and say do you want to make a deal

[rinue]

There's not really a non-taboo way to say this, but I had a particularly unpleasant menstrual cycle early this month, then came out of it with severe pad rash, and then had that turn into a yeast infection, which I have been treating with creams and suppositories for the last several days. Which is not something I think anyone needed to hear, but which is backstory for the following triumph: I spent the last hour totally unaware of my labia. For the first time in two weeks, they were not part of my active awareness at all. It is like a very small car alarm has finally stopped going off outside my window.


I have been playing a game where I congratulate myself for completing basic tasks, like "well done; you made it through a day" and "you have answered the phone when it rang and got through a conversation in which you imparted scheduling data!" It is a game because I do not actually find these things impressive and if I think about it very long it makes me sadder instead of happier. My other game: "you have to get through this for [blank]," where blank is Emily, James, Ciro, Sharon, Lia, or any number of friends who are struggling in one way or another, and for whom I could theoretically be a resource were I to succeed wildly. This is also a tricky one because it is a lot of pressure and feels a bit intrusive.

I don't know why I am not able to give myself a vacation at this time. I keep making notes for essays that I think would be good, but then I freeze up when I think of actually writing them just now, and then get upset because if I wait they will be stale, and then think I wouldn't know what to do with them if I wrote them anyway, and it goes back and forth and stays negative. I have a sense that I should just write the damn things, and that I would like them and this would make me feel happy, but I have an equally powerful sense that I should have a naNOwrimo in which I am not allowed to write anything for a bit, and I have no perspective at all on which of these is the better idea.

I spent the morning before work going through the kitchen cabinets to decide which dishware to bring along - mainly antique cups and saucers, which I collect in a dilatory way. Our relocube arrives tomorrow (the aforementioned scheduling); I still need to box up my pots and pans, coats and dresses, sewing supplies, and stationery, but none of this should take long. Ciro is fretting because our stuff will get to leave before we will, and seeing it ready to go makes him feel he has no good reason to be in Dallas, even though there is more to do in the next week than we have time for. I practiced some Italian last night to relax and can now clarify whether objects are on, under, or inside other objects.