A week ago, I was enjoying my Monday morning ritual of binge watching The Twilight Zone when I was bombarded by phone calls. What else is new… I put the TV on pause in the beginning of the episode “Penny For Your Thoughts” and it happened to be on this particular frame of Dick York right before he has a near miss with an oncoming car. His face was so comical, I had to take a picture of it!

But it was more than that… It was also a matter of how much I could relate to that face… No matter what I’m showing on the outside, this is, for the most part, the face I’m making on the inside. Especially lately… This past week was a disaster that seemed to get progressively worse as the week went on. Just when I thought that it couldn’t possibly get any worse, it fucking did. And I have a feeling it’s not going to be getting better any time soon…

Show of hands… How many of you relate to the sloth…?

That’s me, just trying not to fall out of the Tree of Life. And I’m failing miserably.

There was a time, long ago, when I had no issues telling people to get bent or tell them what I really thought. If you pissed me off, I’d tell you that you were pissing me off. If you were being a needy pain in the ass, I’d tell you that, too. But, at some point, I had to change because situations had changed… You get older, you acquire more family through marriages, births, or what have you. That’s when shit gets complicated. Suddenly, you have to watch what you say and do because you don’t want to make waves with family and extended family. Relationships with people suddenly become more of a burden… And you find yourself missing the person you were who spoke without giving a flying figging fuck.

Ah, to have the life of a cat… and just hide in a box when you don’t want to be bothered.

Morticia is one I’d like to hide in a box from. Literally…

You know, I don’t get her at all… I understand how boring it can be, just laying around, waiting to heal from a surgery. But the stupid thing is that she’s not doing that. She’s still running around (I was told not to drive for 6 weeks after my hysterectomy was finished), she’s baking, canning shit… So WHY does she still call me more than a half dozen times a day?! And why can she not understand that I have things to do and can’t be bothered this much?! I know things aren’t going well for her right now. Her landlord is trying to evict her (though she’s done nothing to break the lease) and she’s not going through legal channels. So Morticia calls me all frantic and bawling. I explained to her the landlord can’t evict her without going through proper legal channels (at least where we live you have to) and that she should talk to my lawyer. She did and he reassured her that what I said was correct. Yet she still freaks out and blubbers to me about it.

She’s also been spending more time with Gomez, but not for the right reasons… I suspect she’s spending more time with him and acting as if their relationship is okay because she’s afraid she’ll end up homeless and need a place to go. Granted, I think Gomez is a douche, but even he deserves better than being used.

Not to mention that she’s constantly telling me that she has no money, won’t be able to pay her car payment and she’ll lose her car. First of all, it takes months for them to repo it. Second, if she’d call the bank like I told her to, maybe she could work shit out, but she’s so dead set that they won’t help her that she won’t call. On top of that, I think she’s always telling me how broke she is because she knows I came into some money. Yes, I could help her, but I won’t. I need that for my own expenses and I can’t afford to have someone not pay me back for long periods, if at all. Besides, instead of constantly telling me your woes, ask if you need help. Not that you’ll get it…

So I’ve been taking the advice of the owner of the hippie-dippy shop. I just haven’t been answering my phone. But it doesn’t prevent her from calling…

And there’s something I’ve taken notice to… Her constant calling, whether I answer or not, is still so stressful that I’ve been physically sick. It began as mild discomfort but, with the rest of the week’s events, it blew up into the most horrible issue…

Several years ago, I spent a few days in a psych ward for my anxiety and, afterward, went through a 2 week outpatient program. I thought it wouldn’t work, that they’d never retrain my brain to stop freaking out, but they succeeded (for a few years). The downside to this was that my anxiety decided to manifest as something else entirely instead. It wasn’t in my brain any longer. Now it was in my digestive tract…

Since I managed to cut my amount of Klonopin down to one in the morning, I’ve noticed that my anxiety has once again moved to my digestive tract. I had a stressful moment coming up, which was bad enough, and Morticia’s constant calling just exacerbated it.

By the time that stressful moment came on Wednesday, I ended up with some mild stomach pain after the fact. But, over the next few days, it grew progressively worse. By Saturday morning, my stomach and gut were in so much pain. I ended up with a horrible case of the runs, something I never get, so that in and of itself was stressing.

I tried everything… I tried medicines, eating bland, eating things to soak up stomach acid… Nothing worked…

So here I am, just 2 days short of a week after the stressful procedure I had done, and I’m still feeling like shit. I’ve literally been laying around doing nothing, partly because of the procedure and partly because I feel so fucking lousy. I’ve just been laying around, curled up in a little ball, suffering with the worst stomach pains and intestinal cramps. Yeah, they got the anxiety out of my brain, but I think I’d prefer it there over my digestive tract…

Sorry for the graphic picture. I know; it’s really gross…

I’ve had toenail issues since I was a young child. I’m not sure how it happened, but the nail beds of pretty much all my toenails are damaged, but none so much as my big toenails. The last time I saw the podiatrist, he told me I was out of options. It was either continue to have excruciating pain or remove the nails permanently. I was against it… When I was a kid, my sister caught one of her overly long toenails on the doorframe of the car when she was getting in the backseat with me. The nail was sticking straight up, only attached at the nail bed. I had to ride about 20 minutes in the backseat with that creepy, bloody sight. It was pretty traumatic, which is why I was so reluctant to have the procedure done. But the kind of pain I had… it was bad enough for me to agree.

It was hell… I didn’t feel anything until the local wore off, but it was tolerable. What wasn’t tolerable was that I almost puked when he removed it (I could feel the pressure of him taking it off) and the first time I saw it that night when I had to soak it, I almost puked again. The following morning, I wasn’t in any pain, really, but it looked awful. This picture was taken yesterday, 5 days later. And this looks good in comparison, despite the swelling at the tip of my toe. And I’ll have to do this again with the other toe soon…

On the bright side (of which there is only one), I was inspired last week to create an art journal entry!

This is just one page of a 2 page spread of mixed media. It’s nothing very important, just something I felt like doing since I had gotten a shit ton of new washi tape and had used none until that day. And I felt like playing with my watercolor markers…

This was the very first thing I’ve actually created in probably almost a year, save for a new profile picture for Facebook… So I posted pictures of both pages as well as a video of me slowly panning over everything. Sometimes I wonder why I bother… All of 2 people actually hit the like button for all the hard work I’d put into this journal entry that took probably 4 days. So either my friends are major fucking assholes or they have no appreciation for art and the hard work that goes into it…

Similarly, only one person liked this drawing I did in Corel Painter. This one also took me several days, working at least 8 or more hours each day…

Is my art this bad…? Do my friends care so little for me that they can’t be bothered to make me feel better by hitting that like button…?! Maybe they think that, because I enjoy what I do that it’s not hard work. I mean, hey, I’m just sitting on my ass drawing, right? Let me tell you, it is work and not easy work at that. It’s time consuming, frustrating when it doesn’t turn out like you envision… Not surprisingly, Morticia was one that didn’t hit the like button for either. I suppose that’s why she thinks she can call all the time and disturb me… She doesn’t see drawing, paining or writing as actual “work”… Either way, it’s disheartening that no one seems to like my work. It sometimes makes me feel like quitting and never creating art again.

Ah well… Such is life…

Well… such is my life, anyway. I’m at the point where I often times feel like just saying “fuck it” and becoming a hermit. I’m just tired of all the bullshit.

Imagine you put your heart and soul into something and no one notices or cares, but put up some gross ass pictures of your now nailless toe and everyone seems to chime in to ask if you’re okay. Seriously?! It’s just a fucking toe! It’ll heal and I’ll be fine! Christ, physical pain is nothing compared to mental pain! You know… the kind people inflict on you by not liking the good things that make you happy and instead liking the miserable times…

Is that what makes a person interesting, the awful things that befall them even if they’re not so awful…? I only posted pictures of my toe so that the people saying they wanted to have it done because of constant ingrown toenails could understand… It’s not fun and I had damage done to my nails that would never improve. This was a last resort and no one wants to do this unless they’re at that point. But hey, I guess that’s more important than supporting someone’s creativity, right…? Yeah… Assholes…