It’s the seventeenth of February 2014. If you can log on to the Box you could cheat on a mild cognitive impairment test. Funny thing is our gadgets are becoming like speed dial; there’s a cookie that keeps you signed in. Seriously for some websites try to remember the last time you had to actually type a log in.
I’m a little compulsive. Almost my birthday, dad in nursing home, makes me want to buy shit. Thinking about replacing my computer. Computers live in hyper dog years; the core of this one is almost 200 years old. I can probably transfer all my settings, but, you know, I have a sentimental attachment to this wheezy old hunk of Frankenstein metal ( first son or daughter of a whore that points out Frankenstein was the doctors name gets a box of cookies up his or her digital ass).
Without a local parts store it’s almost as cheap to get a factory rolled as it is build another one. Not even sure if I’m looking for longevity in a computer. Ideally in ten years I’m somewhere eating from my own garden and the stream, cooking over wood or pellets and heating with a fire. Ideal is unlikely, but, kids; don’t buy a computer for longevity. The upside to building one, besides knowing the guts intimately, is that it’s not proprietary. You don’t have to get all the latest, just get a motherboard that’ll run all the latest so when the latest is on the way out you can upgrade.
Yes, I’m avoiding all the little angsty things gnawing at my ribs, all the clouds of sturm and drang (which, incidentally don’t have silver linings, though there are glints of some kind of sharp metal, perhaps a stainless serrated knife edge) or the general thickness of gestalt in the air, a silent primal scream. Often the purpose of avoiding such things is the superstition that by remarking on them or, worse yet, the lack of them, you draw attention to yourself and the shit storm moves youward.
I had one of my stupid panic attacks yesterday which I still insist aren’t panic attacks, although I’d be ripe for a panic attack. As I’ve told doctors across the nation “It’s not like I feel I can’t breathe, it’s more like I try to yawn and can only get three quarters of a yawn in, it’s like preparing to sneeze and the sneeze doesn’t come. I can breathe, just not with the depth of a yawn.” I’ve been poked and prodded and hooked up to different diagnostic things and in the end they call it panic attacks and give me anti-anxieties. Most of yesterday I tried yawning.
I did the non-pharmaceutical solutions I know; kundalini breathing exercises and others that are less naughty sounding, pacing, and, discovered a new way; laughter. I have this friend who thinks I say funny things and her laugh is so melodic, so pretty, so distinctive and, subjectively, so warming to me that she makes me laugh too. Laughter takes air, instinctively when you know you’re about to laugh hard you take a sharp intake of air like diving into a pool. Those few times in your life when caught unaware and laughed so hard you couldn’t breathe and your vision narrowed, you didn’t have warning that something was going to be that fucking funny.
Laughter is good for all sorts of things, even the kind of scary laughter in the last paragraph, or the kind when you snort soup or milk through your nose (usually that’s a sibling or spouse that makes you do that) or the kind that gives you hiccups, it’s good for the spirit, the emotional body, the part of you that clings to sober and somber like a floating board in the raging sea. Turns out it also helps with my particular kind of panic attack. The feeling that you can’t breathe is textbook panic attack, the feeling that you can’t yawn or sigh not so much. I think it’d be real hard to laugh if you felt you couldn’t breathe.
I’m going to the nursing home either in an hour or four. Either before or after lunch. Last time I visited with my mom right after lunch he was out of it, became cheery after he soiled himself and the nurses changed; a few minutes of cheery and then into a stupor and asleep. It could be it’s not going to get better; any visit from any of us in the past week has been similar, sans the few minutes of cheery. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t remember. We don’t really visit for him, or I don’t. I visit for my own conscious. I kept him out of where he is for my own conscious too. I’ll never forget the extra couple of weeks I kept Herschel alive because I wasn’t ready to let him go. They were painful for Herschel and yet he had a smile for me and was ready to do anything I wanted. Herschel was of sound mind. I can honestly say Herschel and I understood each better than my dad and I ever understood each other, and, now, my dad is not of sound mind.
It’s not like he doesn’t know who were are, it’s when whatever internal thing he has going on is going on he’s non-responsive. Oh, yeah, I wasn’t going to go there, I mean in the entry. Geographically I’m going there in a few minutes or a few hours. Tomorrow I’m not doing anything. I mean I may write here, but the floor will have pillows around the chair in case I fall. Birthday luck is bad. Mine is at any rate. Book of revelations bad.
I had plans, I don’t think they’ll happen. Doesn’t matter. I’m not only ok with spending the day under covers it’s the standard. Those of you dying to read the range of dumbass to smartass to actual star chart astrology; Aquarian on the cusp. Most of the general stuff demonstrates how very much the Aquarian I am, though personal traits based on birthdate seems just as superstitious and as unlikely as breaking your mothers back by stepping on a crack. My birthday luck, however, is consistent. If I graphed it, it’d be provable, statistical demonstrative. Doesn’t say that in the Aquarius profile. So there’s that and numerically being one step closer to the grave. Not that I have some great fear of death, it’s just kind of sad that another year has passed without little to show for it.
I think the most common fear, the one people rarely talk about, is the fear of being discovered for a fraud. That someone will discover that most things you do you aren’t qualified for. I’m not saying that’s true or anything, just saying most people have that fear and hold it very close to the chest.
Awww shit, guess I better put this dull ass crapfest up or tear it down.
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