Unwanted Realism

Had a good day yesterday, got a bunch of bills / paperwork / etc. done, and went to sleep in fairly decent shape. And then I had a series of some of the worst nightmares that I’ve had in quite a while. I can’t think of any reasons for them, nor can I link any of the dreams’ imagery to anything I saw or experienced during the day prior. 😯🥺🤷🏻‍♂️ So along with waking up several times during the night, when I finally woke up for good this morning I was legitimately exhausted. 😓 Way too real and stressful. Hours later and I’m still having a hard time shaking it off. (Chases, knife attacks, abducted kids, assaults, horror movie deaths… 😳 Oy…)

So now I feel like I’m having an awful day even though there’s nothing about this day (at least so far) that should make me feel that strongly one way or the other. 🤔😐 Heh… so along with just taking it easy today (since I’ve got my meeting tomorrow) I’ll have to kinda keep reminding myself that it’s not actually a bad day. 🙄😏 Nothing on the agenda, nothing that needs my immediate attention, so I’ll probably bubble up and just watch some YouTube and Netflix and try to avoid anything negative. 🤨📺

The only thing (based in reality) that’s got me a little bit anxious is that there’s some rainy / icy / snowy weather headed this way. 😳 But I’m sure by the time I’ll be leaving the house tomorrow, if anything has managed to accumulate it’ll be gone from the roads by time I’m out on ’em. 😌🤞🏻 And, ironically, it actually helps to focus my thoughts on the meeting with my WC attorneys tomorrow. It’s still stressful, yeah, but I know what I need to talk about, and however it goes it’ll still be pushing this shit further along towards a resolution or significant change… so yeah, still looking forward to it. 🙂

Youth: Wasted On The Young

Lemme tell ya… 😏 once I write something, I swear it’s like I’ve invoked the spirits to deliver exactly the opposite. Talking about the awesome weather a few days ago? How I was feeling pretty darn good? 😅 So of course that meant today the sun rose over a crunchy, icy, snow covered everything. (I know. I was there.) It was pretty, but it’s just that I didn’t catch any forecasts – because I somehow managed to invert my days and nights again, and I’ve ended up feeling a bit off due to it. 🤔 Or I felt a bit off and that messed up my sleep. Meh… nothing serious, it’s just frustrating (convenience-wise) when I slip from the humans’ schedule.

I think it’s gonna sort itself out tonight though. Woke up before noon yesterday, ended up staying awake all night, then all of today… and now the sun has set, and I think I still have enough oomph to stay up for at least a few more hours. Sounds like a recipe for a good night’s sleep, no? 🤷🏻‍♂️🙂🤞🏻

Maven has been trying to help… by not helping. 🙄😄 She sticks to me like glue if she senses that my energy is off, so any time I’d try to sleep – whether kicked back in the recliner, on the floor by the heater, or hiding under the covers in bed… as soon as I’d almost nod off, she’d deftly plop down somewhere inconvenient or just directly on me. 😿🤨 Can’t be mad though… her intentions are good. 😺

So bear with me if I go radio silent for another day or two, or if you’re not able to get me on the phone or via messages. Just getting everything back on track so I can continue this slightly-good streak. 😎 Monthly WC doc appointment is coming up on Monday though, which is always followed by the lengthy, fun approval process (or not) at the pharmacy. 😐 (I’ll push that to the back of my thoughts for the weekend.) Plus, for after my appointment, I’m gonna make my version of tuna fish sammiches for me and Dad (even though nothing can top Mom’s vacation sammiches 😌) so that visit will also help to take my mind off of any BS for the duration.

I shall return.

BTS Comeback Trailer

Guess I haven’t made an entry for a little while. Been feeling a little sick, sleep has been screwy, and then of course I had my monthly doctor appointment yesterday which means several days of bullshit in order to get my meds. 😠 I was able to pick up one of them today, but I’m not doing the “pay for it first and then we’ll refund you” thing like I usually do. Gonna try to wait them out until it is approved, since it legally has to be eventually. Meh… I’ve already explained and complained about that shit, and this month’s no different.

But there was something that put me in a good mood the other day. 😃 BTS released their comeback video for their next album, with a song featuring Suga called Shadow. If you’re a fan, you’ve probably already seen it, but if not… watch it first, before you read everything that I have to say about it below the video. 😏

(Make sure you turn on captions by hovering over the video and changing the selection at the bottom.)

I’m a huge BTS fan now, thanks to Cassi subjecting me to their music long enough to where I began to like and appreciate it, but I’m probably just a bit short of being considered Army. 🙂🤷🏻‍♂️ My bias in the group is Jungkook, but with this video I think Suga just jumped ahead of J-Hope for second place. But for as short as this song is, to squeeze in three distinctly different styles… along with all the visuals… it’s just impressive for a “sneak peek” into their next album that drops on February 21st.

Okay, here’s the shit I wanna comment on, sorta in order as it happens in the video…

• First thing I noticed is that the music is actually the background for the chorus of Fake Love. 😯 Also, the way he runs down the hallway is a flashback to Jungkook running in the Fake Love MV.
• Second thing: Suga rapping in English. 😳 Wat? 😅
• As he runs down the hallway, it’s him taking all of the ambition that he’s thinking about, and choosing to break through to where the lights are bright and the shadows are waiting. Clothes change from light (good) to dark (bad).
• Once he’s broken through and found himself in the spotlight, gained the fame, he feels the weight of the shadows of what his life used to be like – before he became a celebrity… making him question if it’s all worth it, basically abandoning who you once were in order to become what he now is.
• Once he’s on the stage, all of the people in the audience are just blank, still, and holding their phones in the air to record – rather than fully experiencing what he’s doing. 🥺 He even looks dejected as he looks down on them. (Kind of a burn to some of the fans.)
• At different points in the video, “ORUL82?” pops up for a few frames… which is obviously a reference to that track on a much older album, which was about following your dreams no matter what it takes – but it didn’t have the dark spin of Suga now knowing the negatives that go along with fame. 😟
• Then you see the two versions of him… one on stage performing, and the other in the audience – apparently representing the younger version of him that would watch other performers and want to be famous like that.
• Then the “shadow” version of him takes over, telling him how those feelings of uncertainty, regret, insecurity are always going to be there, that there’s no escaping the bad feelings if you’re gonna also strive to get the good things that come with being at the top of your game.
• Even though the shadow side is portrayed as being “dark” or “bad” … that’s the side that has his confidence, that knows both good and bad are inside of him, and that those two sides are gonna fight sometimes – but that if he learns to accept it he’ll be able to move forward with more peace. 😌
• But with the way the song ends, it looks like he still hasn’t been able to reconcile both the good and the bad, as he just gets lost in the crowd of swarming fans.

So yeah, in a way it’s the typical “be careful what you wish for” or “it’s so hard being famous” type narratives that a thousand other songs have, but the visuals in this video really do tell a compelling story. Lots of callbacks from when they were younger and much less in the spotlight, using cues from Fake Love in both the music and visuals, but with their shadows now stalking them all right outside of their hotel rooms, the visual reminder of “ORUL82?” which had a much more optimistic view on striving to hit your goals in life, etc.

It really makes me wonder what the album is gonna be like. 🙂 The current phase of releases is under the “Map of The Soul” theme, and this album has “Shadow” and another track that will be called “Ego” – so I don’t know if it’s gonna be a half-and-half album where the first part is all optimistic and light, and the second half is all hard and dirty, tackling stuff like anxiety and depression and loneliness or what. 🤔🤷🏻‍♂️

Heh… I say that I’m not Army, but as soon as that video came out I began noticing this, noticing that, catching all the references, etc… so maybe I am getting closer. 😁 I actually tried to get tickets for me and Cassi when they were touring in the US, but they sold out so damn quickly. 🙁 By the time I was able to access the Ticketmaster site and try to select two seats side by side – after “You are in the queue” for about 15 minutes – all that was left were single seats scattered around the stadium. 😟 Hoping we get another chance this year.

If you wanna see a ridiculously well-choreographed concert performance from them, click here. 😌

Phones: Everything’s Easier

Speaking of the holidays… over the past couple of days I’ve been trying to get my phone loaded up with all of our familiar family Christmas songs. Most of them are everyone else’s family songs as well, sung by old favorites, and those are pretty easily found on Spotify. 😋🎄🎶 So I just pick the ones that I want and add them to a playlist. The good cheezy 70s sounding ones though, the ones on obscure albums or even records that Firestone and Goodyear would give away each year… those are a bit more difficult to come by.

Terry Baxter and His Orchestra… I had to go on Amazon a few years ago and buy one particular album in MP3 format, which I now have to actually copy over to my phone – rather than just streaming them like the others on Spotify. And it’s funny, there are a few albums that were released under that artist’s name – but upon googling to find out what he looked like, or just more about him in general… it turns out that it was likely just a name that the record company put on albums of similar sound, when they were really just performed by a house band or even different folks. 😏🤷🏻‍♂️

(In the upper right corner of this video you can select from 42 songs in the playlist for this album.)

Doesn’t make any difference to me… but still, that’s an interesting thing to find out about 40 years later. But now I’ve got all the happy ones, some sad ones, 8-bit / chiptune Christmas covers, and even a few from the South Park / Mr Hankey Christmas episode ready to go. 😋 I’m doing all this now, while I’m in a decent mood, because I wanna try a little harder this year to not let the whole season just blow by me. For various reasons over the past several years, the “holiday mood” has been harder to come by – but being able to play these songs as I fart around the house or drive in town for food or whatever… it’ll help.

I still need to find a good version of “Christmas Chimes are Calling” from one of my favorite specials:

Now I have to look in the basement at some point and see if I still have a tree. 🤔🧐

The Day After

“What are you thankful for?” Well, at this moment, I’m thankful that I had absolutely zero desire to go out and do any shopping with the Black Friday crowd – and that I can sit at home and regenerate from the past several days of stuff. 🙂 Nothing bad has been going on really, I’ve just used up all of my social juju over the past few days – so the long weekend will be even more appreciated.

I know that I’m always invited to the family gatherings, which is technically just Aunt Sharon’s clan usually, but there’s still a bunch of people if everyone shows up. And everyone showed up yesterday… including me, since Toni invited me again a couple days earlier. It had just been so long since I’ve been to even a cookout, so even though I knew I was low on energy I still wanted to go and at least pop in and say hi to everyone at once.

Dad knew ahead of time that it would likely zap my energy if I stopped by at the dinner, so he didn’t mind that I wasn’t able to make it over there yesterday, since I’ll be able to sometime else here soon when I’ll be far less twitchy. But I’m glad that I went… it was nice… but I got home around 4:30p and was sound asleep about an hour later. 😳🤷🏻‍♂️😏 Woke up after midnight, decided to eat the leftovers that Genesee had dropped off for me, and fell back to sleep around 4am. Slept in until about 11am, so sleep-wise I’m actually doing okay I think.

But yeah, there used to be a time where I’d at least be considering going out and doing some shopping… but I’m recovering too nicely today by just sitting on my ass and watching random stuff on YouTube. 🙂 Hell, next year could be different and I might be right back out there with the crazy shoppers… ‘cuz sometimes it’s just fun to watch people scramble for what they want… but today, this is right where I need to be.

Figuring It Out?

I’ve been bitching a lot here in the blog lately, so I figured I’d drop in to make a more positive post about the weekend. I actually ended up getting pretty much what I was hoping for – putting the stress of my WC stuff to the back of my mind for a couple days, and just letting Saturday and Sunday work themselves out however they wanted. I didn’t even put any self-imposed obligations of “chores” or “being productive” on myself, and it actually worked.

I went in town to grab some groceries and some stuff for Dad, so I ended up making my visit with him on Saturday instead of Sunday. We were talking about maybe watching the race together, but after the visit on the day prior – we ended up just watching the race at the same time and texting back and forth about it. And that track… Homestead… I still think that it’s a little too generic to be the final race, and the one that determines the season champion. The racing from Phoenix, the week prior, was actually more exciting and entertaining… but meh, racing throughout the 2019 season felt improved overall, so at least things are moving in the right direction.

Caught up with some friends and family on Sunday, through messages, since I’d been flying under the radar most of the week. Toni sent me a few pics and vids from their Philly trip, where Matt participated in the Rocky Run, and also sent me a clip of Matt and Wendi’s gender reveal party thing. But she just wanted to check in on me to make sure I was okay. She jokingly offered to get a life-sized cardboard cut-out of me, which she could then take around town and take pictures with it every few days and post the pictures to Facebook – so my friends would “see” that I’m okay. (Since I still haven’t been able to make myself get back on there and socializing again… heh)

Also got caught up with Bri and Cassi… both of whom are dealing with various crap, but they also both seem to have a pretty good handle on things – or at least are doing their best to fake it as they deal with their respective crap. Not only did Bri have to take her youngest son to Children’s for some more tests on Friday, but then today she has her final custody hearing. However it all goes, I’m still impressed with how well she’s dealing with it all, despite obviously being nervous (and me being nervous right along with her), she’s just facing things and tackling them as they come. Same thing with Cassi, just with different issues. I could learn something from both of them when it comes to that.

In fact, I think that’s what helped my weekend (and even today, so far) feel pretty decent. Living a little more “in the moment” than usual. Reminding myself that constantly worrying about things that might not happen for several weeks… there’s just no point to it. You get things settled in your mind and in your plans as best as you can, and then you put it out of your thoughts until it’s time to actually deal with whatever it is. I mean, that’s not a new theory to me, but it’s something I’ve always struggled with. But watching and listening as others deal with some serious shit, and seeing how they do it without letting it crush them, it could be in my best interest to emulate how they do it.

And for good reasons and bad reasons, I found that “cats” ended up being a frequent topic of the weekend… and while talking to Genesee, I had her remind me about the whole story of Maven’s birth. I won’t go through it all, but basically Maven was lucky to have even survived – which made me remark how lucky she (Maven) was. And Genesee replied that she and I were the lucky ones, considering the influence that Maven has had on both of our lives… and I definitely can’t disagree with that. But it was neat hearing the whole story again, with her lazy butt sleeping next to me by the space heater, and realizing how much she overcame in her first few days and weeks.

So, yeah… I guess it’s sort of crappy that just an “okay” weekend like that feels like such a positive improvement, but it really was a decent couple of days – and I needed it. And like I said, I’m gonna try to follow the lead of the folks that I know who are dealing with just as much as me, if not more, to try and keep the stressful stuff from weighing me down so much. Disability and pain are a couple of challenging adversaries when it comes to that… so not only do I need to embrace the good days when they come, but I also need to do more to nudge the “less good” days in the right direction whenever possible.

(Sorry, I can’t be arsed to go back through and add all the normal emojis today… just gonna hop off here and see where the rest of the day takes me since I’m not feeling too gimped up at the moment.)

Regenerating

Today was a little better than yesterday. Got to sleep a lot earlier last night, slept in pretty good, my various bits eventually hurting a little less, etc. I am gonna avoid the bed for a couple of nights though, as it definitely doesn’t do me any favors when I try to sleep in it “pre-gimped” from too much activity in the day(s) prior. 😟 It was an unplanned blessing that I picked up this leather recliner, nearly new, at an auction many years ago. Didn’t know then that it would eventually make the rough nights a little less so. 🙂

Listening to the scanner tonight, unfortunately I heard the address of some folks I know come across the fire dispatch channel. 😯 It doesn’t sound like it was a big one… with the fire being contained to the porch where it apparently started, and the most important thing – that nobody was hurt. Still… hate to hear that it happened, especially since they’ve been doing some remodeling on the place over the summer.

For some positive news, one of my other friends… her boyfriend recently got hired on at a new job, he seems to really enjoy the work, and he’s getting a buttload of hours – at least for right now. 🙂🤞🏻 Things are always in flux when you start a new job, but hopefully they don’t hire like a lot of places do these days – where they’d prefer to have a dozen people working 12 – 16 hours a week, rather than a handful of folks that get a full 40 hours. But yeah, definitely nice to see things looking up for them. I’ll go ahead and say it… “knock on wood”… so I don’t jinx anyone – but from now on whenever you see me say something that seems jinx-worthy, just keep in mind that the appropriate wood knocking has been completed. 😏🤜🏻🌳

I think tomorrow I’m going to take this little file cabinet over to Bri. Now that she’s got an apartment, bills, court papers, etc… she’s finally got enough crap that she needs to keep organized, and this one has been sitting in my basement since I moved in here. 🤷🏻‍♂️🗄️ I had to pop the lock on it, ‘cuz who knows where that key would be, and the bottom drawer did have a bunch of stuff in it (including printed out blogs from the mid 2000s) so it’ll be interesting to go through all that when I have a moment of boredom. 🙂🗃️ Right now it’s still in a stack on my living room floor. And luckily this thing is lightweight, made from some kind of thin metal, so I shouldn’t have any problems getting it into my back seat. (Hopefully.)

But today wasn’t awful… and I should be pretty close to getting back into the swing of things tomorrow. Oh, and I did introduce OutsideKitty to his new (potential) Rubbermaid “house” in case he’s interested in giving it a try tonight. It’s not gonna be cold cold, but shelter with soft / warm stuff inside is better than nothing, eh?