One of the things I’ve worked hard at erradicating from my thoughts is envy. It serves no productive purpose and it fosters dissatisfaction with my life. It doesn’t motivate me to do things differently, it just makes me unhappy at what I may consider unfair. Envy is pretty much the opposite of everything I need to do to enjoy my current life path and to be a good friend and partner to those around me.

So far I have been really successful, and it has gone a long way in upping my happiness quotient. When the people I love tell me about great things that happen to them, my first thought is never “I wish that had happened to me.” I am geninely happy for them. I can go visit your beautiful new 4,000 square foot house and be so happy for you, and at the same time be perfectly happy to go home to my small house that’s only halfway remodeled. It doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t care about popularity or numbers of followers or what kind of car you drive. I really don’t.

Except for this one thing. I’m wrestling the green-eyed monster over one little thing and it’s pissing me right off. I’m pissed that I can’t get over it and just be happy for my friend. It doesn’t really matter what I’m jealous about, the fact that I’m jealous at all is what has me kicking my own ass around the block.

Don’t get me wrong, I am happy that this good thing has happened for my friend. It’s awesomely super fantastic in it’s awesomeness. But I want it for myself too. I am having a hard time with accepting, with this one little thing, that things are different for me and maybe it’s even ultimately all my own fault that they are.

And there’s the rub. It’s ultimately my own fault that it’s different for me. I have put myself in this situation, and maybe instead of being jealous I’m really just angry at myself.

Obviously I still have work to do in that department. Maybe I always will. But at least I can see how self-destructive this emotion is, and I’m working at changing it. I’m going to count that as a win.

Except that there are always new apps.  It’s like playing Whack-A-Mole with the app blocking, and that drives me slightly insane too.  But I could live with it.

Until this morning.  I’ve been seeing all of these “friendly quiz” updates all over my feed, where people answer a question about their friends.  There are about 4 different apps that I’ve seen so far that do this same thing.  It works under the premise of how well do you know your friends and how well do your friends know you?

When you click on the app you get to see the questions people answered about you, but you don’t get to see who answered until you answer a shitpot of questions about your friends, which is how they perpetuate this bullshit.  Human nature is to want to know what people have to say about you and they are banking on the fact that you can’t resist knowing what’s hidden in the box and you will play along to find out.

It all seemed pretty harmless until I looked at the questions.  Most of them are totally innocuous, like Is Lisa geeky? and Do you think Lisa knows how to drive a stick shift?

And then I got to this one: Do you think Lisa makes more than $50K a year?

Hey there, ho there, back up the information superhighway!  This is information I’m not going to give out willy-nilly on Facebook.  I presume this app assumes that my friends know me well enough to answer this question correctly, so here’s my question.

What is the purpose of the information these apps are gathering?  It seems like nothing more than a cleverly disguised data miner to me.

Am I crazy in thinking that this is not ok?  Whether it’s just to target their sidebar ads more effectively, or some other more sinister reason, I am just not down with this kind of monkeyshine.  I can block this app from my feed and from gathering my information from my feed, but if I block the app does that mean it has to stop asking questions about me?  Or does that just mean that I won’t see the questions it asks about me anymore while it goes along its merry way sticking its nose all up in my hoobastank?  Because I’ve noticed that this app asks questions about everyone, even people I know are on top of their Facebook privacy game.

It’s all fun and Facebook games until someone loses an eye.  In my case, 99% of the people on my Facebook account don’t know me well enough to answer these questions correctly but that’s kind of beside the point.

What do you think?  Am I totally over-reacting?  Has paranoia finally destroyed me?  Is it possible to completely block these apps from even asking about you?  Does it even matter?  I have an itchy trigger finger poised over the “delete account” button, and inquiring minds want to know.

Then the Universe throws a ball of poo at you.

Maybe not actual poo, but it still stinks just the same.

And you say, “Ok, Universe.  I got your pooball, and I’m just going to put it over here in the toidy for you.  I know that’s where you meant to put it, instead of on me, and I’m going to help you out.”

So then the Universe rings your doorbell, but when you open the door no one is there.  Except that you smell something and you look down and this time the universe has left a flaming bag of poo on your doorstep.

And you shake your head and say “Oh that Universe is such a silly prankster.  What are we going to do with him?”  And you get out the fire extinguisher from behind the wood stove, where maybe it’s not such a good idea to store it, and you put out the flaming poo bag because at least you were smart enough not to stomp on it.

And then you go sit down and listen to the plinky-plinky music while sipping your hot cocoa and you hear this noise.  beep…beep…beep……beep…beep…beep

And you look out your window and that silly, prankster Universe is backing up a dump truck full of poo, and proceeding to dump it in your front yard.

And all of your friends and neighbors come by and shake their heads and wrinkle their noses and say, “Wow, that’s a great big pile of poo.”  And you say, “Why yes, Captain Obvious.  Yes it is a big pile of poo.  Thank you for admiring my poo because it is a mighty poo.”

And everyone leaves except your bestest friend in the whole wide world, the one who would never leave you alone with the poo, and you stand in the yard and try to figure out what you’re going to do with this much poo.

And you hope that the Universe will be distracted by watching you shovel the poo into wheelbarrows enough that he won’t want to bring more.  Because you think that next time he might bring a trebuchet, or maybe a canon, or some other creative poo-delivery device, and you might just have enough poo already, thank you very much.

This weekend?  I got my cocky butt kicked by some copper tubing and a torch.  It seems I needed a little ego smackdown because the universe delivered one right to my door.

I’m working on a cake project.  What does copper tubing and torches have to do with cakery, you ask?  Why everything!   I’m making a framework for some cake badassery that’s only going to be badass if it actually works out.  That’s the fun part, in case you think I’m a little bent.  The not knowing if it’s going to turn out right.  It’s either going to be the shiznit or it’s going down in a burning ring of fire.  There is no middle ground.

See, this is where I get myself in trouble every time.  I see something in my head and automatically assume I’m going to be able to make it happen in 3D.  Because clearly it should just jump right out of my head and onto a cake, and I should be able to do it all by myself because I’m just awesome like that.  *cough* Right?

I always forget that the cakes that included sneaky behind the scenes craftodynamics were the cakes that were a result of teamwork.

Case in point:

This one wouldn’t have happened without hubs’ mad skillz.  He made the framework for this cake for me and without his help it would have been just another flat fish on a board.

I have an independent streak about a mile and a half wide.  I don’t like to ask for help.  Maybe it’s because I was an only child for 9 years.  Maybe I’m just a control freak.  It just bugs the crap out of me to have to ask for help on projects that I can clearly envision in my head, and think that being able to see it means being able to make it happen.

Ego much?  My issues are many and varied.

Hubs isn’t here right now to help me.  See what I get for doing that happy hubcation dance?  Universal smackdown via solder and flux.  Now I have to wait until Tuesday for him to help me, which puts my schedule so far behind that I’m going to be in some serious weeds if my plan doesn’t come together all A-Team fashion, especially since I don’t have a Plan B.

Lessons learned?

1. Quit with the Lone Ranger act.  I can’t do everything and I’m really kind of dumb for thinking I can.  I’m not a two year old stomping my feet screaming I do it myself!!
2. Appreciate the skills that other people have.  I tend to take some things for granted instead of respecting the time it took to learn and perfect those things that other people can do.  Especially those things that I can’t do.
3. Alone time is great and not to be undervalued, but teamwork is what makes the world go round.

Hubs is coming back Monday night.  After I smooch him all over he’s going to look at this hot mess I’ve made and shake his head and tell me where I went wrong.  Then he’ll probably pull out the whooopppppppaaahhhh!! and things will magically come together.

Because he’s awesome like that.

See what I mean?

I thought that my week off would be the perfect time to do some reading and writing, relax and re-order things. It turns out, not so much.

Aside from all the running around I did when I was supposed to be recuperating with my foot higher than my heart, I just didn’t have it in me.   It turns out that it takes a lot more brain power to do those things than I thought, and than I had left.

Lately, I don’t want to do much of anything that involves brain power.  Why is that?

Is it that my beloved summer heat cooked my brain while I was sweltering on the couch wearing the sauna boot?  That would be a crime against nature because I love me some hot summer days.   To the point that I don’t have air conditioning in my house, which I definitely do not recommend if you have to wear a sauna boot.  In July.  During a heat wave.

Did the drugs trade my yay for meh? I was feeling pretty good during the before stage of this game.   The after stage is leaving a little to be desired.  Maybe I should blame it on the fact that they didn’t give me any drugs that actually made me feel even a little high.  I was sort of looking forward to that because I think that if you have to have your foot all ganked into das boot and with the stitches and everything, you should get to be high. It’s about balance; yin and yang. The universal consolation prize.

Maybe instead of working on my baby toe bone, the doctor took out my funny bone. Because not only have I lost my words, I have lost the funneh. And that is a problem for me.

Maybe I’m just going through a low, I don’t know, but I feel all jangoed up and I don’t like it.  No sir, I don’t like it.   I don’t like having nothing else to write about other than the fact that I feel meh and don’t know what to do about it.  Who wants to read that?   Don’t answer that. I don’t think my self-esteem can take it right now.

Part of the meh comes from the fact that I just don’t feel good. The drugs messed with my stomach, and the boot has jacked up my back, and I’m not sleeping well at all.  It’s hard to roll over when you have to concentrate on not clocking the dog in the head with the boot and also actually finding a position that doesn’t make your back clench up like Thurston Howell III’s ass at the same time.

Have I mentioned that I hate whining? And whiners? And yet here I am writing one giant whinefest of a post? And how much I hate that this is all I can come up with right now? And yet, here I am with the blah blibbity blah blah blaaaaaahhhhhhh. Emphasis on the blah.

Feel free to slap me.  I know I would.

The level of any given item on my Give-a-Shit-O-Meter is inversely proportional to the amount of ass chap caused by that item.

Pick a meth fight with me over something and you can guarantee that from that moment on I couldn’t care less about that thing ever again.  That goes for people too.  I’m bitchy like that.

Case in point: the baby blanket.

*yes, that’s really my name.  Unless you can come up with one that I haven’t heard it’s best we keep our comments about that to ourselves when I’m in this mood.

But I digress.

She’s right, and I’m probably caving it up pretty good right now because I don’t feel much like talking, or writing, or Twittering, or Facebook updating, or emailing.  My social butterfly is in its cocoon phase, laying dormant and waiting for…something.

I don’t know why I feel this way right now, except that I’m running low on emotional energy.  Maybe this is my power-saver mode while the batteries recharge.  I can be somewhat social and polite and a functional member of society while just barely scratching the surface, and that’s ok.

I don’t need anymore ripples in my pond right now.

Besides, do you know how long it took me to get my cave decorated like this?  Rome wasn’t built in a day, baby.

Things have changed only in the ways I handle the not sleeping.  Lately it happens less and less, but every once in a while (like last night) I still pull an all-nighter.  They usually happen on Sundays because even though I know better I love to sleep in on Sundays, and that gets my body clock all out of whack.

Lately, the thing that gets me more often is the waking up at 4:30 am.  Like clockwork.  I have no idea what started that, but it’s been going on for a couple of years now.  I’ll lay awake for an hour or so and then, somewhere within that golden half-hour before the alarm clock goes off I will fall soundly and awesomely asleep.  I think that’s worse than not sleeping at all.  You just get your snooze groove on and BEEEEEEEEEP  BEEEEEEEEEEP  BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!! the alarm goes off.  It makes you say things like motherfuck and smash the snooze bar with fists of doom.  I really hate the golden half-hour.

There really isn’t a point to this post.  No moral of the story.  Except that all of you insomniacs out there that are just like me?  You are not alone.

Oh, and today my pants will be cranky.  Fair warning.

Then hubby and I decided we needed to run some errands.  So we got in the car.  Which wouldn’t start because some assmunch siphoned ALL of the gas out of it.  They didn’t even leave us enough to get to the goddamn gas station this time!

That was the beginning of a downward spiral which included the spillage of gas all over the back (on the carpet!) of my Jeep, a giant hissy fit (mine) over the gas and the fact that the boy had his music cranked into the upper decibels while we were gone.  (I really don’t want to hear that if it’s too loud I’m too old because I will cut a bitch today.)

I’m really just angry at myself.  Ok, I’m angry at the gas thieves too because I am sick to death of them.  It was bad enough when it was at work, but now it’s at home and I am PISSED.   That’s twice now.

But what has me really just spinning my wheels is that this happens to me every month.  (look away boys, I’m talking about girlie stuff)  Every month I think I’ve escaped the rage.  Or minimized it.  Or something.  But no.

After the gas incident I lost my mind.  Not over the siphoning, but over the spillage.  Lost my fucking mind.  I knew, in the back of my head I knew.  Yes, spilled gas is bad.  I’m never going to get that smell out of the back of my Jeep, and I love my Jeep.  Motherfuck.  But it’s not bad enough to lose my shit and start screaming and throwing things.  It’s that PMS-induced rage that gets me every time.

It was brief this time, like only 15 minutes.  I congratulated myself over learning some self-control.  I patted myself on the back all the way to the grocery store and back thinking that it took me almost 30 years, but I’m finally getting the rollercoaster under control.

And yet no.  Before dinner I almost lost it all over again.  The boy was playing my game and it pissed me off.  Hubby was chewing and it pissed me off.  The dog rang the fucking bells and it pissed me off.  Somebody somewhere breathed and it pissed me off.

Seriously?  Is there really no end to this?  I am 40 years old, you would think that at some point this would stop.  And yet I am surprised by it every month.  I can be going along just fine, thinking that this time, just this one time, I escaped it, and then not 15 minutes later it hits me like a freight train.  It’s literally that fast.  The rage express.   And woe to he who is in the way.

It’s so totally bizarre to be almost standing outside yourself, watching this horrible behavior, and being completely unable to stop it.  I know I’m being irrational.  I know that at any other time this stuff would not make my hair stand on end.  It’s like my brain is split in two, one half completely insane and the other half watching and going “huh.  Really?  You’re really going to scream at the dog for ringing the bells you taught her to ring? You are batshit fucking crazy!”

And then it’s gone.

Please.  Tell me I’m not alone.

See I have this problem.  I’m a bit of an insomniac.  Actually, I’m kind of a raging insomniac and have been since I was a small child.   I used to joke that I never sleep unless drugged, only it stopped being funny because it was true.  It’s hereditary; my Dad is the same way.  He compensates with alcohol and mad midnight internet surfing.

Over the past year I had to duke it out with my insurance company over paying for my sleeping pills.  They thought I may have a bit of a problem and wanted my doctor to call them every time I tried to get a refill.  Every time it happened I would get this sick feeling in my stomach, start to shake and cry at the drop of a hat. (no, I didn’t have a problem!)

Whenever I tried to skip a night thinking I would prove that I didn’t have a problem I would lay awake all night long, jonesing hard and feeling like a wreck so inevitably I would cave because I’d end up keeping hubby awake too with all my tossing and flopping around.

Over the summer hubby went to a retreat for two solid weeks.  During that time an animal got into the yard in the middle of the night and killed two of our turkeys.  I heard the commotion and if I had been able to get out there I probably could have saved at least one of them, but I couldn’t.  I physically could not get my body out of the bed to go see what was happening because I was stoned on Ambien.  My head fell back down on the bed and the next thing I knew it was morning and I had to hunt down turkey bodies.  Then I had the joy of telling hubby his two favorite pet turkeys had been killed. (yes, we have pet turkeys.  We’re weird.  You can say it.)

I decided then and there that enough was enough.  After taking them for 3 years solid I stopped, cold turkey.  Yeah, I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to do that.  I figured I had like 10 days before hub got home to get it out of my system and it didn’t matter if I wasn’t sleeping because he wasn’t there for me to bother.

And I didn’t.  Sleep, that is.  For 5 days straight.  I shook, I sweated, I hallucinated, but I did not sleep.  Amazingly I wasn’t Queen Bitcharella from the planet Snarkatopia.  I was surely a zombie, probably unfit for things like driving and balancing my check book, but I knew I just had to gut it out because there was no going back.  I wanted that monkey off my back and I had to pay my dues, so I kind of took it in stride.

Eventually I made it.  I started sleeping through the night.  After it was all over I went to see my doctor who told me to not be so stupid next time and come see her first.  She gave me a prescription for something other than the devil Ambien that I can take when I actually NEED to.

I think I’ve taken it 3 times since the summer.  Otherwise I’ve gone it on my own, learning to compensate with reading and staying up a little later.  The great thing is that my quality of sleep is so much better.  I don’t feel grogged out in the morning and I don’t have to worry about fighting with the insurance company because they think I’m an Ambien junkie.

The bottle of Ambien still sits in my medicine cabinet, as a reminder I guess.  I don’t know why I haven’t thrown them out because I’m surely not going to take them again, ever.  I still have the occassional sleepless night, but it doesn’t bother me like it used to.   I got the damn monkey off my back and it’s good, very good indeed!