So easily swayed

Wednesday, February 4, 1998

        Today started off fine. I was happy this morning. I don't know. Confident, optimistic. By about noon, things started going downhill, and by the end of the day I was practically in tears. No particular reason, just nothing and everything.

        I went to the drugstore tonight to buy vitamin C for Bob, and also bought some zinc to maybe help my arm heal a little, and calcium and magnesium because I know I need calcium and I know I don't take enough, and magnesium because you have to have that to absorb the calcium, and I finally bought some St. John's Wort. I'll try taking that for a few weeks or months and see if it has any effect.

        I just tend to overreact to things. I was running late this morning and didn't take anything for lunch, and thought I'd go out and maybe run some of my errands on my lunch hour. But it was about 20 degrees at noon and I just couldn't face going out. So I went down to the cafeteria to get a salad. They were having one of their stupid "celebrations"--their ten year anniversary--and they had filled the salad bar space with awful cafeteria salads, weird things like pasta and mayonnaise and sausage salad, and things with peas and eggs, and scary looking "seafood" salad.

        I ended up not having any lunch, I was so annoyed. I suppose anyone else would have just adapted and had some of whatever was there, but I just don't "settle." If I can't have what I want, I'd just as soon have nothing. Not always, but I was definitely in that mood today. So I got nothing.

        I could have just gone to bed when I got home, but I needed to go out and run errands. I decided not to go to yoga class because the thought of rushing home, changing clothes, going to class and then going out afterwards to three or four different stores was stressing me out too much. So I skipped it. I just came home, changed my clothes, and went back out. I hit Drug Emporium, Marshall's, the Hallmark store, and Borders. Several of my favorite places, and by the time I got home, I was feeling perfectly fine.

        Even the fact that both my email and my website were inaccessible when I got home didn't bother me much. I figured they'd be back online before long, and they were. I'd just like to be a little more even-tempered, I guess. Not so easily swayed by circumstance.

        Charles DeLint's new book, "Someplace to be Flying," is out, and I bought that. He is such a wonderful writer. I have so many favorite authors that I'd be hard-pressed to select just one, but if I had to, it would probably be him. His books contain just about everything that I look for in fiction. They're completely entertaining, but they also have a deeper meaning than just the surface entertainment. They can be enjoyed on more than one level. He has a wonderful ability to take the fantastic and make it seem normal.

        Bob came in earlier this evening and said that he knew what he wanted from me for Christmas. He wants a short story. He specified a mystery story involving books and a cat. An assignment. I'm not sure about that . . . but yeah, I can see it. It would have to be magical, though. A story of magical realism about a bookstore cat. Named Pyewacket . . .

        Pye is doing okay tonight. She's managed to loosen one of the staples, but I don't think I'll do anything about it unless she really starts to worry it. She's been coughing, though, and I called the vet when I got home and caught him just as he was leaving the office. He said that it was probably irritation from the tracheal tube that was down her throat during surgery, and as long as she was drinking and eating normally, and she seems to be, that it wasn't anything to worry about. He said if she was still coughing by Friday to give him a call and he could give her some steroids to take care of it.

        I'm not worried if that's all it is, I was just concerned about some sort of respiratory irritation from the anesthetic. Bob said something again tonight about enjoying her for as long as we have her, that we shouldn't expect to have another cat as long as we had Doña, and I thought about how we've certainly spent more on this cat in the two months we've had her than we spent on Doña in 24 years.

        I've decided, at least for now, to stop doing a new essay at the beginning of each month. I'll still leave the essay up, and change it periodically, but trying to come up with a new one each month is beginning to feel like an unwanted assignment. It's feeling like too much pressure, so I'm going to ease up on myself and just do a new one when I actually have something to say. There's something to be said for commitment, and for forcing myself to write every night, but the first of the month deadline begins to loom on that last week of the month, and then I feel horribly guilty when I don't have something new up right away. So maybe if I give myself a little leeway it will come a little more naturally.