Bottled Sky

My computer mouse has gone bat-shit crazy. The left button is sticking, so almost every left-click behaves like a double click. It opens multiple windows and accidentally closes others, deselects things right after I select them, resizes windows at inopportune moments… the list goes on. It’s ANNOYING (note the angry caps locking).

We bought that mouse not even a year ago. The one that came before it lasted a good several years before croaking, so in my mind it has no business malfunctioning so soon. I’m going to have to buy a new one, unless one of you knows how I can fix it. Any suggestions?

Speaking of mice, here’s a cat drawing I made for Tracy. (Yay for segues that really aren’t!) I used it for a thank-you card I sent her in January. I love it when cats purr

I haven’t been dealing with stress very well. (I can feel everyone who has had to deal with my stress-induced bitching raise an eyebrow at the understatement.) It’s like I’m experiencing continual PMS (read: crankiness personified). I’ve been a bit short with most people, but I’ve been at my monstrous best at home. I know it’s totally unfair, but I may have been reserving the nasties for my mom because I know she’s the least likely to strangle her one and only daughter. I feel really guilty about it and I’ve been trying to keep my temper under control, but I keep failing. And it just seems completely lame to apologize when I know I won’t be able to stop myself from being snappish again, at least until this semester (i.e. the source of all stressful things) is over (and buried 10,000 feet into the ground where it will never ever bother me again).

I’m normally not the type of person who remembers past slights — I follow the rant-for-ten-minutes-then-forget philosophy — but the stress is making me remember old annoyances, too. Like just now as I was washing the dishes, I suddenly remembered the time a couple of years back when I had to wash a huge pile of dishes at 5 a.m. with a hangover waiting to happen. I had texted my parents that night that my friends and I had decided to have an impromptu drinking session (or alcoholic rampage as my friend Mei-Anne would call it) and would not be back till morning. Since they had replied and told me to have fun (my folks are very lenient), I had assumed that I wouldn’t have to worry about my dishwashing duties for the night. I had finally managed to get home a little past 4 a.m. and had been looking forward to sleeping the drunkenness away. But no! They had left all the dishes from lunch and dinner scattered on the kitchen counter, some still on the table. So there I had been, pending hangover and all, pissed as hell to be scrubbing dishes at dawn. Had I been naive to think that they would clean up because I had given them sufficient warning and because they hate it when the dishes are not washed right away?

But I digress. The point is, that was ages ago! What was my brain doing bringing that up now? Bad, stress! Bad! I need for this semester to be over, so everything can go back to being hunky-dory in Nikkiland. Then again, I can’t just turn into a monster every time things get tough. I have to find a healthier way to deal with the stress. Somehow, stress balls aren’t enough anymore.

An afterthought added several hours after my original post: I turned 22 last week. My life was in a much better place last year, I think. But I can’t really complain; it’s been a good life.

It’s funny how some people think they know me just from reading my blog. You can know a person your entire life and not really know them. It’s completely valid to make judgments about strangers based on what they post in their bits of virtual space — but to think that you have them all figured out? That’s just absurd. And to go the extra mile and actually have them labeled and put into a neat little box is plain stupidity.

Then again, here I am, guilty of the same thing, because now I think a person I don’t even know is stupid based on a single e-mail. Feel free to stuff me in the box labeled “Hypocrite.”

Whatever the case, Stranger, I’m flattered that you think I’m pretty.