Get busy living

I have often said things like, "That's the universe speaking to you." To other people. I believe in signs from the universe, it's just that I seem to miss the ones directed at me until they're screaming at me and beating me about the head.

Today, I finally got the signs right, almost 13 years after they were set in motion.

See, that was when Jackie (one of my top five favorite people on the planet) gave me a copy of the book Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. She told me that the eponymous character in the book reminded her of me.

I loved the book, and I had one of those hand-over-my-heart-touched kind of moments thinking that Jackie thought Stargirl was like me. (She's said this many times in the years since, so you know she really believes it. And that still floors me.)

The sign from the universe part was this: there's a passing mention in the book that Iceland has these spots that are designated by the government as "enchanted places." I didn't know if that was true or not (it's a novel after all) but that was enough to convince me that I needed to go to Iceland. I even bought one of those travel books (which did not, by the way, mention anything about "enchanted places").

A year or so later, my mom and I were visiting my great uncle in New Hampshire and during lunch, he mentioned (I don't remember why) having visited Iceland (I think during World War II, but I might be completely making that up).

Shortly after that, I saw some passing reference to Sigur Ros and asked my brother-in-law to download some of their music for me (I had dialup until four years ago) -- I wouldn't necessarily know any of their music if you played it for me right now, but I remembered liking what I heard at the time.

I kept meaning to get a passport (I still don't have one), but I never got around to it. I never had the money for it, let alone the money to travel anywhere that would require one. Or so I told myself.

In 2008, Matt Harding released my favorite of his dancing videos and one of my favorite moments in that video takes place in Iceland. I thought, "I really need to get there someday."

Almost two years ago, I met the most confusing and cryptic guy I've ever known. The first thing that made me want to get to know him was his casual mention of the fact that he'd spent a night in Iceland several months before we met, and the words he chose in his brief description of the country when I pressed for more details.

Last year, while my writing partner and I were setting the ground rules for our version of NaNoWriMo, he decided that we should have code names. Since Em had just legally changed her last name to France, Ben opted to be Germany. I didn't even have to think before I claimed Iceland.

One day last spring, I was showering before work when I felt what I thought was a lump in a place no girl wants to find even lump-like things.* I had a full-on panic attack that stopped just short of hyperventilating. I ended up being too freaked out to go to work that day, but I did email my friend Emer who, in an effort to calm me down, sent me a link to the video for Of Monsters and Men's "Little Talks." (The video DID make me feel better. I fell in love with that song.) In July, I saw them in concert. Although there are songs I like better than others, there isn't a single song on their album I'd say I dislike.

...And that brings us to today.

This morning, shortly after I'd read an article about an Icelandic girl suing the government to recognize her name, my friend Anne posted a link on Facebook about Iceland Airwaves. I clicked the link. I looked at the prices for the packages that included airfare, hotel, and admission to the festival. I'm not sure what my tax return will be this year (and I'd planned to use it to pay down my credit card debt) BUT, if I put the entire tax return toward this, I thought I could swing it. Holy. Crap. I sent Anne a message saying basically all of these things, calling myself insane, saying that I couldn't even believe I was considering this. (But I WAS considering it. Seriously. And what's more: I WANTED to make it happen.)

We sent some messages back and forth this morning and during my lunch break, including this:

Anne: GET LIVING.

          there's some saying on that, I think: get busy living or get busy dying?

Me: Yes, get busy living or get busy dying is from Shawshank Redemption (it's also a Fall Out Boy song).

Anne: Fall Out Boy. Love it.

(Incidentally, Fall Out Boy is my favorite band.)

And that's how I decided to go to Iceland this fall. Nothing's booked yet (and I still need to get my damn passport), but it's kind of amazing how you don't even really need to think about some decisions - they just fall into your head and heart, because you'd really made the decision eons ago without ever noticing.

Dear Universe: Thank you for being patient with me. ...And for continuing to send signs.



 * I turned out to be fine.

"I can’t go to the places where I used to go. And it can’t be like it was. And I wasn’t ready to say good-bye just yet."

- Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I've been meaning to sit down and write something about how it's good to be able to laugh at yourself, and I'm glad that I have that ability (as evidenced by the fact that my current profile picture on Facebook is a REALLY unflattering picture of me laughing HYSTERICALLY, which makes me snicker every time I see it).

I've been meaning to write about how I discovered Douglas Coupland by reading on Wikipedia how Panic! at the Disco named the song "I Write Sins Not Tragedies"* in reference to part of Shampoo Planet when Tyler writes each of his friends' fatal flaws on a dollar bill and says, "What I write are not sins; I write tragedies." (Shampoo Planet is a pretty awesome book, by the way. As are The Gum Thief and Hey, Nostradamus!) I wanted to write about how if anyone was going to write my fatal flaw on a dollar bill, they'd need a whole stack. One for fear and one for the way I hold myself back and one for how I miss the obvious and one for how I have to have the last word. (And then that was going to segue into having the last word in an argument with someone who would never read the post anyway, necessitated by the fact that I missed the obvious over the course of many months.)

But I'm not going to write either of those posts.

Because the post I need to write is the one I don't want to write. The one I don't want to think about....

I have worked on my novel for 61 consecutive days. Each day, I have written at least a few sentences, sometimes whole scenes, once an entire chapter. I have never written for so many days in a row before. I don't know how long I will keep the streak up, just that I feel compelled to do it, especially as I add more days to the count.

It's awesome in about nine hundred different ways (and it's gotten me more psyched about reading -- just finished book # 45 of 2012 last night -- and about writing in general, about this book specifically). But the thing is, I'm writing a fictionalized account of my mother's death. And the huge downside, the part I haven't mentioned to anyone who has said, "Good job!" when I've mentioned the streak, is that it means I have to hang out in this very painful little corner inside myself while I'm doing all this writing. Some days, I feel absolutely eviscerated by it. It puts thoughts of my mother front and center, every day. (Of course I thought of her, missed her, every day anyway. But some days those thoughts weren't quite at the center of everything, weren't hogging the focus of both my conscious and subconscious. Like they are now.)

Twenty-three years ago yesterday, something horrible happened. Something that broke part of me in ways that can never be unbroken. Something that makes missing my mom a much more complicated and painful thing. Something that made me think, for a good chunk of my life, that I was unlovable and unloved. (Sometimes, this time of year, I still wonder about that. I guess it's part of the brokenness. I am thankful that there are people in my life who remind me -- often -- that I am loved, even at my most broken.)

I don't want to begrudge anyone a happy new year, a chance at a new beginning. It's just that, for me, it never feels that way. I'm not sure it ever will.

For me, right now, I have to take my narrator's advice and just focus on this moment, this breath, this instant. ...Which means it's time to eat the frozen hors d'oeuvres, per Mom's annual tradition.




* Oddly, I discovered my favorite book -- Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold -- thanks to a post by Kevin Griffin of Better Than Ezra on his tour blog years ago. Years later, he made another recommendation via Twitter (City of Thieves by David Benioff) which was also really awesome. Lesson: Musicians make good book recommendations. (Or, Kevin Griffin and Brendon Urie do.)

You're so last summer

For several years, Taking Back Sunday has been my go to band for loud, screamy music when I am in a bad mood, a sad mood, a want-to-tear-down-the-world-with-my-bare-hands mood.

Months ago, I was listening to a mix at work while I was doing something or other on my computer (I really spend WAY too much time in front of one) and part of "You're So Last Summer" absolutely jumped out at me for the first time (even though I'd heard the song plenty of times before):

The truth
Is you could slit my throat
And with my one last gasping breath
I'd apologize
For bleeding on your shirt

Later that day, I emailed Em and said something like, "Hey, this is totally me." And, even though she was mad at me at the time, she said, "Yes, it is."

The Sunday before Thanksgiving, Kate and I saw Taking Back Sunday live. It was the tenth anniversary tour of their first album, Tell All Your Friends, so they played every song from the album (including "You're So Last Summer").

It was an awesome show and I stood within inches -- twice! -- of the lead singer when he came into the crowd to sing four or five different songs. (Side note: I have no idea why the people around me were all about touching and even kind of petting him. Yes, he's a talented guy. I suppose I could see there being some wow factor in saying, "I touched Adam Lazzara" but I don't see any more wow factor in that than in saying "I stood two inches away from Adam Lazzara" and I didn't have to touch a sweaty stranger to be able to say that.)

Adam was standing on the other side of the sound board during "You're So Last Summer." As I was screaming along and it got to the part I quoted above, suddenly things felt different. It felt really sad and lonely to sing those words, to relate to them like that.

Standing there in my ass-kicking boots of cosmic wonder (that's what Emer calls them anyway) sweating in a ginormous crowd of strangers listening to one of my very favorite bands, I realized that I didn't want to be that girl anymore.

My old boss (who I randomly ran into on the street today, even though he now lives in Africa!) used to tell me it was okay for me to take up space. (He's a social worker. They say stuff like that.)

And it is. I guess somewhere along the way, I forgot about that.

Since the show, I've been listening to a lot of TBS. I've noticed that several of their songs mention the color red.

"Little Devotional"

I picture you in blue
But I have to say
I’m more partial to the red
Deep, dark, and devastating
Leaving no question
As to where you’ve been

"...Slowdance on the Inside"

And this town may be a darker shade of red

"MakeDamnSure"

Scissor-shaped across the bed
You are red, violent red

It makes me think of my red notebook, about all the amazing things my friends did with it, about how the red notebook conspiracy has inspired me to be a braver, better person. My friend Mia pasted a picture of me in my fancy red dress onto one of the notebook's pages and on the opposite page, she quoted a song about a red dress: 

If anytime I think that I might drown

In all this standard issue gray

When I'm feeling small and pushed around

I close the door and draw the shades

I put on my red dress

I put on my red dress

Can't take my red dress away

I still love TBS and how they make me scream away the pain of a bad day, but these are way better lyrics to live by.

Expect love. And hope.

Today, one of The Bloggess’s blogs led me to an Amanda Palmer blog, which led me to another Amanda Palmer blog, which led me to this quote: “if you love people enough, they’ll give you everything.”

It reminded me of an entry in the red notebook:

The title of the last blog I posted related to the red notebook came from a David Levithan book: “I hope, but never expect.” When I read that line, I underlined it. Like, five times. I underlined it so much, because I thought it was so very true about me.

Except, maybe not.

I do hope (much more than I like to let myself think about, because hope hurts a lot of the time -- it's often the conjoined twin of disappointment).

And I expect almost nothing of anyone. Ever.

Except this: I expect the people I let into my life to be decent human beings.

Everyone can be an asshole every once in a while, given the right combination of circumstances. But MOST of the time, you need to be decent. You need to be concerned about the people you’ve touched; you need to show up when you say you will (or get in contact – with adequate notice – to say you won’t); you need to do the right things just because they’re the right things to do, even if it’s hard, and especially if it’s not.

That’s what I expect.

When I was in my earlyish-mid-20s, I saw a therapist for about nine months. At the time, I was convinced that I was a terrible person. I explained to my therapist that I worked SO HARD to be a good person. It was exhausting. It was neverending. Obviously, I had to be a terriblehorriblenogoodverybad person if it took so much out of me to be a good person. In one sentence she turned my world upside down: “A bad person wouldn’t put that kind of effort into being good.”

Since then, I’ve stopped worrying about it. I just keeping working at being a good person. I work at being a good friend. I try to remember to be awesome. Most days. (Some days, I’m an unreasonable jerk, just like anyone else can be on any given day. Those days suck, and I just want to get through them as quick as I can.)

But most days I try. Most days I remember that love and friendship are the best things I have to offer, and I offer them freely.

My life's hard

I say that to myself in my most sarcastic voice whenever I feel the self-pity starting to creep in, whenever I feel like I am taking certain things in my life for granted.

Sure, my life isn't always the easiest to navigate. I've got things that worry me, that make me sad, that make me so very angry. Things that keep me up at night. Things that make me cry.

But, you know what I don't have?

Bombs exploding all around me when I try to do simple things like get groceries or send mail.

Concerns that the water I drink might give me a horrible disease and kill me. (Or, worse, that I might not find water.)

Fear of being killed in some barbaric way just for my gender or my penchant for self-expression.

I didn't have to live without power for two weeks in the wake of a hurricane, like a friend of a co-worker.

I don't live in the Gaza Strip.

Next week is Thanksgiving, but it doesn't hurt to take a moment the other 364 days of the year to think about how much harder, how much sadder, how much more dangerous life could be.

Thinking out loud

This blog is supposed to support my mission to "keep working on love" and I think a big part of that is self-reflection and figuring out the stuff in your own head. (You'd think it'd be easy to figure out since it's ALREADY THERE in your own head, but no. I have a hard time deciphering the stuff my brain creates until I put words to it, which is why I babble relentlessly at a lot of people.) Here goes some babbling:

One of the best gifts I ever received was from my sister. She was sending me a birthday present quite a bit late (it was during a period where she sent everything late and we all used to tease her about it) and tossed into the box, unwrapped and like an after thought, was this little stuffed Star Wars creature that had obviously come from the store where she worked. The tag on this guy's ear told me he was Max Rebo (I didn't know he had a name; I just knew him as the blue elephanty guy in one of the original Star Wars movies, I'm not even sure which one). I called her up to thank her for the gift and when I got to the stuffed Max Rebo, I said, "And hey, he was always --"

She cut me off, "Your favorite. I know. That's why I put him in the box."

I'd never realized that anyone had noticed that I loved that character as a kid. (Blue has always been my favorite color, and I had a real thing for elephants when I was little, so he was just AWESOME in my book.) I didn't ever remember SAYING anything to anyone. Even if I had, it would have been about 20 years prior.

And yet. Here my sister was remembering that I liked this guy and sticking him in with my birthday present as just a little something small to say she thought of me.

My mom used to do stuff like that, too -- little gifts for no reason other than, "Hey, I saw this and I thought of you." It's one of those things I'm proud to say I inherited from her. (My derby wife also does this; I think it's probably a big reason we get along so well -- y'know, kindred spirits.)

And although it's nice to have someone say, "Hey, I thought of you," the Max Rebo left a bigger impression because it was more than that. It was also, "Hey, I know you." That kind of recognition is something I've often craved (probably because I spend A LOT of my time explaining myself, feeling misunderstood, feeling like even the people who know me BEST don't really get me a lot of the time).

Toward the end of my engagement, my ex and I used to fight all the time, because I felt like he didn't see me for who I was. He didn't know me. (Which is a big part of why he became my ex.)

Logically, you'd think that I'd appreciate it when someone says, "I know what you're thinking" or "I know what you're gonna say" or something similar. You'd be wrong. Few things make me want to prove someone wrong (even to my own self-detriment) more than someone saying such things. Don't philosophize about what's in my head; lots of times I don't even know (see first paragraph above). Don't pretend you know me better than I know myself.

But why? Why does it bug me so much?

And then I realized that usually when people SAY stuff like that, they're wrong. And I guess it bothers me because I really do WANT what they're saying to be true -- because I want someone to know me that well, because I crave that sense of recognition and connection -- and I'm so let down by the fact that they're wrong. Truth doesn't need to herald itself with banners and fanfare. It just shows up. Like a little blue elephant in a box.

Eight Days

Eight days ago, I drove two friends to New Hampshire. We threw ourselves into a wind tunnel (and discovered that floating in a wind tunnel makes you drool like you wouldn't believe).

I got myself Chipotle for dinner (mmm, Chipotle) and went to practice and all was good.

Then I went to work. I had some frustrations with IT, and it felt like everything was coming crashing down. I went home for lunch and found a cookie in my mailbox with a bright blue smiley face, ordered to my door from my friend Mia. Her timing couldn't have been better.

Five days ago, I woke up feeling a cold coming on. I would've sucked it up and gone to work, except that I knew I had epic things planned for the weekend and didn't want to be sick for that. So, I stayed home and rested all day. I snuggled with the cat. I felt better. My sister and brother-in-law celebrated their eleventh wedding anniversary, and my cousin had a baby.

Four days ago, I dropped my car off for an oil change and basic checkup and ended up having to buy four new tires. (They said I'd need them "before winter" -- since I'm already wearing my fuzzy bear hat and gloves, I feel like winter could descend any moment. Better to be safe than sorry.) After work, I ran out to do laundry and realized I'd fallen in love with a borrowed book. I came home to find a package waiting on the porch. "I didn't order anything," I thought. No, I hadn't. It was a box filled with a pretty amazing sock monkey and a beanie hummingbird and these adorable, shiny, rainbow slipper socks. And stickers! And a really awesome note from my friend Dani.

A couple hours later, I picked up my friend and writing partner at the airport. I finished reading that borrowed book while I waited, and then I almost knocked her down when I ran to hug her at the bottom of the stairs that lead to baggage claim. When we finally got home, she handed me a present -- a journal to document our weekend adventures. She'd already started filling in the pages. It's been a long time since I laughed so hard.

We got up the next morning and drove to Portland to meet friends from grad school. I'd forgotten that Em hadn't seen any of them since we graduated 8 years ago. It was good to catch up and to reminisce. A surprise guest made it all the better. I ate cake in a jar (again).

Then Ben and Em, my writing partners and two of my favorite people on the planet, came to watch me ref roller derby. (Roller derby is a huge part of my life and not many people outside of derby have come to bouts in the six and a half years I've been doing this, so it always means a lot when they do.) I got knocked down by another ref early on and am now sporting a pretty fabulous bruise on my butt. The bout went well. We had another post-bout officials' dinner at Margarita's, possibly the biggest yet. It was fun.

Two days ago, Em and I got up and drove to Manchester, NH, for the yummiest mac and cheese you can find in New England (at least in my experience). Then we headed up to Cavendish, VT, which is incredibly creeptastic. (The dreary weather may have played a part in our assessment of this town.) We found a memorial to a man whose brain was pierced by a steel rod more than 160 years ago.

We saw an odd little covered bridge and took a slight detour to drive on it, turn around, and come back. We shot a very stupid video of the experience, which didn't seem nearly as funny after the fact as it did in the moment. So it goes.

By the time we reached Barre, VT, it was dark. We made our way to Hope Cemetery with the intricately carved monuments anyway, past the sign that pointedly states that cars and people are not allowed in after sunset. It was cloudy, so there was no moon, no stars. Just darkness. We drove around the cemetery, convinced that every passing car was someone coming to arrest us. We took some pictures, scared ourselves silly, and drove back into town to find the Whispering Statue. We sat on either end of a curved bench with the statue between us and when we spoke, it sounded like we were sitting next to each other.

We finally made it to our hotel in Burlington, where the front desk clerk kept trying to push the teddy bear factory on me, since I was wearing a fuzzy bear hat on my head.

Yesterday, we woke up in Burlington. We drove to Lake Champlain and some aimless wandering led us to these giant carved slabs of granite -- a mermaid and a merman and a sea serpent and other things (including a pair of rollerblades - not skates, but close enough in this case).

While heading to our last stop, we randomly picked an exit to get lunch. Turned out, it was the town where the Ben & Jerry's factory is. We toured the factory, ate a sample of Milk and Cookies ice cream, and got back on the road.

We landed at the Bread and Puppet Museum in Glover, VT. It's a giant barn attached to a rambly old farmhouse, across the street from a dilapidated old bus that advertises "cheap art."

I bought a little booklet on puppet making and "How to Make Junk Instruments" (since the sign said they were $3 each or 2 for $5) and dutifully placed my money in the box labeled "pay here." We walked up and down the aisles of puppets on uneven floorboards that creaked and shifted and made you think you might fall through any second. We took silly pictures and fun pictures and really creepy pictures. We trudged up the stairs and did it all over on the second floor with the REALLY BIG puppets (including one giant head as big as a staircase).

Our four-hour drive home through the backwoods of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine was pretty empty and quiet. We listened to music and talked some, although we'd had so many conversations over the days before that sometimes we just sat in silence. The comfortable kind. The "I am so hungry and tired I can't think of anything to say anyway" kind.

There wasn't much time for sleep before we had to get BACK into the car (which has gained more than 1300 miles in the last eight days) so I could drop Em at the airport.

I spent most of today napping with the cat (who is more snuggly than usual, since I left him overnight and had a stranger in the house for days!). It was good. In between, I thought of how jam-packed my last eight days have been, especially when I got that tickle in the back of my throat and the familiar clogged up feeling in my ears. (Well, it was bound to happen....)

Eight days of adventure and fun and awesome stuff in the mail and perfect gifts and so much laughing and feeling pretty well loved. I couldn't handle so much awesome all the time, but I'm glad I could pack so much into these eight days.

Over the course of our adventure, I told Em about a quote from Audre Lorde's memoir, The Cancer Journals, that has always stuck with me: "I would never have chosen this path, but I am very glad to be who I am, here."

Stepping off our established path got us to find those carvings at Lake Champlain, led us to Ben & Jerry's. There are many things in my life I might not have chosen (especially if I'd been given a choice in the matter at all), but all those experiences, all those diverted paths, led me to being the person I am here and now. And that person is a very lucky girl who has had a lot of fun with a lot of really incredible people recently. 

Threes

The thing I noticed this year is that all the milestones, all the anniversaries, are way harder than they were before. Year one was just total numbness. Year two was an aching longing, but starting to feel like a person again. Year three was sort of like the ghost pain after an amputation -- all the feeling started to come back into the nerve endings that had been SO traumatized they had to just shut down. Until now.

All the threes have sucked.

Today is the last one.

Three years ago today, my mom died.

I'm distracting myself by going indoor skydiving (basically, flinging myself into a wind tunnel). Later, I will eat pumpkin pie that I bought last night, because my mom never in her 56 years of life tasted one (even though she MADE lots of them -- from scratch even!), because she said she didn't like the texture.

The pie is like my DFTBA tattoo. It's like today. It's to remind me that as much as I love my mom, as much as I miss her, I don't want her life. I want to try new things (even things that scare the bejeezus out of me) and I want to give myself every opportunity to be awesome that I can. (It's not that I'm always going to take those opportunities, that I will always remember to be awesome, but the magic is in the trying.)

There are some truly amazing people in my life -- people who are willing to rearrange their lives to go indoor skydiving just so I don't have to go alone, who reach out with surprise gifties and hugs and music, who send these emails that make me cry or want to or just sit there with my mouth hanging open (yes, literally) because I am just so amazed by them and their kindness.

I can't help but wonder if my mom has found peace, at last. I can't help but wonder if she sees all that I've done the last three years, if she's proud of the way I've tried to figure this all out and still come out whole, if she understands that it's all about love and I'm trying so very hard to remember that every day. 

I could never live in Seattle

So. Much. Rain.

In my late teens and early 20s, it was really bad – if we had a low pressure system, the pain in my head would be so terrible that all I could do was take prescription painkillers and sleep sleep sleep. I had no energy, and even if I did, my head hurt too much to do anything.

It got better as I got closer to 30. Over the last year or so, I noticed it getting worse again. Doubly so since the concussion I got back in August. (And then I remembered, it all started with a car accident when I was 15, when a guy who was looking one light ahead, slammed into my mom who was stopped at the light right in front of him. My head hit the seat in that old Datsun so hard it gave me headaches so bad that, over the next year, I had to have an EEG and an MRI and no one could ever say exactly what was broken or how to fix it except to take pills.)

Despite the rain and the headache and the fatigue, I managed to feel good on the “I’m better than Accuweather” day, LAST Monday. But then it kept raining. For days and days and days. (The one bonus: My cat snuggled with me pretty much all day Saturday. He’s a good snuggler when he decides he wants to be cuddly, which happens very infrequently.)

Tomorrow is supposed to be nice, but then two more days of rain. Assuming the forecast is right.

I can’t tell if the way I’m feeling right now is because of the rain, because it’s October (and even though I love the fall, I doubt it will ever not tear me apart in big and small ways at the exact same time), because I’m reading a really intense book, because of hormones, because of all of it smushed together, because nothing is ever as simple as just one thing in one moment.

All I know is, right now everything feels a little too intense, too bright, too loud (too much like those last few days three years ago), and it’s making me feel sad. It hurts, just like this ridiculous burn on my thumb that I got tonight steaming asparagus (because, really, if any idiot could burn her thumb steaming asparagus, it’s me) but everywhere all at once.

I AM BETTER THAN ACCUWEATHER!

Me, circa 9 a.m.: Is it supposed to rain? My head is KILLING ME.
Cubemate: Hold on, I'll check. (Pulls up accuweather.com) There's a 7% chance of rain.
Me: Hnh. This is the intense pain at the back of the head kind of headache I only get when there's a low pressure system moving in.

Approximately 8 hours later: The heavens open up like somebody unzipped a cloud (thank you, Ma, for that description AGES ago, even if you didn't remember saying it).

TAKE THAT, ACCUWEATHER!

There was a rainbow curving over my street on my drive home, the most vivid one I've ever seen. I was listening to Ani DiFranco's "32 Flavors" and when I got into the apartment and the cat cried for food (his normal greeting any time I enter the apartment, even if I've only been gone 5 seconds), he rolled belly up for me and I scratched him and sang to him and he didn't even seem to mind (especially odd, since that meant a delay in the food actually hitting his bowl).

So, even though my head feels like it could fall off any second, and even though I'm a veritable circus freak in the way I can predict the weather by my aches and pains, I'm left feeling kinda like that time I was backing out of my parking space at a rest area and saw in my rearview that this guy in one of those adorable new Fiats was doing the same; I pulled forward back into my space; he backed out, stopped alongside my car, honked his horn, and waved in enthusiastic thanks -- SOMETIMES the world doesn't suck. (This is one of those times.)