There was a little Jackie Russell that "worked" on our construction crew building the house. He came over every day, right about lunchtime, inspected progress, and got fed lunchmeat by the construction workers. He was a smart cookie for sure.

And of course, when it was being built, there weren't any walls, so he just trotted through the house like he owned it. By the time Seabiscuit got there, his smell was all over the place!

(eta: That's not good, Dana.)

And before I go on a rage-fueled rant on FB... someone please look at my last post regarding my lack of sleep and the terrible feeling I have in the pit of my stomach, and tell me that I should just ignore the last comment about needing therapy. I am about ready to cut a bitch.

Maria, I nearly flipped my shit at her. I controlled myself because I thought it could generate further stress for you and I am trying to be mellower these days. If it would not generate further stress for you I'm not so caught up in this "mellower" thing that I can not FLIP MY FUCKING SHIT AT HER.

I'm glad you're taking care of yourself and not spinning into a rage. See? You are capable of doing things right now. And if you weren't we'd have shuffled you off into the International Buffista Underground but the least said about that the better It would be bullshit to say "it'll all be ok," but in about a month it'll all be a good bit more tolerable.

Good grief, Maria, I almost ripped into her too but then I stopped myself, I figured I shouldn't start shit on someone else's FB page and maybe you knew her and had already blown her off. You should totally ignore her. Not worth a spare thought.

I offer a deep discount on bitch cutting services for Buffistas. I'm just sayin'.

((( Bitches )))

Halfway thru week of hell. OK, maybe not quite that bad, but it's not great. And the kids managed to pass me the ick that's going around the Grad Students office. Not a horrible ick, but has been wiping me out all week. Now my throat is raw, and caughing up half a lung. I feel like I'm feverish, but temp says 98.3º, which is 0.3º higher than yesterday. Blargh.

Sorry to hear you're sick. Drink lots of tea with honey, omnis. It's good for both the sore throat and the coughing.

So much love to you all, but especially to my sorella Maria. I'm thinking of you, love.

I'm going to join the crappy day parade. I finally realized (why does this always take me so long?) that my random bursting into tears and escalating inability to deal with stress might have something to do with a new med my doctor had me start taking about 7 weeks ago. It was supposed to take the edge off of my anxiety. Instead, it seems to have pushed me back into depression. Lovely. Anyone else had this issue with Buspar? Anyway, I've halved the dose tonight and am calling the doc tomorrow to see how quickly I can wean myself off of it. I hope to all that's holy that once it's out of my system, the Pristiq will go back to working well, as it's done for the last few years. (I never went off the Pristiq—I just started taking a small additional dose of Buspar twice a day).

There's a lot of other stuff going on that acted as a catalyst, no doubt. My friend and colleague Harris' memorial was last Friday (fuck cancer), the huge literary conference I run pretty much single-handedly is two weeks from today, I'm in the midst of coordinating all of the honors and AP testing for my department, the BEB (Big Evil Bank) has completely fucked me over after more than three months of leading me on with the promise of debt consolidation (working on a solution, but it's a sucky place to be at the moment), I'm way behind on my grading, as per usual, I developed a corneal erosion that has been worrying and painful, and I discovered over the weekend in the most disgusting way possible that the puppy had roundworms...but yeah, even with all that, the degree to which I was losing my shit wasn't right.

So. One step at a time. I keep seeing all of you doing it, often with much heavier burdens, and I'm going to keep doing it too.

{{{{Buffistas}}}}. And much ~ma.

{{Bitches}} May this day be better.

Good to hear your mother is recovering well, Daniel.

Can I have a little test~ma today.

You got it, sj.