Pointless

It is 6 am here and I still haven't managed to get to sleep tonight. I took a sleeping pill, and two Xanax, and still don't even feel drowsy. That will probably happen around 8:30 this morning, leaving me a zombie the rest of the day. I know no one out there gives a hoot about my insomnia but I'm compelled to complain about it. Maybe someone will have a sure-fire cure? Yeah, right.

My christmas shopping remains in limbo, in that I've decided what to get but can't find them. I also can't seem to resist buying stuff for myself, making me feel guilty, but damn! Have you seen the sales going on? I bought a $78 pair of Ralph Lauren slacks for $13. Not even eBay does better, and I get to try them on. I can't imagine what the after-Christmas sales will be like -- will they pay us to take the stuff off their hands? Clearly bad news for retailers this year.

Saturday marked the one year anniversary of my last day of work. I gotta say, I don't miss it, although I would like to hear the latest gossip from work. I called a couple to times to ask or answer various questions, and always they would say, "We'll have to get together for lunch some Friday--we'll call you when everybody can make it." Of course it never happens, and what's more, I asked to be contacted when the other "old-timer" retired so I could come to his party, and no one called then either. I sent flowers to the funeral of one of the main office guys, and never got an acknowledgement from the family -- is that passe now? And I feel, not quite hurt, but, but not good either. All the comments before I left about how they couldn't get along without me...guess I wasn't so irreplacable after all. N says, out of sight, out of mind. I did pop in one day about a week after I left, no one was in, but my entire office, including the computer and the furniture had been replaced. They even got rid of my chair. So...I took it with me, from where it was sitting in the hall with the "surplus--take me" sign on it. I ordered that chair special because of the lumbar support...

I think I'm just feeling down today. The holidays are always a tough time, too many painful ghosts, and no sign of christmas cheer. We went to Gassaway last Friday to put the holiday decorations on the graves, it was cold and spitting snow, no one else was there, the wind whipped away anything you set on the ground. I'm ambivalent about doing it anyway, really we do it because my aunt and uncle appreciate it, as they decorate the rest of the family graves, but it's a melancholy task at best. Traffic on I-79 was atrocious coming home, even for a weekday, and that makes me an anxious passenger.

Oh hell, no one wants to listen to this whiny drivel. Move along, nothing to see here...