In the Pink
2005-05-03,

Insulated. That's how I'm feeling-- insulated. Not in the classical, literary, completely-cut-of-from-the-world sense. It's more like I feel that my psyche is packed in this cylindrical sheath of pink fiberglass insulation and, while it's warm, my psyche has nowhere to go, no way to stretch. And for some reason it can't look up or down, so it can't even think of considering those directions right now. My mind is a mothballed tank. (As in military tank, not a reservoir - though the cross-symbolic implications are dandy.)

I also seem to have developed some sort of chest thing, giving me the occasional rumbly cough, and I have no idea where it came from. I haven't been smoking, save for the one I had at a friend's over the weekend. I don't have a cold. It just feels like there's a wad of something stuck in there, and I'd really like to get it out. Maybe it's a wad of insulation.

At the same time, I feel like my emotions are insulated, as well. The former issue may be causing this to some degree, but it's not the whole of the problem. Part of me is trying not to get excited/hopeful/expectant about the coming referral (god it's less than a month off), mainly because I'm of the neurotic mindset that if I think too positively about it, something's bound to go wrong. On the flip side, I'm also trying not to visualize all the bad things that can happen, either. When I was in my teens, I had convinced myself that I needed to think out all the possible ways that some important event would go wrong, because if I thought of it, then it wouldn't happen that way, kind of like I was trying to weed out all of the negative possible futures by acknowledging them. (I sometimes wonder whether I was on the verge of OCD as a young teen-- I also had a severe 'step on a crack, beak your mother's back' issue for a couple of years around then. Luckily, it didn't stick, and I can pass of my peculiarities as stubbornness or light-hearted, unfounded superstition, rather than living from medication to medication. Whew.)

I can only assume that this is going to be temporary. My bubble will pop soon enough, as the inevitable approaches. In the mean time, I can fret over things that need to get done. If this weather ever clears up, I may even get to mow the lawn. I haven't tried out our new electric mower yet, and I just yesterday bought a new hedge trimmer. Must Use Gadgets Soon. I'd hate for the novelty of the things to wear of before I even get to use them.

Speaking of weather (of which I seem to be doing too much, lately), yesterday was crazy. Nothing says, "No global warming here!" like 45 degrees and snowing, followed by hail and, ten minutes later, bright sunshine.

Have your weekend free? Then why not go to the (one and only) Time Traveler Convention? Who knows, maybe it won't just be preyed upon by pranksters, attention-getters, delusionals and schizophrenics trying to pass themselves off as being from the future (or past - maybe the Ionians had one!). I heard about this on NPR yesterday, and one of the people setting this up was (deadpan as possible) saying that he was worried about parking, because if one time-traveler showed up and had a good time, he might go back and tell his friends to go, then they'd tell their friends, and so on, until it was a fustercluck of Futurepeople. Here's hoping.

Fun with Visio - Vol. 1, Ep. 4-- Transcendence:

-- End Transmission --