All over the place...

Really? Truly? I wish I knew what the hell was up with me lately.

I'm normally a fairly laid-back, generally happy person. But lately it seems that every day is a freaking roller coaster.

No, that's not quite right. I like roller coasters.

This... this is the fucking Wild Mouse.

It looks harmless enough from the ground. "Oh, it's just a kiddie coaster," you think. "Just a couple of turns and those drops? Pffft! Nothing!"

Until you are 30 feet in the air, in the world's tiniest cart, and you can't see the tracks under you. You're rolling along quite peacefully when, without warning, you are whipped around in the opposite direction. And again. And again. And each and every time that car whips around you are absolutely positive that you will fly out of your crappy little cart and die a painful death on the pavement below.

I fucking hate the Wild Mouse.

I also hate days like today. When I woke up I was feeling fine enough. Look! I even made Fritata!







After breakfast the morning was marked by bouts of random photography.

The "Sorry We Eliminated Your Job" flowers are already wilting, but still photogenic.








And yet, despite the tasty breakfast, and the pretty flowers, as the morning wore on I felt an all too familiar sense of malaise settling over me. Figuring it was just a late-breaking hangover, I did what I always do in such cases. I went back to bed.

A little over 2 hours later I finally roused myself from bed. Contrary to my intent, my nap had not left me feeling refreshed and rejuvenated, but had rather left me inclined to spend the entirety of the day swaddled in my 800 thread count sheets.

I was supposed to go to a vegetarian pot-luck this evening, which is admittedly not exactly my scene--"eco-friendly containers" and "musical instruments" being on the list of items to bring--but I love the hostess in all her crunchy-granola-glory, and so was prepared to make an appearance and try to avoid eating anything containing mushrooms.

But my body was dragging and my brain was one step behind, so I wrote her an email begging off.

My mom had called me last night to check in while I was out and about, so I took a moment to call the parents. Within less than a minute my dad was asking "Are you alright?" Sure, I said, just tired.

Really, it's more than that... but I don't know what.

I went to the grocery store to find something for dinner, and kept wandering up and down the aisles with a few random items in my basket--butter, ravioli--and absolutely no clue what I wanted to buy. Other than ice cream. I knew I wanted ice cream. Eventually I decided on pizza and spent the next 10 minutes trying to find yeast before determining that there did not appear to be any in stock. However, I could feel my brain cringing in my skull at the prospect of having to come up with an alternative plan, so I simply paid for my items and left.

I was so out of it on the way home that it took three attempts before I realized that the "Hey girl!"-s coming from the guy less than a foot in front of me were directed at me.

Yet somehow, as I sat here hunting for a recipe for yeast-less pizza crust (the packet I dug up in the back of my cupboard having expired last November), my mood rolled over once again and I was doing okay.

Oh, and taking a biscuit recipe and using half the baking powder called for? Not a bad pizza crust substitute if you happen to be out of yeast.



As I ate I decided that, being the emotional equivalent of the pendulum on the world's largest grandfather clock, I needed to spend the remainder of the evening watching chick flicks. This may or may not have been a good idea.

"Becoming Jane" is excellent. However, why on earth I chose a film that I knew for a FACT did not have a "happy ending" (Jane Austen never married), is completely beyond me.

So I chose to follow that with "The Break-Up." WTF? Whoever chose to market that movie as a comedy should be taken outside and shot. I cried. Repeatedly. Not exactly what I had in mind.

And now here I am. Not exactly the picture of cheer, but not the lifeless lump who wandered aimlessly around in the grocery store for half an hour (and my grocery store is TINY... like, 4 aisles, that's it). I'm sort of floating somewhere in the middle, which for the time being I guess is good enough.

But what really bothers me, what I don't understand, is what on earth causes days like this? Days when half the time I don't even feel like myself. It's like I've made a quantum leap into someone else's body and can't quite figure out what to do with myself.

And I worry that, if this continues, my unemployment will not be the blessing I'd hoped for. That rather than be productive during my now-free days, I'll sit around like a lump staring at the walls and wondering why going to the store seems like such a gigantic effort.

I can't let that happen. I'll go crazy.

Sorry... like the title suggests, I am seriously all over the place today.

Do any of you have days like this? What do you do to get yourself back to... yourself?