Caution: This Post May Sense No Make

I need an IV, Earl Grey, Stat! And push 30 Espresso! Okay, that's a little ridiculous. Maybe I've been watching too many medical "dramas."

I've actually had a coffee and a tea. I don't even like coffee but it gives me more of an immediate jolt than tea. I'm a mess. I keep dropping things, picking up the wrong items in place of others. I'm mumbling and my speech is full of incorrect word usage.

I had the worst night's sleep last night. I got 6 hours (I know, I know, I can almost feel the chronic insomniacs hurling objects at me) but it was the quality of sleep that was bad too. I was plagued with nightmares (a popular/recurring one is me being transported back to my old job where I was fired for being mentally ill and another where I was being chased through a labyrinth where I urinated on myself.) Fear? Shame? I did actually have to go to the bathroom when I woke up so perhaps there is a physiological basis to some of the latter dream. But I've never had a dream where I've actually pissed myself out of such fear! And I know I've said that I'm not big on "dream interpretation"--despite my therapist's urging to "delve deeper" into them.

And then the leg cramps kicked in (ha, no pun intended!) I've never been shot but the pain is so intense and jarring that I often wonder if that is what it feels like to on the business end of a bullet. I've had them on and off throughout my entire life. So here I am, the sun not quite in the sky, writhing in pain trying not to scream, lest I wake my snoozing partner. I limp to the bathroom to take care of things there.

Yesterday was not one of my more stellar days. Hence my problems with sleep? I had taken my hypnotic and two hours later I lay wide awake, my brain still abuzz. I finally just rolled over and thought I'd better try to get some shuteye or I'd be a real mess for work in the morning. I don't know how much that made a difference but here I sit.

Have you ever in life (well not literally so let me rephrase) in your mind, set up things, like a series of dominoes? It can be any number of pieces, multi-coloured, in any shape or pattern but you do it, sometimes even painstakingly. You step back, admire your work. But one day, you feel the urge to tip that first domino.

Now in life, there are always choices. Yesterday, I decided to tip the domino. I didn't have to but I did. At first I was pleased! Hey, look what I did! Think back to when you were a child and you would watch a set of strategically stacked dominoes fall. Wow! How, empowering! But then, a short while later, I sat amidst a rubble of fallen dominoes and there I was, feeeling like a child amidst a sea of broken toys. What did I do? This of course can then lead to: Oh my god! What's going to happen now? and all sorts of various scenarios can invariably pop into your head about the future. And they're all bad.

In psychology, this is known as Catastrophic Thinking. Now, I did not get to this point. I have at other times in my life but yesterday, thankfully, some semblance of my logic and black and white/absolute thinking kept me away from that place. What a surprise that these things could actually work to my advantage. I looked at my pile of spilled dominoes and realized, well, what is the absolute worst that can happen here? It might be really fucking shitty but I made the decision to tip the first one and set it all in motion so I'm just going to have to live with it. I stand by the decision that I made. That doesn't mean I still felt rather upset about it all but it helped me try and put it in some sort of perspective at least. I put on my "sane face" for the rest of the day, laughed and smiled on cue and I don't think anyone was the wiser.

I'm not sure but maybe I'm the sort of person that needs to learn things by "tipping her dominoes." And part of me doesn't even know what the hell that means.

On a lighter note, I love my boss. She is hilarious. I was accosted by her when I walked in to work this morning. She pulled my headphones off and as I am still trying to convince myself that I am useful on this planet, I am currently dousing myself in Mercyfuck by Mary Prankster (see MP3 of the moment, if you dare.) That may seem counterintuitive but we all have our ways of dealing with things. I suggested that perhaps I should turn the volume down as it was probably the most profane song ever written. She asked what it was so I told her roughly what it was about and by whom and she can't wait to download it! It's her birthday this weekend so we (some colleagues) went out and bought her a bottle of wine (a Shiraz from Oz) called "The Lackey." We just couldn't resist the name.