sometimes i'm not even aware of the time

oh... bipolar how i loathe you.

i would count the ways, but i think yall would get tired of reading about them. so i'll just give you one: it's a time suck.

i love how smart i am. really. my brain's got some wicked power, especially when it comes to crafting a sentence (though i do occasionally throw in a typo, just for fun.)

once upon a time i worked for a newspaper. one of my jobs was editing letters to the editor. i was very careful not to change what had been written unless grammatical stupidity was involved.

you know. like when someone writes your when he meant you're. or it's when she meant its.

(to the editor of the conroe courier: i meant its green, not it's green. one's possessive. one's not. but thanks for printing my shit.)

i've never written a letter to the editor, by the way. usually because i can't be bothered. but the greedy bastards demolishing my state's fine forests are really pissing me off. so i wrote one. and my mother helped me reign it in and whittle it down to three hundred words. (it wasn't too much longer than that--maybe a hundred words or so. but i know how precious inches are, and i do tend to get verbose when i'm on a tear.)

i won't give you the whole of it here. just my favorite paragraph:

twice, the people residing west of the city, near the manmade lake, feared the rains that made the waters rise would flood their pricey homes. the san jacinto river authority would wait until the last possible second and open the gates. and the water rushed to the east, and the neighborhoods where the interstate meets magnolia parkway would be underwater for weeks. the only things that have kept our homes from being lost entirely or from not staying underwater longer or from flooding at all are the tree to the west.

yeah. singular tree. because for some reason, i didn't catch that missing s until after i submitted it. and the editor, so careful to tweak my language elsewhere, missed it, too. even though i'd sent him a follow up email immediately after i'd sent the first, calling attention to it. i was gonna correct it here, but then i'd be quoting myself erroneously. and i can't have that.

anyway. it was a good letter. i was pretty proud of it. i went to bed last night in a good mood.

i woke up this morning in a good mood. of course, i had to read about the goings on of the texas legislature. but even after reading about that, i was alright.

and then one of my friends posted something on facebook about how stupid the state of texas is and how it should secede already and attached this article.

and i said something about how i liked it, but then i saw that bit about secession and argued that not all texans are stupid. just perry and his cronies.

and one of her friends had to point out that it's satirical.

so yeah. there's where the wicked brain power jumps to the dark side. so much shit goes over my head. and when my brain flicks the bipolar switch--i'm never prepared for that, by the way, even after all these years--all the sudden i'm beating myself up because i'm slow-witted, and i just proved her point, and it's not just perry and his cronies, it's me, too, and this is why people don't like me, and how can i be so smart and so stupid at the same time? how can my brain be so strong and yet so weak? and eventually i'm crying and rocking and trying to tell myself that this isn't me, it's the madness. and this is why people don't like me, so reign it in.

and fifteen minutes pass before i get control of myself. reading this post's update helped.

i'd been playing a game of hearts when this occurred. i remember looking at the clock: thirty-seven minutes past eleven. and the next time i look--which seems to me to be merely seconds later--it's eight minutes before noon.

and now it's half past. and i need to go get my slow-witted, yet genius self in the shower so i can go tweak a story that may never see the light of day, excepting the snippets i post here.

after i distract myself with this:

. . .

i made my mom laugh. she said something about how i sure do have a way with words.

 one of the servers said i was beautiful, which was really nice. really. i wish i could think of myself as thus.

but that bit about it being a time suck... i didn't accomplish a damned thing today, unless you count getting fatter. or surviving a wretched mental health day.