Today I had a lesson in giving advice, and why it is almost never advisable.  (Ha!)  In conversation with a dear friend, I found myself  beaking off with all manner of advice and opinions and interpretations, which were entirely unsolicited, and rather unwelcome.  I do know better than this - lesson one at therapy school is never give advice.  (Except things like “You should have a doctor look at that,” or “No, you should not abuse others” and so on.)  But I fell into it and of course the conversation ended tensely.

I’m not a total jerk - I did call up later to apologize for being so insensitive.  And have resolved anew to hold my tongue unless a request is received to do otherwise.  Because here is something else I have learned: when people come to you to talk about problems, they almost never want your advice.  Not really.  They want to vent.  They want to feel heard, supported, and cared for.  They almost always know what they’re going to do already, and even if they do outright ask for advice (a rare event indeed!), they generally do so only as a way to confirm their pre-existing decision, either by accepting your congruent advice or devising ways of shooting contradictory advice down.

Asking for advice is, in most instances, a form of social stroke exchange entirely divorced from the literal meaning of advice seeking.  And anyway, if the other person really doesn’t know what to do, and really wants your advice, you should run like fuck away from that trap.  One, you don’t want to be responsible for a course of action when you have imperfect knowledge of the situation which, trust me, you do.  And two, it’s creepy for someone else to totally abdicate responsibility for themselves to you and you just shouldn’t go there.  (Disclosure: I occasionally force Husband to offer advice when I’m stumped, though of course he hates this and I ignore his advice anyway.)

Hey, did you notice how I totally gave advice up there?  Oh, I kill me.  I just can’t escape being a know it all.  Oh well… if ever there was a place to be obnoxious, it’s on a blog.

I’m spearheading the initiative to bring “whom” back into popular parlance.  From now on, I will strive to use whom whenever appropriate.  Remember: who is the subject, whom is the object.

Who’s with me?

Don’t you hate it when those people who direct traffic around road construction do that thing where they simultaneously hold up their “SLOW” sign and wave at you frantically to hurry up? What the fuck!

If there’s one thing I took away from my college orientation, it’s to never send mixed signals by playing coy; if you say slow, mean it. Doing otherwise perpetuates date rape. And I’ll say it right here, the last thing I want to do is date rape a traffic control woman. They’re all so… haggard.

I just got home from the grocery store (bread, yogurt, asparagus, portobellos, laundry soap) to discover, horror of insensitive horrors: my husband, the person who has sworn to love and support me FOREVER, is right now, as I type this, lying in our bed TAKING A NAP.  As though he has some kind of right.  Like you can just go around, napping whenever you want.  Like there aren’t serious consequences.

Clearly he is doing this to harass me.  I can’t think of a punishment severe enough.

My insomnia is back.

I just need to look at that for a second, and wallow in the misery.  It’s back.

A few minor bouts aside, my insomnia has been largely under control for several years now.  I will never be a great sleeper, but I could count on feeling rested when I got up in the morning.  And I came to a point where I actually enjoyed the many wakings a night I always go through - it makes the night feel longer, and therefore more luxurious.  I could always fall back asleep, so waking just represented a time to go to the bathroom and enjoy the fact that there are still X hours until morning.

Last night I think I slept about three hours, maybe four.  I couldn’t fall asleep for hours, and when I finally did, I snapped awake after an hour or so and then, finding myself fatigued but alert, tossed and turned for an hour or so more until another short nap could be achieved.   Repeat.  I think I got a couple hours solid in the early morning.  And insomnisleep is not like normal sleep.  There is no period of drifting off.  I go from awake into a deep sleep quite suddenly it seems, and similarly, the waking is fast too.  The whole process feels disjointed and uncomfortable.

I remember this feeling so well.  Fighting to keep from getting too frustrated in the night (anger being the kiss of death for sleeping), running through mental algorithms of ways to get back to sleep.  Progressive relaxation.  Distraction.  New positions.  Cool the bed down, change the pillow.  Move to the couch.  Move back.  Consider elaborate permutations of the consequences of getting up to read.  Decide to kill self from utter frustration; remind self that getting all worked up helps nothing.  Get all worked up anyway.

I woke up yawning.  My eyes are swollen.  My body aches.  I feel like shit.  And I feel a sense of doom, to get a little maudlin - there is no such thing as one bad night on its own.  They travel in packs.  I’ll do everything right today - exercise, eat well, take no naps, and choose a bed time that coincides with sleepiness, but I already know I’m not going to sleep tonight either.

What kind of fucked up disorder is not being able to sleep?  It kills me to know I’m the traitor - there is no tumour or lesion.  This is coming from my head, or at least it is now - I get so freaked out when the sleep goes that I pretty much guarantee myself a hard time of it from the first night on.

Today I bought an ironing board.  And I was finally forced to admit that I’m glad we have a convertible: if the top didn’t go down, there’s no way I would have been able to fit the ironing board in the car.  Of course, if our car wasn’t a convertible, it would probably be big enough to just take the ironing board without bothering about the roof at all.  But nevermind that.  At last I can iron while standing, rather than doing it kneeling on the floor with the garment to be ironed spread out over a folded towel.  For the record, it is impossible to iron sleeves properly in this fashion.

And I cleaned the living room today, which is sort of disappointing because, despite over an hour of dusting and tidying, it looks like nothing got done here at all.  I much prefer cleaning the bathroom, where you can always appreciate the difference between the before and after states.  Dusting?  Not so much.  In fact, when Puck came over tonight he commented on how messy the apartment is (which is true - I’m in the middle of laundry and the dining table is awash with papers), not on how dust free it also is.  Alas!  Cleaning can be so thankless sometimes.

I met my mom for lunch, pinned some pants for hemming, finished writing up an assignment for school, prepared meals, cleaned the kitchen, and watched a movie.  Speaking of thankless jobs, I also washed all the garbage cans in the house.  I usually wash the one in the kitchen once a week or so, but haven’t done the bathroom bins in months.  I don’t know why, but I really get itchy if I don’t clean the kitchen garbage can regularly.  I know it’s just where I put the garbage, but somehow I can’t stand to know it’s smudgy and smelly.  I clean it by washing it with dish soap, then let it stand full of hot water and a healthy splash of bleach for half an hour or so.  Then it air dries, and finally goes back under the sink with a fresh grocery bag.  So much trouble for a trash can!  But it makes me happy, so what the hell.

Last night I went to the poker game.  I never play, but usually someone brings chips, and as long as I don’t buy them I really can’t be help morally responsible for weakening and eating them, can I?  After all, I did my part.  There were chips, but more dangerously, there were Clodhoppers.  I actually have always thought these were popcorn, so imagine my delight (and dismay!) when I discovered they were little graham cookies, covered in whatever that stuff they’re covered in is.  Scrumptious!  Then Husband and I ordered a pizza, and then I snacked on pretzels… it was a disaster.

Nonetheless, it was quite pleasant to see the poker gang.  Esan and I have made a plan to go watch the football game this evening, which I am quite looking forward to.  And we have tentative dinner plans with another of our friends, who we don’t see much but came out to the game last night.   In general, it was a good night.  The only down side came when, as we leaft Esan’s, we discovered that Joe and Mel’s car had been side swiped by some woman in a stolen car.  Luckily the police were right there still, with the woman in cuffs and everything.  The car wasn’t too badly damaged, and luckily there is now an official police record of the damage, which I imagine will ensure they don’t have to pay for repairs themselves.

And this morning I got to sleep in after a weekend of early rising for classes.  Now I’m going to watch Law and Order and clean my damn bathrooms, which are unholy.

In keeping with the general chaos of my life these days, today was unexpectedly a very nice day which I enjoyed immensely.

It doesn’t make for good blog fodder, does it?

Here is my list of things that are making my life miserable:

1. This apartment. It is dirty and I can never stand that. That pink scum is back in the sinks again. I am a terrible house keeper and am living like a barnyard animal.

2. School. I’m having significant anxiety about doing a research proposal for my thesis. I hate research (by which I mean experimentation, not reading). It’s hard, but worse than that, it’s tedious and boring. I have no good ideas. It’s due in two weeks and I haven’t started. I’m afraid of my professor. My advisor quit.

3. My stupid body. I’m so sick of constant hay fever and the accompanying relentless sinus pressure and pain. I take so many pills every day you would not believe it. Naturally the only antihistamine that works is the most expensive one, and I still need to boost it with Sinutab and ibuprofin most days. I think I have been sick more days than well this year. I can’t lose any weight and I have yucky calluses on my toes.

4. Living in this city. It’s lousy with people. I can’t do something as simple as going to the grocery store for milk without it being an enormous ordeal of public transit, crowds, smells, dodging bodies, and the endless process of refusing to give money to panhandlers while maintaining an air of liberal nonjudgmentalism. (Which is impossible.) There is no peace anywhere.

5. Cohabitating.  It’s nothing against Husband, mind you - I’m just hating the process of doing the living together thing.  I have always maintained that the most civilised way to live in a romantic partnership is as next door neighbours.  I suppose I never learned to share properly.  Back when I was single, I was miserable in most ways except one: I had my apartment all to myself.  I loved it then and pine for it now.  It’s a shocking amount of work to live with another person in your personal sanctuary (the barnyard).  Most times I like it, and get kind of a kick out of playing housewife, but lately I’ve been wishing for more alone time.  Which is kind of stupid because Husband is gone to work all day and I have the entire place to myself about 80% of the time.  There is no limit on my selfishness, apparently.

Husband: You should come with me next time I go to North Vancouver, there’s a place next door where you can get a free urine test.

Blogo: What!  A free urine test!  Why on earth would I want that?

Husband: I said hearing test.

Blogo: Oh.

A silent moment passes as we both appreciate the irony.