I’ve been all in a funk for the last week and a ton of weird, annoying shit has been happening — and not just to me! Friends far and wide have cited incidences of the funk in their own daily goings on.
If you’re into astrology you might blame the old Mercury Retrograde, which is said to screw things up pretty regularly. Last week I jokingly cited this astrological nonsense on twitter (as usual, without checking the facts) only to find out that Mercury really is in retrograde. Huh. What do you know about that?
Anyway, has your life been funkdafied as well? Is the universe serving you up a slice of old, funky pie? Please chime in if so!
BUT FIRST! Here’s a List of the Shit:
1. While cooking dinner the other night, I accidentally sliced off a smidge of my fingertip. It hurt; it was nasty; blood was everywhere. When I finally got the situation under control, I happened to notice that the dog had, in the middle of all the chaos, encircled me in a ring of urine. So that was fun. Theories abound: most people seem to think he was “protecting” me. Next time I will thank him to leave well enough alone — it’s bad enough to have to clean up your own blood and finger mess, but to have to clean up dog pee, too?
2. Later that night, I was awakened by the sounds of my cat scratching at my bedroom door at 3:00 AM. I got up and opened the door to shoo her away only she wasn’t there. No cat in sight. You know what was there? A giant fucking palmetto bug the size of my fist. If you are lucky enough not to know what a palmetto bug is, it’s basically an enormous flying cockroach. It flew away into the living room, where it probably still lurks today. Waiting. Lurkingly.
3. Two days later, same as above except replace “bedroom” with “bathroom” and “palmetto bug” with “huge motherfucking wasp.”
4. Feeling generally exhausted, headachy, and icky. Sleep schedule completely off. Incomplete sentences.
5. The office copy machine has been broken for what seems like weeks now, apparently because some genius broke a part of it while “trying” to “fix” a “paper jam.” The administrative assistants have been filling in by making all our copies on their top-secret machine that we aren’t allowed to use. Of course, they will only do this after we fill out an appropriate request form and place it in a special receptacle X hours before the copies are needed. They are nothing if not accomodating, nice, friendly, approachable, and free of snark when it comes to such requests. By which I mean the opposite of that.
6. Via a recent memo, I learned that non-tenure-track faculty now receive 1/6 of the travel funding to attend conferences that used to be given last year. Point of note: I am non-tenure-track faculty. In case this short-changing should go unnoticed, however, the department has decided to make it more blatantly visible: I recently observed that whenever fliers are distributed in faculty mailboxes (promoting some department event, for example), tenured and tenure-track faculty receive color copies while non-tenure-track faculty receive black-and-white copies. Separate but equal, one might say.
7. I keep trying to publish this post but the “internet” keeps being “unable” to “contact” my “server.”
Yes, it’s safe to say I am feeling the funk. And you?
Raveling Out 
That bit with the flyers is just weird!
Yes: car accident coming back to haunt me in lawyer form, sister has the breast cancer, plant in fancy work cubicle mysteriously dying, dog has a stinky butt.
Oh my dear baby Jeebus. I just had to check my watch to make sure I have the time right now to type all my retrograded bullshit. Good news (for once!), the vacuuming can wait.
Well, let’s see: in general, I’ve been feeling rundown by the blasted THREE weeks of rain we’ve had, which have prevented me from being outside AND dry for more than 30 seconds recently.
But most of the funk started in the last week. First of all, The Boy picked up a demon at pre-school. That’s the only explanation I can find for it. Every other day or so (or, like for 6 hours yesterday), he will turn into the most high-strung, incommunicative, screamy toddler EVER encountered. Both myself AND Philly have lost patience with this on more than one occasion, which is saying a lot, cause usually Philly picks up where I give up. But this demon-child CANNOT be comforted, CANNOT be pacified, CANNOT be bribed, even. Thus far it’s been a lot of “Demon, BE GONE”‘s and holy water. It’s been exhausting.
Next, the great technology fail of Aught Nine, in the Philly/Clarabella household: Thursday (the day of evil) my phone just cut off. For no reason. In the middle of a text message. It would not cut back on. Went straight to the Verizon store after lunch, where the woman working there seemed to have the IQ of an intelligent rock (case in point, when I suggested we plug my phone in to see if it would turn on, she first looked confused, then mumbled something incoherent, then claimed they didn’t have a cord for my phone WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING), and I’m not sure she spoke English. That is also where another woman asked me if I was pregnant. Worst phone-store visit EVER.
On returning home, The Boy was possessed and our internet was down. Philly had to teach. For some reason, I assume the internet problem is my router, so I attempt a replacement. We have a back-up. Long story. Anyhoo, in the middle of the disc set-up of said back-up router, the disc freaks out and shuts the set-up down, incomplete. The disc will not restart set-up, suddenly doesn’t recognize that the router is plugged into the wall and keeps trying to tell me to check that the bloody outlet works (IT DOES). Breathe, breathe, long story short. Because of this mix-up, I start fiddling with stuff on my computer to try and see if I can find the router’s signal. And then, my airport turns off. Actually, it doesn’t just “turn off.” It UNactivates. I have no idea why or how or if I did it or if Loki looked down at just that moment, elbowed Thor in the ribs and said “watch this, I’m gonna fuck with her” or what, but in the years of having my macs, I have never seen an airport just UNactivate. And you know what? I didn’t know how to REactivate it. That took me 20 minutes, 10 of which I cried b/c I thought I had broken my beloved computer.
All of this turned out to be AT&T’s fault (or Ted Hughes’s, depending on how you look at it). The internet FROM AT&T was down, which I would have known if I had just called them first before I pulled out the new router and all that jazz and saved myself over an hour of hair-pulling, fist-shaking, screaming-at-the-sky misery and frustration, all while my demon-spawn shrieked in the background. Note to self.
Let’s just say, I had some drinks Thursday night. A few. Oh, ok, quite a few. And I enjoyed them immensely.
And then, yesterday morning, I got up with The Boy (a little demonlike) and our fancy LCD flat-screen, year-old, more-than-we-could-really-afford TV Would. Not. Turn. On. Just like that: not with the remotes, the button, not unplugging it, etc. So we have a call into Samsung for service, which we managed to get before our warranty runs out in THREE days. That’s the first lucky break we’ve had in weeks. I’m sure it will also be the last. Oy.
I AM SO IN THE FUNK WITH YOU. Replace “palmetto bug” with “grasshopper on steroids,” and make me try to keep my kitten from eating it. Note general anguish with photocopier that led to me kicking it when no one was around on Sunday. Note THE FACT THAT I WAS ON CAMPUS ON SUNDAY.
And now I feel bad bitching about phones and routers and TVs when someone’s bad week included breast cancer.
I think the dog thought you had been stung by a jellyfish and was trying to help stop the pain. (You pee on the stings right?) I’ve been in Zen acceptance mode for several days, going to 40th HS reunion events for spouse and entertaining her friend/classmate from Texas and her redneck husband who are here for a week. Nothing too awful unless you count stripping paint in an 1898 caboose in 90+ degree heat (but no humidity) Oooooohmmmmmmm
totally in a funking funk. god DAMN it.
I have to say, my week sucked (except for lunch with Clarabella where her phone died), but nothing terrible or traumatic. Except for maybe the mystery “why do I feel like I drank a bottle of Scotch?” migraine I had ALL DAY Sunday. It should be noted that I don’t drink Scotch, and I haven’t had a drink since Clarabella and I went out a week and a half ago, and I only had three drinks that night. Maybe four.
So a general malaise, perhaps, caused by the assworthy weather we had for that month or so. Now to get my days back on track…
Why is everyone having migraines now? Is Mercury retrograde also responsible for migraines? Craziness.
P – BOO to all of that! It sounds like you are having an especially bad form of the funk. All my best thoughts for you and your sister.
C – Yikes, frustraion! Hope everything is up and running and The Boy settles into his new routine.
E – Now, are you sure you weren’t actually down here kicking OUR copier? Were you the copier bandit? Just kidding. Keep those kitties bug-free!
S – The houseguests will be gone soon, I’m sure, and maybe more fall-like weather will come. Namaste.
K – Funk the funk! I hope it defunks soon.
R – Yup, general malaise and unexplained headaches. I’m right there with you. Now just stop drinking all that scotch!
G – MIGRAAAAAAAAINES! (Imagine me yelling that all like “KHAAAAAAAAAN!”) I dunno, man, but it had better stop. At least mine can (partially?) be explained by whiskey. Damn whiskey.
Yep, total funk. It’s been a few weeks now, and none of it is exciting enough to share. A lot of the same ol’, same ol’; I’m just not dealing with it as well as I’d like.
However, I think it’s going to turn around. I woke up today to cool weather, and tomorrow is a new month. I’m SO ready for October.
Lord love a duck. I am so on an upswing. I feel horrible about the funking funk going around for everyone here. For me, the most positive thing has been that I adopted two German shepherds that were quite ill and they are doing much better now!
Anyhoo, I’ll send out some positive vibes for the funkdafied demographic.
I’m ensnared in a total deep-fried funk up here in Portland. The weather abruptly changed from summer to late fall on Tuesday, some guy in the audience caught the hiccups during the last 15 minutes of The Hurt Locker when I saw it last night and my DVR keeps freezing.
Oh, and there’s the whole “job getting outsourced” thing which is a complete drag.
K – Cool weather can make all the difference! I hope it’s sticking around.
J – Wow, that’s awesome! Thanks for the good vibes, too.
B – Oh, that’s a funk all righty. Down here, a change for fall-ish weather is good, but out there it’s a sure-fire recipe for the funk. Not to mention the job. You’ll pull through!