Two weeks!

Wow that's a long time. I keep meaning to post but then I'm either too tired or too trying to be tired to try.

I'll do the boring part first - Mel's getting worse (better?). I'm honestly not sure, but she's been a little more mopey lately and I've largely been free to pursue my own leisure interests instead of airing her out at the park or running interference in Viva Pinata. I've even heard her crying in Mom's room a couple of times which I have to admit was something that hadn't occurred since that first night. Her therapist apparently says that's not completely abnormal, ignoring it for a while and then everything sort of sinking in. It makes sense to me on one level but on the other hand it doesn't. That's why I'm noting it here so future me has something to clue him in.

Also addressed to future me, you should probably make a decision on what series to go with next. She's on Book 4 of the quintet now so that leaves us with the Shanarra stuff (closer to her grade level) or the Death Gate Cycle (different stuff but not quite as dry as Brooks' stuff). Or tell her to use the school library. Or not, that'd probably come off kinda assholed.

As to why I'm posting this so late and for once not too tired. After that last post it started to get even worse. I would wake up with sleep paralysis (which is totally a thing; I've had it happen before and it's apparently relatively normal. Basically the brain bit that makes your body not flip the fuck out in reaction to stuff in your dream keeps flipped on while you're actually awake). Now sleep paralysis is kind of creepy enough but it's pretty easy to get used to once you know what it is, have had past experience with it, and aren't convinced whatever lives under your bed has a paralyzing poison and is reveling in your helpless horror.

It's the hallucinations that started up. At first it seemed pretty normal, like that thing where you hear and/or see stuff while you're going to sleep that you were doing before you went to bed. Then floaty balls, sometimes lit, sometimes not. That's honestly fucked but it's only one sense and glowy balls are pretty low on the list of terrifying things. No, it was one night when I woke up and I could swear my stomach was distended. Not just looking - I reached down, felt of it, and over time it felt like I could actually feel my insides moving. The funny part is at the time I was fairly calm about it. My grandpa had a hernia right around the same area - at family outings sometimes people would make fun of him having an 'outie' belly button. Considering he was a tough old coot who hated doctors he toughed on through it until he was finally put off his feet by it and finally had the surgery. Me having dreams about the condition being hereditary isn't unusual since my family is predisposed to our digestive tracts coming alive and trying to murder us in various upsetting ways. So at the time, like my grandpa, I was just thinking "Ugh, guts acting up, don't wanna miss school or half my routine messed up by pesky surgery."

When I remembered it the next morning I was just generally shitless with horror at the whole thing. I can still remember it pretty vividly and just how fucking weird it was. Not painful, even, just, well, I'll leave it to the non-existent reader's imagination.

But yeah, after one fucked up hallucination like that, I just decided to say fuck it and start doping myself. Now I'm a complete lightweight so what I mean by dope is literally just over the counter allergy elixir (I think the active ingredient is dyphenhydramine or something to that effect phonetically). All it actually does is get me drowsy enough to sleep, but it's been a week and a half now and generally just the little cup full before bed and/or during a mid night wakeup has kept the vengeful intestines away.

And that's why I'm awake right now; I finished off the bottle, and as usual forgot to put it on the shopping list and it's the middle of the night and I'm just scared of the prospect of whatever my half-assleep mind might drag up.

Tomorrow's gonna suck.