Yet another morning where sleep ends at 4:30 AM so I can wake up and stress over what I can't get done during the days.

I was out for dinner with friends last night and we jokingly discussed that I'd soon be found curled up in a ball beneath my desk drooling and muttering and scrabbling away from anyone who tried to pull me out.

It's not sounding like a bad gig at the moment.

(You know you're stressed when you start thinking things like, 'If I could just have a nervous breakdown, they'd put me in a hospital and I'd have at least a week off' or 'If something happened and I broke my fingers, I wouldn't have to type for a few weeks.')

This isn't to imply that I'm going to break my own fingers or have a breakdown, just that I need a vacation...

Ahhhh. It's that time of year. The windows are open. It's raining. A nice warm breeze is blowing across the living room. I'm wearing a t-shirt and shorts. The warm weather (70 degrees today!) makes me think that spring might just be around the corner.

And then I notice the cat.

Staring at the base of the kitchen cupboards. Intently. Watching something moving. Something brown. And big. And the bane of my existence.

And after doing my interpretive Die-Die-Die dance with a bright red can of Raid, all I can think is that I might be willing to trade back to winter. Because at least in the wintertime the evil tree-dwelling rat bastard bugs stay outside or die or something.

------

By the way, for those interested, the steps to the interpretive Die-Die-Die dance:

1. Scream "Eww! Eww! Eww! Get away from that Chet!"
2. Hop around the living room looking for shoes. Put on big stompy shoes just in case the intruder decides on a full-frontal attack.
3. Inch into the kitchen, keeping eyes on offending intruder at all times. When within two feet of the sink, make a mad grab for the Raid can in the cupboard beneath.
4. Deftly grab cat and toss him backwards into the living room - away from potential blast radius.
5. Spray the shit out of the intruder.
6. Watch in fascination as intruder flails about. Keep a safe distance.
7. Utter another "Ewww!"
8. Close off kitchen doors for 30 minutes. Poke head in occasionally to make sure the corpse-to-be is still there.
9. When sufficiently sure that intruder is dead, inch around it in the kitchen to grab broom and dustpan.
10. Scream "Ewww!" when intruder twitches as you sweep it up.
11. Exit back door to toss intruder into back yard. Placing the intruder in the trash is not an option. It may revive like some little six-legged Frankenstein and come for you while you sleep. Ditto the toilet but with more disturbing possibilities. Placing dead intruder in back yard serves as both a method of warning off potential reprisals, and if you're lucky, they're a bunch of cannibals and will eat their own dead and die.
12. Spend the next several days tip-toeing in the kitchen.

One participant in my sleepless night? e. A fantastically funny novel about a London ad agency written entirely as email sent among the employees.

I defy you to read it and not recognize at least one person you know.

I've been awake since 2:15AM. If I go to sleep now, I'll oversleep.

Something tells me it's going to be a long, long day today...

Use Earthlink? Sick of massive amounts of spam in your mailbox? Earthlink has a somewhat unpublicized spam filter now - visit Spaminator.earthlink.net to filter away all those offers for All Natural Viagra!

Of course, now I hardly get any email at all. Sniff.

An (Imagined) Day in the Life of Chet - the orange cat:

*bzzzt*

"Ahh! She is awake! Run to She! Sniffsniffsniffsniff - Wake up She! She! Sniffsniff. Look! My butt! PURRRRR.

She goes to water room! She obviously didn't mean to close the door. I will push it open with my big cat strength. She! Hey! There is thing, on wall, above sink! She must not see it. I will meow. MROW! See the thing, She? MROW! Right there! I will climb wall to show She! MROW! The thing! Why does She not see?

Turn on the sink. Turn on the sink. Cat is thirsty turnonthesink... Ahhh.

OK. I'm done. Food. Open food can. Food. She!

...

She is leaving. She is never coming back. She won't notice if I slip out the doo...damn! She noticed.

Sleep.

Food.

Sleep.

Plant! Plant must die! Where is plant! Aha! She tried to protect plant by putting it in window! Haha! She cannot outwit Chet! Narf-num-dig dig dig. Dirt must go there. And there. Better. Sleep.

Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

Food.

Time to decorate! Rug. Or tile. Rug. Or tile. Where to... rug? No. Rug was yesterday. Bed? No. Not bed today. Hallway! Yes! Hallway! Hurk hurk hurk huaghhh! She will like this. Chet is artist. Food!

Noise! To window! She is home! She! MROW! MROW! Move faster! Open door open door open door! She left me! She is home! Pet me! Pet me! Don't touch me! MROW! Pet me don't touch me! Pet me!

Sleep."

Proof that the people who schedule programming on The Learning Channel are diabolical and evil. Tonight's schedule?

8:00PM - "Near Miss" - In which we learn that sometimes air traffic controllers blink. And sometimes planes almost run into each other.

9:00PM - "TWA 800: The Investigation" - In which we learn that sometimes planes can just plum blow themselves the hell out of the sky.

10:00PM - "Understanding Air Traffic Control" - In which we are currently learning that the number of air traffic controllers (presumably the non-blinking ones) is decreasing drastically as the amount of air traffic is increasing immensely. We also learn that while air traffic controllers can technically handle working 15 planes in 16 minutes, they are routinely scheduled to handle 25 planes in 15 minutes.

And hopefully I'll forget everything I've learned by the time I fly again...

Why is it that when you hop on to the end of a long line, like Best Buy's customer service line for example, you always feel better when someone joins the line behind you? That weird sense of superiority that rises up and says, "Aha! We may be here for hours, but at least someone else will be here longer! Hah! Bet you wish you were standing where I am now. But you can't. Because I'm here."

My mind works in mysterious ways.

In other news, after spending years sleeping on a futon mattress on the floor, I broke down and bought a bed. Picture that without the silly looking nightstand, and in a pretty grey color. Unfortunately it won't be delivered until Friday, so I must be patient to play with my new toy.

And we all know how good I am at patience.

These are the things I'm tired of.

I'm tired of being taken for granted.

I'm tired of being the least important.

I'm tired of allowing anyone to hurt my feelings.

I'm tired of being disappointed. Either my expectations are too high, or I choose to know people who live up to expectations very poorly.

I'm just really fucking tired of it.

Referral Log Oddities #2535665:

Someone searching for "drunk women" found my site today, which is odd enough. But the thing I can't quite figure out is that they came from the Dogpile search engine... which apparently classifies digression.com in the category: Society and Culture: Religion Faiths and Practices: Christianity: Denomination: Baptist Churches.

As I've grown older, I've come to realize that even if it is a cliche, there are certain rules that apply to life in this universe. The sun rises, the sun sets. When company comes over to visit, the cat will always determine the exact center of the room and the perfect lighting in which to start licking his butt. There is always someone in a more expensive car who needs to merge lanes far more than you do.

And when it's a Saturday morning and you're sitting at your computer, directly in front of the door you've opened to let the warm air through the screen, unshowered, bed-headed, bra-less, and wearing an old t-shirt. That, my friends, is exactly the moment the Jehovah's Witnesses will show up at your door to discuss the rammifications of God, Jehovah, and The Watchtower.

The address of the house I grew up in was 2001 Park Avenue. Which was, you know, pretty damn cool when I was seven or so. I mean, I had the same house number as the movie with the big black rock thing and the computer. I lived on the street which was, in New York, ultra-cool and rich and stuff. (It was a bit more middle-class where I grew up, of course.)

And not only that, but I had 2001 moon boots. Rainbow moon boots, to be exact. Yep, big clunky and oh-so early 80's. And they had my house number plastered right there on the side. Damn, but I was cool.

As of yesterday, if I still lived in the house I grew up in, I'd have the uber-cool "address-that-matches-the-year" thing going on. Man.

Oh well. Only 3000 years or so to wait before I can say that about my current house.