Poor Cass's back.

I am very much not asleep. I slept most of today and threw off my schedule entirely. I think this might end up as a night of getting two hours of sleep, then forcing myself to stay up through the day so that I'll sleep normally tomorrow night.

Thanks, Hil. If you can't get to sleep tonight, and I hope you can, the reset is a good idea. But I hope you get just a bit of sleep tonight as well.

Turns out drugs and heat combined magically tonight. My back is not actively hurting at the moment. And I am hoping that some sleep will convince it that relaxing is better than the alternative. The drugs and heat have me feeling low-grade loopy if not sleepy. So I'm going to put some randomly anthropologic show on tv and start the night's sleep on the couch.

eta: Not actively hurting so long as I keep the heat on. Good to know. Ima need a bigger heating pad.

Just a small insomniac late-night post to say that a) I would so totally want to be ita's partner in crime and see that she gets to the doctor and stuff, if she were within a suitable distance to do so, and b) I am madly envious of Buffistas playing 'I never.' I love that game, because all of the things people expect me to have done, I haven't, and vice versa. I'm not sure whether it's my hippie reputation or my artfully hidden depths that confuse people.

It's 16 F above zero! Wooo!

That's warmer than it has been in a week, day or night.

I've never played 'I never.' Huh.

Poor Cassey back. I've never been tempted to get a tattoo and the experiences I read hear confirm my decision. Have serious issues with needles, pain, itching. Never would take on these things voluntarily. Eeep.

I've played a few games of I Never back in the day. It often annoyed me, as the game seemed to always evolve into sexual bragging....

EMILY SIGHTING!

Whee! She lives!

continued ~ma for Hec, JZ, and the whole family.

I just spent an hour duck taping plastic storage bins that had cracks in them, then sorting through boxes of christmas-y items that Daniel's aunt handed down to us which we did not use during christmas. Also sorted through a box of his unused christmas-y stuff that Daniel brought down from the not-attic. Now we are not only de-christmassed but also all organized.

Except for the part about there being boxes of christmas stuff sitting around.

And the bags of silk poinsettias that have been sitting in the back of the minivan since they were purchased at post-christmas sales.

it's as if our parents' generation find extended singledom even more confusing or unlikely than homosexuality....

This is an excellent point. It's very "I mightn't like it, but at least you might find a partner, right?"

My mother, bless her heart, is so very pro-relationship. She's accepted, I think, that there will be no grandchildren (I'm probably more upset about that than she is, oddly). But she thinks that I'm not safe left to my own devices, and if there's someone to make sure I eat and to nag me to see a doctor, and to bring stuff over when I'm too sickly to get it myself...just one person who's looking after me, then she needn't worry so much from so far away.

ita, your mother and my mother are as one on this matter. Which isn't surprising, given that they share a birthday.

It's sort of 2-pronged with my mom: she wants to know that someone is there to take care of me should I need it; but she also thinks that The Way To Happiness is by being encoupled. I don't (obviously), and so we've really butted heads on this for, oh, 35 years.

Or, okay, more like 20 years, since being encoupled wasn't allowed until I was 15-16. Ish.

I Never" would be nifty fun with Buffistas.

Shit, half the things I'd have to drink to are things that I've done *with* Buffistas!

Great, now the itching has started. Swiped some Eucerin on it but eeeet eeeetches. And there was a speck of black on my back so the ... um ... healing is evolving. Must. Not. Touch.

Cass, when it gets itchy and flaky and peel-y, you shouldn't actually pick at it, but it's totally normal for there to be pigment in the bits that flake off -- that doesn't mean your tat will have un-colored spots, or will be faded in areas. That's just the top layer of skin. Totally normal.

One thing that helps with itching -- I know this is weird -- is to smack the area that's itching. It gives the itchy nerve endings something to deal with, but you don't end up accidentally gouging yourself.

Well, I only slept until 10:30. Which is better than yesterday, when I slept until 1, or the day before, when I slept until 4. Just need to get up at 8:30 tomorrow to get back on track.

I need to grade papers. I also need to eat lunch. I think I'm going to get a burrito. Or maybe I'll be healthy and get soup. Except I'm sick of soup.

Also, I got a new contact lens case. It's green, and it has a picture of a chimp wearing glasses on it. I am inordinately pleased about this. (It also comes with a matching set of tweezers, and I can't quite figure out what those are for -- they're too bendy to do much good in tweezing anything.)