Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Malevolent in the aggregate

I noticed something about his blog, I sure vent grumpy a lot.

Today is no exception. My day was fucked 9 ways to Sunday, and all by tiny, inconsequential things.

It began with the beginning. I overslept by an hour or so. A luxury I can't afford right now. When the light comes on at 6:30, I'm supposed to GET UP. My plan is to start my bar review now as well as try to learn the subject matter of my classes. I had a lot of community property reading to do. That was all fine. It was pleasant sitting in the sun in my pajamas, drinking tea, watching the kitty come and go, pleased as punch to be allowed to go outside and not be yelled at. The last case, Marriage of Lucas made no sense. There are rules and rationale in the case, I couldn't find them. The opinion just didn't make any sense to me. What WAS that judge going on about? It was frustrating, because after the second re-reading it still didn't make sense, and I didn't have time for a third time over.

Meanwhile, the diet I've not been on has been ratcheted up. The nutritionist has me eating less food but more often. I've not had much luck eating as frequently as she'd like me to while staying within the constraints of allowances in the categories of fat, protein and sugar/starch. It seems like I can do one or the other, but not both.

Today I made yet another honest go. I ate small amounts of healthy food throughout the day. And I spent the whole day feeling irritable and light headed. I couldn't concentrate on my homework, nor pay attention in class for more than an hour. I was hyper sensitive to thoughts and smells of food. There was no way I could have gone to the gym, even if I'd wanted to. At 5:00 (when a meltdown worthy of a tired, sunburned 3 year old was in the offing) I broke down and snarfed a giant chicken caesar salad with probably 5-6 ounces of chicken and plenty of freshly made, non mayo-based dressing. Between that and dinner, I made it through the night. The hunger is still with me though. As I type, my kitty is morphing into that dressed, roasted turkey so popular with the old warner brothers animators. [NB Kitty meat is too gamey and this one too old and stringy, have no fear, I won't eat the kitty.]

My academic advisor was running late with his appointments, so mine got bumped half an hour. This was just enough time to derail my plans for sneaking into San Francisco's mission district for a soak at the all women's hot tub place in honor of a exiled pal visiting from Austin, TX.

Now it's midnight. I'm exhausted but not sleepy. The child upstairs was having what sounded like night terrors when I got home at 11:30 pm. (not simple crying, but a full body cry-scream experience). Normally her crying doesn't bother me at all. It's like listening to the birds or traffic or kittycat mews, that is, it's just another sound. Not tonight. Tonight it put me completely on edge. She's stopped, but I'm still as jittery as could be. Would it be wrong to drink myself to sleep? Too late, diet be damned. I've made myself a proper hot chocolate with milk, the dregs of half and half threatening to sour, and ground up Lindt chocolate. And a giant jigger of orange vodka.

Sometime between now and my 9:00 am class I have a prodigious article to read for my advanced evidence class. Thanks Professor Evidence for not posting it earlier, say, over the weekend.

Oh joy, child is crying again. I wonder if another drink is in order.

2 comments:

Jenn said...

Qir, you sound so stressed -- is it possible that you eat as a stress response? What else works when you get such strong cravings?

Do you have a rope to skip or something that you can do to get all hot and sweaty in about 10-15 minutes to push back those cravings?

-qir said...

Nope, that was a real live low blood sugar day. I talked to my nutritionist, found out what went wrong and why it felt like it did.

Yah, my life is more stressful than it should be, but this was a simple problem, nothing that eating some more actual food wouldn't help.