Today's Fish Selection, Carpe Diem

Sitting here tonight - it is 11:19 pm (the way we've learned to tell time digitally, instead of ghe more casual "almost 11:30) or "past bedtime" or "getting toward midnight," and you probably know I've been faithful to a bedtime routine that includes getting off screens at 9 pm, okay, sometimes pushing it a bit.  I've done a lot of things those who style themselves experts in sleep call "sleep hygiene."  (The very term makes you not want to do it.)

Because over and over I keep learning it doesn't pay to be good.  I mean, to be obedient, to let someone else tell you what is good for you.  I've had two nights running now where I did all that shit the way I was supposed to and still couldn't get to sleep until 2 pm.  And then only because it occurred to me to take another 6 mg of melatonin.  Jesus.

But I've had a good day here in spite of that, or maybe because I was just too stressed from it to behave.  Started right off with a nervous breakthrough, that's where I get really upset at someone and have to practice right speech like crazy and take some ativan.  These things usually happen when I've been too f---- patient, too nice, put up with crap until it nudged me over the line.  It's always a good thing in terms of clearing my mind.

I got closer to some women friends today as a result.  Made it to church, but not to the worship center.  Just sat in Fellowship Hall and talked to people, starting with, thank God, Barb.  I told her how I can predict tomorrow to be a bad day, and just knew I wouldn't get in the car at 3:00 (my low point of the day, except I get worse until about 6:00 on a bad day) and go to Art Journaling which is now a semi-private group of very nice women who are interested in each other's art-making and old enough to be cool.  Women you can talk to. I love the intimacy of making art with friends.

So Barb said she is going to be babysitting Christopher tomorrow, and how about they come and pick me up and take me to art?  Now - that is a bodhissatva at work.  Barb happens to be a UU Christian, I'd say, and I am rather that too, but primarily Buddhist.  Who cares?  Kindness is the basis of all true religion.  No doctrinal arguments there.

It's been a hellish week for me, still alternating days good/bad like f------ clockwork, and my depressed days really black, maybe because of learning about Scott's death Sunday, on a bad day, and then the funeral last Thursday, another bad day, and I never should have gone.  I quit.  I am not going to anymore of these goddam "Memorial Services" unless I feel good.  I personally hate the way my church does funerals, where everybody talks about celebrating someone's life - yeah, celebrating.  Scott was 49 years old and died of a massive heart attack.  What is there to celebrate about that?

Nobody ever breaks down sobbing helplessly at these things, it's like that's everyone's goal, not to cry.  Actually, that's been true of every f--- funeral I've ever been to except Sarah's last fall.  Sarah's, we cried, her sister sobbed, a minister spoke briefly of death and loss.  But the ones at our church . . .

It has never worked for me.  I can't drink now, with my meds, but what I'd really like is to go to a good Irish funeral as I imagine them, I don't care what the religion is, as long as people wear black and weep.  And then everyone should sit down to a lot of good substantial food and get drunk and kiss people in the hall and hug each other and tell people sloppily you love them.  That's what you should figure out from being around death:  get into life.  Get with it.  Live it.  This is no time to be civilized.

Alright.  I'm going to break one of my own sensible rules and post this tonight.  I hope you like the cat pictures.  And by the way, I love you guys who read this.  Sometimes I feel so tired and lonely in the middle of the night, and it's consoling when I see someone on the other side of the world is reading this blog that very moment.  I love that.  This is my little bit of string.