Once again I wrote this last night like a diligent blogger, but didn’t get around to posting it because I’m also a diligent slacker.

---

I’m sitting at my computer desk right now. My computer isn’t set up itself. No cables are plugged in, nothing has power, but it’s here. It’s with me, and its presence alone makes me feel more real. My monitors are in front of me, my keyboard is pushed back so there is space for my laptop, which is currently playing Arrival At Sydney Harbor on repeat. The music is soothing and helping to keep me grounded.

Where to begin with today? Where to begin with any of it?

---

Saturday – Green Curry and Dishes

Saturday was good. Slow, but good.

I posted the comments from my grading to the online platform. Normally Clavan does that, but since there were so many students this month he said to go ahead and post them myself once I was done. Technically I completed my grading Friday night, but I saved the task of posting for Saturday morning during the SAL lab. It would have been my luck to try to push through the posting and mess something up.

“Hey, awesome work, you got a 100. Oh wait… I mean… actually, you got a 15… my bad. Have a nice weekend. : D “

Somehow I don’t think that would have gone over very well…

Aside from that, I checked my work email; nothing exciting there. Something lame about summer training, something about systems I don’t use being updated.I still have the email telling me to update to Maya 2016. I don’t want to. The interface changes in the new version, and I’m sure there are new bugs to figure out. I wish we could go back to 2012. That was actually a pretty solid release.

I wrote a daily post while I was at work, which helped keep me awake. Mostly I focused on staying conscious during Saturday. I’m happy to report that my mission was a success.

Sadly Saturday afternoon is a bit of a blur because of how tired I was. I don’t remember exactly what all happened or in what order. I slept a bit when I got home I’m pretty sure. When Zane and I woke up we ate and watched a few episodes of Blade of Tempest. That’s the name of the new anime we’re watching.

We’re a little over halfway through the series now. It’s actually getting interesting. Still not going to be my favorite, but it’s better than what I thought originally.

I took him to work, but before doing that I made up my mind that I was going to go to the gym. I had been debating subconsciously about skipping out on it, and then not so subconsciously as the hours crept by.

I put my foot down though, silencing that little voice that’s constantly saying I’m too tired to do things.

No, I wasn’t going to skip out because then I would feel like trash for it later. I was going to go. I was going to run. Even if it was a crappy run, because any run is better than no run.

I dressed in workout cloths before heading out to take Zane to work so I didn’t have an excuse not to do it. I was already dressed. Not going would be admitting defeat and that wasn’t going to happen. I hate giving up. If I’m going to go down, then I’m taking someone down with me.

I parked at the gym rather than at the apartment complex and walking over. I figured since I was being awesome and going in the first place the least I could do as a reward was not have to hobble the five minutes back to the apartment. Maybe that’s lame of me, but there you go.

I ran at an average 16 minute pace. Not my best, but way better than I thought I would do. I’m going to stick with my 1:30 intervals for this coming week, but next week I plan to up it to 2 minute sets.

I stretched really well afterwards. I’m able to hold my King Pigeon pose longer. It still feels really intense on my quads; almost too intense, but it’s one of those, “It hurts so good,” stretches.

As I was walking back to my car I noticed that I had parked in front of a lamp post, which was in a median full of grass. I decided to sit with my back against the concrete base and meditate for a little while.

There was a fairly strong breeze blowing, and the air was cool and wet from the recent rain. It was nice. I can’t say that I was totally still and peaceful. My mind kept jumping, sparks of thought, mental fidgets to fill the silence.

I haven’t honestly tried to be connected with myself in a while. Yoga normally allows me the opportunity to do that, but I haven’t gotten back into that routine yet.

I tried to focus only on my breathing, and while I strayed a few times, I feel I did well overall. I definitely felt calmer afterwards. And since I stretched previously my body felt relaxed.

Trevor, Danielle, Zane, and I had agreed to do a communal meal of green curry for dinner. When I got home I helped Trevor put together a grocery list of the things we needed since I offered to do the cooking. He picked up dish scrubs for me, too. They’re the right brand and everything. So much awesome.

Once he and Danielle got back from the store I set about cutting up the veggies and chicken. The meal turned out amazing. It was exactly what I’ve been craving for a while now. Something with protein and zucchini because zucchini is the best invention ever.

Before anyone had a chance to eat I made a bowl for Zane to have once he got back from work. I’m glad I did because there were no leftovers. Lame, but that’s to be expected with meals like that I suppose.

I helped Zane and Pat clean up at the lounge when I got there. They had a pretty good night customer wise, but that meant there were 15 hookahs to clean along with dishes. Some people might scoff at me and say that I’m being free labor, but I honestly don’t care. I would have been sitting on a couch, doing nothing if I hadn’t of helped, and I wanted to get home sooner rather than later. Zane and I normally banter back and forth when I help out, so it’s fun and playful. I’m entertained, and if I wanted to I could get a drink if I asked for it. Pat and Ehab are fair when it comes to things like that.

So yeah, I cleaned dishes since I’m terrified of breaking one of the hookahs if I touch them. And because I’m the best dish fairy ever. /flex

Zane loved the curry and said the apartment smelled amazing. We watched a few more episodes of Blade of Tempest, but I couldn’t stay awake and ended up falling asleep halfway through an episode. Since we had a busy day planed Zane told me to go to sleep and that we would re-watch it later.

Somehow I stumbled to the room without killing myself by tripping over my own feet. I even made it into the bed and under the covers. Who said miracles can’t happen?

---

Sunday – Moving Day

I wasn’t rested enough for this morning. It harkened back to Monday morning and my break down from exhaustion. Not cool, or fun, or something I wanted to go through again.

Shadow, Zane’s cat, thought it was a great idea to start meowing and being a jerk around 10 in the morning. I wasn’t able to get back to sleep once he woke me up. Zane said to wake him up at 11, so I went to the living room to try to see if I could sleep on the couch. Maybe I just needed some space, but nope. That wasn’t it. And since Shadow followed me out of the room his continued meowing made me think having Chinese for dinner was a good idea.

Eventually it was 11am. I went in to wake up Zane, which is sort of where things got icky. He didn’t want to get up, and verbally said so.

I was tired. I was awake. We had to get Trevor’s stuff cleared out of the room, and then go get the truck, and then go get my stuff, and then carry my stuff up a flight of stairs, and then still have to take more stuff to storage before returning the truck to have the Pathfinder game, and that didn’t even account for getting my stuff situated and unpacked…

“I don’t want to get up,” didn’t really get much sympathy from me.

I replied with, “Mmmm,” and started moving things on my own. Zane was tired and grouchy, too. So we sort of clashed. Begin downward spiral of doom because on top of being tired I’m having anxiety because the whole “I’m actually moving in” feelings finally hit.

We ended up talking through it. He said he was allowed to be grouchy just like me, and that everything between us was ok. There were hugs, and eventually we were both awake enough to be able to function, even joke. We got the room cleared out, and I got the truck after having to stand in line for 40 minutes for my already reserved van. I have no idea why the store thought it was a good idea to have only one person at the register…

The day continued with loading the truck with Trevor’s things, going to the unit, realizing we forgot the security card to actually access the unit, going back to the apartment to retrieve annoyingly necessary card, transferring Trevor’s stuff into the unit, taking most of my stuff out, and loading it back into my car / the U-Haul.

All in 100 degree weather. : D

One work out down, three more to go. ;-;

It felt like a huge task was already done, and yet there was still so much more to do.

We ended up getting lunch, all three of us, at Arby’s. It was nice to sit in air conditioning. Even better to have food since I skipped out on having breakfast. Between the discord with Zane and my general overactive brain I wasn’t able to eat anything. I gave myself points for getting through all of my coffee. Small accomplishments are still accomplishments. But the whole not eating thing that meant I was super hungry by the time we had lunch.

We talked about movies while we ate, and anime. Trevor and I were able to geek out over the new Sailor Moon show since we’re both watching it. He and Danielle are way ahead of me, but the reboot follows the original series pretty well before switching to follow the manga, so I was still able to hold my own in the conversation.

Zane rolled his eyes at us for a majority of the time, calling us weeaboos. From there the conversation turned to talk about how they may be remaking Reboot, which lead to talking about voice actors, which is where I became silent because names… I’m bad at them.

Once we were done eating Trevor went back to the apartment and Zane and I went to my old place to get my furniture. Over all it went smoothly, but towards the end we started snipping at each other a bit. It was still 100 degrees outside, we were moving stuff and having to play Tetris with getting my things to stack nicely, I was being overly sensitive to some of his jokes…

Left-Brain: Why so serious?

Right-Brain: Because this is scary, and real, and I don’t want it to blow up in my face, and oh look, we’re fighting, even though we’re not, but I’m going to make it feel like we are because we’re moving in together and that’s scary, and screw your logic Left Brain. No one asked you to rain all over my over-reacting, unnecessarily emotional parade.

/foot stomp followed by corner sulking

Left-Brian: /sigh of exasperation while rubbing temples

Zane and I had another small talk while we were taking a break from Tetris – The Life Edition where we both admitted to being grouchy again, and that things were still ok. Just really hot, and really tired, and really ready to be done with moving stuff.

We got everything packed, which was essentially the halfway mark for the day, and headed back towards the apartment after I said goodbye to Jeremy. I told Jeremy if he ever needed anything to let me know; that I would still be in the area. I even offered to still do the painting for the house since I actually really enjoy doing things like that.

Oh! One amazing, completely fantastic, “shamelessly did a happy dance in front of Zane” thing that happened while at the house…

I had a bunch of mail in a box since I haven’t been to the house in almost a month. One of the things waiting for me was my tax return.

I just got $98 richer. : D

I can’t express how much awesome that is. That stupid debt collector can shove it. Even though I’m still going to hate paying off that charge for all of the reasons I wrote about before, I can do it and not have anything else suffer for it.

Thank you for looking out for me, Universe. I love you. <3

So yeah, that was awesome.

We came back to the apartment and unloaded most of the furniture. There’s a few things going into storage, but we got the computer desk set up, the bookcase, and all of my totes inside. Plus the mini fridge.

Trevor, Zane, and I talked about making a spot for me in the kitchen, but we’re going to wait for John to get back from New York before doing anything drastic like that. I can survive another week sans kitchen space… I hope… It would suck to die within the first week of moving in.

I unpacked all of my books. I’m going to be donating a few of them. I’m also going to be putting most of my sketch books back into storage since I don’t really use them. Most of them are full and kept mainly as a record for where I’ve come art wise. I’m keeping one sketch book which is fairly empty along with my water color paper and a few pads of tracing paper. Currently I am only taking up one shelf on my bookcase. Tons of space for Zane’s stuff.

I have my threads in the closet, so starting new cross stitch projects won’t be too hard. I need to get a stash of fabric, and figure out what to do with my art supplies. They’re in their container in the storage unit at the moment, but I would like to have that stuff with me… I’ll figure that out later, though. Right now it’s not a pressing concern.

I have all of my cloths hung up. I no longer have to pull stuff out of my gym bag. Scarlet has a little dish with her wet food in it. I have my skillets that I can start using when I cook breakfast. I have my own coffee cup with me so I can stop using the other ones; the “not mine” ones.

Eventually I was satisfied with the room enough to stop messing with things and actually shower. It helped that Zane and Trevor needed to get ready for the Pathfinder game, so I let them shower first. That gave me some space and alone time. I still need space. I still feel overwhelmed a bit. Over stimulated from the day, the situation,  and lack of sleep.

I still needed to go to the storage unit to unload the last bit of furniture from the U-Haul, but since it was all light stuff I could take care of I had planned to do it on my own.

Zane’s brother, Gab, came over for the game, along with one of Zane’s friends who has never played a table top game. He was just going to sit and watch. He may be making a character to play the game with us later.

When the subject of food came up I offered to go to Taco Bell and get one of the grande meals. Everyone was cool with the idea, so I took the U-Haul, put gas in it, then went by the unit.

Of course it was after hours so I couldn’t do anything…

I ended up putting the paper work in the driver’s side window because there wasn’t much I could do about the van, and I won’t be able to get there until after work and my dentist appointment tomorrow morning. Hopefully with the paperwork there, they can see who the van is rented to and call me if they need to.

After locking the U-Haul I got in my car and finished the adventure for food. I got two meals, which ended up being 10 soft tacos and 10 burritos. With six people, most of them dudes, I figured / hoped that would be enough.

I came back to the apartment and got Zane and Christian, his friend, to help me carry the food in along with the last bit of my things from the car. The game paused while we all ate and chatted. Eventually it picked back up and I sat with everyone for a little while, listening and joking when I felt the urge to chime in.

After about an hour I got up and came back into the room to be alone. I cuddled with Scarlet for a while and napped a little bit.

I recently got up and went back out into the living room. The game is still going on, and Zane wants me to sit with him.

I think I would like that. The closeness. So the compromise was to let me write first, so I don’t have a chance to slack off on that, and then to go back out. I don’t know if I’ll be there for very long since I’m still in that overstimulated state.

I want silence. I want there to not be things I need to focus on, or think about. I want to not be part of the conversation.

I want things to be ok. I know they are. I know I still feel like I’m home. I know this still feels right. And yet there is the irrational fear still there. This blackness, this darkness of past experiences. It’s like tar. There’s nothing to let go of. I don’t feel like I’m holding on to anything. It’s like the emotions are sticking to me on their own accord. It makes me feel, in a way, unclean. Heavy.

It’s the thoughts, fears, and worries of the little girl inside me, not my inner scientist, not my inner warrior. It’s the small, frail part of me that has been shattered before and remembers what it was like. How it started, how it ended.

There’s a tension, a waiting, like an animal poised and ready to dash away from danger. A doe, eyes wide and alert, sensitive to the slightest change.

I know where the feelings are coming from, why there are there, but that doesn’t make them go away, and writing isn’t really making them lessen.

A day, maybe two. A hug and a kiss on the forehead. A lame joke about, “your mom,”… something to remind me of the normality, to show me it’s still there. Nothing has changed.

I know things are ok. But I need something to make it feel ok. And right now I’m not going to get that from sitting in front of my computer stewing in my own thoughts.

I’m going to leave and get the hug that I need, even if that means having to deal with other humans.

It will be worth it.

Plus I think there’s a taco left. Tacos make everything better. :3