This morning I woke up bright and early, as usual. 4:30 never stood a chance against me, going to bed at 9:30 and routinely waking up for a cigarette around this time anyway, regardless of when I went to bed. I could have fallen asleep at 4, and I will still arise a half hour later for nicotine. I like to wake up early because it feels like getting a head start. No one else is up yet, so my first cup of coffee doesn’t count. I thank my Keurig every time I use it. A brief “merci beaucoup!”, because my Keurig only speaks French (?), and I whisk my mug away back to bed, where the cat is. I don’t take my medication until the sun is up, because if no one knows I’m awake yet, I am under no obligation to do anything at all. For all the world knows, I’m still asleep. It’s my little secret to be awake before 5 am. All my friends stay up too late for me to lucubrate in secret. But 4:30 in the morning? If you’re up at 4:30 in the morning, you’re either insane or elderly. Perhaps you’re like me, and are both ambiguously insane and deceptively elderly. No birds have come to my window this morning, but I hold out hope for my grackle, Pablo. Or if I’m in the bathroom, my dove, Puck. Anyone else here absolutely hate being in pain? I got so stressed out that my back started spasming a week before finals. It got increasingly worse and was inhibiting my ability to do what I love most, which tends to revolve around sitting in positions that this spasm didn’t appreciate. I got a tattoo and, though the tattoo itself was fine, my back had me tap out a lot sooner than I’d have liked. So I went to urgent care twice about a month ago and scored myself some muscle relaxers. My back still hurt more than I was comfortable with, but it was more of a dull, throbbing ache rather than a searing hot knife slowly twisting into my muscle. I could dance again, I even picked up that penny on the floor that I kept stepping on, and I thought it was something wet. Unfortunately, I slept on my neck funny soon after, which landed me in the ER due to the most severe neck/arm pain I’ve ever had, along with the inability to use my left hand, nor could I really feel anything. I’ve been in Physical Therapy for about a week now, and It’s less numb and I have regained some mobility, but holy shit I’m still in so much pain. I’ve become a grumpy elderly person.
I’ve been reading lately, which has been very nice. My 2026 resolution is to try and read a book a month, for leisurely purposes. I know damn well I have at least 20 books I’ve either not yet started and have every intention of blowing through, or that I have started and then Life Happened (winter), and my reading schedule collapsed. What I started doing last summer was reading outside. I got a decent routine going; I would wake up, do all my Immediate Tasks, such as polish my stones and take my special brain candy. Smoking weed was also on that list of tasks. I would make a giant mason jar full of iced hazelnut coffee (Merci!) and go out back, chainsmoke, and read. I would sit out there for at least an hour, and it would make me feel really good in the brain afterwards. When it got too late in the day, it would get too hot, and at some point, the bees would swarm my coffee. So I’d head inside, but I could never continue reading inside. And I can’t figure out why. So my winter mission is to figure out acceptable indoor reading conditions so that I can modify and enrich my enclosure so that it is best suited to reading. So far, I think I’ve cultivated an adequate habitat for reading- I light candles, make a cup of coffee (Merci…), turn on my colorful lights, and boom. The heating pad also bodes well for the cozy vibe, should I be able to wrangle it away from Lilith. And when it gets warmer out next year, I can go back to sitting on the stoop. Ah, the stoop. I miss it so. I miss living on the first floor, where menial tasks were just that, and not monumental feats that test my strength and my patience. Taking out the trash was easy, just waltz out the back door to the dumpster. Smoking outside, also easy and non-taxing on the body. For all the strain of living on the third floor of my building, I do quite like my shoebox. It gets messy very quickly, but there’s less of it to clean than my old apartment on the first floor. The sunlight on the third floor is unbeatable, and I have a much nicer view than before. ‘Tis a joy to be alive, sometimes. Have a good day, y’all. Be kind to each other.
Phrenectomy 