i'm on my way, i don't know where i'm going

[erika]

I haven't been writing much lately, and that's not because nothing's going on... it's more that so much is going on it feels impossible to explain any of it.

I also feel kinda guilty for inevitably being long-winded——which, fuck that, this is my journal. Haters to the left!

(panda always gets my very shortest summaries because of her visual issues related to migrainery, but the rest of you must suffer.)

Short updates which will be expanded upon in more detail later in the entry:

1. Things with Josh continue to be great, he lives up to the awesomeness inherent in his first message, and I do mean to write more about how my (well, our, but mostly my me mine) birthday weekend went down later in this entry. Otherwise, I do want to have some discussions with him about some stuff, but not scary We Need To Talk stuff, just "I'm probably going to have mood swings because winter is trying to kill me, here's how you can deal with them" type of stuff.



2. My immediate family is all going to Disney World for Thanksgiving. The sheer amount of things that one is expected to do while at Disney World + the fact that it's a family reunion for Voldemort*'s wife + PEOPLE AROUND ME ALL THE TIME mean that that is approximately my hell on earth, so me & the dogs are staying here! Yay!
   
   Alone for Thanksgiving might upset some people, but personally I have chosen to reframe it as more stuffing for me. This is awesome. (I might ask panda to come over at some point, OR I might not. I'M A REBEL & AN INTROVERT.)
   
   * Voldemort is the name panda has decided works for my older brother. I'll probably start referring to him as that generally, because his real name and his blood relationship to me are both ... reminders of him as someone I should love/trust and obviously that's not the relationship I have with him.



3. Oh! Speaking of staying home with the pupperazzi, I'm fostering Josh's dog, Aidyn for awhile. More on that later on as well.



4. Um, what else. Oh! Psychiatrist upped my Cymbalta back to 30mgs, now that I've been taking a mixture of 20 OR 30 mg capsules, one of each every other day. (I.e. Monday 20mgs, Tuesday 30mgs, etc.) The anxiety hasn't reappeared, so crossing my fingers for that to stay away. He also gave me a 'script for 10mgs of Adderall 2x daily, but in reality it's as needed, which is what I wanted and he agreed that the exhaustion is a problem.



5. Thinking about my exhaustion, Josh suggested I try Breathe-Right strips for my snoring, and it turned out to be ... magical. I'm serious. Turns out "one nostril way smaller than the other" never connected in my brain to the abstract concept of a deviated septum. Which... it is now obvious that I have. Great. Appointment with ENT specialist ahoy, I guess.

Birthday weekend! It went awesome. Josh agreed my dad is basically Gomez Addams, but ... generally nicer than that might sound, he just gives the impression of someone you'd never want to fuck with. My mother did not freak Josh out with how weird and um... whimsical she is.

(I would hazard a guess that much like Josh recalibrated my scale for sexual awesomeness and general relationship goodness, I have recalibrated his scale for judging how whimsical/odd someone is. He tells me something or other I do is adorable about once a day, seriously. APPARENTLY I'M A MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL AND NO ONE TOLD ME. :( I don't want him to move on from our relationship having learned valuable lessons, tho!)

Josh will be back in my locale for dental work next Monday the 19th, so I have been nominated by ... default, I guess——to take care of him afterwards. He's not sure what they're giving him for anesthesia. I'm trying to resist the urge to video what he's like on pain meds. I wouldn't share it; I'm just sure it's going to be hilarious.

Anyway, weekend bonus: Neither of my parents saw my sex toys in the bathroom! This is contrary to what I thought when I woke up on Tuesday and found them on my ottoman, where I didn't remember leaving them. Turns out Josh left them there. That would have been bad, considering that that was the day I had to spring the fact that I had agreed to foster Josh's dog on my father parents.

So, Josh's dog Aidyn is staying with me for awhile! It's a bit of a complex story, but Josh was staying with 'family friends' for a few months in South Central Middle of Nowhere, and they turned out to be more frenemies than actual friends—kicked him out with two days' notice, the only apartment he could find didn't allow pets, they agreed to keep Aidyn until he could find an apartment that DID, but started making noises about perhaps ... keeping Aidyn permanently. Um, yeah. That's Not Okay.

So when the frenemies gave him a week's notice that they were going on vacation for three weeks (seriously, really, a WEEK'S NOTICE?) and their suggestion was to kennel Aidyn at a local vet... where he'd be either in a cage or in a large fenced area with other dogs for 95% of the day and not played with or interacted with much——note, this is where they kennelled Aidyn before (without telling Josh when they left for three days) and where HE PICKED UP KENNEL COUGH—— he was like "um, no." So I offered, because I was under the mistaken impression that 3 dogs would not be much more work than 2*. And my dad, so far, has not thrown a fit. Fingers crossed.

*note to self: THIS IS WRONG.

Aidyn is fucking adorable, but my dogs still reserve judgment on him. Teyla appears to have forgotten how to play with anyone but Ronon, and she's definitely not impressed that Aidyn somehow manages to be an even bigger drama queen than she is. She also dislikes the fact that I only have two hands and thus can't pet three dogs at the same time.

Meanwhile, Ronon thinks that me playing tug of war with Aidyn where he mock-growls at me means that Aidyn is planning to attack me, and repeatedly bounds over to save me if he's in the same room, which is kinda terrifying for Aidyn because Ronon somehow became alpha dog when I wasn't looking. Strangely, Ronon is very happy being always below humans in status, because I'm not even sure he thinks challenging me or any other human that I seem to like is an actual option.

Anyway, Ronon will totally throw down on my behalf. Sure, Ronon LOOKS mild-mannered when he's bogarting my spot on the bed, but inside that scared-of-everything-man-made-and-also-thunder-and-fireworks dog lurks the heart of a DEFENSIVE MOTHER BEAR. He once tried to convince a GREAT DANE that he was Not To Be Fucked With because I was very uncomfortable around her owner. (Yep, that's Voldemort's dog.) (The situation worked out to be that the Great Dane ignored him until he snapped at her, then she 'held his head in her jaws'. Ronon bled. I had some very angry words with people for a) ignoring me when I said that Ronon was not going to be happy to let another dog in his backyard, b) allowing both dogs to be in the backyard TOGETHER against my express wishes and then c) not alerting me immediately to the situation when Ronon was trying to start shit OR AFTER HE GOT HURT.)

HOWEVER, Ronon is generally okay with Aidyn, especially after all the humans in the house showed him that Aidyn was fine. It definitely helps that Aidyn is probably one of the most submissive dogs I've ever seen. He has no interest in dominance struggles, only cuddling, marking everything in my backyard, and burrowing. I found him under my bed a few days ago—it's six inches off the ground!

As for the marking, well... that led to this very amusing interlude last night:

I let the boy dogs out, and Teyla was like "fuck that, I have a comfy place, I am just going to recline IN LEISURE."

Now, in order for you to understand this story, you have to know that Ronon drinks ... a LOT of water, and then he pees for literally over 2 minutes. I have timed this, because it is amazing to watch. The vet says it's fine, some dogs just go all at once or whatever. It probably also helps that Ronon drinks like a fucking camel.

So both male dogs get let out, and while Aidyn's running over marking/peeing on stuff in spurts, Ronon meanwhile moseys around, surveys the lay of the land, sniffs a few things, and decides to let fly on the garden fence.

(I was outside watching because it's late enough that I didn't want them barking and waking people up.)

Aidyn finishes his typical marking and runs over to Ronon, curious as to what has so enthused Ronon (who has been peeing for about 30 seconds at this point) that he is marking the spot so vigorously. Aidyn kinda tries to nudge Ronon, like "hey, you marked that spot, I wanna mark it too!" but Ronon ignores him because he's still going.

So Aidyn moves back a little, like... what is going on here? Then Aidyn started sniffing Ronon's butt, like "are you sick, you're PEEING FOREVER" but nope. So Aidyn starts sniffing UNDERNEATH Ronon, like "are you really peeing here, this is crazy, dude!"

Ronon, meanwhile, is doing his customary "pee until I no longer make sloshing sounds when I walk, after which I will go inside and drink enough water that I make sloshing sounds again," and totally ignoring Aidyn.

So finally at about maybe the 90 second mark, Aidyn is like I REALLY WANT TO PEE ON THIS SPOT and so (because Aidyn is probably at least 10 pounds smaller than Ronon and proportionally shorter) Aidyn sorta diagonally aligns himself AND CROSSES THE PEE STREAMS so he can mark where Ronon is marking.

At this point in time I spontaneously said "NEVER CROSS THE STREAMS" and started laughing hysterically at the Ghostbusters reference.

Oh, dogs.

---

Moving on to the snoring!

This conversation I had with panda after trying the Breathe-Right strips for a night:

Me: so josh suggested i get some breathe right strips for my snoring and wtf, people can actually breathe thru their nose, what is this craziness... turns out i have a deviated septum and i might need surgery, but that could be one reason why i am always exhausted when i wake up 12:08 PM

Lydia: .... You couldn't breathe thru yr nose? 12:09 PM

Me: ummm... hard to explain, i CAN, but i have to actually like, expend more effort than someone without this problem, i'm pretty sure 12:10 PM

Me: and so when i fall asleep, my body doesn't make that amount of effort and thus the snoring, because the septum (the bit dividing nostrils) sort of collapses without enough pressure and i can't breathe thru my left nostril at all, basically 12:10 PM

Me: i feel like a dumbass, because a) somehow the idea of "my left nostril is way smaller than my right one" never occurred to me to = deviated septum, even tho that's what it is and b) WHY DID NO DOCTOR PICK UP ON THIS EVER 12:11 PM

Lydia: Yeah wtf. 12:12 PM

Me: i mean, it's WAY smaller. my right nostril is probably the size of my right index finger, and my left one barely lets my pinky in 12:15 PM

Me: not picking my nose, just trying to give you some idea of the size diff 12:15 PM

Lydia: Wtffff 12:17 PM

Me: yep, that's at least... idk, probably .5cm diff in THE OUTSIDE OF THE NOSTRIL, IT'S NOT LIKE THIS ISN'T FUCKING OBVIOUS, DOCTORS 12:18 PM

Lydia: Didnt u have a sleep study? 12:19 PM

Me: yeeeeep... they did not mention this at all, altho i haven't talked to them to get it sent anywhere, so maybe it was in their notes, but idts 12:20 PM

Lydia: Uh they couldn't have missed the SNORING wtfffff 12:20 PM

At this point in time, I can feel panda psychically prodding me to remind you, Gentle Reader, that when I slept over at her place a month ago or so, I snored so loudly she heard me from THE LIVING ROOM when I was IN HER BEDROOM ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HOUSE.

I would like to note that I was very drunk that night, but um, yes. I cannot tell a lie—I did snore down the house.