It's Been One of Those Days

You know? One of Those days? Maybe you don't....

Let me explain.

It started this morning. I woke up before my alarm. Weird. Especially for me, who is notorious, notorious I say, for sleeping for long stretches, 12 plus hours at a time sometimes. I have, in deference to The Other Half, become accustomed to having some background noise when I sleep, so I fire up a bunch of movies to loop in random sequence during the night. When I wake up, I catch the end of Disney's "Mulan". I've seen it many times. I know how it ends. It usually gets a little catch in my throat, because it's touching. This morning? I bawl, like a baby, once when she's talking to the Emperor, and it started up fresh once she got home and talked to her dad. I cannot for the life of me figure out what triggered it. I wasn't thinking anything special, no attachments or personal memories about it, or anything. I just lost it.

The rest of the day felt... surreal. I was too happy, to chipper, and yet at the same time too easy to swing to another mood. There was nasty irritability waiting to surface at every turn, especially with the entitled attitudes I get with my work (that's another rant altogether... actually several rants, but I'm not going into it because it will make me feel dirty). I was weirder than usual, and slightly more out of touch. Also had a hard time focusing cleanly on much of anything. It would come and go throughout the day. I suspect I know the cause: I had gotten a soda off Knitting Broad N.

Now KBN is a good soul, kind and generous to a fault. She tends to stash things around the office like a squirrel, because we don't have our own desks.... yeah it sucks, and I will get a new job ASAP. At any rate, she stashes sodas sometimes, so I asked and got permission to nab one.... completely forgetting that her tastebuds are totally mutated and alien and she actually likes the taste of diet soda. Nothing against her, really, she's awesome, I just don't understand the allure. My bigger problem is not so much the taste (which is mediocre at best) but the contents: almost all diet sodas are sweetened with aspartame. Aspartame has some nasty side effects to many people's brain pan... Mine is especially susceptible. For example: in high school, there was a cheapo grocery store near to my school, and we would have just enough time in our spare period to wander down to said store and pick up their super cheap store brand sodas, advertised as zero calorie and sweetened with aspartame. I was incredibly fond of the wild berry ones and the peach ones, and consumed, over the course of three days, several bottles of these (they were a dollar each for a litre). By the end of my binge I was constantly thinking of harming myself, and picking fights with anyone and everyone who I thought had slighted me, and picking fights with my then-boyfriend for anything and everything that came to mind; yet at the other end of the spectrum I was giddy-hyper and extra weird. My friends were all scared, and the then-boyfriend made me read about aspartame and forced me to quit. All it took was three days to make me realize how bad this stuff was for me, so I do whatever I can to avoid it like the plague. Unfortunately, I slip up. Like yesterday, in getting the soda from KBN, which, unknown to me until this afternoon, was loaded with aspartame. Luckily I didn't down the bottle all in one go (710mL of a certain big name brand of cola is just way too much for me to handle, as I normally don't go in for cola-type sodas), and I cut it with food and water. However, I am almost definitely convinced that that pop may be the cause for the extra dose of extra special.

I fear reading this post over again for how horrible it will sound once this stuff has all passed through my system.

I haven't knit because I've been too twitchy. I'm still hoping to arrange a stitchy afternoon thing so I can have some girlie time, but real life comes first.... uh... wow... by "real life" I mean "other responsibilities including, but not limited to: cleaning, laundry, groceries, miscellaneous chores, job hunting and relationship stuff"... and that's not to suggest any of that is in a negative light, it's just real life. Everything else is play time.

Though I am going to get some stupidly sexy laceweight yarn soon, and will need a venue to show it off. For all that TOH enjoys my finished products, there's a damn good reason he suggested I start this blog: so he wouldn't have to bear all the brunt of my obse-.... er.... hobby. Yeah, that's it, right.... hobby.

Whatever helps me sleep at night I guess. We all know the truth.