Me vs. Giant Piles of Stuff Everywhere = Disaster

Life lesson #1 learned in the past two months: moving four times in two months is a Bad Plan. Let me chart this out for you:

Step 1: Rental house in Iowa to RV park in Minnesota in order to escape sewage leak making us ill (half of houseful of stuff into RV, half into parents' house in Wisconsin). Two humans, two cats, two dogs, six potted plants.

Step 2: After job ends, drive RV back to Wisconsin, thinking we can live in the driveway until we can move into the downstairs of the house (which involves major work because we have to move my in-laws upstairs so we can be downstairs and I can therefore vaguely function in theory without expending all of my energy going up and down stairs).

Step 3: We find out there isn't enough power for air conditioning in the RV, and it's 95. I attempt to live in the RV anyway. but keep having to use the guest room upstairs because my dogs are overheating. The cats had to move inside immediately. Meanwhile, my fiance is driving a friend around the country for an entire week, which means it's me going up and down stairs trying to keep everyone alive and quickly burning out.

Step 4: While living with my dogs in the RV when it finally cools off enough, I find myself getting really sick with cold-like symptoms. My fiance gets back, roadtrip done, and it occurs to me that I feel worst while in the RV, which, because of lack of running water, we haven't been able to clean or empty the tanks of for two weeks. And so we move completely into the upstairs guest room, severely limiting what I can do.

The Result: I only have two or three roundtrips every day on the stairs before I'm unable to muster the energy to go up or down anymore, which means I have to think carefully to plan everything and my fiance has to do almost all the work taking dogs outside or cooking (formerly jobs I was proud I could do). Meanwhile, when we're upstairs the dogs are unhappy and have to be crated because we're living in a maze of box piles and it isn't safe for them to roam. When we're downstairs, the cats stand on the stairs and meow piteously the entire time we aren't up with them until everyone in the house wants to commit kitty murder. The result of this is two constantly stressed out and puking cats, my dachshund having diarrhea and needing no less than four bathroom breaks during the night, which my fiance has to do because I can't go up or down at all at night or I will fall on my face. I keep running out of food because I can't keep track of what we have since I can't go in the kitchen whenever I want to, I can't keep anything clean because a) everyone's throwing up and b) there are piles of laundry everywhere and boxes and everything I need is always on the other goddamned floor. When I'm downstairs, there's access to the outside for dogs so I can actually take care of my dachshund's needs, but there's nowhere for me to lie down. Meanwhile, I'm ill, my fiance is having a tough period and is emotionally a wreck (he hates them more and more as time goes by), we're discussing hormone treatment and arranging lots of doctor's appointments as we're trying to help my mother-in-law very slowly move ten years worth of stuff upstairs while trying to get my father-in-law to at least think about moving the furniture sometime this century, and it's still like everyone except me is dragging their feet. Which, if switching the house around had been my idea, I could understand- I never would have asked to take over the master bedroom because even if I need it, it's their house, they get first dibs, no question from me. But my in-laws, the ones dragging their feet because something is always coming up, were the ones who convinced me that it would be good to live on the first floor, leaving me in this ungodly in-between state. And over all I'm glad they did, because it will make my life possible instead of physically impossible. In theory, even the animals will like it better. If, you know, they can keep any food down for the next month as nothing continues to happen, I keep getting stuck on floors, my fiance has to do everything and I have to try to live in a giant forest of boxes with all of my stuff spread out over three different floors, waiting.

Somehow Surviving a Week of Total Insanity

Too tired to write... in... sentences...

1) Moved out of house to escape sewage leak and into a Super 8
2) Accomplished above at 10 PM with four animals
3) And with tons of GF frozen food and leftovers
4) Which ran out after 3 days and required me to eat steadily stranger things and rely almost entirely on a loaf of GF bread and lunchmeat from Walmart
5) Checked house every day to drop off laundry and were subjected to the horrible smell increasing until the cleanup people got there finally
6) Watched my fiance come down with horrible flu-like withdrawal symptoms from getting off of his anti-depressant too quickly
7) Nursed fiance back to health over three days while taking care of 4 animals in a hotel, one of which is a dachshund having serious back problems that require extra work
8) Drove to Walmart for emergency supplies and to the house for similar
9) Accomplished the above without crashing into anything despite sleep attacks and being exhausted, not having driven at all in months
10) Moved everyone and everything back into the still slightly off-smelling house to get away from the hotel
11) Had disappointing therapy appointment over the phone
12) Did three loads of laundry and washed giant pile of dishes (using water boiled on the stove because the water heater is still off)
13) Hoping we don't have to move out again while they bleach the basement
14) Called Mom to vent about above and started crying because it's just that insane
15) Now only awake because of blasting Britney Spears

Grandparents' Glass Maze House

Last night, I was visiting my grandparents at their house in small town Texas. In real life, they have a back room that they basically use to store stuff and when I was little it kind of creeped me out back there. So, of course, for as long as I've been having nightmares, some of them have taken place in there.

In the dream I was having seriously crazy drama with my cousins for awhile when we finally decided to go back into that room. It was dark and we were enjoying creeping each other out. Each time we found a new doorway, we would go through to see what was there. At first, the rooms looked like the rest of the house and formed hallways in an almost maze-like fashion, but then we passed this huge floor-to-ceiling window that looked out on a small courtyard. There was furniture piled outside in the rain with grass growing all around it.

Of course, I was like, "we should go try to get in there!" because my fiance an I have been talking about needing a couch for some time, lol. So then my cousin spots a door leading out there, but it's coming from a different direction, so we start heading that way to see if we can find it.

We emerge from the dark, cramped hallway of dark wood and wallpaper into this giant ballroom with walls and ceiling made out of glass. Looking through the walls, we see other glass rooms receding into the distance in every direction, most of them piled up with old furniture or figurines on shelves. There's a lot of stuff but it's pretty spread out between the rooms, leaving lots of empty floorspace. We spread out individually to see what's around, and I spot the door into the courtyard off to my right. I start heading over there, but I run smack into a glass wall because I'm so focused on what's behind it that I don't see it in time, which makes everybody (including me) laugh.

I look around and find the way around the wall, which happens to be a wheelchair ramp with old hotel brass railings and ugly red patterned carpet. So I run up it and around the wall and reach the glass door.

I look outside and see the courtyard more clearly. Against the wall to my left is the furniture and the small grassy space is otherwise overgrown. The blue couch I was so excited about has a big hole in it and is next to this hilariously 70s chair with a giant light blue and puke orange plaid pattern on it. My cousins have come over and we're laughing at how ugly the chair is.

Suddenly I hear barking and realize that there are three boxers (all of them brown and white) in the yard, two of them chained up next to the door and the third roaming free. My cousin opens the door and starts to step outside and the dogs go nuts. Just then, my grandmother finds us, telling us off for going so far back into the house. She goes out and gives the dogs chunks of steak to quiet them down.

And then I woke up, still wondering if that couch can be repaired.

This Ill Feeling Is No Longer Mysterious

As I may have mentioned earlier, my fiance and I have been renting a small house in small town Iowa where my fiance is working. When we first moved into this old little house, we had all sorts of problems. It wasn't too surprising, as the place had been vacant for over a year when we moved in. First, there was the plumbing, which took awhile to get fully functional. Then we had to get the water heater fixed, then before winter set in, the furnace needed help. And after that, miraculously, everything worked for several whole months!

Well, then I kept catching what seemed to be random colds. I was sick with three seemingly different things (complete with their own distinct symptoms) one after another and was totally blaming it on the weather. I mean, the Midwest is famous for immune system-wrenching spikes and drops in temperature this time of year, plus there's allergies to take into account. So I figured (especially as this spring is my first living in this area) that I was just allergic to something.

Then J, my fiance, started getting headaches and feeling crappy. He has an extremely sensitive sense of smell and was complaining that the house smelled funny a couple of days ago. I noticed it a little bit, too. This weekend we got back from a field trip to Sioux Falls (our nearest source of sushi and many other delicious GF things), having been gone all day, to discover our hot water wasn't working. It would flow, but it was cold.

Last time we had this problem, the pilot light on the water heater had gone out. So we go down to the basement to check it and--

We find that our basement is flooded with foul-smelling, tepid water. As in sewage. o.O It was six inches deep, and high enough to have triggered the water heater to shut itself off. Thoroughly grossed out, we had to decide what to do. At J's dad's urging (he works on houses) we decided to take all six of us (two humans, two cats and two dogs) to the nearest motel for a couple of days while our landlord sorts it out.

We called around and found somewhere that would take all of us in last night, and we are so glad we did. J's dad told us that if you can smell it at all, the gases can be making you sick, and I'm now sure that they were. I'm really glad that we're now all out of danger. I already feel so much better after a night of fresh air. I think it was affecting me a lot more than I realized, however faint the strange smell had seemed.

We stopped in to grab a couple of things we forgot in our haste to leave last night, and I ran in to the house myself for about two minutes. That was enough to make me feel sick again until I had been breathing fresh air for awhile. I'm not going back in there at all until the sewage is gone and the basement is bleached.

Well, we'd been saying we needed a vacation, right? XD Not quite what we had in mind...

RV Living

Want a new way to save energy? Try downsizing your floor space. :D

Before we relocated for my girlfriend's job in August, we were living at her parents' place, a lovely two story house with a pretty large upstairs that we had completely to ourselves. When I moved in, I put myself in charge of keeping the two large bedrooms, connecting bathroom, two walk-in closets, stairs and loft area clean. Being a genetic neat-freak who actually enjoys things like sweeping and dusting made this part of my life fun rather than a chore, so most of the time I didn't actually mind. That doesn't mean it wasn't a challenge however- we had two dogs and two cats upstairs with us, constantly shedding hair, plus my girlfriend who is like a tornado on the weekends. She likes to collect her things in what we refer to as "chaos piles", and anything within ten feet of one is in danger of getting sucked into the vortex, to disappear for days or weeks until I have time to go in and put things away. So while cleaning that place was fun, it wasn't easy, and sometimes it would get nasty if I was sick or busy or just plain tired for a couple of days in a row.

Then, in the span of a week, the whole situation changed. She interviewed and got an offer a week before the school year was going to start and we found ourselves scrambling, trying to find someplace to live in a state neither of us had ever even directly visited, in a small town with nothing posted online. We ended up borrowing the family RV and living at a campground for the first month while we looked for a place to rent via word of mouth. We took the dogs with us but had to leave the cats in the care of the in-laws for lack of space.

I have to admit I was skeptical of the whole RV thing at first. After all, the last experience I had had with an RV was camping on the beach with grandparents when I was little in a very cramped, old and only partially functional one (if I remember correctly, the shower didn't work at all). But this thing was pretty fancy, with a separate bedroom, a pretty nice little kitchen and comfortable furniture. And I came to appreciate the lack of space- I got so much more art and relaxing done, simply because I had hardly anything I was supposed to keep clean. Because of the close quarters I got to know my girlfriend's dog a lot better and we really developed a bond. The dogs also liked the campground because there was always so much to smell, and walks were positive challenges for both of them because of other dogs and children. I gained so much confidence walking them there. It was so easy to just go outside with only three stairs instead of a whole flight in my way.

It was pretty interesting to watch our neighbors come and go, even after just a night sometimes. I thought having so many people parked so close would be harrowing, but instead it was just fun to watch their interactions. Everyone was really relaxed for the most part- after all, they were on vacation- and just having a good time. There were a couple of boisterous weekends around Labor Day that were a bit much, but expected. Once I even saw an RV hotel. o.O I didn't even know those existed. It was like a bus and had a bus full of people inside it.

I also really liked having a ridiculously tiny kitchen. I didn't have to walk to get to anything, lol- you just reach up and there it is. And I loved the fact that we could easily open the place up- it was mostly windows- and we were practically outside. In August the weather was right up my alley, even though in September it got a tad chilly sometimes, but the RV's air conitioning and heating worked really well and quickly. Another advantage to small living spaces.

Even so, we were all getting ready for a change when the time came to move out. The weather was turning chilly and the campground was going to close for the year by the time we had arranged to rent our house. The dogs played victory fetch in our new large living room and celebrated having a yard all their own to claim. We humans were excited by the prospect of having the ability to actually fit a whole meal's worth of pots on the stove at once. A couple of months after we moved in, my in-laws came to visit and brought the cats with them, so our family was reunited. And I do like our house. Sometimes, though, I miss the RV (like when the entire house needs vacuuming XD), and I would live in one again without hesitation.

Corpse Ghost New Apartment Foster Family

It's been awhile since the last time I didn't have some sort of vivid dream interrupting my sleep, but last night was crazy.

The first one was a nightmare. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before now that dead bodies, especially rotting ones, seriously freak me out- it's like some bizarre phobia I have. In this dream I was still living with my parents, indefinitely, with no hope of moving out, which was an awful feeling I had for the year and a half after college. That feeling made the dream that much worse. So my parents had just moved into a different new house and I had come with them. It was a bit of an improvement- there was more space for me and my room had better lighting. Everything was kind of weird though. The walls were all painted red and had East Asian style details- including a really cool dragon statue attached to the wall between two rooms. The layout was very confusing and didn't make sense, so I kept getting lost even though it was a small house. In the middle of it there was a tiny courtyard with a young tree and a small patch of grass where my dachshund could do his business. At first I really like it out there- a small enclosed bit of the outdoors where I could be outside without being in public. I started spending more and more time out there and thinking this house really wasn't so bad. That's when the visions started- it felt exactly how it does when I'm hallucinating while asleep (which I'm sure I was), only inside the dream it would happen when I was awake and I would have to stop and wait for it to finish before I could see anything again. The flashes of images would come as I entered the courtyard. I started to get really scared because I realized a ghost was sending me memories and I suspected there was a body buried in the courtyard. The patch of grassy area was exactly the right size, and my dog liked to sniff it a lot- it was hard to get him to leave. This totally freaked me out because of my phobia. I started to avoid the courtyard and take my dog to a park instead. This worked for awhile until he started to dig tunnels. I would turn my back for a second and he would disappear underground and it would take yelling to get him to come back out. It's kind of hilarious because the tunnels were perfectly round, as if made by a giant worm, even though it was a dog supposedly digging them. Meanwhile, as the visions started getting stronger, my fears were confirmed- the ghost wanted me to dig up the body so that its murderer could be found, and I kept telling it that I couldn't because I was terrified. It started to get angrier and angrier and my terror got overpowering. I was afraid to let the dog go anywhere near the courtyard now that he was digging so much. It was getting harder to come up with excuses to my parents and they started to wonder what was going on. The dream ended with me trying to get ready to leave to go somewhere with my parents while having a vision showing me the rotting bones while I kept having to run outside and grab my dog because he had somehow escaped out there and was digging. I started to panic and that woke me up.

In the next dream I had, my girlfriend and I had just reached our new apartment with all of our stuff- in the dream we didn't have dogs- and were figuring out where to put our furniture. Our apartment had one room and was a really strange layout- there was a fireplace and chimney in the middle, and so many cabinets on the walls it was hard to figure out where to put furniture. We were really happy to be there and enjoying figuring it out though. I looked out the window at the view- it was really high up over a city at night- and it was amazing so I walked over to the sliding glass doors to see how the porch was. It was a tiny porch with really flimsy-looking railing. I made the mistake of looking down over it to discover we were about 100 floors up. I got serious vertigo and a stab of fear. That's what woke me up.

The last dream was interesting- I was a teenage boy (lol) who was meeting his foster parents for the first time. They were a really nice couple with a very strange house and really cool furniture. The man was big and gangly and bald, and really sweet. His wife was short and incredibly smart and had flowing reddish-brown hair. They were very welcoming and my thoughts (as the kid) were that this really might not be so bad. The house was really weird- there were windows (without glass) in the inside walls, including my bedroom, so even if I locked the door I didn't really have privacy- but neither did anybody else. The bathrooms were both really bizarre; one of them had a giant marble tub raised up in it, with a toilet literally hidden underneath a lid next to it. The other bathroom had two toilets and two sinks randomly without stalls or anything- just in the middle of the room. The main room of the house had random stairs everywhere and was a crazy shape- the walls were at weird angles and were varying sizes. The place was filled with ornately carved furniture from all over the world. I spent awhile admiring everything. There was a glass case full of shiny little statues and a mobile made of origami cranes, several really old-looking round tables, and tons of chairs (no two were the same). I ate dinner with my new parents and several of their relatives and then went to bed watching the tv in my bedroom. That's when I woke up. What a night.

Itching to Clean

Well, the double cold ended up looking more like the flu- we were both feeling pretty awful for four days each. My girlfriend didn't go back to work until yesterday (she was still recovering even then) and I was still feeling really miserable. Today was my last day of feeling sick I think, or at least the first day I've really felt like I was starting to recover. Mostly today I was just wiped out. I thought I was exhausted before, but getting sick has given me a new perspective on things. I didn't venture down the stairs for several days, and when I did it this morning- to take Noodle outside to go to the bathroom- it completely flattened me. By the afternoon I felt better, and then the challenge was to avoid doing too much. With both of us out of commission since last weekend started, and with four pets up here in addition to us, things have gotten pretty filthy. My girlfriend recovered first, but she's had a lot to do with work, tutoring and pets; besides that she's really not the cleaning type. Now, my girlfriend and I are agreed on one thing- I'm a little bit crazy. I love cleaning. It's not that I'm obsessive about it being clean all the time or something, though if I'm honest with myself I may have inherited a little of that from my dad (who is a total neatfreak). It's more just something that gives me satisfaction, that I enjoy doing and that I think is fun. Yes, I think sweeping is really entertaining, lol. So today it was pretty difficult to keep myself in check. There's a nice layer of fur on the floor everywhere and the surfaces have food gunk or crumbs on them from having our food near us. Things- like books, DVDs, and empty kleenex boxes, have been migrating around the upstairs. I even found an uneaten clementine in a bag somewhere, forgotten because we didn't bring it when we went into the other room a couple days ago. So I let myself move a few things around and sweep a tiny bit in the worst room. I did a few dishes and cleaned a couple of counters and felt much better about life. I was careful, though, and tired quickly as expected. I think I'll end up doing a lot tomorrow- hopefully feeling even better than I did today- and I can start to get caught up. Did I mention the laundry? We've got about six loads at this point, since we were sick when we usually do it.

And here's a dream I've been meaning to record. I got up in the night to take more Xyrem and go use the bathroom. I was at the house I grew up in, which for some reason didn't tip me off- I was convinced it was real life. I get to the bathroom to find that, once again, the toilet is obviously not working. I sigh and decide I'd better use the other bathroom, so I head in that direction. I reach out and open the door. Bright light shines on me and suddenly I see that there's this teenage girl standing on the inside of the door, looking straight at me with this huge smile on her face. I jump about a foot in the air since I wasn't expecting anyone, especially somebody I'd never seen before, to be in there. She starts laughing and I try to laugh it off but I'm pretty creeped out by the whole thing. Her grin is so big that it's stretching her face unnaturally. I figured out it was a dream at that point, and instead of searching for a bathroom I started trying to figure out how to wake up. I just wandered around the house hoping to snap out of it, figuring I would feel different if I actually woke up. Which I did after awhile, very confused about which house I was in, but also quite relieved.

Suicide Party Mansion Exploring

Last night I was at this reunion of sorts in a dark, dingy house. A lot of my middle school friends who I hadn't seen in a really long time were there. The party eventually turned into a sleepover, and I kept trying to catch up with people but I was constantly falling asleep and having trouble participating. At one point, one of the people at the sleepover shot himself and committed suicide, and it was really disturbing. There was blood everywhere. Everyone was shocked and scared. We started looking through his backpack, trying to figure out why he had done it.

Then the setting changed from this dingy house to my grandparents' backyard, where the party was still going on only now it was a roleplay game involving my cousins. We each had a different anime character we were supposed to be portraying, but it was difficult because I didn't really get who I was supposed to be. My cousin had made up his own character, and everyone was making fun of him because he was being all emo. It was pretty funny actually. I decided to follow him around instead of trying to be part of the game anymore, because we hadn't talked in awhile. So we ended up walking around this pretty fantastical yard, with waterfalls and rocks to climb on and secret passages between all these fences. It turned into us avoiding the other people, and then we went inside the house, which turned out to actually be my house.

Apparently when my parents moved, they had moved to this mansion. Like, literally. The place was insanely huge and had endlesss staircases and hallways. My cousin wanted to show me this extra suite of rooms he had discovered that had a balcony outside, down this back staircase that was carpeted. It was funny because the inside of the mansion looked exactly like my real house, it just had like ten times more rooms. I was thinking about how crazy my parents had been to move the three of us into a mansion that could easily house about fifty people, and my cousin explained that he knew someone who was talking to my parents about turning half of the house into a hotel. Oh, I thought, that makes sense. Anyway, we explored for awhile, finding a huge living room full of fancy old world furniture, a patio with a koi pond just outside, and a large cafeteria full of people eating lunch. I then got this awesome idea to move my room into one of the more secluded parts of the house, and to see if I could move in next to a patio with backyard access because I figured my dog would like that. Then I woke up, amused.

Interesting Stairs House

Last night I had a dream about an interesting house, and it was funny because it relates completely to stuff I've been thinking about.

It started out that I was at this tiny theater to watch a musical that one of my close friends (who I needed to email in real life) was directing. I sat down and it started, with a couple of characters emerging suddenly from behind a tree that had at first looked like it was painted onto the background. I thought this was really clever, but then the play turned out to be pretty bad, and most of the audience left. I ended up talking to my friend instead and telling her everything I had planned to email her about.

Then the dream changed and I was walking around this massive house with my dad. He was helping me apartment hunt so I could have some good options to show my girlfriend when she came to visit. The place had a lot of stairs, which I had reservations about, but it was pretty cool all the same. You entered the front doors, which were massive, dark carved wooden double doors, and there was a small entry room with a closet and a flight of stairs going up, with a beautiful carved wooden banister and aged but gleaming wooden steps. Up those stairs was a small sitting room, like a miniature living room, with more stairs going up. On the next landing there were two hallways going left and right. One hallway had the master bedroom and no less than four other bedrooms, obviously intended for kids by the paint colors, all off the hallway and right next to each other, sharing one bathroom. I thought at the time that this setup was pretty weird, with the parents and kids right on top of each other. This floor was carpeted in a soft blue-green carpet.

Down the other hallway was a tiny office space and a closed door. When I opened this door, I found myself looking into a massively gigantic room. It was carpeted like the bedrooms and looked identical, except that it was multiple thousand square feet by itself. The ceiling was pretty standard height but the room continued on so far that it was difficult to make out the opposite wall. I remember wondering what on earth you would use a room that big for.

Back on the landing, I went up another flight of stairs to find a couple more office-like spaces, with wood floors this time. Up more stairs took me to the top floor of the house. It was massive. There was a huge kitchen behind metal doors, looking like it belonged in a restaurant with steel countertops and huge amounts of workspace, plus a big walk-in freezer. Next to the kitchen was a small area with a few tables next to the stairs. Through another door was a massive room like the interior of a restaurant, with tons of tables set with napkins, silverware, candles and even menus. Beyond that I could see an empty area like a ballroom. The carpet up here was a rich shade of red and the whole place looked pretty classy.

I followed my dad back down to the front door, exhausted from climbing the stairs and seriously wondering why I was considering this house. I really liked it and thought it was cool, though I was trying to figure out what on earth we were going to use the restaurant and random huge room for. Plus I knew I didn't want a kitchen upstairs from my bedroom like in my parents' house. I resolved to discuss it with my girlfriend and then suddenly woke up, really amused.

I'm already feeling physically better and I only just dropped classes yesterday, so I'm sure now that I did the right thing. Plus my parents have agreed, more or less, to give me space on the health stuff. We'll see how long that lasts.

Old House Exploration Sleepover

Yesterday I got fed up with not sleeping very well and raised my first dose of Xyrem slightly, hoping that even if my stomach rebelled I would at least get more sleep for a few days. I did sleep better and had a couple really interesting dreams.

It started out that it was dark outside and I decided to take my dog out into the yard to use the bathroom before going to bed. I put his leash on for some reason and opened the door, and found myself in this fanastical Japanese garden. It was really cool- it had a curved wooden plank bridge over this little stream that had big waves in it, and there was a lot of wild-looking plants everywhere. I crossed the bridge and it was suddenly the middle of the afternoon, and I realized I was actually in the backyard of my old house. It was how I remembered it being as a child, before we did any landscaping, and everything was exactly how it was at that time. I ran around exploring it and just really happy to be back there.

Then I went inside the house and was exploring in there, and it kept changing into different dream variations on that house- everything from how it was laid out last week in my dream with the huge computers to some variations on it I hadn't dreamed about in years. I found some really neat stuff in my room, though I don't remember the specifics now. As I walked into the living room I instead found myself in this mall. Apparently my parents had started a mall out of our living room and as business grew they had built on to the front of the house. It was pretty crowded and they were selling some pretty random things. It was a bunch of tables loaded with piles of boxes of stuff for sale, a lot of it candy or little knickknacks. I spotted some stairs and started going up to see what was above.

There turned out to be floors and floors on this building, which had turned into an adobe style thing- all the walls were smooth and brown. Every so often the stairs would end in another room of merchandise, and in one of them was a pile of candy bars that were labeled "gluten" in large letters, which I thought was hilarious at the time. I kept running into food I couldn't eat while I was exploring, but I didn't really mind because I having fun seeing what all was there.

After that dream I had another one in which I started out in a class my best friend was teaching, and I don't remember much about it except that it somehow turned into a sleepover with my high school friends on a boat where I was taking pictures for my photography class with the fancy camera. I was trying to get nice portraits of people but it was like 3 AM and I was really tired.

Overall I think it's an improvement as I'm feeling better rested this morning. It was also nice having a night without frustration or disturbing aspects to my dreams.

A Good Cry

Sometimes you just need a good cry.

Every time I've tried to talk to anyone about my health lately I've ended up in tears before I can even really say anything. I'm in a pretty bad place with Narcolepsy right now. I've been going downhill for months and my neurologist is basically out of ideas, which makes me feel pretty helpless. I'm having more and more trouble doing the work for my increasingly fewer classes and I'm sleeping worse as the nights go on. I feel like I'm fighting an uphill battle and losing ground every day. To say I'm scared would be an understatement.

At the same time my life is changing for the better. I've been able to make plans to move out of my parents house (which I was seriously worried I would still be living in at the age of 35) to start a life with my girlfriend (who we have already established is the best person ever). It's such a wonderful emotional thing, and my health is such a terrible emotional thing that between the two I've felt like I've been on an emotional rollercoaster all day.

I talked to my mom this morning and my dad when he got home from work. Both parents are ecstatic about the plans and worried about the health. I had a heart to heart with my dad on the way home from dinner about how bad my Narcolepsy is getting and how helpless I feel in the face of it. When we got home he gave me the tightest hug in a long time and told me he loves me. I was already crying, but I lost it even more because I'm so damned lucky to have the parents that I have. I headed straight for the shower and cried my eyes out for awhile. I actually let all my feelings about my health come out for once; most of the time I shove the panic down and try to ignore it, to pretend like I can handle this.

My inner therapist is telling me that I need to learn to accept the lack of control. I think that's one of the major things I can learn from this illness... that I need to let things happen sometimes instead of getting caught up in frustration and disappointment when I can't change how I feel. But I'm so not there yet. At least the people around me are the best people in the world, and because of that I know everything will turn out okay.

Getting Exercise

Today I had a day pretty much off from class things, having been especially responsible about getting things done last week (or it might have been the caffeine, haha). So when I got up this morning I decided to catch up on some cleaning. When I'm as focused on getting through college (again) as I've had to be lately with my health going downhill, things fall by the wayside around my part of the house. I'm only responsible for my small bedroom and the downstairs bathroom but it still has to get pretty bad before I do anything about it. Now, we are talking about my grew-up-with-a-total-neatfreak version of bad, so I'm sure there are many worse bathrooms out there. But it was seriously starting to bother me. Besides that, dust has been building up in my room again so I figured I would tackle that afterwards.

I figured I'd just do my cleaning in the morning, so after I ate breakfast I got out all the bathroom cleaning stuff to drag back downstairs. Then I got to work. It took me awhile because I had to figure it out- it had been awhile since I'd done more than the vanity and with my terrible memory I had forgotten exactly how to clean everything. By the time I finished the bathroom was gleaming and I was overdue for a nap. I decided to take the dog outside first.

I got out there to find myself facing another accidental nap on the porch and just went straight back inside. I took an hour-long nap and was still tired after that. I definitely abandoned the idea of dusting.

I tend to forget how much cleaning takes it out of me. If you think about it though, if you're doing a good job it is pretty serious exercise, though it isn't valued as such. It does involve a whole lot of moving around, getting down on your knees and using muscles you aren't really used to using. I can remember countless times pre-diagnosis when I would try to do just a little bit of cleaning and end up completely flattened. I used to be very confused as to why it was so exhausting. Sweeping especially kills me- all that standing up nonsense. How dare I think about walking around like that, moving my arms, haha. It's too much physical work, so I leave it to my dad. At least these days I usually remember to save the cleaning I do have to do for days when I don't have anything else.

New Job Garage Art Frilly Reunion

Weird dreams this morning. o.O

In one dream I was working for this company that apparently helped people edit their papers. It was a kind of fancy looking office and we all had to wear suits. All the furniture was shiny polished hardwood. A client would come in and check in at this library desk, and then the receptionist would send them back to one of our editing cubicles.

It was apparently my first day on the job and my first ever client turned out to be an acquaintance from high school, only in the dream I thought I knew her from Japan. I was relieved to have someone I knew because that way I wouldn't have to be all formal and nervous. We talked for awhile and she gave me a research paper for grad school to edit. It wasn't that hard but I was starting to get sleepy sitting in my comfy armchair. I started to move around, finding excuses to stand up because I needed to wake up again. Unfortunately this strategy backfired and I got really tired and started having trouble pretending I was fine.

The next dream I had took place at my house except that it was still my senior year of college. Our garage was the Carleton ceramics studio, and if you went into the actual house it was nothing but twisting hallways with these framed bold graphic poster-sized drawings hanging neatly on both walls. Apparently I had just finished my senior comps project and was pulling it out to look at everything in the garage. The last person to be in there had left a slide projector and a lamp across the street in a park for some reason, and I was annoyed because it could have easily been stolen. I took both back into the garage but left the garage door open because even though it was foggy outside there would be better light in there that way. I had laid out all of my work on a table and was looking at it. It didn't look great, because the glaze had come out kind of weird and not how I'd planned, but I figured it would work anyway. I had lots of different sizes of dinosaurs and other animals, and the really big ones had lots of detail. The lighting in there was pretty bad and kept getting worse until it occured to me to turn on the light. At one point a giant ceramic owl fell from the rafters and half-smashed on the floor, and I was relieved that it had missed the table and hadn't broken any of my art. People kept coming in and looking at my stuff or just randomly wandering in and out, and one of them was a friend I had in elementary school who I haven't spoken to in many years, only in the dream I apparently still knew her pretty well because we were discussing art stuff. We got onto the subject of making jewelry and she showed me a couple of rediculously impressive little metal pendants she had found somewhere. One of them was shaped like a tiny domed building, and if you opened the little door and looked inside there were tiny metal people dancing (literally moving) under a tiny chandelier. The whole thing was made of gold and on a gold chain.

That dream melded into another one in which I was at a family reunion showing off the little metal building. My grandparents and cousins were all there and we were sitting in chairs around the edge of a small square bedroom with a big fancy bed in the middle. Everything from the curtains to the carpet to the fluffy comforter were pink and frilly. No one thought it was weird to be in there, lol. I mostly listened in on conversations for awhile but people kept talking about things I didn't really understand. Eventually I decided to go home. I was walking around and saying goodbye to everyone when I woke up.

Photography Homework

Last night I dreamed I was working on my photography assignment. I really do have one to do over the next two days, and yeterday I was having trouble thinking of things to photograph because I used most of my good ideas up last week, haha. But in my dream I was having no trouble coming up with lots of crazy but awesome ideas. I kept waking up enough to jot suggestions down in my notes. In the dream I got so preoccupied by setting up cool ideas that it got dark before I had time to actually photograph anything. Plus people kept getting in my way. A friend I haven't spoken to in awhile was at my house, trying to do a puzzle with her eyes closed. She wouldn't even open her eyes while I was trying to get around the giant table she was working on. My dad kept following me around distracting me by asking me to do other things. There were a bunch of other people wandering around too. It was a pretty interesting dream, and when I woke up I jotted down a couple more ideas for my homework. Then I looked at the list. It was hilarious because half of the stuff involved parts of the house in the dream that don't exist in real life. I can't get on this house's roof, for example, and we definitely don't have a waterfall in our front yard, even though that would be awesome. There were still some ideas I can use though, if it stops raining. It was also nice to have such a coherent dream again as they've been disjointed lately.

Today I'm starting Ritalin. We'll see how that goes.

Really Weird Night

Wow, last night was bizarre. And I'm still feeling it. o.O

The first two doses went just fine. I slept deeply with no dreams. At the end of the second dose I overslept my alarm by like half an hour, which has happened without anything weird before. But last night I had an interesting hallucination.

I woke up in my dark room and looked around. There was a ladder leaning up against my bookshelf, which made perfect sense to me at the time- I remembered needing to change a lightbulb yesterday and leaving it in my room so I could hang a couple of pictures up today. Then, suddenly, a bag of really tall golf clubs fell on me. It was startling because I hadn't seen them at all until they were falling towards me, and they were very long. When they fell against my arm they were really cold and smooth and it hurt a little. I sat up and leaned them back up against the ladder, suddenly remembering that they had been in the closet with it and that's why I had to bring them into my room, too. I decided to get up and go to the bathroom before going back to sleep.

When I stood up my door was open, and there was a cold white light coming in from the skylight over the entryway. I looked up at it as I came out of my room and started freaking out because it was snowing. I was really excited and ran to the front door to look out.

I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, but I could see there was a thin blanket of really fine snow over the grass. I was very impressed. I watched the small flakes fall for a few minutes until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore.

As I walked into the bathroom I suddenly knew that I was in a hallucination. Then I felt hands grabbing my arms and hands and I couldn't move. I fought the paralysis until it went away and I could sit up and turn my lamp on. I was suddenly back in my room, with no ladder (I didn't actually do anything with a ladder yesterday) or golf clubs (my parents have never had anything even vaguely resembling golf clubs, haha). I went to the bathroom without passing any skylights and it certainly wasn't snowing- it snows lightly here maybe once every couple of years, and certainly not in October. I was pretty creeped out by the dark corners, but I figured leaving my light on would help me sleep the rest of the morning.

Unfortunately I was wrong. I took my last dose and read a book until I figured it was safe to go back to sleep, only to get plunged right back into serious REMland. I had dream after vivid dream, and every time I woke up I fought paralysis. I went through three different half-dream, half-hallucinations that way. In the dreams I had all of my senses so it felt almost like real life. I would wake up to find my eyelids closing again of their own accord despite my light being on, and then in an instant I was back to dreaming. At least one dream was Harry Potter related (not surprising as I'm rereading those), and in another one I was on a football team (which is hilarious because I'm the biggest wimp ever). I woke up late and got up to avoid going right back under again, and I'm still fighting my eyelids after being up for half an hour. I'm thinking I need caffeine this morning.

I figure it might be food related. I did try a couple new things yesterday. Hmmm.

Not a Smart Plan

I definitely spoke too soon after the closet cleaning adventure. The next day I was basically out of commission, and it was a bad day for it. I was exhausted and sore from the moment I woke up, and my muscles were refusing to do much of anything. Standing up was tiring (more tiring than usual) and I couldn't lift anything. I kept trying to carry my 15 pound dog to go upstairs, but he would complain and I would look down and realize I was about to drop him. Really light things seemed heavy. At one point I tried to open my window to air out my dusty room, but I literally didn't have the strength to pull up in the way I needed to.

To top it off, there was a family reunion to go to. I took a nap for the first hour of it. Luckily my mom was driving or I wouldn't have been able to go at all. After a nap it was pretty fun and I got to see a bunch of people and catch up with them, and my dog had fun getting extremely muddy.

When we got home I should have just hit the couch and not gotten up the rest of the evening, but I had promised my dad I would go to dinner with him. Of course we got the newest waiter who didn't know to put our sushi on seperate plates, and I was too tired to deal with sending it back. I realized when I was mostly through my dinner that I was having a really minor gluten reaction, probably because of contamination from my dad's wheat-containing California Rolls that would have been on a seperate plate if I had been thinking when I ordered. So I just stopped eating it. It wasn't worth making a fuss over and I was just too damned tired.

Unfortunately we were going to the grocery store after that, so I found myself trying to buy a week's worth of groceries while the most exhausted I've been in a long time, complete with stomach pain and an even hazier brain than usual. I had trouble pushing the little cart. When we got home I didn't even try to carry groceries up the stairs and let my dad do it instead.

Yesterday was a lot better. I still had sore muscles and a hard time lifting things, but this time I was smart enough not to leave the house. As incentive to rest after lunch I watched Jurassic Park, which is one of my favorite movies of all time, and after that I actually had the energy to do homework. I got really into working on my Flash final and got a huge amount done. And last night I slept like a rock so I think I'll be back to normal today.

I really had forgotten what it's like when I push myself too hard. All it takes is a little extra physical activity and I'm screwed for a couple of days. I think I needed to test myself though. Every so often I get this nagging thought in the back of my head that I really am just slacking and using my illness as an excuse, and I have to learn the importance of resting all over again.

Me vs. the Closet Under the Stairs

I didn't write last night because I was totally dead. I was sound asleep by ten. And today I'm still sore and my muscles don't really want to do anything. But it was totally worth it.

The closet under the stairs is basically where I threw all of my stuff that wouldn't fit in my room. I never really unpacked after my parents moved because my room in this house is about half the size of my old room and it has way less storage. Then when I moved back home from college I brought all that stuff with me, and it all ended up in there too. I knew sorting through it would be a monumental task because there's so much and you couldn't really even get in there, so I put it off for more than a year.

It probably would have just stayed that way except that I keep needing stuff out of there. And when I go in to look for whatever it is, it's impossible to find anything. For one thing, the boxes are labeled with really useless labels, like "stuff", or with the location of where it was in my old room, which doesn't tell me anything because I don't remember where anything was in there either. I can't really blame my mom for the problem though, because she had to pack all of my stuff while I was gone and didn't know what goes with what else.

So a couple of days ago I went hunting around for a couple of art projects that I wanted to photograph for my Flash final project, which is a portfolio website. I spent about half an hour digging around in there not finding them and finally just got really fed up. So I resolved to wait until classes end, drag everything out of there, get rid of the stuff I don't want and reorganize and label the rest.

Well, yesterday I was feeling better than usual. I got out of class super early because we just had a test, and I got an icee on the way home. I was feeling pretty much caught up in my classes again, and felt like doing something besides homework. Plus I had a serious sugar high in my favor. So I pulled all of that stuff out of there and filled up my small room. My dog thought it was very interesting and had fun smelling everything.

Just dragging it all out, even with the help of my mom, was enough to wear me out. But I went through almost all of it anyway. By the time I stopped I had two huge trashbags of stuff to go to Good Will, two to put out in the trash, a bunch of recycling and everything else sorted into categories. I was also shaking and sweating and feeling like I was on the point of falling over, and my muscles were all aching and sore. Even all the little ones in my hands.

Most of it is still in my room because there was no way I was going to be able to drag things back into the closet last night. I'm still sore today but I'm going to try to finish it anyway, if I can.

Despite it's completely flattening me, I feel so much better about life having done all this. Now I have less stuff, I know where it is and it's the stuff I actually want. Plus I have some really neat things in there. I have a really nice shell collection that I didn't even know about, lol. Yet another useful thing about having a lousy memory.

House Drama

This is most definitely my parents' house. Actually it's more my dad's house than anyone else's. It fits him perfectly and therefore makes me cringe. We love each other very much and have a very good relationship, but we're two very (very, very) different people with practically opposite interests and lifestyles. Obviously we also have differing taste in houses. What I mean by that is that I have taste and my dad doesn't, haha. I'm not trying to be mean, but seriously- if you've seen my house you know what I'm talking about.

The outside is very ugly. That's a little less colorful than how I tend to describe its appearance to myself while waiting at the next intersection over and being forced to look at it until the light changes. The first time you see it, it's almost normal looking. But if you keep looking you soon realize that everything from the window placement to the ugly pink brick just doesn't quite work together. It's like a study in bad design or something. The composition of it just isn't visually appealing, and if you care about those things you start trying to figure out how to rearrange it to make it better. To top it off, it belongs to a group of houses that all look similar- only the other houses have better architecture. And there's just too much pink brick involved on the block to be healthy.

The inside is more interesting and quite a bit better as far as architecture, except that this is cancelled out by the fact that the walls are all beige and the trim is a hideous shiny grey color. It's so incredibly boring that I just can't stand it. And of course my dad loves it in all its horrible boringness. At least my mom is on my side about the walls, and we're working on convincing my dad to add some color at least. Just about anything would be better.

But the appearance of the house isn't actually that important. What really gets me is how hard it is to live in. For one thing, three floors is too many stairs for my always-exhausted self. The one thing you don't want to do to someone who is a) tired and b) has to cook almost every meal herself is to put stairs between her room and the kitchen, or between homework and the couch, between all of her art supplies and the tv. Add to this equation a dog who must be carried because he can't get up the stairs otherwise, and who needs to be a couch nap-assistant part of the time but needs to go to the bathroom outside other times. To make this even more fun let's remember that I'm really good at forgetting important things and leaving them places, only to realize later that I left my phone downstairs or forgot to bring down a new trash bag or toilet paper or something else essential. The greatest time to do the stairs is when I run out of toilet paper in the middle of the night, have to trek upstairs to get more, bring it back down all while in some state of drugged sleepiness, hoping that I'm not about to fall down and break something.

As much as I hate the stairs, I've adapted all right- I think very hard before going up or down and most of the time these days I actually get where I'm going with what I need. But once I get upstairs, the kitchen makes me crazy.

It must have been designed for someone really tall. I can't even touch to bottom of the top shelf of the cabinets without standing on something. This makes it hard to get heavy things up and down because I'm not very strong. The layout of the kitchen is annoying because there's a rectangular island in the middle and really important things- the sink, stove, fridge and pantry- on each side of it. So when cooking I end up going in endless circles around the island, and I can't aim myself very well so I can't even count the number of times I've run into the corners painfully. The kitchen is also large and spread out, so you have to walk a lot while cooking. And trust me, I don't need more exercise. I end up more exhausted after cooking than is really necessary. To make it worse is the fact that my mom likes to go on about how great the kitchen is and how fun it is to cook in, when she very rarely cooks anything. I think she likes the look of it more than anything because trust me, it's not fun to cook in. It's exhausting. Trust me, I run smack into that island every freaking day while on my fifth trip around to the fridge.

And let's not forget the wonderful fact that the laundry room is on the top floor. My parents think it's so convenient because it's right next to their bedroom, which is great for them, but it means I have to haul my laundry up two flights of stairs. I've started doing smaller loads more often to avoid hurting myself, and enlisting parental help in carrying things up.

Recently I realized that my eagerness to move out had less to do with a need to feel more independent and more to do with a need to live somewhere that's easier on my body. I grew up in a one story house with a small kitchen, and during college lived in an apartment that was similar. Having everything on one floor leaves me with so much more energy to do other things. It's better for my dog, too. I really miss not wasting precious energy on the stairs all the time.

But as I start to consider the idea that I could be living with my parents for longer than I would like or had planned, I'm trying really hard to appreciate this house more. At the least, it's somewhere to safely live, and it's a loving environment despite the occasional drama. So I've been trying to focus more on what I like about my life here as much as I can- like cable on a nice big tv, watching thunderstorms from the balcony, and the gas stove which works a lot better than anything else I've had. Lately my attempts to feel better about the house have been working, more or less. And I am glad that my parents like it even if their gushing gets obnoxious sometimes.

Maybe someday I'll live somewhere easier, or my parents will find someplace to install an elevator, lol. But until then I'm just going to deal and do my best to appreciate having a safe place to be.

Parental Appreciation

I had an interesting hallucination this morning. There were three people standing in my closet having a conversation. One was shouting about something- it was really loud and what I assumed had woken me up. The other two were talking very quietly. I was paralyzed, lying in bed on my stomach, which was weird because usually I'm on my back during these things. I remember thinking I must be hallucinating, but I was confused about the position I was stuck lying in. And then I suddenly woke up on my back. What I think actually happened is that I had a hallucination dream about being paralyzed and hallucinating. Hallucinating about hallucinating? Really, brain? Is this totally necessary? XD

On the upside I'm feeling much better today. My stomach hates me very much, but I actually have some energy. Which is good, because I need to clean. >.> A lot. Haha. I think all of the cleaning that really needs to happen will take me multiple days. It's not that the place is really all that dirty. It's more the combination of two important factors: cleaning really takes it out of me (probably all that standing up and you know, moving around nonsense), and the standards are very high. You see, my parents (who have been gone on a very cool vacation) are coming back this week, and my dad is a total neat freak. He does admit this, and does almost all of the housecleaning around here because he wants it done right. And to him, right means frighteningly spotless and organized. To be fair, he used to be much more particular and has mellowed out over the years. However, no matter how much work I put into cleaning this week, the fact remains that he most likely is going to re-clean everything this weekend. Every part of every lamp will probably be wiped down, for example. But still, I want to put forth the effort anyway, just because I don't want him to feel like I wasn't taking care of things.

I definitely have a weird insecurity about not impressing my dad enough. It's a very strange thing for me to be insecure about, because he has absolutely never failed in any way to be proud of me no matter what. And he constantly tells me he's proud of me. All the time. Sure, he tends to encourage me to do more than I'm doing even though I really physically can't, but that's more of a misunderstanding than anything else. He's a very healthy, active person who exercises rediculous amounts every week and has seemingly endless energy. It's difficult for him to understand the constant exhaustion thing. Still, no matter what decisions I make in life he's always supportive and does his best to help me out.

When I first moved back home it was hard to live here. For one thing, this house is really annoying. I know I'm supposed to be grateful for a nice place to live and all that, and I promise I really do appreciate it. But everything about it, from the stairs to the layout of the kitchen to the dark doorways between me and the bathroom at night, all really get in my way every day. It's also so incredibly open that anyone listening to music anywhere in the house is automatically disturbing anyone else who's at home. Aside from my dad's kind of bad taste in houses, he tends to make a lot of noise. It makes napping during the day on weekends more difficult, which has the potential to really screw with my energy level. When he's walking around his footsteps are heavy and you can hear them from anywhere else in the house. He opens and shuts doors, cabinets, etc loudly, and likes to shred lots of paper at once, blast classical music from the living room, put every call on speaker phone and yell into it. Noise just really gets on my nerves for some reason. And yes, I have talked to him about it, and the occasional thing has gotten better. But we're talking about a small dent here.

For awhile I was just plain annoyed at my dad because of all this. I complained to my grandmother about it, and her attitude towards the situation really made me think. She pointed out that boys tend to be encouraged to be loud, to the point where they don't know they're disturbing anyone, whereas girls tend to be encouraged to be more conscious of other people. I really think I was holding him responsible for something not his fault. And then she went on to say that you know, as long as I have someplace to live, there's no reason to be annoyed at living at home. She said that when she was my age, you lived at home until you got married, and all this pressure to move out I seem to be putting on myself isn't really necessary. And looking at it now, I think she's right.

When my parents left for their vacation, I was looking forward to having the whole house to myself. And I have enjoyed it to a certain extent, I have to admit. But at the same time, it's made me appreciate my dad more. There's something to be said for having someone ask how your day was when you get home, or even for another presence in the house even when you aren't in the same room. To be honest, this place is lonely without all that noise. And I was relying on my parents for a lot of my social interaction- I was a little lonely already, and since they left I'm really feeling it. I also have this sense that a security blanket that's been there my whole life is temporarily gone- and I feel very exposed, if that makes sense. I'm really glad for this vacation because it means I might actually get over myself and appreciate living here. And that would be a huge step forward, especially since I'm probably always going to need some form of help because of my health. I need to learn to accept that help without feeling weak or stupid on the one hand or taking more than I need on the other.

It will be nice to have them back. In the meantime, I have lots of cleaning ahead of me. XD

How Many Narcoleptics Does It Take To Change a Lightbulb?

Today was, at the least, the makings of a really amusing joke.

So I slept not so bad last night. I got up feeling, while not great, not as exhausted as the past couple of days. So I really had hope for today. No class, just needed to go grocery shopping at some point. So I figured I should do a couple other things I've been meaning to do around the house. Top on my list was investigating my ceiling lamp.

Oddly enough this takes some explaining. My parents moved while I was away in college to a newer house that, to put it nicely, I don't exactly like very much. I keep thinking it must have more to do with the fact that they moved without any input from me while I was gone and I must just resent that or something, but honestly I really just think that this house annoys me. For one thing, it makes my life more difficult in some ways- like the fact that it's three stories instead of the previous one story house, which means I get to expend a lot more energy than I was used to just to get to, say, important places like the kitchen. The laundry is, for example, two floors above my room. Which I seriously do not appreciate as I can barely lift a week's worth of laundry, much less haul it up two stories of staircase. But what really gets to me is my room.

It's supposed to be a guest room. So it's really not made to be comfortable for someone to live in for multiple years. It's tiny for a bedroom, with a tiny closet, no natural light to speak of, and it's tucked in behind the garage like it was an afterthought- Oh, hey! There's a random awkward space! Let's make it a guest room!!

Not like I'm bitter or something. XD

Anyway, the only light that it came with is the ugliest ceiling fan ever, that, to add insult to injury, was so dim that my 25 watt lamp next to my bed was brighter. So I get a tiny, dark room. Big deal, right? Well, it does actually really suck because I like to draw, and I'm going to an art school, and I need natural light to be able to see what I'm doing. And nowhere else in the house really works. Up until today I was doing my work next to the front door, which actually lets in natural light because it has random glass panes in it. That way parents were constantly stepping around me but at least I didn't have to climb stairs and could see what I was doing. Or I would haul everything up to the well-lit living room, but then I'd get up there without things and keep having to go up and down to retrieve stuff.

So recently I decided to see what kind of light bulbs were up there behind the hideous thick glass dome suspended from the fan. I figured at the very least I could get higher wattage bulbs, or maybe even just leave the hideous glass dome off to get slightly better lighting.

This turned into a major operation that ended up with me on not the steadiest latter ever, sweating from total exhaustion while trying to figure out how to get the stupid glass dome either completely off or completely back on (I didn't care which at that point), holding or dropping various parts of fan, screw-on thing, dome and lightbulbs. Of course no one else was at home or even within phoning distance. If I weren't seriously fearing for my life and limb at that point it would have been hilarious. I was feeling very weak and unsteady because the dome was heavy (well, heavy for me) and I was having trouble holding my arms up. Part of me was pretty sure I was going to fall and break something- me or fan or lightbulbs. Finally I figured out how to detach the obnoxious wooden heart (I'm so not kidding) that was hanging off the pull and was preventing me from getting the glass dome completely off. Then I sat it down and just lay down on the floor, weak with exhaustion and unable to do anything else, sweating like a pig. So how many Narcoleptics does it take to change a lightbulb? One can do it, but it might just about kill her. XD

The good news is that (after some quality couch time) I was able to get out three terrible, ancient and rediculous lightbulbs, of which only two had been working in the first place, and replace them with new, clear, stronger but still safe ones. And I'm leaving that stupid heart and glass dome off for now. For one thing, I'm not sure I could get the damn thing back on. But now my room has light! WOOHOO. Take that, stupid fan. XD I WIN.