bad_day ovenbird Some bad days are a slow burn. Starting with a minor inconvenience that builds into a cacophony of horrors that pile up until you don’t know whether to scream, or laugh, or cry. This particular bad day has a million legs. It skitters. It runs from the light. It gets into the walls and chews up the wiring. It’s a monster made of the pieces of a dozen other days that have been stapled together into something so grotesque it’s no longer recognizable. It’s a birthday present lost in the mail, it’s having your friends go out without you, it’s a fight at the dinner table that ends with mustard in your hair, and when you think the day is dark, it shows you that you don’t know what dark is. It’s blood test results that don’t look good. It’s a trip to emergency. It’s waiting and waiting and waiting and wondering. Then the day heads out into the night. It comes to your house and cries on your doorstep. It’s had too much to drink. It’s swallowed substances that shouldn’t be consumed. It cries on your shoulder: “Everyone is dead. Everyone is dead. I don’t want your children to turn out like me.” The day tries to hug you and you back away, terrified. You shake the day’s hand while wondering if it has a knife in its pocket. The day wanders the streets in sock feet with a black dog trailing behind. You go inside and lock the doors. Now your phone sits silently beside you. You stare it down. You turn your eyes into paperweights and pin the plastic casing to the table. If you can imagine this perfectly enough, you think, maybe the phone won’t ring, maybe it won’t be able to broadcast even one more piece of bad news. 250624 ... epitome of incomprehensibility The collage of scenes here works so well to evoke tedium and dread. You wouldn't know it, but the timing also made me feel better; I'm still thinking of yesterday with heated_argument. Even though the day as a whole wasn't horrible. Just way too hot. The worst thing is when I make things worse. I need to make a concerted effort not to grump when I see environmental and/or physical reasons for grumpiness on the horizon. So, PMS: I see you, I will give you space, but I don't need to make you a reason for making other people's days worse. Summer heat: same thing, I'll know you'll be back. 250625 what's it to you? who go blather from