Back to Normal Stupid

You know how when you have a bad cold you're supposed to drink a lot of water and take a lot of vitamin C and get a lot of sleep? I didn't do any of those last night.

It was Christmas night and, as I said to my ex-wife on the phone, the first one in my life I spent by myself. She was spending the first Christmas night in her life by herself too. She didn't sound very happy about it. I was fine. I was in a good mood, actually. She on the other hand was in a big house full of Christmas decorations and Christmas lights and a Christmas tree and opened Christmas presents and, on a night when traditionally a family sits around post-dinner and leaves the dishes till later and stays up late playing a game, she was alone, her sons were at their girlfriends' families, and I was gone.

That's very painful, and I am sorry about that, but there was nothing else to do. She no longer knows what I've done in the past that was real and what was a fake-out, and so even if I could do something for her, it wouldn't be real. Not in her mind. Nor mine.

So I just stayed in and did nothing particularly productive. I did have an interesting drive looking for drive-through cheeseburgers because dang it that's what I wanted and more than half the usual places were closed. I was happy about that, actually. I've worked on holidays and it sucks, and I'm sure the kids working at the one that was open were less than excited about the fact that their was the one that decided to remain open. And it was a rainy night and lights were still on yet stores were closed and I kept wondering about the people who were out on the road, what was their Christmas like, how many were aglow with the fading joy and how many overloaded with family stress and just aiming for the comfort of their own liquor cabinet.

Then I just stayed up late doing I don't know what. Playing some stupid addictive computer game. It shocks me how readily I fall into that pattern, and stick with it, and hate myself for it. That, I think, is the essence of an addiction. It is my chosen method to ensure failure. Now that we've survived Christmas, defeating that mode of thought might be a good project.

All that being what it is, I got my sniffly self to bed about one, hoping beyond hope that I would get some sleep. The cosmos had a better idea, and I helped by not silencing my phone.

At 3:45am, my ex texted me to say it was nice to have me there and to have a relaxing day. This was unusual as she is not a texter, but she has always had sleep troubles and was no doubt up and journaling and feeling low, probably very, very low, and sent me a nice message after, if she is anything like me, writing a lot of unhappy messages and not sending them. Of course that's a guess. In any case it woke me up. I went back to sleep.

At 7:06am my phone alerted me to a poke on Facebook. I love getting pokes from this person, and this was not an exception, only my giggles over it were a little rueful. I went back to sleep.

At 8:42am my father called to say that he thought our visit today was on after all. He had canceled yesterday so he could spend today in total misery with a urinary tract infection the doctor would deal with Monday, but though I offered to take him to emergency he was also offered some taxi service from the son and daughter in law of the lady he spent Christmas with, who were there with him. So he spent the evening at the hospital, got sulfa drugs, and was now fine. Since he knows the boys won't be awake until late morning and we really didn't need to know until then, it was heads up of him to call me as early as possible. I went back into doze mode.

At 9:22am my mother called to tell me she wouldn't be home today and to just leave her cell phone in her garage. She left it at the house yesterday. She thought she left it at home, and when she got home and called it, my ex heard it. I can get into her garage because I know the secret code. I better, I installed the keypad. After that I considered going back into doze mode, but it was a very unsure bet, and got the hell up.

Back to normal stupid, rather than Christmas stupid: Still have a cold, not drinking enough water, not giving myself enough sleep, and the present I was going to make for my father hasn't been done yet. Simple: Will just grab good pictures of the four of us out of my digital collection of the past year, crop and paste them into one 5x7 image, print it, and frame it. I have ju-u-ust enough time. That's normal too.