love & kisses

I was a big letter-writer from around age 12 until today, and of course it is email now rather than letters.  I've written plenty of business letters, too.

Here are all of the ways I can remember ever signing my correspondence, from most to least formal:

Sincerely
Very truly yours
Regards
Best Regards
Best wishes
Happy holidays
Happy new year
Hope to see you soon
Hope all is well

Love
Much love
With love
All love (& maybe more) [used for a brief time as a flirty teenager]
Love you

I purposely put a gap between the first group and the "love" ones. Is it a huge difference? how to you jump that gap?

It never occurred to me until a couple of days ago, writing an email to someone I've never met face-to-face, and who comes from a different culture to boot. We had fallen somewhat out of touch, and I do feel a lot of affection for him. After a longish email, touching on many important topics, I felt the urge to discard our customary "Regards" for "Love."  Would this send the wrong message? Often there are certain nuances missing from written correspondence: sometimes joking, teasing, or sarcasm reads as some thing hostile. So I signed "Love, (I hope it's ok to say that)". I hope it is.

---

I come from a huggy, kissy generation. I am a huggy, kissy girl. I hug and kiss hello and goodbye. And again, like when to sign "love" and when to sign "best regards," I don't generally consciously decide who gets hugged, who gets kissed, and who gets kissed on the lips. It's usually pretty clear. But the day after the "love" email, I saw a friend and did decide that it was time to make that move from kissing on the cheek to kissing on the lips. The "hello" startled him. The "goodbye" was a mite softer. Clearly it was the right thing to do.

Hard to figure out, sometimes, how to up the show of affection a little. And twice in two days!

lyrics and nail polish

And before lyrics and nail polish: due to yet another trigger finger, my blogging may be somewhat limited until I can have something done for it. I had one treated maybe eight months ago or so, and I seem to have two more, although one is much worse. I had something called a percutaneous trigger finger release and physical therapy last time, but maybe I can just get a shot of steroid for this one. It's hurting a lot, and I really don't want my hand laid up for as long as it was last time. I'm seeing my primary doctor on Monday.

V. used to say that he could never consider a song to be good if he didn't like the lyrics as well as the music. I think I've decided to disagree. The sung party of a song has its own rhythm and (often) melody line that can be quite lovely even if the lyrics are ordinary...or even, say, in a foreign language one doesn't understand (see what I'm doing, here?). So I'm breaking with V. on that one.

Even though I gave up being a big slob a couple of years ago, and pay a lot of attention to my clothes, accessories, makeup, etc., I am WAY far from being a follower of fashion. Can't wear and don't like most of it. On the other hand, I do seem to be oddly tuned-in to color and style. And somehow, even though I've had ugly, plain, picked-at nails for most of my life, now that my nails are neat and polished, I have somehow plugged into the nail color cycle. All of a sudden, I'll start thinking about a color I must wear, and then I realize that women all around are starting to wear the exact same color. This changes two or three times a month. Today I put on a slightly greyish light blue, like a stormy sky, and it is just perfect. Orange was perfect last week, and a light mint-green the week before. I still have a sort of shamrock green on my toes. So glad it's spring.

My jewelry color sense is still somewhat hooked to the seasons, but I'm going to have to wait and see when I can start making jewelry again, because my hands are not up to it now. Sigh.

I can't really get into it, but...

My family is a disaster. Have I mentioned this? Divorced parents always brings some level of dysfunction into the picture, but a couple of years ago, just when it seemed we were all older and more mature and could put the past behind us...something else happened that ripped everyone up and severed lines of communication and just made everyone a million times more troubled and miserable. And, as the only person in the family still speaking to all of the other members, I spend a lot of time saying that I don't want to be put in the middle. But I live in the middle. Everyone seems to have different kinds of misery and different levels of misery, but we're all miserable. Probably every relationship and every dynamic has been altered, so my place and function int he family is radically different, which is good in some ways and dreadful in others. I am heartbroken for everyone who is disconnected. We're not all that big a family, and we're a disaster.

Guess it's a little more on my mind because I've actually spoken to all parties over the past couple of weeks, which is a little unusual, and the last of those conversations was tonight and with the person I believe to be most damaged. It's just all so sad.

It's an understatement to say that there are not enough hours in the day. There aren't even enough hours in the workday. There were a few really dead weeks at the office, sometimes spaces where there was literally almost nothing to do - the kind of days where you send the interns home early - and all of a sudden it's overwhelming. In fact, it was so overwhelming one day last week that one person I work with said something to another, and that person called a third person, who called me (and she was the appropriate person to make the call), and said, "What's going on, are you OK, and how can I help?" I really love the people I work with and for. But things are still insanely busy and will probably stay that way until mid- or late June. Then it gets kind of dead until mid-August.

Things are even busy in my non-work life, with quite a few dinners, visits, and events coming up. All good things, but I still don't have any time for some of the kinds of relaxing I seem to need. I want to see an Indian movie; I want to spend a little time on Twitter; I want to while away a couple of hours on YouTube. (However, I should say that a week from Friday is planned as a movie-in-the-theater night: Rochelle, Barry and I are going to the opening night of Department, the new Amitabh movie. The last two movies I saw in the theater (I can't remember which order) were Spiderman (fell down a few steps in the auditorium and sprained my ankle) and Lord of the Rings (I fell asleep). I'm too lazy to check when they were in the theater, but it was some time ago. I mean, aren't they about to reboot Spiderman?

Last thing: I have to give a shout out to Mental Floss, which is a simply fantastic website and blog and Twitter with all kinds of fascinating and nerdy and odd facts and lists. I entered a sweepstakes there, forgot about it, then won: twelve tee shirts of my choice from their store. Please click on this link, because these tee shirts are outrageously cool and not very expensive. I've had my eye on a few of them for a while now, but could never choose which one to actually buy. I love tee shirts and could easily spend stupid money on them. I've actually earmarked half of them for Barry, because I don't really wear them as much as I used to, and he does. (I actually wore tee shirts to work at NYU for the early part of my work there, and always wore them on weekends and to the gym. Now I wear them sometimes on weekends and mostly sleep in them. But this has not diminished my tee shirt lust one whit.)

I've fallen a little out of touch with some people, which is kind of a bummer, but I never seem to have any time. Shiva and I haven't emailed for a while; it could be six or seven months since I've been in touch with Rafael; and I owe phone calls to Winnie and to Joyce. I need more hours in the day, I'm serious. And perhaps a mite less family drama.

bad mental health week...or two

So it wasn't just one of those little stressy recurrences of depression. Not only was it bad, but I had my first experience of delusions, albeit minor. A few times this weekend, waking up or falling asleep, I found myself worrying about mind control of children, accompanied by an image of upside-down red and purple tulips falling like a rainstorm - I suppose this was the delivery system for the mind control agent. Those thoughts showed up about three or four times.

That shit is fairly scary, and told me that it was high time to get my meds managed. I haven't seen a doctor in the year-plus I've been on this health plan because it's a $30 co-pay to see the primary doctor, and then a $50 co-pay to see a specialist. Plus my long-time primary doctor is not in the network. But I picked a new primary doctor today, made an appointment for Monday, and called my old doctor to arrange to get my records.

I need a psych consult, a consult for what seem to be two trigger fingers, and a new set of labs, since my body chemistry is no doubt a mess.

Luckily, work gets slightly easier after tonight. Classes are over until September, so no more late Monday nights. There'll be a lot of work through the end of June, three kinds of end-of-term evals to collect and some fundraising stuff, but July and half of August should be dead. I have ten vacation days coming to me and I'd like to take a full week in July and maybe a few other days. I do need some serious stress relief.

Part of the bad stuff was triggered by another horrible money squeeze last week. Barry was under the impression he would be paid in the middle of last week (when actually it's this Friday), and Verizon suddenly decided that no one can carry any back bill at all, did not notify us, and cut off our TV and internet (and would not reinstate it without full payment). We had zero money and no TV or internet, and really no resources to raise what we needed. So we ended up borrowing from my uncle and aunt, which I loathe doing, although they are very kind and generous and non-judgmental. We asked for $300 (Verizon needed $165), and they sent $500.

This kind of thing kicks up more shit than I can even start to get into. My issues with parental generosity/lack thereof are deep and broad and are making me cry right now.

Needless to say, I found I had no interest in reading riddles by an insecure wealthy actor.  SO not into Big B.

I also found some of my weird self-comforting behavior kicking up, the easiest one to mention being excessive playing of computer games (the really dinky puzzle ones). Another one is sleeping most of the weekend. One other I'm too flat-out embarrassed to mention, but I'll simply say it's been a few years since it kicked up.

Oh, and I pretty much ran out of lorazepam in the middle of this, which is what I take as-needed for anxiety, up to two 2-mg pills per day (this is the generic name of Atavan). Since I'm not seeing a psychiatrist now, it's a bit of a hassle to get it, though I don't do it illegally.

It sucks, it sucks, it sucks. But we had back-to-back functions at work today, and I am off to eat some leftover cheese.

Bad news and good news: Jannah's dog Sasha died last week, one of her two little Yorkies. I don't generally like small dogs, but hers are very sweet. Were. Max still is. The upside is that I'm going to visit over Memorial Day weekend.

I also had lunch last week with a friend from Penguin who doesn't want her name in this blog. Can't blame her. I'll just call her Liz, and say I haven't seen her in nearly a year. We ate Thai food at Qi, and I gave her some raspberry sours in a Hello Kitty tin that I bought at Dylan's Candy Bar.  That Dylan's sure is one dangerous spot if you don't want to be eating candy.