot chocolate and eating kettle corn all evening for the last two nights?

But seriously, I woke up this morning. (Yeah, I did! Twice!). It's the first time in a long time I haven't slept with Angus, gotta admit, and the house is absolutely empty. There's snow outside sifting through the branches. Big house, no Bob, no Ryan, Vikki may be here but if so she's fast asleep. The kitchen, despite me doing some dishes yesterday, is once again full of ick-- I especially hate it when both sides of the double sink are filled up with dirty dishes so I have to excavate before I can clean some dishes. This is even ignoring the endless dirty cups that fill up the rest of the counter.

We have a house meeting today before I leave for work. It needs to be done. In my current state of mind (kill! kill!) it's likely bad timing. I'm pretty sure that being-alone and cleaning the kitchen (need to clean the fridge too, someone dumped water in it, and shovel the walk) will make me feel better. A clean house always does, and cleaning is soothing. Talking to people about it again will put me back in laundry-list mode (I inherited this from mom, you can see it above: I do *this* and *this* and *this* and *this*...)

This has gotta be a sucky post to read.

So anyhow, turning best music way up, contemplating trying a firelog in the fireplace, filling this too-empty space with myself-- and man, does it feel good to stretch out into it! It's nice to know that even just writing this makes me feel better when I wake up in that sort of a mood. It's nice to know that doing grown-up human things like cleaning house makes me feel good too.

It's nice to know that I *know* what makes me feel good, and I can do it when I get stuck in a bad place mentally.

Well, wasn't that a bit of a mood flip? *grin* See y'all on the other side of the dishpile.

Not-Quite-Poetry

“I’m going to Hell,” I said.

“Fire and brimstone,” said the creature, “is best avoided.”

“Not that,” I said. “That’s a stupid kind of Hell.”

“Oh?” it asked. “What is Hell, then?”

“It’s not torture,” I said. “Pain is just sensation. I mean, humans are really good at this kind of thing, and demons are even better, and I’m sure that you can always make torture last one day longer and make it one note harder to bear. But pain is just sensation. Torture is just sensation. It’s not suffering until it makes you suffer. And Hell is eternal suffering.”

“What is suffering?”

“Suffering is when you can’t accept the pain,” I said. “And it’s normally self-limiting, because people automatically accept the pain they’re used to. Most humans are so used to walking around at the bottom of an atmosphere that we forget how much it hurts. And we’re so used to not having our jaws ripped off every few days that we forget how nice and amazingly cool that never happening is. But sometimes you can’t accept the pain. You want to fly. You want to transcend. You want an apple and you can’t have one. You want the pain to stop. You want something. You want something that’s right, and proper, and something that you can’t have. And that’s suffering.”

“So what is Hell?”

“A place where there’s something you can’t let go of,” I said. “It’s a place where there’s something so bad that you can’t accept it. Where there’s something you don’t have that’s strong enough to cling to forever and ever. It’s a place where you can’t just close your eyes and let go of the pain and the fear. It’s a place where there’s something you can’t stop wanting.”

The creature considered. After a time, it said, “I would recommend against going there, because you would certainly suffer.”

Courtesy of Ryan, because what else are roommates for, from Hitherby Dragons.