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So after all of the degenerate sheet insanity, I made my way down to Hagerstown to exchange the Wamsutta sheets that don’t fit the bed. I couldn’t find any 300tc sheets that had “extra deep pockets” so I had to settle for a 250tc set, in white. If I was cool with the mix & match thing it would be a lot easier, but I really prefer the fitted and flat sheets to be the same colour. Anyway, they fit nicely and my next trip sort of made up for it. I did want a set of white sheets anyway.

So, I stopped at Home Depot on the way home, they had no air conditioners either, well, except for the $1000 portable ones that you don’t put through a window or wall… heh. Bastards!

I swing by home to pick up the woman so that we can head to Camphill/Harrisburg to exchange the defective sheets, well, they had nothing at Boscov’s that really met with my approval so I just returned them. We then hopped over to Linen’s & Things, wow, that place is the mecca of bedding! I had a difficult time in choosing which set of sheets to get, but I finally settled on a set of 400tc sateen ones in a sort of creamy beige colour. They were on sale for $50, which is quite a good price for such a high thread count, and they seem to be made well, especially considering they didn’t fall apart like the other ones I took back, hahaha.

I finally spent a night in my new bed, mmmm, it’s so comfortable, I didn’t want to get up!

I started on the headboard lastnight, only to discover that the circular saw is now degenerate. I guess a new one is going to be on my list of tools to get eventually. So I gave up and used, get this, the reciprocating saw, hahahaah… yeah, no way to get a straight cut with that thing! Thankfully the straightness of the cut isn’t important because the whole thing is getting covered with batting, etc. I have one pack of batting on the board now, need to find the energy to get the second pack of batting on it, then cover it with this awesome chenille upholstery fabric. I think I’ll need to go get some bolts or something so that I can attach it to the bedframe. Of course as I realize that I’ll probably need to go to Lowes, I realize also that they are closing in nine minutes, so I guess that won’t be happening, hahaha. I can probably find what I need around here though, if I look closely enough.

Unfortunately it appears as though 2 bags of batting, which approximates about 5-6 layers doesn’t seem to be squishy enough, so I’ll need to go out and get some more. In retrospect I should have probably bought the foam, even though it was rather pricey, it probably would have been cheaper in the long run. Oh well, lessons learned. Cole had suggested that I use foam originally for the headboard up here. Of course the fabric store is closed so getting the foam now isn’t happening.

I don’t understand why some people feel the need to just keep twisting the knife once they’re fully aware that it is already firmly embedded into your heart.

I’m a rather pacifistic person in general, so in a way it surprised even me when the phrase ‘I’ll break his legs and if he fucks around with you again, I’ll kill him’ fell out of my mouth the other night. I wouldn’t do it, little things like legality and morality get in the way, but the idea is so tempting if you subtract those obstacles (which cannot be removed).

If geographic placement would be a little different… I might feel enough of a need to rough him up a bit; not particularly in any sort of physical way, because again, I have a huge issue with inflicting pain on someone,even if by all practical measures they fully deserve it.

I’m not also really one to get involved in something without being asked or otherwise asking. I was going to say that I wouldn’t get involved in something that doesn’t directly affect me; however, I think that it does, to an extent. If you hurt someone that I love, you essentially create a de facto state of war.

So I’m left with the unfulfillable desire to break this guy’s legs along with a completely antithetical desire to just hold my friend until he falls asleep. In a sense the latter is also unfulfillable for the time being; I hate feeling powerless, when words become the least powerful solution.

I often have dreams involving either train stations, metro stations, or airports. I had this bizzare dream yesterday that involved a sort of post-apocalyptic world that was mostly covered in water. I really should have written it down yesterday because now it’s more of just a blur, but it involved ‘driving’ this boat over a series of bridges with holes in them (a common theme, scarily enough) and the boat fell or slid off of this bridge interchange area… we finally found our way to this dock, where these people were less than thrilled with our being there. There was some sort of fight related scene, then we found our way into some shopping mall. I remember there being some sort of brief kiss between me and whoever the guy I was with was.

Today’s dream started out on a train, I was with Cole. I remember for some reason the train was stopped and I went to some other car, when I looked back to the original train there was some sort of accident, there were two trains on neighboring tracks, with what looked like “cartoon electric shock hair” people, some strewn onto the ground alongside the train. I was mortified, apparently there were then people switching trains, so I went to the one that seemed most logical, only to find that Cole wasn’t on it, but it started moving, so I yelled at the conductor guy to stop to let me off (it was more like a bus on tracks than an actual train). There was this woman who got totally bent out of shape because I wanted off the train, apparently there was a dead woman on it too, heh, and they wanted to have that dealt with. I was just going to jump from the train as it was accelerating, but the height was a bit too much, so once it slowed then I got off.

Back aboard the other train I discover that Cole is fine, so I suppose we continue on our way. We’re in England apparently and are living together in some apartment. Apparently everything is fine for a good while, though I’m not really sure what we do on a daily basis. One day I come home to find that there’s this degenerate boy living in the apartment below us and they’re chopping a whole in the floor so that they can pass *something* between them… to which I pretty much freak. The next thing I know is that Cole is gone, somebody else in the apartment building tells me that he’s gone to the train station… but that isn’t where he is, I figure out, somehow, that he’s at the airport. I grab together a bunch of my stuff and rush down there. I run into him and he says something incredibly rude about how he wanted to go to [somewhere that I forget] with someone that could afford to do it in style or something like that. I’m totally puzzled by the fact that something has come over him making him very much unlike his normal self. And then I lose track of him again — this woman tells me I want platform G, and that it is down near [something], I look at the map and can’t find it. Then I run into him again, at a ticket window of sorts, and pull what amounts to be perhaps 500 UK pounds of money out of his pocket. I ask him where on earth he got that money, though I have my suspicions (re: the hole between the floors and whatever it was that they were sending back and forth), but he tells me to keep it. It was pretty obvious that no matter what I would say that he was leaving.

Then, with irony, I wake up to my phone beeping with a page… it was him.

So lastnight, as I wrote, I went on an air conditioner hunt, neither of the ‘local’ (including Hagerstown, Maryland) walmarts had any air conditioners (except for some 30,000 BTU monstrosity), which was just absolutely mind-boggling considering how insanely hot it is outside. I guess since it’s August and they need to start selling fucking x-mas decorations the air conditioners that still have a purpose are completely unncessary to still sell? Bastids! I went to Lowe’s today and they only have really expensive ones, I didn’t have time to go to Home Depot in Maryland to check on what they would have, so my options are either there or ordering online from walmart (grrrrr!!!) which adds $20 in shipping of course, or to just do without. The doing without idea is what I’m going to most strongly consider, provided that the summer warmth soon dies down. The room downstairs is mostly underground and doesn’t have any heat sources like windows, so it might work; it’ll also be more friendly on the wallet, which is definitely important after buying that bed.

The delivery people were supposed to be here sometime between noon and 4pm. Did they arrive during that period of time? No, of course not. Want to take a guess at how long they kept me waiting around the house to show up? EIGHT FUCKING HOURS! That’s right kids, the delivery men were “running late” (which is quite the understatement), they didn’t get here until 8pm! Then they start yelling at each other! Yes, right in front of me, one of them was dead set against actually setting up the bed, I guess his idea of delivery and setup means just dropping the stuff off? I could just see them starting to open the whoopass on each other any second… I was about ready, before they finally showed up, to call and tell them to just forget about the delivery and that I didn’t want the damn thing anymore… I don’t like having my day fucked from the very beginning and then proceeding until nightfall.

With the bed finally in place, and yes it is lovely, we did a quick run out to Lowe’s to check on A/Cs, only to find, as I wrote just earlier, that they didn’t have any that were “affordable” …blah. That’s when I first decided to really just forget about getting an A/C for that room this summer. Next, with a whopping 30 minutes remaining until close, we jaunted over to the fabric store. I bought a half yard each of two shades of a blue hue, since I couldn’t decide which I wanted — so I can either make two with each colour, or two of each colour. I also bought 2 yards of this chennille upholstery fabric to make an upholstered headboard for the bed down there… similar to the one I made for this room; only not pleather, lol. This time though I’m going to attach the headboard to the bed, instead of to the wall… attaching it to the wall was a bit of a fiasco up here.

So, I get back home and decide that I’ll trial fit the blue wamsutta sheets that I had purchased last weekend… the fitted sheet is too small to actually cover the mattress properly. So I’m like, okay, I’ll take them back, no biggie. I look at the receipt in the bag, it isn’t the one for the sheets!! I then proceed to go through every single receipt in my desk drawer, and believe me, that’s A LOT of receipts; I can’t find the one I need! So, hmmm, they say on the other receipt that they’ll do “exchange only” without a receipt, so I’m hoping they mean “store credit” otherwise I’m going to be very cunty. I should probably call them first before wasting an hour to drive down there and back. If I do go back and “exchange” means “store credit” I’m taking my trusty tape measure and I’m opening up the sheets and measuring the corner seam before I buy them. I don’t need any more frustration with sheets not fitting properly. I’ll just try to find some that say they’ll work with a mattress much thicker than mine, then they’ll definitely fit.

The black sheets I bought at Boscov’s fit “alright” though not as well as one would hope, but they’ll do. The corners are deep enough that they all wrap under the mattress like they’re supposed to, they just don’t properly cover the sides completely. Since I need a set of sheets, they’re nice, and were less expensive than the blue ones, and I don’t feel like making the 2 hour roundtrip back to Boscov’s, I’m going to just deal with them. The deep pockets are deep, but not quite deep enough to fit perfectly.

The kingsize bedskirt that I had bought because it was on clearance for $7 versus paying $30 for a queen-sized one works perfectly well; the only reason it was on clearance was because Kmart/Martha changed the packaging… I couldn’t see paying all that more for less fabric, heh.

I spent a good chunk of the day sewing up the curtain panels for the dividing ‘wall’ of fabric. I had to make it more difficult for myself for the sense of “style” though of course, because sewing two widths of the fabric together just wouldn’t look as cool as sewing together four half-widths of fabric would, hahaha. So that means I had three flat-fell seams per panel, not to mention the hems for all four sides. I’ve gone through four bobbins of thread thus far, lol. I have only one hem to go before both curtain panels are finished. I need to cut the wooden “support strips” that I’m going to use to hang them though, I neglected to actually measure the distance and just told the guy at Lowe’s to cut each strip of wood to six feet, when the actual width of the room is more like 11 feet… d’oh. I didn’t account for the width decrease caused by the studs and panelling added to the room to make it livable, versus a garage.

Other than these numerous frustrations… and they’ve certainly been annoying beyond words, the room is looking nice. HAH!

Here’s a photo of the new bed, it’s sooo comfortable!

Addendum: It looks as though I’m going to be making that trip up to Camphill to go to Boscov’s afterall. I just took those black sheets out of the dryer and some of the side seams have come undone… wtf? I guess I won’t be sleeping down there on the new bed tonight, bugger. At least I have my receipt for those!

I set these plans for the bedroom in motion, at least the timing, somewhat based on other factors than my own. I guess it is just the desire to actually get something in motion, versus waiting around… I just need to do something that sets foundation for a future.

I don’t know what it is really, I’m just feeling this general doubt and hopelessness lately… I just need to drill it into my head that eventually things will get to where they should be… and even if it is going to be just me sleeping down there for a while, longer than I was thinking perhaps, it’ll still be a great bed in a great bedroom, heh. I just need to accept that sometimes it’s okay to do things for myself, the thing about it is, I’d probably not do something like that for just me — since I hadn’t.

I put up the curtains in the corners Wednesday night, bought a set of lamps (great deal, $20 for a table, floor, and clipon), and I also trimmed the carpet. Yesterday (Thursday) I spent a good portion of the day cleaning up and organizing the non-sleeping area portion of the room. I hit my goal of having the room ready for the bed though, even if it isn’t completely ready. I went shopping this morning for an air conditioner… it will completely blow out my money reserve, which of course was getting pretty low after buying the bed, but it seems silly for it to be too warm down there after spending so much money on the bed and effort on getting the room ready. Of course neither the Chambersburg, nor Hagerstown Walmart had any AC’s… wtf?

It’s sad, because I find it difficult to believe the things I say to others… when they apply to me. Or maybe I believe the idea, but don’t have enough faith in it? Doubt has a way of overwhelming everything. ‘We both need to do the things that get us to where we need to be… ‘ I wish I could remember what I said, because it really is the truth.

I just think it’s important to realize, both for myself and others, that I’m just plain ol’ grumpy lately. I guess it comes from so much uncertainty… I just don’t really deal well with so many course changes, and I don’t like setting one myself either… but that’s what I have to do, but balance it just enough that I can pick up a passenger and then we can still get to where we’re both going, together.

I find my conviction lacking lately. I just don’t have the energy for a confrontation, nor do I know if one is advised and more importantly I doubt it would do any good. I find myself stifled in speech, perhaps it isn’t the conviction I’m lacking, but the energy to carry it out into actualization. There are ideas that I believe in so strongly and they’re contrary to to temporary happiness, they’re for ultimate good, they lead to long-term stability.

What I would do isn’t absolutely the right course of action for anybody else. I just don’t want to see those I care about in the same agonizing pain that I’ve been in and for intents and purposes, I am still suffering from, that I’m still surviving through. I challenge my will daily. I sacrifice most of my moments of escape because I know they are ultimately damaging to me, doing what I need to do, versus what I want to do.

I ask myself the same questions, what would I do…

I’ve wrote about my experience of going to Pittsburgh to see Stephen one last time before he flew home. I used the test of regret, “Would I regret not trying to see him?” and the answer was yes. In the final count, it was completely counter-productive, it causes a re-evaluation of the regret test. While I don’t regret seeing him, it only served to cause my pain to be deeper. I honestly believe it would have been better for me to just resign myself to not seeing him, to having those awful moments the night I left be the end of it, because in retrospect that was better than the resultant memory.

People do not change, only our memories of them. The bitter memories usually grow sweeter with time, we filter out, even without intention, the ones we don’t want to remember, and intensify the better ones… Most of the time we don’t miss the actual person, we miss the idea of them, we miss the way they made us feel. When we see them… reality hits, we realize that they’re not as wonderful as our minds have made them.

So, tonight, my anxiety was getting the best of me in a way that it hasn’t for months. I was nervous and felt my hands and arms shaking ever so slightly. I need to find the middle ground, the balance, where I still care deeply, but do not allow my concern to flood over me. I worry that there is no gray though, either I’m fully me, or I’m out of the situation. I found myself wanting to issue an ultimatum, because I feel so strongly, because I don’t want to pick up the pieces when everything shatters, when it could be avoided. I hope I am wrong, as I almost always hope that I’m wrong, but there are very few situations where I feel so strongly and those feelings prove not to be correct.

In thinking about it just now, there is really only one person that I allow emotional distance to be lessened, in that they’ve hurt me, and there is just enough trust to be upfront. So you ask, or not, of those people that emotional distance is required for, it can never be the same. I’ll be there, but how I’m feeling won’t ever materialize to them, they’ve lost that right, perhaps permanently. Earning it back is likely to be too close to impossible for them.

It is because of wearing my heart on my sleeve, I need to protect it, because as has been seen too many times, they’re not going to. I guess it’s just that I’ll do nearly anything… for someone that has found a place into my heart, therefore I just can’t let anyone in… and likewise if they’re trashing the place, they need to be locked out. They’re going to leave a permanent impression anyway; forever a whisper.

That’s when I know it’s important… my body reacts, the feeling radiating through my arms to my fingers and my heart feels as though it is being tugged upon. This I know, I’m devoted, my own defenses are overridden.