In yesterday’s post, I talked about luck at the DMV. It was a silly post, but there was an underpinning of seriousness in it. If I had gotten the by-the-book person, I might not have gotten my license renewed. I don’t drive much, but I do drive–and I would not be comfortable driving without a license. I thought I was going to get that person (I was counting0, but I had neglected to factor in the different categories.
I was saying in my head, “Please don’t give me that person” over and over again. I was watching like a hawk, though I don’t know why. There was nothing I could do if I ended up at their station. I heaved a sigh of relief when I ended up with one of the more generous people, and I knew what to do when I had to take my eye test.
I rattled off the letters as quickly and confidently as I could. I did not pause or stutter, and then I was able to see the flashing lights. Did I get all the letters right? I don’t know. They were fuzzy, but I could see them fairly clearly. I just had difficulty knowing if it was, say a capital Q or a capital O. Which, let’s be real. There are very few Qs on a sign.
This is my biggest gripe with the eye test. Signs are not that small. I can read road signs perfectly. Wait. Let me say that I can read font on a computer fairly fine, too. It’s just something about the eye test letters that fuck up my brain. I think it might be in part because when I’m reading, I don’t look at each letter. So it doesn’t matter if the individual letters are fuzzy or not.
I’ve been having a rough time with my sleep lately. It’s Daylight Savings, but it’s also a personal tragedy that I still don’t want to talk about. I have not had this bad of sleep since before my medical crisis–which was two-and-a-half years ago. I’m struggling with it because I got used to sleeping like a normal person. This does not feel good, I’ll tell you that much.
My birthday is tomorrow. My real birthday, I mean. I don’t really care about it. I never have, but I am neutral about it now. I considered September 3rd to be my re-birthday, which is much more important to me. I have some lingering negativity over my actual birthday and would prefer just to let it slip by with no notice.
I have to pretend to care for my parents. Back in my twenties, I used to tell my mother I didn’t care about my birthday. Which was true, but it was exactly the wrong thing to say to her. Because then she started crying and saying it (along with my brother’s birth) had been the most important day of her life. Once again, it was all about her. She did not care about me as a person, but just what my birth meant to her.
She used to say wistfully that the time she had off when my brother was born and when I was born were the best time of her life. She said it with emotion in her voice, but I was unmoved. My ex-SIL used to say that she loved the baby years so much that she wanted another. That made me shudder for several reasons, but a big one is that the baby years should not be the best years!
A baby is little more than a moving doll. I mean, a baby has feelings, of course, but they don’t have any autonomy. They pretty much have to do what you want them to do and if you are a loving parent, what you want them to do will be in their best interest. If you are not a good parent, though, then the results can be horrific.
It’s not a good tihng that the favorite time of my life ifor my mother is when I could not do anything on my own. Or voice any opinion. she made it really clear when I was in my twenties that she did not approve of anything about me. So yeah, busting out my baby years was a way of telling me tthat I was a disappointment to her currently.
In life, a little rain must fall. There is good and there is bad. I was increbily lucky with my medical crisis. My medical team told me over and over that it was a miracle I survived. My brother joked that he should have bought a lottery ticket on the same day. I think he’s wronge, though, in that we used up all the family luck for the following decade.
I was so grateful for that. But the gratitude has faded. Not completely, but in the day-to-day. For the first year or so, I wasn’t fazed by anything. I was one of those annoying ‘at least I’m alive!’ people. I shrugged off the little irritants with ease.
This year, however, it has been a struggle. Every since my personal tragedy (which I will talk about soon, I promise, but not today), I have–actually, let’s go back a bit. It started with the the last few months of last year. It was little things, but constantly–which was actuallly more bothersome than my medical crisis. I have found out that I am better at emergencies than at every day life.
It started with issues with my internet in which they claimed I was using 1TB of data. 1TB! In a month! When my norm was 13 GB. A month. I could not find a human to talk to, and I was able to get around it by getting a new modem (which I needed), but still clocked me at roughly 300 GB a month. Which I was not using. But as long as it did not creep up again, I would just deal with it. Monopolies suck, by the way, and it was so infuriating trynig to deal with the issue.
Then, my landline didn’t work. Could I get ahold of Century Link? no, beacuse they sucked, too. It was much harder than it should have been to make an appointment, And even when I finally could, the appointment window was for the whole day. 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Which, yeah, thanks for that. Then at 7:45 a.m. that morning, they sent me a text to say that my actual window was 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. That was fifteen minutes after I woke up. THANKS A LOT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES.
They came around 1:45 p.m., and it took then two minutes to fix. After a week. They could have come out that day and fixed it in no time, but I can’t really blame them for that. I can blame them for not having actual humans to talk to.
Then it was problems with a tire resulting in me replacing all my tires. That was a spenny penny, I’ll tell you that much. I think there were a few other little things–oh yeah. My medical insurance. That was a big pain in the ass and it didn’t have to be. I don’t want to talk about it beacuse it’ll rile me up again. It ended fine, but it was a waste of several hours.
I was saynig to Ian that all of that was more annoying to deal with than dying twice and coming back to life. Probably partly because of time and distance, but also beacuse they are such piddling things. Defying death is a big deal! And it has graivatas and Lifetime movie written all over it. Comcast fucking up and having no way to fix it? That’s banal and not even worthy of a yawn.
I’m done for now. More tomorrow on my actual birthday. Maybe.