Namaste, Bitches

Mostly due to job-related stress, my stomach's been acting up. My ulcer has returned to active duty. I guess it's a good thing - my stomach screams for mercy before I can get good & drunk. But I'd really like to get good & drunk for that release. I think I need a vacation, but I'd prefer it if I made it to Feb. 11 so I could take a legit one instead of getting a permanent unpaid vacation.

Chelsie was a Good Dog™ again today - I had to go to the DMV to get my license renewed, which was a 3 hour ordeal, & then we went shopping & stuff... when we got back, we just had a very happy puppy - no mess, no fuss.

Eh, life. It goes on. I just try not to think about tomorrow too much, or the next day. There are too many things out of my control for me to worry about.

If anyone happens to have a good place to download Emmylou Harris' Deeper Well (it's off a Lilith Fair album) let me know. I'd be deeply appreciative.

Yesterday somehow Rob & I ended up talking about tobacco & alcohol. I mentioned that tobacco is a Jaguar-spirit, & I said that I didn't know exactly what alcohol was, I just know it's a God. It does for me what no other drug has ever done, when I'm not drinking I am nothing - forsaken and empty inside, and I want to drink all the time - very much like Rob and his smoking.

Rob came up with a perfect analogy. He said alcohol is a crocodile. It grabs you, bounces you off the river bed a few times for good measure, spins you around & drowns you.

It was perfect. Alcohol is a Crocodile.

It's a well-known fact that I hate my job. And my working environment is getting worse, day by day. I want out so bad... but I can't quit because Rob won't work and I don't have another job to go to. So tonight I told Rob I think a lot of my stress would be alleviated if I stepped down from night audit & went back to being a regular ol' desk clerk with no responsibilities. Immediately, he started arguing with me about how he thinks it would be a bad idea & first he said he didn't want to hear me bitch if I did step down, but I imagine after he saw my expression (it felt weird on my face, I have no idea what I actually looked like) he changed it to 'well, you can bitch but I won't offer any sympathy'.

So now I'm sitting here & the strongest urge to go get a shot of tequila washed over me. It's still a strong urge. I'd really, really like to get drunk, starting right about now. This is how I know that even after all these years of moderation and binging that is so infrequent it's more like occasional stupidity than binging that I am still an alcoholic.

I did, however, go to the gym earlier. I'm still having a helluva time with extending my right leg.

Evohe Litha!!!

Oj, sio I'm not longer tuyping so good now. :P

I'm so gonna hate myself tomorrow.

Speaking of hate... how can one person so full of anger be so full of love at the same time? Will I regret all I've said tomorrow? Will I leave it to lay like so many sleeping dogs? Will I delete it all in shame? Why am I so embarrassed to show emotion? Why does liquor make it so much easier? It's funny to me that a drying, astringent chemical like grain alcohol can be so lubricating to the soul. And the eyes. Maybe it's just the physical pain relief- I can't feel my back or my knees right now. I can't feel my elbosw, or my teeth for that matter.

But I can feel my breathing deepen, I can feel my ribs spread farther apart. It's the solar festival in WoW land & that cheered me up. Why is it a chemical depressant immediately takes away all my sorrow? Oi, so pent up, thinking about us living in Rob's mom's house til we were 90 & she was 170... she won't seel it to us because she thingks if we got our hands on $100k, we'd blow it. I'd stay in my desert, form labyrinths in the back yard, get a dog. I don't really want to go to Washington when I getmy degree... I'm so scared. I'm scared of succeeding if that makes any sense. Scard of moving yet again, throwing all I knoe away. I'm so dafe sna comfy in my dead-end job. I'm such an Excalibwhore. It's all I really knoe, that and I can type 61 words a minute. Oooh, with those skills I can get a $7/hr job anytime I want it.

If levitation were possible, I'd be 3 feet above my chair right now. Maybe I just need to drink more often. I really do belong to Dionysus. No other God has called me like He has. I'd be perfectly content as a maenad or mellissae, chasing the Stag... Wine, tequila, opium... I miss opium. Maybe I just need to be tied & beaten. It's been so long.

Oi, I'm so drunk. I need to quit, it's like an addiction... Music, wine, opium, the call of the horn, Herne, wish Rob was felling better, he'd be so fucked right now.

This morning, coming home, as we were approaching the on-ramp to the I-15 a couple of guys on a motorcycle pulled up along side us. It was two late middle-aged men on the bike. The passenger was making the sign of the Horned Lord with his fist - when he wasn't just holding both arms out feeling the air passing through his fingers, anyway. They were both whooping & hollering at traffic, & they looked like they were having an absolute blast. Rob kept saying they were drunk, but I honestly don't think they were. They just looked to me like two grown men who were serious about having fun. They looked so free & unconstrained. It was a moment when no one was watching (even though the street was pretty full for 2am on a Wednesday) & they just busted loose into uncensored hilarity. Those two weekday warriors were my exact polar opposites at that moment (me, coming home from work in my polyester penguin suit, over tired & grouchy & overwrought)- and yes, I'm insanely jealous of them :) I hope they continue having a ball, I really do. I want them to go home with nothing but good things to say about all the people they hooted & hollered at, that we were all good sports & we all supported them in their enjoyment of the machine they were riding, the road & the wind through their fingers.

I keep talking about how I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I have no aims, goals, hopes, dreams or desires. I am 'Coyote Woman Waiting'... waiting for what? Waiting to get a little older? Waiting for death, maybe? I've also been thinking about the nature of addiction... the concept that what we are addicted to is a substitute for what we are lacking most in our lives. Maybe I do substitute food for something... Maybe it's the one indulgence I have that I feel safest about indulging. Seriously, I didn't start getting really fat til I laid off the booze. Usually it's the opposite - you start drinking, you get the beer belly, but for me I burned off a lot of calories while I was drunk. I danced more & didn't eat as much. I was drunk a lot. I stopped drinking as heavily when I met Rob because I was trying to be supportive of his decision to not drink ever again. I mean, yeah, I can go out & get 'faced every now & again, & right now I'm sitting here w/a beer because I just wanted alcohol after my ordeal with work. It's a crutch, I admit it, and I'm willing to lean on that motherfucking crutch right now. It's a last resort - when I cannot change a damn thing about the thing that is making me the most unhappy, I have a drink. Being constantly drunk isn't a 'safe' outlet for me. It's not a 'safe', socially-acceptable, ultra-responsible release. When I indulge myself with more calories than I use, well, yeah, being fat is unhealthy, and it's not exactly socially acceptable, but it's more acceptable than functioning alcoholism. Functioning alcoholism is also just a couple of drinks away from being a wino.

This morning (or maybe when I got up around 1, I don't remember, it's been a long day) I came to a realization. More than anything, I want to be unmoderate. I would like to just be a drunk again, all the time. There is a certain mystique that goes along with being a drunk, depressed person. Something about being drunk triggers my creativity, my intuition, it lights my inner flame - and I'm not alone in that - so many brilliant artists were fueled by alcohol. I'm tired of always being responsible, always thinking of every possible consequence before I take action. I'd like to be wild. I'd like to take hallucinogens so every time I open my eyes I see something new. I'm tired of the aesthetic lifestyle of Buddhists and spiritualists - I want to live like Crowley.

What I really want to be when I grow up is a Maenad. I want to drink the blood-red wine, dancing through towns half-naked with sistrum and drums and bells and hounds, to sweep through villas with a wild skirling chaotic horde of mad drunken women and baying dogs. I want to chase Dionysus down the mountainside, half-falling, half running. I want to and run the God to ground. I want to tear His flesh with my fingers and teeth. I want to eat of His still-beating heart. I want to wake in some strange town square with a bad head and bloody thighs and the lingering kiss of the God on my lips and tongue.

That is what I really want, what I really desire.

Call me an 80's geek, but I honestly enjoyed Michael Hutchens' voice (of INXS). And he was very pretty. But I'm currently listening to the new INXS, with J.D. Fortune(?) doing the vocals... Yeah, it's cheesy how they picked their new vocalist, and some say he's a Michael-Hutchens wannabe. I can hear the bedroom huskiness of M.H. in 'Devil's Party' and a little bit in 'Pretty Vegas', but Fortune's voice is bigger. I mean, it's just big. It kind of overwhelms the guitar & drum. An auditorium-filling, from-the-diaphragm kind of voice.

Switch has some slick production, which is usually not a boon to music. I still like old cassette tapes & vinyl. You could hear background noises sometimes - barking dogs, airplanes, the wind. Gruffness of a whiskey binge, a sore throat, a missed chord or dropped beat. Good musical ear candy. Switch kind of leaves me empty as far as soulfulness. But I have to admit, I like the new vocalist. If I was listening to him w/out knowing who I was hearing or knowing how the guy got the job, I would like it. To be fair, I like Justin Timberlake's compilation with Timbaland, 'SexyBack'. I was sitting here grooving to it pretty thoroughly one morning & listening to Rob bitch about the guy singing it being from N'Sync or some shit, and I didn't believe him til I turned around & saw it most definitely was Justin Timberlake. I immediately tried to be dismissive of it, but after hearing it again later & getting into the grrooooves again... well, I downloaded it. Good music is good music.

So I love 'Pretty Vegas', bought the CD on that song's merit alone. Now that I'm listening to the ballad 'Afterglow' I have to admit it's a good album overall. Over-produced, slicker than shit through a goose, but good tunes.

Last night I took a bunch of Rage Against the Machine to work with me. Good angry politically conscious rock-rap was just what I needed. Bouncing around at the copier hollering, "Fuck you I won't do what you told me!" over and over again can be cathartic, if somewhat knee-cracking. I think (even though I say this over & over again & never do it - haven't done it for months) after I go & fail my math final on Wednesday afternoon, I'm going to sit down with some Jose Cuervo Black & get to know ol' Joe Crow a little more intimately. Rob asked if he was going to need to make sure I slept on my side and I said, "Yes. Yes you will. And you'll need to put a trashcan under my face, but I'll wear a ponytail so you don't have to hold my hair back."

Last night at work. Didn't want to be there. I felt like I was ready to just leap out of my own skin. The texture of the paper on my hands, the texture of my pants on my legs, it was hot & stuffy in my office w/no relief from engineering or a/c. Everything seemed to take three times longer than it should have, worked through my break & was stuck there an extra hour this morning. That crawly-skin feeling that just would not go away.

Sometimes I really wish I could just be taken care of, that I was one of those ultra-dependent & needy people that everyone coddles & never expects anything from. I seriously considered checking myself into Nevada Mental Health this morning just so I could relax. Let someone tell me my schedule for a few days, provide me w/food & drugs & bedding and a gown, maybe spend some time in ye old love-myself jacket in a rubber room where I could bang my head against a padded surface. I am in need of a release of something, but what? What exactly is it that I need to let go of?

I've determined that the alcohol gods are punishing me for my neglect and there is a tequila elemental calling my name, so tonight when Rob goes for food I'm going w/him & stopping by Lee's Discount Liquor. I'm then going to proceed to get very drunk and play WoW. Hopefully, my character will end up somewhere unfamiliar, naked & broke, kind of like what I'd like to do in real life.

Last night was yet another reminder of why most night auditors I know are heavy drinkers. There's a lot of pressure on me to be perfect. I cannot make any mistakes. None whatsoever. I have to be better than the computers I work with, better than my coworkers, I have to think 10 steps ahead of everything around me...

So last night I run my single revenue center detail for Rm/Tx... and all the room charges posted as 'Late Check-Out' fees were sitting in the column for 'Food Revenue'. I stared at that thing for a good 5 minutes. I ran the report again, same results... not being quite insane, I didn't run it again expecting a different outcome. Nope, some $2000 worth of Room charges were sitting merrily under 'Food'. But when I looked into the individual transactions, it showed them running under the 'Rooms' revenue center. So I called CIT (aka Chaos in Technology)... the supervisor on duty called the asst. manager, Pam (aka the Battle Axe)... and I sat & panicked til CIT called me back. Luckily, the whole problem was because CIT had 'moved all the late check-out revenue from box 1 to box 2' in an attempt to fix an earlier error involving the tax being posted as NV State sales tax (7.75% or something similar) instead of NV Hotel Room Tax (9%)... so they 'moved the revenue from box 2 to box 1' & voila - my rooms were back where they belonged. And everything balanced out.

But when I first saw that, my rooms sitting in 'Food' I swear I felt a patch of hair go grey... I really, really wanted to just turn in my resignation & go drink myself into a tequila stupor at the bar... My ulcers flared up. Luckily for the hotel, I didn't have a single dime on me, so the tequila thing was outta the question... I might have gone to the bar, anyway, on duty or not.

Especially when it comes to being sick. Rob was hung over all day yesterday, so who suffered the most? Well, there's only 2 of us in the house & it sure as hell wasn't him, I tell ya that much.
Samhain is here, ring in the New Year!!!