In which I broke my promise

My big plan from yesterday to post something longer than a paragraph for the first time in several days ended up flopping, falling victim to the worst anxiety attack I’ve had in quite some time. Anxiety attacks are not normally known for carefully justifying themselves, but this one made even less sense than usual, given that I could not and can not come up with anything in particular that I need to be anxious about. But that’s not how mental illness works, of course; the shit fucks you up whenever it feels like it, and for whatever reason mine felt like fucking with me last night, and it was all I could do to sit at my desk and idly web surf last night. Putting any sort of coherent thoughts together was just not happening. I took a brain pill at like 8:00 and went to bed early, and today I’ve been more or less back to normal, whatever that is.

I’m done with my Christmas shopping– have been for a week or so now, so long as we don’t really consider find a Christmas gift to give my wife and tell her it’s from the boy to be a real responsibility. He told me again today that he didn’t have any ideas for her, and while in principle I agree with my son that my wife is one of the more difficult people to buy for that I have known in my life, I asked him if he’d asked her what she wanted, and he looked at me like that was a rare and challenging idea that no reasonable person would have ever come up with on their own. 

Sigh.

There’s an update on the Dr. Curry situation, too; after several months of calling everyone I could think of short of the actual police (multiple lawyers, the state medical board, the newspaper, the Better Business Bureau, any number of online doctor things) and getting no help from anyone, I’d decided that I was at the very least going to spend several hours Friday morning camped out in his parking lot. I brought a couple of drinks, some snacks, and a book, fully prepared to be there all morning at least. I was genuinely considering just breaking into his office if nothing appeared to be different, although it had occurred to me that one final (legal) remedy might be to see if I could find the owner of the building and see f they would let me in. The last resort would be to contact the police, and if the police didn’t or couldn’t do anything about the situation (and, let’s be real, the police were not going to be useful in this case,) well, I’d been in the building enough times to know that all I’d need to get into his office proper would be a crowbar and five minutes. The place is not exactly Fort Knox, and that’s taking the harder route of going through the doors rather than trying to haul my fat ass through a window.

Anyway, I won’t post pictures this time, but there were two new signs on the door– one from the landlord (!) advertising that the building was for rent and that loitering and trespassing was discouraged, and that the building was under “video severance,” which is about the level of competence I’ve come to expect from everyone involved in this damn ordeal. The second was more interesting, advising anyone looking for their medical records to contact the Indiana Deputy Attorney General through the Department of “Complex Litigation” at the AG’s office in Indianapolis. They provided a phone number; I called it and left a message when I got home, but as it was the Friday before Christmas I’m not holding my breath about a swift return call. I’ll try again on Wednesday and if no one answers that time I’ll try again after New Year’s. One way or another I hope they don’t make me jump through too many hoops to get Dad’s medical records back. ”Complex Litigation” makes me hope that someone has had more luck finding an interested attorney than I did and is suing the ever-loving shit out of this son of a bitch. 

So, yeah. I didn’t get arrested, which makes the story less funny than it ought to be, but at least I’m a step or two closer to getting this out of the way. 

Made it

I live.

Tomorrow, I might even write something.

Survived

Four days, which should be easy, until Winter Break, and I plan to spend the rest of tonight with a book.

For no particular reason

I’m really only posting today because I hate taking two days off in a row. I actually went home sick yesterday, leaving at lunchtime, and today I took my son to the dentist to get some cavities filled, which was already a day off. That’s … all I’ve got. It’s been a quiet couple of days.

EDIT: Okay they are literally picking these fucking things at random:

In which we did the thing

Over the years we have really gotten into alternative tree toppers, and this year’s is some sort of Pokeymans, I don’t know which kind. But the tree is up. There have been years when we haven’t bothered; I don’t think we had one last year, and three cats in the house means that we’ve forgone ornaments for pretty much the entire time we’ve lived here. Also, yes, that’s an artificial tree, because people who bring real trees into their houses for Christmas are lunatics, and yes, I’ll die on that hill.

The lights are controlled by an app, and do all sorts of fun stuff, only some of which looks like it’ll trigger epileptic seizures if we leave it running for too long. They’re pretty though.

Anyway.

I had to give up on a John Irving book this weekend, which I find immensely frustrating. I’ve read nearly all of his work, excepting only his nonfiction and … maybe? a short story collection that I’m not sure actually exists? But I’ve read all of his novels, at least, or I had, up until The Last Chairlift came out. Irving has always been an author who really, really liked his repeating tropes over his body of work, but this book– his first in seven years– reads more like a parody of a John Irving book than it does an actual John Irving book– as if someone much less skilled than him read all his stuff and then tried to write a book in his voice. It took me a week to get through the first three hundred pages out of like 870 or something, I didn’t care at all about what was going on, and then I hit the part where the POV character (who is, of course, another writer) started including long segments of his screenplays in the text of the novel, and that was where I decided I had to be done. The worst thing is this may very well be Irving’s last novel; he’s 81 and if it took him seven years to write this one, I don’t see another coming out anytime soon.

On to a Kevin Hearne book, which isn’t much shorter and I’ll probably finish in three or four days. The Seven Kennings series has been great so far and I suspect he’ll stick the ending.

In which I can see the future

Tomorrow’s lesson is not going to work, and it’s going to be an exhausting day, and this is after coming home yesterday and taking a nap and coming home today and it’s 6:41 and I had a pound of queso for dinner and I really really want to take another nap.

Blaaaaaaarrrrrghhhhh.

In which I am rested

I expect my current feeling of general contentment to last until roughly fourth hour tomorrow, but for now I am in a pretty good place. We had Third Thanksgiving today with my wife’s side of the family, and that cousin of hers who makes the cheesy tater tot casserole was there, and we brought home like four pounds of cheesy tater tot casserole, so we are absolutely calling today a success. It’s not quite 8:00 and I have finished my lesson planning for tomorrow, I took care of a few minor projects around the house and I read like six books over the last five days, plus I finished Blasphemous II.

I’m going to call this a pretty well-spent break, I think. My wife and son both have tomorrow off as well, so I expect to get home and find half of the wallpaper in the house missing. How was your holiday?

Long week, longer weekend

So, uh … the winter NWEA went pretty damn well. I’m cherrypicking here, of course, as this class provided my most impressive results, but four of the six looked pretty damn good and the other two weren’t necessarily bad, just not impressive.

The rest of the week was a damn mess; I had a stomach bug that kept me out Tuesday afternoon (I actually cut out at lunch!) and Wednesday, and of course the two days of testing, and today was just chock full of drama for some reason, but I survived it. Tomorrow I have to drive to the northern suburbs of Chicago and back, which I’m … less than fully enthused about– I want to see my brother and his family but I’m impatiently awaiting some sort of Goddamn bullet train between my house and his that would make it unnecessary for me to actually drive. Then I spend Sunday as a melted puddle on the couch and two more days to Thanksgiving break.

And that’s really all I’ve got. Brainmelt and travel. But hey, at least I look like I’m good at my job.