Grouchfest 2007 - Now with Extra Cranky!

Maybe if I just purge all of my grumpiness into one post, I can finally get rid of this cloud hanging over my head. If you don't want to risk my negativity wearing off on you, I suggest you go read something else. Like my horoscope, and let me know when it's going to lift.

I was a grouch this weekend. No specific reason, really, other than PMS. I don't usually get PMS, at least not in a way that affects my mood (only my weight!), but this month it seemed to come at me with a vengeance, amplifying all of my irritations, as if to make up for all the months I coasted through comfortably content. I'm also a bit stressed about work. Not in a bad way, like something bad is going to happen, just in a I-have-two-events-this-week-in-a-store-that-isn't-done-yet way. The work itself is going fine; it's the three weeks of getting up early and staying late that have finally started to wear on me. None of this is stuff I haven't done before; in fact, this was what my life was like in New York. I guess that's why my mood suddenly seems to match it.

I've noticed something about myself since I moved to LA. While I have generally become much more laid back and relaxed about the big things (work, boys, life), I have become incredibly neurotic about the smaller stuff. Ridiculous things like making sure I go food shopping, or that my apartment is clean, or I that I read every single magazine and trade paper that comes to my attention, even though no one is making me but the obsessive-compulsive person inside my head. An unfinished to do list stresses me out, and when I get stressed, I shut down.

It's funny. A few years ago I might have dealt with stress by meeting up with friends or drinking wine by myself in the apartment. Now, though, when I start feeling like I have too much on my plate, I physically begin to crave quiet, want nothing more than to be alone, free of obligations, to control what little of my life I can. Even if that's only going food shopping. When work gets busy, as it has been, or I have too many social events in a row, I'll make a sweeping gesture of declining plans, swearing off friends for entire weekends. And while that always sounds like a good idea on Friday, by Sunday afternoon I am entirely bored of myself and wondering what fun I might have missed.

So that's kind of the dichotomy I found myself struggling with this past weekend. Initially I had planned on staying in all weekend, because, in my mind, I had a ton of stuff to do. (In reality, "a ton of stuff" was only like 5 things, but they needed to get done or I'd be very stressed out.) Part of me wanted time alone, but I was so unusually cranky, I couldn't stand the thoughts running through my own head. So I forced myself to go out on Friday night, but then was so exhausted on Saturday, I couldn't get all my stuff done. I felt my anxiety grow as the day passed and I had only Sunday to settle my chores.

Sunday I had plans for brunch, but was so consumed with satisfying my to do list, I was a short circuit the whole time. Quite honestly, I was a bitch. Seriously, I didn't recognize myself, was crawling in my own skin!

Did I mention that one of my chores was running? And that the reason it got pushed to Sunday was because my hip, despite feeling fine after my run a few weeks ago, is still hurting? So I haven't been exercising as much overall, at least not cardio, and I have to wonder if that isn't helping to contribute to my disdainful disposition.

I also have a confession to make. I am getting tired of this blog. I am tired of listening to myself wax nostalgic or witty or wistful, hearing sentences form in my head not as actual thoughts, but as leads for my next post. Will this make a good post? I wonder at least once a day. I am getting tired of the Internet in general, this whole social networking thing, this ability to be searched and found and followed and judged. Don't ask me why - after three years, I suddenly crave anonymity. Maybe I feel like I've gotten all I can from it; maybe I am just in a deeper ditch of writer's block, I don't know. I'll never stop writing. I just don't know where I'll do it.

Maybe because today was a holiday for some people, Grouchfest didn't stop when Sunday's sun went down. I woke up this morning feeling two things: 1.) Sick - Yay, sore throat! My body is rebelling! Glands are swollen as we speak.

2.) Sad. I was a lot of things this weekend - cranky, stressed, tired, overwhelmed - but sad was not one of them. I haven't been outright melancholy in a long time. But I woke up from a dream in which an ex-boyfriend was telling me that he had gotten engaged, but that his fiancee was simultaneously suing him for being unfaithful. He wasn't even unfaithful, really, he just took a year and a half to decide whether or not he really liked her, during which time he was always calling me, telling me he was ending it, and when could we get together? (That part really happened.) So in my dream I was asking him why he did a 180 from the summer when he claimed he broke up with her (also really happened) to ask her to marry him? He answered because she had stuck around long enough and he just figured she deserved it. And that's why he was allowing her to sue him, because he figured he made it hard enough for her before, might as well make it easy now.

I woke up with a pain in my gut, sick at the thought I might have lost him for good. Except that in real life, I haven't talked to him in months, and haven't had feelings for him in much longer. Yet I wanted to call him immediately to find out if he was engaged. But of course I don't want to know. I'll never call. I woke up feeling like I had lost something very precious to me. Even though it was never really mine to begin with.