Regina Noctis

So, wrote Under Three Suns out of his system at last. It was a story that pretty much chained him to his computer, and it did that for months.

He’s gotten it out of his head by injecting it into mine.

After reading the final installment, I was driving home from work when a particular song by Apotheosis started playing off the tape I was listening to. Their remix of the O Fortuna movement from Carmina Burana.

As the song played, an animation ran in my head. A highly condensed (so it would fit the length of the song) version of Under Three Suns. It fit beautifully. From the first appearance of the ships sent ahead to scout Draconis 26, to the final battle when the relief fleets arrived.

It has now become the obsession for me that writing the story was for him.

The problem is that, unlike him, I have neither the equipment nor the skills to bring the vision to life. I didn’t get far in my animation courses before Jabba the Schmuck happened to my right hand. I did it just long enough to find that I loved it before I had to give it up. And now I have this thing, this incredible story, wailing away in my head to be realized the way it struck me that night in the car. I hate this creative constipation. This having something that needs to be, but this inability to make it happen. It’s painful in a purely non-physical way. I haven’t felt this in a very long time, either. The part of me that was creative in this particular direction seemed to have died a long, slow, agonizing death after the repeated dislocations that damaged the joints so badly. I guess that it just needed the right inspiration, however. Because Three Suns has woken it back up, only to be completely blocked.

I never expected to wind up in this position again. I don’t like being here, either. I seemed to be doing a decent job at channeling the thwarted need for creation in other directions, and then this happened.

As if to underline how futile this vision is, the chill in the air tonight is making my abused fingers ache in every joint. Even typing is difficult, and that’s not something I usually have problems with despite the damage done. My hand is so stiff and unresponsive right now that even this griping about it is being done at a shadow of my usual 110 or so words a minute. If I can barely type, how in the hell am I supposed to animate something like this?

If my skills were up to it in 3D rendering, I could try it that way, though it wouldn’t match the images in my head as well. What I saw was old-fashioned hand-drawn animation, not a rendered thing. It probably wouldn’t even completely still this deep need, not being exactly the thing that wants to be realized. I’ve got a long way to go before I’m even close to where I’d need to be in order to model the whole thing and render it.

Hopefully, my long-lost bitch of a Muse will get tired of this and take her whips elsewhere, and do it soon.

Since some people might wanna know…

The date Saturday went very well. So well, as a matter of fact, that I thought that hadn’t shown up to be my rescuer in case things weren’t okay, since I never saw her. I was informed later that night that she had indeed been there. I was just so absorbed in talking with Mike that I never noticed her arrive and never saw her seated in the cafe. I would have at least waved or something, but I really noticed very little once Mike and I got to talking.

We finally ended the date 5 1/2 hours after it started, and we’re definitely doing it again sometime after I get back from vacation.

Yay!

An hour just to get through the email. I don’t even want to think about how long it’ll take me to get through all the LJ entries I’ve missed reading from my various friends. Maybe I’ll just skim and pretend I read in depth. Ya’ll write a lot. There’s so much for someone who hasn’t been able to get here in several days to catch up on it all.

And I get to play catch-up again sometime next week, since I’m heading south on Friday after work and will be spending a bit of vacation time off at Pismo Beach and Solvang with my mom. Took the 6th through the 8th off of work for that. Considering I had to plough through almost 200 pieces of email and goddess knows how many LJ entries yet to read after five days’ absence, it gives me a pretty good idea of what to expect when I get home from vacation next week.

I realized at some point today that I’d forgotten about the BayCon meeting again this week. Well, I say forgot about. Really, I slept through it. And I’m going to be gone next weekend, so I’ll have to miss that one also. I wonder how annoyed everyone’s gonna get with me at this rate.

Oh well. If they don’t like it, they can tell me to get out and make the head Kinkajou instead of Kinkajou Second. I was the one who showed up at meetings when no Kinkajous needed to be there, to help Cindy out with stuff and pick up information to spread among the night reg staff. I think that they can survive without me being there for some of these meetings. I doubt that they’re saying anything I haven’t already heard ad nauseam anyway.

I’ve been offline for a bit. One evening, my computer decided that it would no longer boot. When I tried, it told me that there was a VKD error and I should restart the computer. It said this even if I tried to go into safe mode. I talked with about it, and he told me what I figured I’d have to do anyway, but was hoping I wouldn’t… do a complete reinstall. I hate that.

I went off to find my Win 98 install disk, and couldn’t it’s probably in a box somewhere. Annoying.

So I called to ask if she had one. She did, and said she’d drop it off for me. But she’s been busy working, and I get done at work so late, she’d be in bed by the time I got home. So the days dragged on and on while I waited for the chance to connect with her and get the install disk.

While that was going on, I set up the other computer so I could play a game or two occasionally while winding down after work. I didn’t want to have to pull apart the old computer to get the ethernet card out and then go install it in the other computer, so I just put up with being offline. Besides, I don’t even know where the screwdriver is. Probably also in a box somewhere.

Mom, it seems, is good at forgetting to send important bits of cable and cord. I had to get a cable for the VCR when she gave that to me. And when I set up the other computer, I discovered that I had everything but one important cord. The power cord. There was also no keyboard, but I knew that already.

I grabbed the power cable and the keyboard from the old computer to do temporary service with the newer one. And the first time I booted up that machine, I got the VKD error again. It only happened once this time, however. After that, and ever since, that machine has booted up just fine. Made me wonder if it’s a problem with the keyboard and not a corrupted driver, as Wolfie and I first thought. After all, only the keyboard and the power cable were the same from machine to machine.

I got the install disk today (thanks, sis!) I came in to start the reinstall, transferred the power cord and keyboard back in here from there temporary home in the dining room, and decided to try booting this thing without a reinstall just to see what would happen. And guess what? It boots just fine.

I once had a computer that seemed to be affected by the full moon. For the night of the full moon, and a day or two before and after, it would start acting strange. This was some time ago, the first computer I had. During those three to five days, when I wanted to get into Windows 3.1 from DOS, I had to have a CD in the CD drive. It didn’t matter what CD, just so one was there. Otherwise it wouldn’t start Windoze. It would give me an error that the CD was not in the drive and if I wanted to run that software, I had to put the CD in.

Considering the timing and the length of time that this machine had problems, it made me wonder if this one is a werecomputer too.

So now I’m debating whether or not I want to reinstall (it wouldn’t be a bad idea, since this machine has been acting funky in an amazing number of ways for the last month or so.) Or do I want to stick with the status quo, so I don’t have to reinstall all my software and get everything configured again to work with the cable modem.

For the moment, I’ve got so much to catch up on here on lj, and in email, and on PH, that I’m going to leave well enough alone. If I decide to do the reinstallation, I can always do it tomorrow after work.

…alternatively titled Will Probably Grumble.

France was bountiful. No other country was so blessed as France. This was deeply resented by her neighbors, the other Europeans. They grew jealous of all the blessings France had. In a rare moment of unity, they got together and decided to send representatives to God in order to protest the overprivileged country.

“France has been given the best of everything,” they said. “Bounded by both the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, fertile valleys and mountains both, romantic northern winters and southern sunshine, a language of supreme grace, the finest butter and olive oil to enrich the cooking, the most productive and varied vineyards to be found, more cheeses than there are days in the year – everything that a man could desire, in fact, and all in one country. Do You consider this fair? Is this Divine Justice at work?”

God listened to these complaints and considered them carefully. Finally, He was obliged to admit that France’s neighbors had a point. It was quite possible that He had been over-generous to this country when bestowing riches and blessings.

To make up for all these unfair advantages and balance the scales, God struck upon a plan. He created the French. The other Europeans went home happy. Justice had been served.

Paraphrased from French Lessons by Peter Mayle.

If anyone looks for me and can’t find me, that’s cause I’m in hiding from a certain Frog of my acquaintance. :D

I have returned from Seattle. I had a fantastic time there, and wish I’d been able to stay longer.

I am also broke until payday and/or my federal taxes are deposited in my account. I might have been okay, but the cost to get my car out of long-term parking at the airport was pretty bad. It cleaned out all but $13 from my bank account. $60 for parking four days in the CHEAP lot. Dammit.

So, I’m planning to skip lunches this week at work and just eat when I get home from work. I’ve got a couple servings of ’s spaghetti sauce in the freezer, along with a couple servings of turkey mulligatawny soup with coriander and lime.

I’m not really ready to be home yet. I want to be sitting in and ’s living room, talking with them about something. Anything. Or watching more episodes from the first season of Oz. Or something. Something not here.

It would also have been good to have more time to hang with , though there’ll be weekends that I’ll be dragging him down from Berserkly. He’s easier to get to see than the Queens.

And since it’d been 12 years since the last time I encountered him, it also would have been good to get more time to hang with . I had a great time talking with him (and, poor guy, embarrassing him with memories of a particular party from years and years ago.) He’s gotta be the only parent I’ve ever seen who not only bothers to remind his child that she’s sounding high-pitched and whiney, but was able to do so in a calm fashion (and successfully.) Since I’m the kind who dislikes children (with notable rare exceptions) I was both impressed by this and grateful for it.

Guess I’ll have to make arrangements to hang out with him for more time next trip. Not that I’m going to be able to do that soon. My vacation time for the rest of the year is spoken for, so the soonest I’m going to be able to make a serious trip up for a visit won’t be until next year.

And I’ve already decided that next trip, I’m going to go on the Underground tour again, with my OWN camera this time. There are some pictures I want to take down there.

Okay, I’m going to go read or something, and attempt not to pout that I’m home before I’m ready to be home.

I am, as I’ve often said, a fairly hard-hearted wench when it comes to books, TV shows, short stories, movies, plays, musicals, etc. There’s been one book and three movies that I’ve ever cried at. And one of the movies, I was PMSing for the first time in about ten years so I don’t really count that thing. I’ve gotten accustomed, lately, to managing to wring tears out of me with his writing. I’ve considered him a special case. He’s, well, Urquhart. That’s just how it is. He knows exactly where my emotional triggers are, and if he wants to push them, he does.

I’d never cried at anything else. And when and told me that the second half of Rent was depressing and would probably even make me cry, I didn’t credit it. I gave them the patented “Yeahsureright” look.

Well, the writers of Rent are bastards. I cried at a musical for the first time.

And Sylvan, Wolfie, before you even start… hush. ;p

That was a great show. Amazing. And the voices of the people in it… and Angel jumping around in those platform heels… OMG.

I guess I’ll forgive the people who wrote the show for making me cry. The show was worth it.

And the company today was worth it, too. brought down a couple of friends from Berkeley, and they were very fun people to have dinner with and talk with. I liked them quite a bit, even if being around a pack of 18-year-olds made me feel ancient sometimes.

The sprained muscle even stopped hurting so bad today.

And it looks like I have another date, though since the guy in question and I both had plans already this weekend and next, it won’t be happening until weekend after next.

All in all, this has been a very good day.

I’m off to check Pan Historia and then grab a cold washcloth to put over my eyes. I can feel that they’re still red and a little puffy from crying during Rent.

Hasta.

I’ve never really seen myself as the an aggressor when it comes to relationships. I had a sudden burst of realization on the subject, however. If someone pursues me, at least in the beginning, I run away. I’m never interested in the someone that actively pursues me. I might be in the kind of mood where I’ll force myself to stop my headlong flight for the hills, and attempt to see if there’s anything there. But I’m realizing that if I’m not the one who, to some degree at least, initiated things, then I never do actually get interested. It almost feels like a chore, something that I don’t want to do but either have to or, at least, should do for my own good. Kind of like eating your vegetables when you’re a kid. You don’t want to, but it’s good for you and your parents make you do it.

Maybe, as that silly test I took the other day said, I do like the chase. I never really thought of myself as that kind of person. Then I look back over my love life… what there’s been of it… and in all cases but two, I was the one who began pursuit, at least initially.

It’s being on this matchmaking site that actually made me realize it. I was rather grumbling to myself that the types of guys that don’t interest me at all are the ones who contact me. But is it just because I wasn’t the aggressor that I’m not interested? If I’d stumbled across them in the first place, would I have passed on by as not interesting, or would I have initiated contact? I’m not sure. I think I would have passed on by, but that could just be that I’m turned off because I’m not the pursuer.

I think somewhere in my head, I’ve come to equate letting myself be pursued and eventually caught as settling… and the two times I actually did settle for someone I didn’t want in the beginning led to the two worst relationships I’ve ever been in.

Enough incentive to hightail it in the other direction when someone else makes the first move? Or have I always had a need to be the one to take that first step? I wish that I had more of my memories. Maybe then I’d be able to tell.

It makes me look at my last relationship and my last crush in a different light. In both cases, the flirting was pretty much mutual in the beginning, but I was the one to make the first move toward flirtation in both cases. And then, for various reasons, they both backed off fairly quickly after that. I think that’s what really got me so thoroughly hooked so quickly. Just enough flirtation to get me interested, and then the thrill of the chase…

Huh. Maybe I need to change my view of myself on this subject.

I’ll think about this some other time, though. I need to break this habit I’m developing of getting introspective when I ought to be sleeping.

The journal for my fiction is set up, the people who asked to be added have been added, and the work so far has been posted on it.

Considering the lengthy babbling I do here, it feels a little weird to have a journal with only one entry in it. And it isn’t going to grow with anything like the speed THIS journal has.

Ahhhh well. Back to writing!

I’m far too awake for it to be this time of the morning. I haven’t gotten to sleep yet and I don’t know when I will.

One of my friends at work, Kat, suggested that I take a long, hot bath to try and help the strained muscle in my side/back. I look at the dwarfish little tub I have and laugh at that idea. It’s so short, narrow, and shallow that the water would get nowhere near the place that’s in pain.

And it is SO painful. I’ve been moving around worse than my 90-something-year-old grandmother. I hope this is gone by Sunday night, cause I have a ticket for Rent that night, and might wind up making the lengthy round-trip from here to Berkeley to take and his friends back up to the college after the show. I can just imagine how happy that’ll make this stupid thing feel.

Pan is down again. It’s been going down over and over again. It’s worse than a cheerleader with an oral fixation.

I think I’ll go attempt to sleep again. At the very least, it’ll take pressure off this damned strained muscle.

I succeeded in pulling a muscle in my right side yesterday, around toward my back.

Last night I had a coughing fit that put a lot of strain on it. By the time it was over, I could barely move because it hurt so much.

My idiot neighbors, who have a difficult time remembering that I am asleep in the mornings, were blasting rap under my bedroom window. They played it so loudly, the music was distorting. It woke me three hours after I got to sleep. In getting out of bed, half-asleep as I was, and making my way to the window, I moved wrong and made the thing in my side worse still.

Getting out of bed at all when my alarm went off was incredibly difficult. I was awake enough that time to remember about the damned muscle, and moved carefully. I’ve been suppressing another coughing fit because I know how bad that’s going to make me hurt.

And I can’t take today off. I already called out once this week, because of the whole thing with John last weekend. This sucks, since there’s a lot of walking around in my job, to get to printers and copiers. There’s a lot of bending down to the floor, too, to grab files for processing.

This is not going to be a good day.

i am

what sexual performer are you?

damn, you’re good. you’re intimate and reckless. you buy stuff that you could barely afford but you live a life others would envy. work is just something to get you by while you are preoccupied with thoughts about the opposite sex. you seduce with intellect when looks fail you. the thrill of the chase fuels you and you’re not afraid to try new things. your intimacy goes beyond the flames of passion.

you look for love at the most inopportune of moments. you sleep with impunity and could break a few marriages if not caught. you love sex with a dash of danger.

oral sex? with passion.

sexual positions? you go with the flow.

And I even, mostly, agree with what the profile says about me. The only thing I question is the bit about being a leader. I’ve never seen myself as one, and I’ve usually attempted to avoid positions of authority.

Enough is enough – you feel frustrated and rejected. You are fighting back and the going is tough. It would be just wonderful if you could be left in peace.

You are a leader and possibly at this tine in a position of authority, but you are experiencing problems. You are not quite sure how to handle the present situation.

You wear your heart on your sleeve and since you are an emotional person you are apt to give your all – heart and soul – to all those that show you a little affection; but take care – it would appear that you have been extremely hurt in the past and you keep leaving yourself wide open for punishment.

Recent disappointment has led you to become truly introverted. You are becoming suspicious of everybody and consequently you now feel that you are unable to trust anybody. Unfortunately it would appear that you are curbing your natural enthusiasm and imaginative nature – perhaps this is because you are fearful that you may become over enthused and find that you could possibly be carried away by wishful thinking. You are keeping your distance to see whether attitudes towards you are sincere – but this watchfulness could easily develop into suspicion and distrust.

Perhaps in the distant past your trust and belief in your fellow man was misplaced and you can now no longer accept anything as it appears to be. You are untrusting and you insist that before you commit yourself to anything, you examine the pro’s and con’s with critical discrimination. The situation has now progressed to one where you are apt to disagree yet not make any form of constructive criticism to every suggestion that may be put to you. As a result you are in limbo. There is a saying that goes ‘The past does not equal tomorrow’. Think about it – and let go.

At last! Pan Historia is back online! Woohoo!

Yesterday seemed to be my too-much-stress day. Today began that way as well, but it got better.

Normally, when John pulls something like this, I do get stressed… but it’s a different reaction. It’s mostly anger. I guess the latest one was just too much. I was angry, but I felt so far away from where it’s happening, and helpless, and depressed that it wasn’t the dominant emotion. When I’m angry, at least I can still function. But getting hit with the mishmash that I was yesterday made me useless. Seemed like there wasn’t anything I could do besides cry yesterday.

John’s insanity and violence has been going on for quite some time now. Almost a year since the first incident (at least that I knew about) that happened to the family down in Delano. And he was violent before that, though people tend to forget that. Somehow, I guess because I’ve always been able to pull through it and get on with life, it has seemed less dire to everyone in the family when it was me that was his favorite punching bag, back in high school and before. Hell, as much as I hated it, even I feel like it was somehow less bad when it was me he went after.

Of course, I’ve changed since then, and he seems to know it. I was, as my mom always said, the perfect victim back then. I think John realizes that something has changed since those days, since he keeps his distance from me. Maybe he realizes that if he tried pushing me in that way now, I wouldn’t just cower and let it happen. These days, he keeps his distance from me when I’m in Delano and plays kiss-ass.

I wonder if he knows how close he’s driven me to forgetting that I’m a pacifist. I wonder if he knows that after his rampages, even I, someone who doesn’t believe in taking life, have considered just offing the bastard.

When you have a rabid dog, you don’t try to rehabilitate it. You have it put down.

After all this time, I guess I should have expected at least one day when it was too much, and I couldn’t just rant here and stomp around the apartment, and then go off to work and get things accomplished. I guess I should have expected to just break down and sob all over my room. I guess I shouldn’t feel like I’m weak and useless.

But that’s how I feel right now.

I’ve heard the endless litany from one person after another about how strong I am. I know, I’ve hauled myself through all kinds of painful shit. I think I’d dealt with more stuff by the time I was 20 than most people had who were twice that age. But the necessity of persevering that way has begun to make me feel like I can’t have a moment of losing control like I did yesterday. That somehow, in some cosmic ledger, this brands me as weak, useless, not worthwhile. I need to stop feeling that I’m not allowed to buckle once in a while. I need to stop feeling like I’m not allowed to be human or to have feelings of pain and being overwhelmed.

I am so drained.

I called out of work today. I hadn’t slept well enough to be even vaguely safe behind the wheel. And after I called out, the stress and everything just got to be too much. I started crying, and I couldn’t stop.

I think I cried most of the day.

I realized that I’d be better if I had some company. Being alone here gives me too much time to think about everything that has happened and is likely to happen down in Delano. So, I called around to a couple friends, but they were too busy to add me into their days.

Since I couldn’t actually be physically around someone, I called and talked with him briefly. I forgot that this is the time that was up there in Seattle visiting him and . Sylvan put her on the phone, and that was a lovely surprise. Between the brief conversations I had with her and Sylvan, I managed to stop crying for a while.

But then I could feel it building up again, because after we hung up the phone, I was back to having nothing that would keep my mind from turning back to the situation in Delano.

I did try talking to someone at the Sunnyvale PD. I was hoping for some kind of suggestion that I could pass along to the folks down in Delano. It wasn’t really any kind of help. All they said was to keep calling in every incident to Delano PD, and eventually someone would have to respond.

Eventually when? When John finally puts someone in the hospital for an extended time? When he kills someone? That kind of eventually? I need something that will stop my family’s pain NOW. Not some nebulous eventually.

So, that really didn’t get me anywhere.

About the time I was building up to another burst of tears, logged onto Yahoo. I’d been keeping it running, since Sylvan said that he’d log in and look for me when he got back from dinner.

Misdev agreed to go out with me to get something to eat. I realized I hadn’t eaten a thing all day. But then, that’s really pretty typical. I only get hungry about once a day. Sometimes not even that much, and I have to force myself to eat something anyway so I don’t get hypoglycemic.

So I picked her and up and we went to the Mini Gourmet. We had a good long talk about any number of things. I even reached the point where I could laugh. It felt so good to be able to laugh after the last couple days.

When I got home from that, Sylvan was online, and we had a rather morbid conversation, right up until some underlying bitterness about something else decided to make its presence known. This is the problem with typing like I do. It’s not really any more of a buffer than speaking is. Sometimes mouths can say things that should never have been said, and it happens too quickly for your internal censor to cancel it. With the way I type, there’s not actually any more of a buffer between those impulses and just tossing ‘em out into the open where they shouldn’t be than there is when speaking. Less of a buffer, probably, since I’ve had less time to develop that kind of internal censor in typing. The reflex loop from brain to fingers doesn’t have one in place yet, or not much of one. So I said something bitter, and realized it as soon as I hit enter. I immediately apologized, but it was too late by then. It was already out there.

We worked out the brief fight following that comment that should never have been made, and Sylvan went to bed on a much happier note than it could have been if we hadn’t gotten that ironed out.

I’ve been playing Pharaoh since then, hoping it would absorb me enough that I wouldn’t go back to brooding. It at least slowed it down. I’m only now starting to feel a distant threat of tears. So, since I’m exhausted, I’m going to try and beat the tears by going to sleep now. Hopefully, all of this has drained me enough that I will manage to beat insomnia tonight, as well as outdistance the tears.

Here’s hoping for a better tomorrow. I could use one.

I am The show must go on

You’re tired and you’re weary.

But you are extremely strong at heart, you’re one of those people that will
keep on going long after everyone else around you has given up.

This is what makes you everyones saviour, you slowly feel like people are
wearing you away, but hold on in there, a better day will come.
What Queen song are you?

Originally posted private

The truth is that I still, to some degree, mourn the end of my relationship with Pete. I still miss him. I still wish that we were together.

I still love him.

When does it stop hurting?

I wish I could talk to someone about it, but I learned my lesson. I learned that, even when I’m not insane with grief like I was over Jeff, people can’t deal with me being sad.

It’s like my father, and his conviction that if I wasn’t smiling and happy all the time, no matter what happened to me, then there was something wrong with me and he didn’t want to deal with me.

I’ve given my support to my friends, no matter the tragedy, no matter how deeply it cut, how much it hurt, how long they mourned. I’ve given as selflessly as I could when that happened. But when the situation’s reversed, they’re not willing or able to do the same. I can’t talk about it with them, and if they knew that I still have some of these feelings, they’d either start telling me to get on happy drugs or get pissed off at me for not being over it on their time schedule.

Excuse me for needing someone once in a while.

Even pillars of support need to lean once in a while.

What were you in a past life?

You grew up without your parents, disease took them when you were young. Your wife too was lost to illness, and although you’d already begun studying what there was of medicine, it was only after she had left you that your life had real purpose. You were going to cure the world. You worked long hours, you did your best to heal the sick and help the hurting. You believed in what you were doing. And one night you had a little bit too much to drink… and another life left the world, one you could have saved, one you should have saved.

Karma is giving you a second chance. This lifetime, you will have the chance to make a difference, to help or heal, cure or care. Take that chance, use it well, or you’ll be stuck repeating this over and over. You’re already somewhat health-conscious and that can be used to your advantage. You’re already at times protective, and that’s a good trait. The only thing you really need to beware of is being used – not everyone is looking for help, some just want an easy ride, and that is NOT what you are here to give.

Why am I not surprised by this result? :D

I want my fag to cuddle. And of course, he’s in Seattle.

Seems like no matter how bad something is, a good long hug will give me just enough of a false sense of security to get the emotions under control and be a little more rational. Unfortunately, being the emotional sort I am, I often need something like that in order to actually achieve some degree of rationality. Not all the time. But when things get bad… really bad, like all of John’s insanity and violence.. then it helps.

And is sooooooo good at just the right kind of hug, when I really need it…

He should probably be glad he’s in Seattle. The way I’m feeling right now, I’d be calling over to his place and demanding he haul himself out of bed just to give me that hug, if he were in the area.

Or so I say now. I’d just sit here wishing he was available for that hug rather than asleep if he actually were in the area. I can talk a good self-centered game, but when you come right down to it, I’ll suffer before I go wake someone up.

Hell, even when I was in the middle of the attack that put me in the hospital and led to my surgery a few years ago, I waited for as long as I could before I called anyone. I put up with being alone, and scared, and in incredible pain, and too far gone in shock to think, “HEY, dummy, what about a hospital? Or 911?”

What I DID think was, “I wish I even had someone to talk to until it stops hurting, and then I can get some sleep at last.”

So I went through that attack all night. It started about 9pm, and I finally decided that I’d waited long enough and (though I knew I’d be waking him up) called Sylvan when it was about 6am… 9am his time.

So yeah. I know that I might wish he was here so I could force him out of bed for that long hug until I could feel better and start thinking instead of feeling, but if he was still in the Bay Area, I’d just wait until he was up anyway.

Oh well. Back to obsessing on the whole hug thing, since it keeps me from obsessing on my family in trouble.