a wolf angel is not a good angel

My plan is to do some art and some packing every day. I haven’t exactly decided on how much of each, but some. I have a few half-thought-out plans for art to be making; it will be fun to think them a bit more out.

My other plan is to make a list of every room in my new place (living/dining room; kitchen; bathroom; bedroom; office) and what I will need for them (furniture! the furniture I do not have!).

I make so many resolutions. Maybe these I will follow.

My cat has missed me. She refused to sleep on my bed last night: punishment for leaving her alone. But today she has decided to work with me.

I have, now, a cat asleep on my leg, happy, breathing in that funny half-about-to-cry-sounding way she does when she is pleased but not purring. She is happy, happy, and I am uncomfortable and my leg is falling asleep.

You should have no trouble figuring out who will win.

“Hello.”
“Hi, who am I speaking to?”
“Who would you like to speak to?”
“Who am I speaking to?”
“Who would you like to speak to?”

Lather rinse repeat.

I will never actually answer that question first.

In general, too, I have been unhappy: surprisingly so, extremely so. I am not sleeping. I am occasionally crying, though mostly I am just sitting and thinking. I am boring everyone, especially myself.

Will I be understood when I say that sometimes numbness can hurt? That you don’t want to feel because what you feel will be pain, so you try not to feel and just sit there, immobile, numb, in pain?

-Yann Martel, “Self, a Novel”

I guess I deserved it. I didn’t start it, but I certainly kept the fight up, and we both certainly know where to press the other’s buttons. (Oddly, my sister seems to believe I am upset because I am not married and not a mother. This is not true. It is true that I am single and childless, but not that I regret this.) The only thing I can say is that I did not start it, and, eventually, I stopped: in the meantime, I gave just as good as I got.

No point in repeating the cruel things we threw at each other. I am not particularly proud of myself. Oh, it feels good while I’m doing it, but not so much after.

I’m not sure what I will do now. Ignore her, try to respond to her abuse as if it were neutral?

I think I would feel less bad hitting back.

Update:
She “apologised” (”Sorry we were both so mean”), then apologised. I apologised.
Then I offered to watch the one of two shows I thought she would prefer. “Why are you being nice to me? I thought you wouldn’t want to be nice to me after the things that you said. You just want to pretend.”
I am watching the other show, which I preferred anyhow.

Apparently, somehow, magically, despite all the major incredibly stupid mistakes I made, despite being away during this crucial time, everything house seems to have worked out. (Magic = father, in large part.)

I am not quite sure if I feel relieved, yet. But I am going to pick up paint samples on Sunday and pretend I feel better. Maybe that will work. In any case I might as well pretend.

What I need is to sleep well, for a lot of hours. I am not dreaming — good. But I am also waking, tired, after not more than 6 hours — bad. At least I have mostly been busy, though I have also spent a fair bit of time just sitting: I do not know how the time went. Usually I am happy in the fall: this is altogether unexpected.

To be fair, though, I am having long periods of fun, where I am even — dare I say it? — enjoying myself. And I am laughing. There’s just always something a little behind, dragging, slowing me down, wearing me out.

In the antiseptic world we try to purge ourselves of difficult things. Don’t dwell on it, switch off the light and go home. But this is home. I have to be a home to myself. I am the place I come back to and I can’t keep hiding difficult things in trunks. Soon the house will be full of trunks and I perched on top with the phone saying ‘Yes, I’m fine, of course, I’m fine, everything’s fine.’ The trunks shudder.

-Jeanette Winterson, “Art & Lies”

I need a massage. I even have a gift certificate for a massage — 90 minutes! I cannot get to it until next week, but still: I am not sure how well I would do with one, and the place is a snooty place, and though I am sure that the masseuses are nice — I don’t know. I am making excuses for the reality, which is that I do not want to be touched, not really, especially not by a stranger.

I need to add a new category, I guess: moments when I am actually content or even happy, so I can look back and maybe remember them.

Why is it so hard to remember emotions?

I read a book, Burn Unit, which contained a most marvellous factoid: One thing we do know is that scarring is unique to mammals, though the reasons for that are lost in the evolutionary past. (Alas, there was no reference here.)

Now, I don’t know how we define scarring, exactly, but brief googling about fish and stuff suggested (well, to a friend, who was more assiduous in fact-checking than I could be bothered to be) that this is not true. So, biologically astute readers (like, um, PZ Myers? Hey, I convinced my father AND one of his friends to give evolution a chance): true, or sadly false thing that *sounds* true, like the words for snow?