My knees are cold. I don’t like winter this year. It may have something to do with me dressing for summer when I go to work, but…air-conditioning! Which wasn’t working particularly well at four yesterday morning. There was shivering. Actual, teeth-chattering shivering. This morning as I sallied forth, I wore a jacket. Shocking!
After five nights on and not very good sleep (I think I should start charting these things, because after nearly twenty years of shift work, I’m clearly not very good at managing it), the last two nights were flipping awful. There were some work issues, but meh, I have five days off now. Consider raspberries blown.
Disjointedly, here is the tiniest of tiny round-ups, because I have no central thesis and my laptop is freezing my fingers again.
In the vein of flipping awful, I found myself thinking the worst about, well, everything. Impending doom. It’s when I feel this way that I fear losing husbandly and small lad the most and my wonderful brain can well imagine - and I’m going to stop there before falling down that hole again. Being an old hand at making myself miserable, I ponder pretty things and giggle at nearly everything. Humour is on my mind at the moment, because I found myself having been a smart-arse and (almost? actually?) offending people, but with absolutely no offence meant. We were all terribly polite about it, but I’m going to wonder when I make remarks. That some of it had to do with address (as in who was being so addressed), doesn’t change the hurt feelings.
It’s a problem with my viewpoint. I see a great many things as absurd and worthy of laughing at, but not in a mean-spirited way. The latter leaves me feeling like slime and I’d hardly pour it all over someone else. Mean-spirited humour could not be any more awful. If pulling wings off flies and calling them walks makes you snigger, you’re a twerp. Graduating to twat if you’ve made it past your thirtieth birthday. If it stops being funny when it starts being you…for straightforward slipped-on-a-banana-peel humour, it’s a no-brainer. But in complex situations, recognising an absurdity can be taken as complete, balls-out insensitivity. Ouch. Now I think I’ve dug myself in even deeper, I’ll move on.
And now, a smart-arse.
A feeling of impending doom, unlike mine, can be a sign of an ABO-incompatible blood transfusion. It’s a given in blood banking that receiving an entire unit of incompatible red cells is fatal, so that feeling is entirely accurate. Score one for our brains. I went to look it up this morning, because I’ve heard of patients surviving, and was delighted to discover that death ain’t necessarily so.
This morning I went shopping for husbandly’s birthday (it’s today, eep, I’d almost forgotten). Sitting at traffic lights I felt like a Nigel no-friends, being on my lonesome in my lane, and the one next to me was a line of about a squillion cars turning right. I vaguely wondered if I should panic about whether or not I was going in the right direction. I didn’t panic, even though I wasn’t carrying a towel. Enough sleep? Enough said.
I wandered into a shop that has a policy of searching your bags as you leave. Today to the point of counting how many DVD’s I had in the bag compared to the docket. Yes, yes, I know, theft is a big problem for stores, but really, searching my bag every single time I go there is insulting. Do I bother saying anything? I don’t know yet. But, JB Hi-Fi, I infer your name should be Ho-Fi, given the implicit moral compass of your customers.
Next to food. I’ve been reading about the advantages of a2 milks. While I poo-poo the ideas about a1 being worse for you, I have persistent dermatitis on my hands (fark! it’s under my fingernails now). In my case, it’s because of the soap we use in the lab, although it started from prolonged exposure to histolene, an orange-pith-derived xylene. Histolene was billed as safer than xylene, but so much for that. It’s depressing that eating an orange means a lot of slicing and dicing to get rid of the pith, but I shouldn’t be eating citrus anyway. At least I can have limes.
I can’t effectively remove my exposure to the chlorhexidine* wash we use in the lab. I take the ever-lovely (not really) QV hand wash to work, but the sheer amount of chlorhex smeared all over the place from everyone else’s hands means I’m exposed no matter how I try to manage it. I can use cortisone cream, but it leads to thinning of the skin, and really I just don’t want to. I’ve had periods when I haven’t had dermatitis at all, but I started scratching up my arms two weeks ago after an hour in the lab, and oh gusty sigh. I have a lovely beeswax-and-hemp hand cream that I use (and yes, I now slather it EVERYWHERE), but it isn’t terribly practical. Plus, I’m waiting for the day that someone starts thinking I’m a stoner, because the fragrance is a bit interesting.
Anyway, a2 pundits talk up a2 milks as reducing allergic symptoms. Since I’m also a package with hayfever, it might be worth a try. Every little bit helps. Eheu. In the supermarket I go looking for a2 milk, assuming from the hype there will be something that is 100%, and says so explicitly. Err, no. Dairy Farmers crack me right up, with their pretend hand-writing font declaring their milk “Naturally contains” a2’s, but the brand with the big a2 on the label blurbs about both types - and theirs is “rich in a2”. Wait a minute…I don’t think I drink enough milk. Bugger it.
I get to the checkout and see Men’s Health in the magazine stand. One headline? “FIGHT FAT AND WIN!” Since fat is basically a gelatinous mass, I would certainly assume victory.
* Just why the effing hell we’re using chlorhex, an ANTIBACTERIAL wash, is beyond me. The predominant biohazards from blood samples are viral.
I’ll close with an exchange I found in my phone as I went to keep my notes this morning. People thought I was crying as I walked along after finding it, because I was giggling and trying not to, pausing and bending over laughing so hard, and I’m amazed I wasn’t escorted out of the shopping centre. I’m certainly not showing my best side (indeed may not have one having read this again), but small lad’s responses were brilliant. Apologies to anyone who has seen it before.
We were driving into a Westfield car park, small lad and I, and had to wait at the crossing for the SLOWEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD to cross with her empty pram. And pause. And cross.
Me: Ahh, you f***ing cow, could ya just move instead of standing there like a f***ing lemon?
Woman’s friend comes up behind her and they keep crossing. Slowly.
SL: MUM! Mind your language!
Me: I don’t give a shit, f***ing bitch.
SL: MUUUUUM! That child was looking at you.
I have no idea where this child was. The windows were closed, so I don't think anyone could hear me. Pause.
Me: Sorry {small lad}. Sometimes I’m like a twelve-year-old on a sugar rush.
Pause.
SL: A very RUDE twelve-year old.
