I’m Kind Of A Wreck Right Now

A bunch of really nice people sent me a bunch of CDs over the past month or so, CDs I was unable to listen to because neither my flat nor my work computer, for some reason, have CDs players. I wrote to the people who’d sent them to me, saying “Thanks for the CDs! I don’t know if I like them yet! But I bet I do! But there’s no way to be sure! Because I can’t listen to them! But thanks for thinking of me!” I was waiting patiently for my laptop to arrive from Seattle so I could listen to some new stuff on my iPod and also maybe put my pictures on there and do some stuff online and I guess I don’t need really need to explain what a laptop is for, do I. It’s 2006. You understand.

Last weekend the laptop finally arrived and I thrilled, thrilled! to receive it. I was so thrilled that I opened it up and turned it on and changed the desktop wallpaper to this really awesome closeup picture of a giraffe I took in the rain at the Wellington Zoo, and then closed it and left it in its little laptop carrier case for another five days, with the nice CDs that came from three different countries neatly piled up next to it. I watched Outrageous Fortune or read a book or went out every evening during the week and didn’t get around to it until last night, all cuddled up on my awesome pink bed with a cup of tea, ready to type in all the song titles when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the screen went blank for no reason. I tried all the things that usually work in situations like this: pursing my lips and furrowing my brow, pressing the power button multiple times, asking a geek to reach through the phone lines and fix it, to no avail. It’s the Mac store for me this weekend, at which prospect I feel pretty much like crying because there is nothing worse than being condescended to by a smirky guy with a computer-screen pallor and an apple tattoo on his neck. It all makes sense, though, because this is just the kind of couple of weeks it’s been.

The first thing that let me know that I was on pretty thin ice was that I somehow managed to acquire a bulged disc last week and had to leave work in the middle of the day to go to a physical therapist, who was a very lovely girl who told me I needed to do a bunch of exercises, every hour on the hour, on the floor of my office, to fix it. It hurt so much that I didn’t care what a fool I looked doing up dog (basically) in my business casual, or how much my nineteen-year old office mate laughed and laughed and laughed, but I had to cancel my introduction to tribal thing and that put me in kind of a bad mood. And then I got my period, just like I have every month for the past two hundred and twenty-eight months, and that was fine except that now that I’m no longer on the pill I seem to do this awesome thing where I blow up to twice my normal size over the space of forty-eight hours. That too would be fine because it’s always entertaining to watch people try to mask their initial horrified reactions when you roll into a room, except I got so annoyed at not being able to fit into any of my clothes that I immediately threw away most of my underwear, which upon reflection may have been the smartest move because, as it turns out, I am not very punk rock at all and am most comfortable living the lifestyle that involves regularly having a thin barrier of stripy cotton between me and the world.

My face broke out, inventively, lavishly (“How did I get a pimple on my earlobe?”). I got a canker sore right on the underside of my lip. I found a bunch of new gray hair. I’m almost out of Burt’s Bees. I was pouring milk into my tea last night and it tasted all weird and there were all these little lumps at the top and I sipped it a couple of times but it still tasted terrible so I made a new cup of tea, sadly making the fatal mistake of using the same milk and it was just as bad and I don’t think it’s fair that the fridge doesn’t keep milk for more than two days because I only drink milk in tea and I can’t get through an entire tiny little bottle in that time so basically I am paying double for milk.

I left some clothes in the dryer but it turned out they weren’t completely dry but only sort of damp but after three days in there I had to do the entire load over again. I have this huge tri-colored maybe-it-was-a-domestic-dispute bruise on my right shin that I have no idea how I got. New World has stopped carrying my favorite kind of carrot/kumera/coconut soup. I keep getting all these notices in the mail about all these great packages I am supposedly receiving, but I have to call the post office and have them tracked and they’ve always gone back to the depot and so I have to have them sent somewhere else and pick them up two days later and then take the bus home because I can’t walk home and carry them at the same time. My iPod is acting up again. I hate everything I’ve written since I arrived in New Zealand. My teeth hurt so much when I floss them that I have to whimper aloud and do Lamaze breathing just to get through it. They don’t really do Halloween in New Zealand so I didn’t get to dress up or go to any parties. I’m a little headachey. I’m out of yogurt raisins.

I know these are not big worries in the grand scheme of life. I know, that for every poor-me complaint, there is an equal and opposite bit of luck or happiness: one of those packages at the depot contains a bunch of cute retail-therapy skirts. I keep getting compliments on my beautiful red purse that Nicole made. It was sunny on my walk in to work today and I could walk in because my business-casual PT exercises have really worked. I am going to celebrate my first Guy Fawkes Day this weekend, although I have to say that I’m a little tired of people constantly asking me why fireworks are illegal in lots of the States but you can buy guns at Wal-Mart. Speaking of the States, I am proud to report I got my absentee voter ballot in on time. I’m hosting a Dvice party at my house in a month and next weekend, finally, is my long-anticipated trip to Melbourne. I found a place that sells really good Italian-style pizza and gelato. So, really, I have it pretty good, considering I’m kind of a wreck right now.