Early Spring Mental Breakdown

So I've been stressed a lot lately. Oddly, a lot of this stress stems from actually having money. I'm not accustomed to it, and it's making me crazy trying to reconcile how it gets spent. A good chunk went into savings, which is good (yay for my smart and responsible wife!). Some of it went to bills, some of it to paying off the demon credit card. There's still some left, and we're trying to make that turn into a beach vacation.

Then we discover that the week that the bakery is closed (and which I already requested off) is the most expensive week of the year to go to the beach. Son of a bitch. Then, as an extra added bonus, I managed to damage my mother in law's truck, so there's some more money. Shit on toast! Add in that I haven't been sleeping very well or much, haven't been eating right and have gained a good fifteen pounds...well, I'm cracking.

I know I should sleep more (last night I went to bed at eight o'clock). I'm trying to sit here at work and take deep breaths like the therapist told me to, but the damn poster printer keeps printing out posters with weird arrays of symbols instead of the text I want it to print. It's an uphill battle. We're having people over tomorrow night, and I'm already stressed about that too, because the house isn't all that orderly right now and cleaning it seems absurdly harder than it actually will be.

I don't know why I let myself get as stressed out as I do. It just seems like a bunch of little things snowball into this horrendous tsunami of frustration. I have a coworker who is waging chemical warfare on me via her allergen-laden perfume...I think maybe that's what finally pushed me to the point of wanting to bang my head against the wall. Note: I have not actually banged my head against anything, but it's still disturbing to have the urge to.

So, here's my proactive plan to not have a terrible weekend. I'm going to clean the house. I may arrange for a babysitter if I can tomorrow, and then try to con my wife into going on a pre-vactaion committee meeting date. And ideally a post-vacation committee meeting date as well.

Anyway, to any of you who both read this and have to deal with me in daily life, sorry I've been so freaked out all week. I'm trying.

Behold!

So I haven't been posting very often at all lately. It's not just laziness (not purely). I have a new huge time consumer here at Strother House.

I used to have an acoustic guitar, then got depressed and sold it at a yard sale for a ridiculously low price two summers ago. Don't EVER do that. If you have a guitar, keep it. You'll never get the money out of it that you'll need to replace it. This is experience talking.

Anyway, I'd been thinking about getting a new one since about two days after I sold the old one. I ordered one off the Internet (not this one), but my stupid bank likes to randomly deny charges and checks (that's a whole other story). Anyway, after finding out that they weren't going to send it to me I decided to check out the local guitar store.

I made my huge nerd checklist of models I liked and how much I could get it for at the absolute cheapest. The guitar store is actually about the same as the Internet. That was a nice surprise, but the cheap bone still balked.

Then I walked over to the used section. This was a steal, even once you add in the case I bought. STILL cheaper than the Internet.

Anyway, I'm all happy. And that's why I haven't posted anything. I did learn some Tenacious D songs, so there's that.

Friday the 13th and Valentine's Day

I've always loved Friday the 13. The idea of an unlucky, even evil day appeals to me.

I've never had what you'd call "bad luck" on a Friday the 13th. Usually I celebrate this tiny personal holiday with a horror movie. Yesterday we were going to mount an expedition to go see the Friday the 13th remake, but I wound up hanging out in a bar all evening instead.

There was good luck yesterday. Good luck in the form of the tax return. I have to go take a shower and then make a secret mission run. To a store. Maybe two. Maybe I'll even break down and get a haircut. We'll see.

Wish me luck.

At least 50

We're having a warm few days; it's like 50 outside right now. This is fantastic, as it's been between 0 and 20 for what seems like a month.

Last night I got out of the house and went running around for a while; today I'm puttering around cleaning. I hope to make it to the recycling center at some point today, because it's been a long time. That stuff pile up, you know. It does take a little bit of the shine off having only one or two bags of trash per week when you have to lay the seat down in your car to take all the plastic, cans and cardboard across town.

Not all my posts have to be comedy gold, you know. Enjoy the warm day.

Groundhog Day!

OK, let's all get together and let a rodent conduct meteorological predictions, shall we? I can never remember if seeing the shadow means more winter or what. I know there are two groundhogs, but it's Phil's judgement that I trust.

But is it Phil? How long does a groundhog live? This may be a conspiracy, a hoax perpetrated upon the American people. The real magical weather predicting rodent may be dead. The whole town could be in on it. They may secretly just be consulting the Farmer's Almanac and manipulating the whole shadow spectacle. A shadow groundhog organization, if you will.

Anyway, here's hoping for early spring. Suck it, winter.

(Amazingly, nothing came up when I spell checked this. First time ever!)