For those who give a shit (and a bow and thank you to the thoughtful awesome ones who took the time to ask) I am not looking too good on the health of my anklebone. The Urgent Care NP who examined me gave a tentative diagnosis of osteophages, or tiny bone spurs. Which basically means "Fuck you and suck it up." for now, anyway. Once i have my insurance on-line I can see an orthopedist, and have an MRI to confirm, etc. But the fact is, it seems there really is not much that can be done. Oh, and she said that it might be a good idea to take steps to reduce the amount of pressure on the bones, as that can help.

To wit, lose weight, fatass!

No, she did not say it like that. But I do not feel like repeating the nice and smiley way in which this recommendation was passed down to me.

This means that I am not necessarily doing an damage to the bones, but when the pain randomly stabs me I kind of have to grin and bear it. This will, no doubt, as a delicious nuance to my performances.

I am not a huge fan of my humanity. Those things that "make me Me" piss me off about as often as they fill me with some kind of wondrous glimmering self-actualized respect and affection.


Which makes for interesting days.

This last week I had the hardest time concentrating...the constant chill and rain did not elevate my mood, as I am fair game for the vagaries of rain and fog and gloom. Why live in San Francisco, you ask?

Good question, and one I ask myself whenever I find myself staring at yet another gloomy morning. I do live in the Mission. I do not live in the Fog Belt. I do my best.

But day after day of rain is not to be thwarted....mudslides, flooding, you name it. It even snowed. Insanity prevails. I expect locusts by next Thursday, and possibly to see the 4 horsemen clambering on their winded steeds of doom up Nob Hill next Sunday morning to deliver their dirge-like proclamations of The End Times to a moistened, dispassionate city.

I am discovered that We are a fucking nervous wreck. Yes, it is true. Strange thing about being sober: there ARE things that worked quite well for me when I was still drinking that, by the end of my drinking career were so full of fail that I assumed that stopping drinking would put me spang in the midst of the right path to set everything right.

Alas, not.

My mental cyclotron buzzes into high gear behind my "shortcomings", real , perceived, exaggerated or underscored.

In the past week, I have been massively spun put by:


My lack of progress in "working my AA program"...

My failure to learn my lines....

My flailing in my capacity to be organized in my new job.....

My hyper-vigilance and anxiety as to the nuances of every word spoken or NOT spoken by John.....

My fucked up ankle.......



See. lots of "me" in there.



Not a lot of room for compassion for myself.



Lots of "Why cant you just......"



A metric fuckton of self-flagellation.



A googleplex of private Tasmanian devils of anxiety slavering and whining and moaning all day and night.



And....of course....I realize that I am an ant frying under the effulgent illumination of hormones propagated under the magnifying glass of PMS.



Which, without my usual crutch of mood altering substances, is making a run for my money. I had a really really nice run in with Bubbles this evening....I went, after a grueling rehearsal, to try to go to an AA meeting, but the schedule was wrong and there was not one where it was listed on the AA website that there WAS one. I could not feature waiting around for 2 and a half hours for the next one, was tired, wanted to get home before the rain started back up.



Valencia street...one bar, one cannabis club, one liquor store later, and even as I stood in the aisle of the grocery, gazing bleary eyed at the cat food cans my eye wandered over to the 14 doors opening to the bottles of toxic-to-me solutions to no problems that this store sold in every conceivable formulation. I sighed. Then as though it were an actual sensation a slithering up the back of my inner eye maybe a paw on my hand and a rough broad hot tongue lapping the back of my knee



Hey, it has been a long day and you have a long evening...alone...your not-boyfriend John isn't coming over....who knows what he IS doing tonight....and you still have SO much work to do.....on your lines...wouldn't it be nice to just have a glass of wine or three....





Even as my stomach knotted at the thought of alcohol and I shook in disgust at the blatant tactics she was using, she laughed that hyperventilated sick sallow knotted guffaw



hey, just kidding...I know you don't do that anymore...I know you don't even wanna...you can take a joke, right?



Yeah.



Maybe.



Or maybe not. Maybe we will just sit and look you in the eye tonight, Bubbles, because it is not now, not today. not for you to eat me anymore.



Ugh. I do not have much compassion for her today. But that is OK, because I still can love that part of me, sick as it is.



Thank the gods I was paid this Friday and had enough money for a small tub of mini-bite brownies!


Speaking of nuances.....I am both proud of and dismayed by my capacity to be all mature and Zen about my interactions with John and then on a dime live NOT AT ALL in the moment and begin tripping about shit I have no business worrying about.

I am not enamored of the habit I have noticed of having expectations of what I "Want John to say" and then savagely chewing myself a new asshole when I spin out because he does not do or say what I'd wanted. It can be so simple and something I am quite certain is Not A Big Deal and yet I can weave it into whole cloth of A Problem in a manner that makes Rumpelstiltskin's feat of straw into gold look like a parlor trick. I am AMAZING in my capacity to read a passing comment as a Portent Of Things To Come.



Of course, then, you have people reminding you to "take it slow" and other people reminding you to "pay attention to your gut" and other people reminding you that "you are a newly sober alcoholic and therefore you really shouldn't even be doing any of this now." and some people telling you to "Just relax, have a moment to just enjoy things in the moment."


And by you, I mean me, and there it is.



I find myself feeling comforted that John is in my life right now, and that he is able to talk to me about recovery in a way that I understand, and for being straightforward. EVEN when I do not agree with him...and even when wish he'd have said something different



I am not so comforted by the gibbering jealousy I have shimmying on the edge of my emotional periphery. NOT cool. Yet another emotional jetstream to keep an eye on. Oy! I do not wish to repeat the fit of pique an impending lunch date he has with with "An old friend" sent through my headbones. Yep, this is one obsessive insecure woman when it comes to this shit. Own it, own it, owning it, before it pwns me!

This morning, while moving his car, he went to the Castro for special coffees....when the Castro Philz was closed for remodeling (WTF?!?!), he called to let me know he would be going to the other branch in the Mission. I had to laugh...he was very earnest in his desire for the special attention they pay to their brewed-by-the-cup ballet of flavor. Oh, and the sprig of mint that picks up and livens the cuppa. We had a fairly intense discussion about my trying the mint coffee, and why my adding after-marked soy milk and sugar were simply not going to cut, it, as I had to have them do it in their "Special Way".

I cannot deny it was a good cup of coffee :-D


I cannot minimize the wonder of having someone who is affectionate and sweet in my life. I can be very grateful for that for today. Even the simplest of kisses makes me smile and think "My gods that is nice!" so I think that is a good thing.



And being fucked so mercilessly I can hardly catch my breath and cannot see straight or speak really at all is not something abut which I can say anything but "Hallelujah!".



Well, I can say that afterward, once I have caught my breath, regained my ocular integrity, and cooled off a bit.


John came to the QOM on Friday, and it was, BTW, fucking cool! The book that the people read from had some amazing stories that sent me into serious nostalgia that hurt in some places. The SpamSlam I did was, if I may say so, a hit! People laughed a lot.

My audience-inspired rant was on speculums. I told the story about when I shot one out of my hoodieehaha across the CastleBar dungeon during a scene, lo these many years ago. The nice PTA ladies who had come out to support the book were a bit scandalized...but I have it on good authority (DoppMonster, I would post y'all's links and shit in here but I don't know how to and I am tired and not wishing to learn right now) that by the end of the story they were amused, too.

We went out for breakfast afterward and had a really good talk. He is super patient even when I feel like I am whining and being lame. He says I am not. I am trying to believe him, because i do not think he would lie about that.

It is raining again on my skylight.



I should to bed.....but before then I have to post this and see if anyone has read all the way through and takes a moment to say hello...I am a little lonely tonight...

My ankle is fuuucked up.

It is like it needs to "crick" but is stuck, and randomly either aches or suddenly starts to hurt bad bad bad something awful to the point whre I wince aloud and almost cry from the pain.

And it takes a lot for me to cry from fucking pain.

This sucks!

Ah well...at least we only have 3 hours of rehearsal instead of four tonight :-\