and bad dreams

Update: at least I can receive voice mail at my home number, but it doesn't seem to be working as when I called it just now, it rang once and went to voicemail (the "busy" set-up) rather than four times (the "no one is answering" set-up). They are telling me my line is fine and everything is fixed. Siiiiiiiiiigh. I will check when I go home at lunchtime but I do not feel sanguine about this.

I suppose a possible answer is to just periodically check my voice mail using my cellie; except for my parents calling me a couple times a week (and I know when, and I can give them my cell number) the only calls I get are telemarketers, so. But this stinks, if the lines in the house are shot and they'd have to pull new ones, forget it: I'm not going to go to that trouble, I'll just rely on having a cell and cancel my landline and maybe save some money. (And then I'd probably get a smartphone because my current cell phone doesn't hold a charge all that well; it's old)

Further update: our dewpoint is currently 75 F. No wonder I feel like I've been dragged through heck. I have a sinus headache but because of my recent (as in January) stomach issues I'm afraid to take ibuprofen lest I mess my stomach up again, so I guess I just have to tough it out until lunchtime and then go make a cup of strong tea and hope that helps. But I am SO OVER it being this humid.


I think part of my distress is I'm just, what I call "nonspecifically sad" - there's really nothing too big but lots of little things to deal with. All of the tsuris involved with getting my grant money spent and the research set up. Things like remembering to change addresses (the university closed its post office branch - cost savings - so our "new" address is, of course, different)

And I had an unpleasant dream as the last dream of the night, which always adversely affects my mood. I don't remember much of it other than that there was a rose-breasted grosbeak I had been watching and the bird died, and the last thing before I woke up was looking at the pitiful bird lying on its back in the flowerpot where it had wound up, with a little blood around its bill. (I can't remember enough of the dream to remember if I knew how it died). The unsettling thing is that in a lot of cases I can chalk those kinds of images up to "my brain is sorting its recycling" but I can't remember having looked at any pictures of rose-breasted grosbeaks (they haven't migrated yet so I wouldn't see one on the wing). Unless my brain somehow transposed "ruby throated hummingbird" (which I have been seeing) to "rose breasted grosbeak." I don't know. Brains are weird.

And once again it's super, super humid and warm - it feels like south Florida out there this morning and all the windows of my building are fogged because the AC is up (which is a good thing right now) and it's so humid out.

And someone brought up a study on ITFF about "friendship" and especially "unequal friendship" and the stress people feel when they are friends with someone but that person isn't friends back (and yes, it's using the debased definition of "friendship" as Facebook et al. use it but still). And this brings up a lot of my Issues about "am I weird because I don't have a Best Friend?" and also the whole thing about my not being willing to declare myself someone's Best Friend because I'd be afraid they'd turn around and be all "oh. That's nice. But you aren't MY best friend...." and yeah, I know, that's a little Discord At The Grand Galloping Gala to feel bad about that, but....yeah. Have had "friend issues" since I was 13 and the whole Popular Table issue came up. (And yeah, I know: a lot of people are "broken" in that way but as I see my "insides" all the time and only pretty much see the "outsides" of other people it's easy for me to assume I'm "broken" in weird ways that no one else is).

Things are so much easier in cartoons. Sometimes I wish I lived in a cartoon. But a nice cartoon, like Ponies, not like one of the Seth McFarland cartoons.

And, just, everything. The fact that I have to click through on about eight different things just to post something on the BlackBoard page for my classes. And it's humid and gross out and I hurt and I'm wheezing a little bit from the humidity.


And I don't know, maybe I'm a petty person for this, but I feel whatever the opposite of bad is about Lochte losing his endorsement deals. Actions have consequences and I've spent too much time on too many college campuses where athletes doing both little and big bad things (or just being unpleasant humans) faced no consequences for what they did, and I knew that as a non-athlete, if I acted like they did, TPTB would be down on me like a duck on a Junebug.

That said, even talking about it gets the individual more attention than they currently deserve....