I mentioned I don't like you either, right?

You know that phrase "wheels off"?

I'm coining a new one: "wheels still sort of on, but making really funny noises, and gosh, it kind of worries me." Okay, maybe that's a little long. It still describes my day.

How is it, I ask you, that I can perfectly understand the structure and function of the heart, the way EKGs work, and whether or not a missed QRS complex means you have a block on Wednesday, then find it all impossibly dense on Friday? How is it that I can identify rhythms on one day, and not manage it two days later?

How is it, for that matter, that my grass can go four fucking weeks without needing to be mowed, then suddenly, it needs to be mowed twice in one week? It's not getting mowed today, and thus won't be mowed for the forseeable future, because it's supposed to rain from now until the Four Horsemen show up on their My Little Pony-style steeds. I fully expect to see Max slinking through the waist-high grass by this time next week. He'll have fun pretending he's a big lion on the veldt; I'll have fun trying to mow the back yard on just two Neuton batteries.

And cat hair. I had cat hair everywhere today; yesterday, there was none in evidence.

I'm beginning to sound like Andy Rooney.

Honestly, though? It's all beginning to hit, what I've done. I'm basically starting over in my career, and I miss my friends from the neuro acute care unit. We were family for nearly eight years; they got me through divorce, trauma, happiness, my sister getting married...and I just plain miss them. There are inside jokes my new colleagues just can't get, and quirks I have that they're not used to, and that makes the transition hard.

The guy who changes my oil went from being a sweet, kind of clueless nerdy type last month to having fresh tattoos of zombies on his arm and rivets in his ears today. *That* was a shock.

Max is getting grey around the muzzle. There's no other evidence that he's getting old; in fact, he's more active now than he was two years ago. But I still notice, and I wonder how much longer he'll be around.

And I'm fighting off, simultaneously, whatever bug is going around at Holy Kamole (fever, chills, nausea, diarrhea; not the H1N1 flu) and a bladder infection (hooray for cranberry capsules!). In an attempt to give my body what it needs, I've bought sour-cream-and-onion chips and Ben & Jerry's.

Frankly? I could use a hug. I wish my long-lost Polish buddy Arek were here; he gave the best damn hugs on the planet (partly because he was, like, seven feet tall and three hundred pounds, with an enormous curly red beard). I could use a couple of glasses of wine with Friend Pens. I could use a really, really good dinner with little deep-fried squidlians and endive and all those things I don't normally eat, then a walk in cool weather along a river I'm not familliar with.

*sigh* Potato chips and soprasetta for me, kids. And artichokes and clarified butter. And another beer, and another week, and maybe things will improve.