Man, this year has been a shit show, huh? Also, I am amazed this still exists. I read a few of my last entries (from years ago), and that was a trip. I've changed so much. Everyone has. Hopefully for the better?

I still journal offline, but I haven't had the heart nor mind to even try to sort out my thoughts in months. Every time I think about it, about the little pebbles or big boulders in my way, I'm like, "Nope. Not today."

Try to stay positive. That goes for all of us.

Stagnation softer than a smothering pillow.
Flaking layers of powdery shell.
And then the sleep came.

I've been having stress hives (I guess that's what it is?) for weeks now. Sometimes, it's particularly bad. Last night/this morning, I had to take two antihistamines just so I could pass out and not scratch myself in two. It's most bizarre.

When I was little, I had an allergy that did the same thing to me. It got so bad that my dad had to take me to the ER because he was afraid my throat was going to swell shut. That's how I got one of my two stuffed pandas. I wonder if they still give those to kids in the ER. Anyhow, I had to go to an allergy doctor several times to get those scratch tests on my back. They never did figure out what I was allergic to because I had a response to too many things. Heh. Maybe it wasn't an allergy at all... maybe it was just stress then, too. Or temperature. Who the fuck knows? I do know that I am allergic to certain detergents.

So, hives. If you've never had them, consider yourself blessed. They start small, then turn into massive welts, and they itch like fire ants playing kick-ball under the skin. Antihistamines alleviate them a bit, but that also causes you to fall asleep hard. I slept from about 10am to 10pm. Woops.

Here I sit. It's 4am. I'm drinking some homemade blackberry tea and watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries on Netflix. Also playing ff14. Trying not to think stressful thoughts like, "WHY THE FUCK IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME? OH YEAH. I AM STRESSED."

XD I guess I'll stay up a good while if they don't attack me again. Gotta few chores to take care of, dammit.

I got fired last Friday. I've never been fired before. Feels like a sucker-punch to the gut, the wind is knocked out of you, and your heart is deflated by the pressure of your stomach trying to relocate.

It was a job. Just a job. I'd been there nine years. My bosses urged me to write HR as they didn't agree with it. I'm still debating that. I'm not sure what to write exactly, and I don't have the proper knee padding required for that much groveling. Others are urging me to find something else.

I've been casually browsing things here and there. It's still too fresh and painful to really wind myself up for it. I am not good at this.

If I were, I would have found a job after I graduated college which actually uses my degrees.

Part of me just wants to get up, drive away, sit somewhere I've never sat before, breathe, and flip-off the sunset. The tricky part is... I could totally do that. I have enough money in the bank to do that several times. Be an adult, Fyx. Don't go flipping off the sunset, when it is clearly not the horizon's fault. Ahhhh, entropy.

So, long story short, I dunno what the fuck to do.

I am a hateful thing sometimes.

I've had a fever on and off for over a week. My energy level is completely broken, sweating buckets (and god, do I stink... this antibiotic is making me smell so yucky), I'm coughing so hard that my damn face feels like it's going to explode.... Whatever this is, it doesn't feel like bronchitis. The cough isn't productive. It's just evil. And painful.

I did wind up going to the doctor last Sunday. That never goes well for me. The doctor didn't give me much of a diagnosis and even said my lungs sounded clear. I don't know how they magically sounded clear at that moment, but I can assure you... I've been coughing so much, I'm pretty sure I have popped my sternum more than once. But I got a prescription for an antibiotic. Woopdifuckingdoo.

I haven't been able to sleep at all unless it's with the help of Nyquil. Pretty sure my liver is going to start rebelling, at the rate I am ingesting tylenol or ibuprofen for the fever. So fucking tired. And no appetite. This is not a good combination. No energy, no rest, no nutrients.

I wake up so early... took two days off from work and today is my day off. It's fucking agony. Can't muster energy to do anything. Not hungry. Can't breathe. Can't sleep. Day's just going on forever. Minute by minute. Sweating by.

I haven't had much sleep, which is immensely shitty since I was off yesterday and today. You'd think I would have gotten at least 8 lovely hours of sand in my eyes. No. Not this lucky gal.

This lucky gal woke up to a man peeing on the floor. This lucky gal went to sleep on the couch after cleaning up the pee. This lucky gal then discovered her bed and floor beside the bed had been pissed on, too. What a wonderful morning to be lucky.

I am livid.

I just drove him home. He's shown up drunk before. Fortunately, he did not drive. The last time was just a couple weeks ago, and I laid into him about driving to my place. And being shitfaced in general. And hurting me, albeit unintentionally, when trying to get fresh.

But this time... This time is beyond any state I've ever seen him in.

I'm exhausted and angry. Exhausted from being angry more than from lack of sleep. I guess I'll go crash on Toni's bed.

I am horrible at taking risks. Spontaneous decision making is not my fort�. Do I want to do the thing? Let's go through a billion scenarios to find out!

Working a full time job in retail is, well, not recommended. I don't even need to work full time, financially speaking. The only bonus to working full time is more money and dental insurance (and I haven't even used the latter). But, for some reason, I did it all the way through the last two years of school. And now I'm still working full time as I browse through job listings in my field. Most of those jobs have obscene requirements for experience, which pretty much elbows me out before I can even say, "Here's my resum�."

What was I getting to? Ah, I'm wondering how I'll transition to a job, if I find one, from working a crap retail job 40 hours a week. Hell, the hours I get pretty much lock me out of decent interviewing times. And the schedule comes out weeks in advance. I suppose I could change my availability so that I'm free on at least one or two weekdays.

In my head, I'm fretting over the typical anxieties about getting a job. What if the job I get isn't the right fit and then I'm out of a job? What if it's terrible?

Can't be helped. There's more to life than this bull, I know. I need another big, life project to work on. School was my last one. I find that I function better when I'm accomplishing something rather than slogging along pointlessly. So, what shall I do?

So, I graduated with two degrees. Associate in Applied Science: graphic design. Associate in Arts. Mmm.

For a minute, I forgot what I was going to write about.

I got something on my brain earlier. Must have seen something or heard something. Anyway, hoarding.

Both of my parents are hoarders. As a result, I grew up in a messy house, whether at my mom's or at my dad's. And when you grow up in it, it's only natural to give in to it (because there is no fighting it) and be messy. Yet, as I got older, when I started understanding that my parents had a problem, I actively started reducing my mess. Of course, I had the teenage mess going on. But never filth.

My parents are two completely different types of hoarders.

My mom is a sentimental hoarder. She sees value in junk. She keeps a few rooms clean in her house, and the rest is full of documents and trinkets and clothes and all manner of other things.Example: I found documents from 1995 concerning my little brother. I was helping her clean, and she didn't want me to throw them away. To you or me, it was trash. Not even shred-worthy trash. Just put-it-in-the-trashcan-ffs trash.

My dad is a lazy hoarder. He doesn't throw things out or clean up after himself. His house is littered with garbage. Not foodstuffs (thank god) but junk mail or old magazines. And he doesn't mind that sort of thing being thrown away; he just doesn't do it himself. And then he's got this Great Depression mentality of keeping stuff he thinks could be useful. His parents grew up in the Great Depression, so they had to be resourceful and see value in everything. But they used the "junk" they collected. They probably recycled better than today's suburban commando. Unfortunately, my dad picked up the habit of collecting/keeping junk, but he doesn't actually follow through with using it. Case in point: he works at an electronics store and sometimes brings home wires that would have made it to a landfill had he not rescued them. Oi, and he sometimes buys things which he thinks will have value later! Pretty sure he's got a Chip Hazard action figure (from that 1998 movie, Small Soldiers) still in the package somewhere. But he's not a real collector. He doesn't watch the market value of action figures or anything like that. He doesn't buy and trade on the internet.

He collects comic books, but he has no idea of their worth (though I have a rough idea, since I'm the one who got him back into comics and his collection is my collection--or so he always says).

So, how the hell did I come from those two hoarding houses and not wind up a hoarder? Yeah, I keep things around for sentimental value. Sometimes my room looks like a tornado came through (books strewn by the bed, work clothes tossed on the floor), but I clean up. I throw things away that have lose all use. When it comes to throwing things away, I try not to measure their sentimental value over their usefulness and the space they'll take up. For some reason, I've got an attachment to clothes that are long overdue for trashing. That's my guilty... uh... pleasure?

I can't stand filth. I keep my clutter confined to small places. My desk, for instance, is a sea of notes and nail polish bottles. I'm not a neat freak, for sure.

How you keep your house says a lot about your character, I believe.

I do not handle being a maid well. When I lived with my dad, I tried several times to stay on top of the mess. I couldn't keep up. If he went on vacation, I'd clean the house from top to bottom. It'd be a wreck within two weeks of his return.

Still, I try to battle the mess for both my parents from time to time. Sometimes, again when my dad's on vacation, I'll go to his house and throw away bags and bags of trash. Finding that '95 mess at my mom's house was the last time I tried to "help" her clean. That didn't go so well. I felt like I was on an episode of Hoarders after the conversations I had with my mom. Instead of throwing away stuff, I mostly ended up shuffling it from one box to another and moving it from room to room, because she wouldn't part with anything. Sometimes I would sneak things into the trash when she wasn't looking. It was surreal.

I don't have a point. Just had to babble for a bit. Keep your place clean. Don't be nasty D:

Feeling like roadkill is the best time to have strangers in a strange land slip their fingers into your skull and worm around in your brains.

Bada bah bah.

Every time I sneeze, I also cough up phlegm. Frowny face.

And then there's this phone call. A paranoid-schizophrenic phone call. Girl, you have problems bigger than I have care.

I may not get my intern hours... I don't know. Don't know what to do. Getting pissed off and depressed hasn't done much for my disposition.

So, I'm just going to listen to Poe and curl up around Adobe Illustrator. These are fun times, lemme tell ya.