Cliffs of Insanity

Yeah, sorry about that last post. I was just making sure you all are paying attention!

Yeh.

Anyway, maybe I've been feeling a little insane lately. It's partly because winter is coming, and by now I'm sure you all know very well how I feel about that. And it's partly hormonal insanity, but let's not go there. It's also partly insomnia insanity. (Astonishing alliteration, anyone?) Because not sleeping much makes people insane.

Yes. Yes it does.

It's actually been ever since my surgery. It's like my sympathetic nervous system went into high freak-out and I can't seem to be able to tell it to stand down already. So I toss and turn all night, and frequently wake up in panic mode, except that all I'm actually thinking about is that I need to remember to wash my jeans. Or how much I'll want a cup of tea at 10:30 later that morning. So I fidget and think, except I can't seem to think in a straight line, and try to will myself to go back to sleep and then my brain goes "BZZZOT! I need to refill the salt shaker! Hey, and where is the phone book, anyway?"

Frankly, it's exhausting.

Maybe I should look into getting that fixed.

Oh, and speaking of things that cause insanity (because that's what we were speaking of, wasn't it?), I have one single, solitary appliance in my house with power to bring down all semblance of lucidity.

One thing that resides in our creepy, old basement that can single-handedly (single-pipedly?) rule my days.

I wrote about it once before. Maybe twice, I don't know.

It's the water softener. The jewel of house-hold function and yet bane of my existence. When it decides to go on the blink, I will put off doing laundry for days or weeks --long past running out of clean underwear-- in hopes that maybe this time it will come back on and I won't have to fill the machine halfway with vinegar in order to ensure that the clothes and towels don't turn orange. It has power to make me ashamed of my sinks and toilet, not because I haven't cleaned them, but because the Evil Appliance makes it appear quite convincingly that I haven't cleaned them. And that's all to say nothing of my hair. You could probably mine iron ore from my scalp.

Usually, Nathan can sweet-talk the water-softener into compliance. Other times, he just gives it a swift kick in the rusty under-parts. But I'm thinking we need to get psychological about it. Make it want to work. Natural consequences and all that. Unplug it, unplumb it, and let it sit there and think about it's misdeeds. Maybe we'll carry it out to sit in the rain a while as well and let the chickens poop on it. And no matter how much it pleads for the Culligan Man, we'll just laugh our evil cackle and ask how powerful it feels now, punk?

Hm. Wonder what I'll wake up panicking about tonight?