Water level--Oh my God, everybody out, it's sink or swim.

I have perfectly rational fears: spiders, bees, moths mating with my marshmallows, being eaten alive by just about anything...

Then, I have a few irrational fears: fear of abandonment, claustrophobia in giant rooms with a lot of people, our really old vacuum cleaner that we don't actually have anymore, but was loud, and had a light on the head, and was generally a product of the 80s.

Then, there's the downright silly ones, that no one else in the world is afraid of, and hiding in the bathtub is not going to save me from them, no matter how hard I hide. These would be things like, a fear of black toilet seats (I don't know, this goes all the way back to when I was a kid - perhaps I was once eaten by one?), a fear of overflowing toilets (way to go, plumber's granddaughter, I bet you're making him real proud up there), a fear of the decorative pieces on the arms of our old couch, because they looked like tongues and I used to run screaming from the room if one came unstapled, and, you know, general fear of basements. Especially dark ones.

I bring this up, because one of our toilets got clogged today, and the water level was rising, and my voice was getting higher and higher in pitch as I told this to Ruy, and he told me I had to fix it myself. So, I did. But I stayed planted firmly in the bathtub while doing so.

Also, great tip for a clogged toilet? Pour a pail of water into said toilet very quickly. In a lot of cases, everything just goes right down. Which is great, because I don't think we own a plunger.

Learning to deal with the fucking elephants.

You know, some days, I wake up, and everything is rosy and wonderful, and I feel productive and generally awesome, and other days, I can barely get out of bed, because the elephants have taken up residence on my chest. All the elephants really want is love and affection, and maybe breakfast, but they fail to realize that their comfortable nesting place is right on my chest, and for fuck's sake, I can't breathe with them there. Like, a lot. And every time I notice that the elephants are still there, it gets less and less easy to take a breath.

Anxiety is a pernicious brain-eating zombie. All you really want is for it to stop gnawing on your head for long enough to run, or maybe find something to hack their limbs off with, but they keep climbing back onto you and supping on your delicious brain-meats, leaving you weak and unable to function.

Days like today, when I realize all I still have to accomplish in life, how many sandwiches I have left to eat, and that I'm going to have to move from our glorious downtown apartment, out to the 'burbs, taking my slightly psychotic mother-in-law with us, and probably within the next couple of months, I just can't get out from under the elephants on my chest and away from the zombie. My breathing is too quick, I can't get enough air, and damn if I'm going to ruin what should be a perfectly serviceable day, by just taking the damn Ativan, and going for a long nap.

Oh yes, I see this day going far, in terms of getting anything done. I wouldn't even mind the zombie, if the elephants would just shift a little.

...who wants to hyperventilate with me?

Inappropriate songs to get married about...

You know you're a very, very sad (in both the emotional and pathetic sense) nerd, when in the last moments before you say goodbye to your dying bunny, you suddenly have the theme song from Enterprise stuck in your head.

...well, in all fairness, I was on a hair-trigger anyway, and while Faith of the Heart is actually a rather hopeful song (especially for a bunny going on to romp the eternal pastures), it always killed my heart dead watching the opening credits of Enterprise. Ah, misplaced emotions.

On a more somber note, I hope Blooper is going where her heart will take her, right now. She'll reach any star. She's got faith, faith of the heart.

Russian roulette isn't the same without a gun.

Law & Order: The Mothership

So, Law & Order ended its 20-year run on May 24th. Or so I'm told. I actually didn't watch it, because I was too busy celebrating my brother's birthday (9 days late) and Mother's Day (15 days late). And actually, this entry was supposed to go up sometime around my brother's birthday. But then Blooper (one of our bunnies) got really sick and was humanely euthanized on the 21st, and I spent most of that week crying anyway, so, no post.

I started actually watching Law & Order in the summer of 2001. I started with the sixth season's finale, which was possibly the worst episode I could have started with, because Claire died at the end. And a cloud sort of hangs over your head when you then park yourself in front of A&E at 10, 4, 8, and 11:00 every day, watching the early episodes, knowing that your favourite character is going to die anyway. And sobbing into your lamb and gnocchi, while trying not to tell anyone you're crying over TV, because damn that's weird.

I'm pretty sure I've watched at least one episode from all 20 seasons, and all of them in the year they were broadcast, right from 1990. And, I mean, I tried to pay attention when I was 5, because it was a grown-up people show, but all I really remember was that I had the attention span of a gnat, there were people in suits, and I liked neon colours, none of which were featured in Law & Order.

I remember Michael Moriarty getting into a bar fight in Maple Ridge around the time I was crying into my gnocchi, which hardly jived with my then-view of Law & Order people being awesome, and unable to do any wrong. That sort of coloured my view of Ben Stone forever after.

I remember how sad everyone was when Jerry Orbach died, and how such a large piece of the show died with him. Dennis Farina, you were no replacement.

I remember discovering that Jerry Orbach was Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast, which pretty much clinched his awesomeness for eternity.

I remember the kafuffle over Serena(?) coming out as a lesbian, but only after she was fired. Because Dick Wolf apparently can't do openly gay characters. Prove me wrong, people, prove me wrong.

I remember seeing Richard Brooks on tons of other shows, but having trouble placing him, because he didn't have the flat-top anymore.

I remember thinking Angie Harmon was kinda cute, but then finding out (*coughthisyearcough*) that she was a staunch Republican, and being unable to summon any respect for her.

I remember finding out that Carey Lowell was married to Richard Gere, finding out how rude Gere was to a fan in a wheelchair, and subsequently losing all respect for them both.

I've noticed that no other ADA has ever really lived up to Claire Kincaid's awesomeness, no calm-voiced Skoda will ever live to the greatness that was Elizabeth Olivet, and that, though Van Buren was brought in originally to fill in the required minority representation, her character has always been beautifully, beautifully portrayed.

And most of all, I remember Jack McCoy. A lot. And now, he'll be stuck doing TD Waterhouse commercials forever.

Goodbye, Mothership. I'll always remember our 20 years together. You weren't perfect, you didn't have enough women, and you totally lied about those stories never being ripped from the headlines, but you'll always have a place in my heart and on my DVD shelf.

The good thing is, he's still alive, so we could ask him what the hell his painting represents.

Blogs need to have a point. A reason for existing, if you will. Some people blog about food, some about politics, some about their children, and some about their way-more-fascinating-than-mine (kittens, for fuck's sake!) lives.

Me? Well, I stream of consciousness all over the internet, abusing the 140 character Twitter limit with my need to introspect prodigiously at the population at large, maintaining a Livejournal that only really came about because all the cool kids were doing it, and it seems to be a requirement for fandom, and starting 300 dozen writing projects in Google Docs that almost, but not quite, go somewhere.

Actually, even if I could pick a subject for this blog, I'd almost certainly stray from the topics at hand, to tell you things like how I think trepanation might be preferable to this massive headache on one side of my head, or how I've forgotten the password to the Gmail I just signed up to Etsy with, because I'm smart like that.

So, instead, I'm just going to pick a new and interesting (and pseudorandom!) subject whenever I post. You might learn an interesting fact or two, like how, by doing this, I'm contributing to the heat death of the universe, and how I think that's just swell.