Entropy

And just like that, another two weeks has gone by. I swear I’m not postponing my weekly check-ins on purpose. But today it’s raining outside, making it the perfect day to read and write inside. Pull up a chair and let’s chat.

As is usual in these cases, I’m relying on my social media posts and camera roll to remind me what’s been happening.

For example, on September 29 I felt that things were really off, because I looked at the calendar on my phone for a solid minute, convinced that it said September 30. And while I was trying to figure out how I had lost a day, the timer I’d set for steeping my tea went off, and when I cleared it, the display said September 29.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one with such a glitch; a friend said their car claimed it was Friday the 25th.

Who knows what was going on?

It may have been a harbinger of what the day would hold, because it felt that I had a million tabs open in my brain, and when I went to close them, there were a million more that I’d forgotten about.

I ended up taking a personal day on Wednesday the 30th.

What did I do?

I cleaned the kitchen and the living room and dusted and sorted and put things were they belonged and even worked up the courage to make a pile of books I’d never read again and was holding on to just to hold on to them. It was one of those days that seemed like I had more than enough time to get done everything I wanted to accomplish, and sitting in a clean house with a calm and comforting scent spreading through the air while “fall jazz” plays . . . perfect.

Which was also how I was available when one of my friends tagged me online to tell me that my newest tattoo had made an appearance on the “animal news” aggregate The Dodo. The photo was rotated and maybe the lighting had been adjusted, but there’s no doubt it’s my photo: if you zoom in, you can see the stovetop burner just behind my arm!

On Friday, Krystal and I were invited to supper with friends at their house, where we had charcuterie and wings and spent a couple hours just talking.

I think it’s a good thing that Wednesday and Friday were so peaceful because things were about to take a more downward turn.

On Saturday we were supposed to go out of town to a reptile show (amphibians welcome) with a friend, and after we picked him up my car started making an awful sound that soon got a lot quieter but never quite disappeared. We pulled over and found some things that we thought should be checked out, but nothing that looked like we should cancel our plans.

So we went to the convention center and saw lots of snakes and a few tortoises and at least one axolotl, and so of course the one thing purchased was a stuffed opossum.

Then we went to Hot Topic and purchased some Over the Garden Wall Funko pop figures and a Pusheen mystery pin and paid next to nothing because I had a bunch of store credit by combining rewards and other credits applied to my account to “make up” for the recent Hot Cash App fiasco. We had lunch at Mellow Mushroom and then went to a few antique stores before going home.

I’ll admit I wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around as I was both worrying about the car and feeling awful from a series of storms moving through. The pressure messes with my back and I also don’t like driving in the rain on the best of days and maybe I was crankier than usual.

So we went home and I crashed in bed and Krystal and our friend went out to walk downtown but then the rain REALLY came down so they cut it short and Krystal came home absolutely soaked because all the umbrellas were in the house and none were in the car.

I was still feeling under the weather (literally) on Sunday and so I took a social media break, and that included writing a blog post, and I think that was the right decision.

Monday morning I was at my mechanic to have the shop look things over, catching a ride to work with a family member. A few hours later they called me.

The good news: they found what was wrong.

The bad news: there was a lot that was wrong.

Four sets of brakes and brake pads and rotors and two new tires later . . .

Well, let’s just say I had a bonus coming at the end of the month – but on the plus side, I have a bonus coming at the end of the month and while it means I won’t have any “extra” money, it also means that we wont’ be in a bind just to stay safe on the road.

And please don’t tell me I was being taken advantage of: I know for a fact that no work had been done on the brake/brake system for a very long time, and the last time I had tires put on I was told the back two were good “for now” and then of course put off replacing them, so . . .

Sure, I could likely have done the work myself, but also, at that point, I don’t know that it was safe to drive, and so I made the choice to have them do the work.

Of course, that’s also when Krystal’s car started making noise, and yesterday one of our friends and his dad replaced the radiator fan for us.

Last week was also the last week I put out hummingbird food. It’s been two weeks since I saw my regulars, and I’ve only seen one bird total in that two weeks. I have seen A LOT of yellow jackets and one butterfly, but I think the season is over.

Friday, I emptied the feeder and brought it inside.

On Thursday I picked up a pen to do some journaling and found my hand covered in ink. Unfortunately, I’d had some pens wrapped together with a rubber band, so I couldn’t really tell which one was leaking and which ones were just covered in ink. So I wiped them all down, put each one in a separate sandwich bag, placed them all upright in a jar, and waited. A few days later, it was obvious which one was the culprit.

The offender has been exiled and the others released from solitary.

On Friday my left knee decided to give out, and I wasn’t even doing anything! I was just standing talking to some guys and checking off a setup list for an event and something shifted and I spent the next day and a half with a jolt of pain every five or six steps – just enough that I would start to think everything was fine before being reminded that it wasn’t – until Saturday afternoon when there was a very loud click/pop and it simultaneously felt so much better and so much worse.

Of course Friday was also the day I decided to take the aforementioned books to donate to the library, which involved two flights of stairs . . .

Saturday saw me grocery shopping and then staying home. There’s a big town festival this weekend, and I tend to avoid going out if I can help it while it’s going on. Today is the second day, but I don’t know what it’ll look like with the rain and all.

Here, have a gallery of photos from the last couple weeks:

I’m just going to say I don’t know if there’ll be a post next week as this weekend is the 24 Hour Theatre Project, in which I’m involved as a writer. So Friday and Saturday will be longer than usual, and we’ll have to see how I’m feeling on Sunday.