Thoughts are bumping against one another in a competition to get out first and scream their primal scream.
I'm worn out, guys. I think it would be good if this summer could end.
This is one of those posts where pretty images are used as a buffer. The blogging equivalent of an ice cube on a third degree burn. Today's images were borrowed from the LA times garden sections. So beautiful! The house and garden are new but look like they have been there a hundred years.
Back to me now: I've mentioned periods of my life when Mercury being in Retrograde was the best way to define my circumstances.
I came back from France on one cylinder. I ate something or caught something that gave me the runs (i'm not speaking in Athletic terms here) for ten whole days. I emptied myself gaily from France to Switzerland, from Paris to Deauville, to Nyon to Geneva, sprinting through boats, beaches, museums, subways, train stations and the occasional restaurant where I would refuel, then empty myself some more. The crowning of this epic time was a visit to a doctor who diagnosed me with irregular heart beat due to low potassium and other chemical elements straight out of the periodic table.
Then I flew home to learn just how creatively a pea-brain-irresponsible-entitled 24 year old biotch house-sitter can trash a house in a short six weeks. That will be another post, when you and I have got all night.
To those who asked my cat came back, but thoroughly changed by the experience. In fact it might have done him good to have a cat hater in the house. Now he finds us very tolerable in comparison and has gone as far as purr a couple of times. Also he's all skinny now, poor thing. You have to respect the cat. He preferred to go hungry than to compromise his beliefs. I should really learn to do that.
Then came the period of Great Breakage. Have you ever had moments when EVERYTHING around you that can be plugged craps out?
Here is the list of the things that have experienced meltdown since my arrival back home in L.A.
My son's old computer
My son's brand new replacement computer right after we opened the box (!)
My cell phone battery
Our sink disposal
The pump for the fishpond
My kid's Xbox 360
My internet connection, again and again.
The Prius's battery
It's as though appliances just stare at me from across the room with their knots and bolts beady eyes, say 'is that all there is to life?" and promptly self-destruct.
I'm just telling you this so that you don't venture in my vicinity if you're wearing a pacemaker.
This is me, right now. Mercury. In retrograde.
I though I had it bad but the worst was to come. I began to notice odd things going on with my computer files. I could not download my pictures and blamed the camera. Images were missing then reappearing and I blamed the internet. Then I could not find documents and blamed my mother. Little did I know that those were only warning signs. As was the small clicking sound my "back up" hard drive was making. It sounded as though a small mouse was hitting an even smaller punching bag in there.
Now notice I'm adding quotation marks to the words "back up." See, when my computer broke down back then I had everything transfered to a Lacie alternate drive, and since I was using a borrowed computer I did not trust so the drive was really the only place where I "protected" (notice he quotation marks again.) over 20,000 family pictures and ALL my writing. My Entire Life in one small metal box.
The mousey clickings turned out to be the sound of My Entire Life made as it as was being gnawed at. Eaten were the pictures, gobbled up were the precious files one after another until the drive just went pfff..and fizzled and died in my arms. Yes. This is what they call in the business Drive Failure. And by failure they mean that IF my data can be retrieved at all it will cost anything between $700 and $2700, a sum I will gladly pay even if it means i have to sell a kidney (my husband's preferably)
What to say next? There are more thoughts in me but I'm all out of steam. My pictures of New York and Paris are gone, so now you'll never believe I was there. Will I ever recover my journals? My essays? All the stuff I had not deemed worth my time to back up onto disk?
On the bright side, did I mention I lost those reluctant six pounds just walking around New York and Paris.. that and hum...my ten days of diarreah?
The cat saw me in my bathing suit and purred to me " "Honey, I know your summer was tough but you look fantastic" "No," I said: "You! You look great, and SO thin." He and I nodded and smiled to each other knowingly.
