So I am fucking PISSED. Here’s what happened: I haven’t been sleeping well at all. It’s hard for me to sleep at night without taking the Seroquel, and the Ambien has pretty much stopped working. I emailed my psychiatrist about this. I asked him if we could try a new sleeping med. He told me I had to come in and talk to him. So I did. He asked me why I’d stopped taking the Seroquel at night. I told him it makes me tired and fat and I hate it. I just need help with the sleeping. But instead of being all like, “Oh, okay, I understand, you don’t want to be on a lot of medications, that’s reasonable, let’s work with that,” he was all like, “Well, let’s try different medications.” So he took me off the Seroquel and put me on this shit called Topamax and this other shit called Temazepam and I was too damned exhausted to even argue with him about it. I’m so mad at myself for not speaking up for myself. But I was going on literally probably an hour of sleep and I just couldn’t do anything but nod and cry. So I took them last night and I literally couldn’t get out of bed today until 2 pm. I had to almost roll myself to the bathroom to pee. My body felt like bricks. It was the weirdest feeling, just absolutely overwhelming physical fatigue, like the air had weight. I was immobile. There were times when I’d briefly wake up and think I was paralyzed — that’s how heavy my legs were. And my muscles were sore until about 7 pm today. And I had the craziest dreams, very lucid. In one of my dreams, I’d taken Leo and the cats to a boarding facility because I needed to go to Panama for a birthday party (long story), and when I woke up I was frantically checking for them because I couldn’t remember if I’d really boarded them or not. And I am NEVER that way with dreams. It was awful. I’m SO fucking pissed. I hate psychiatrists so much. I was really doing just fine and I was really happy, I was just having trouble sleeping, and now my body’s all fucked up again. Why are doctors always so excited to just prescribe you a bunch of shit you don’t need and you didn’t ask for? It’s no wonder this whole fucking country’s addicted to drugs. This is what I get when I’m trying not to be on a lot of drugs. Can you imagine what they’d give me if I were actually drug-seeking?

It’s my own fault, too. I should have stuck up for myself and put my foot down and been like, “No, I’m good on the low dose of the Seroquel, just please put me on something new for the sleeping.” But I let myself get talked into trying not one but two new drugs. And who the fuck puts someone on two new psych drugs at the same time? I talked to my dad about it today and he was like, “I would never do that with a patient, because then you can’t separate what’s causing the side effects.” DUH. That’s a really good point. I can’t believe I agreed to this shit. I was so happy before. I just couldn’t sleep.

Oh, and you wanna know the kicker? None of that new shit helped me sleep anyway. I ended up having to take the Seroquel around midnight anyway because my brain wouldn’t shut off, and I was like, “I absolutely cannot go another night without sleeping.”

So what did I do today? Recovered from all the medical “help” I got yesterday. FUCK.

1) Decided I wanted to buy rugs for my apartment. Asked on Twitter where I could buy a cheap rug in Seattle. Ten minutes later, pulled up to Homegrown in Fremont to get lunch with Neighbor Danielle. This was three doors down:

Obvious conclusion: God reads my Twitter.

2) After purchasing an amazing rug for approximately 95% off its $1300 price tag, I decided I wanted to redecorate my patio. My neighbor and I went to Home Depot, where they had amazing deals on potted trees because they are all going to lose their leaves in a month. I bought four trees and she bought two. Then we put them all in my car. Along with the rug. Did I mention we both had our dogs with us?

3) Took the trees out of the car, created a small forest in our elevator, then transported the trees to my patio, where they look stunning. I will take a photo when it’s light again. Honestly when I tried to put plants on my patio myself, last year, it just ended up looking horrible and the cats ate all the plants anyway. Like within 10 minutes. I’m just flat-out incapable of doing this stuff. The brain process that manages it always goes into core dump immediately after initialization. But Danielle? Is a genius at it. It looks fab. Thank you, Danielle!

4) Cooked and consumed risotto with garlic.

5) Went to my friend Alicia’s house for Catan night. I suck at Catan. I’m like the worst Catan-er ever. I don’t understand any of the rules and I don’t understand how anyone else understands them either. It’s like football — the rules have been explained to me 100 times, and it doesn’t matter. I have no idea why sometimes I get two wheat cards and sometimes I get a wheat card and a paper card. I don’t understand what the knights do or why you want knights or when the barbarians are going to invade. Alicia and her boyfriend are hardcore about it. Her boyfriend could practically write the rulebook for Catan from memory. I lost badly. But Alicia had made homemade vanilla ice cream, which made it all worth it.

6) Came home, wrote my boss a frustrated email because he won’t send me to the Twitter conference in LA. He says I can go, he just won’t pay for it. (And I pretty much just spent my potential plane fare in trees today.) I felt bad about sending an angry email, but I did feel my points were valid.

7) I desperately want my LinkedIn profile to be 100% done. LinkedIn always says it’s at like 75%. I put in some bullshit about how my goal is to get married and have babies, and that pushed me up to 85% done, but I can’t figure out how to get over the rest of that hump. I think I have to ask people for recommendations. I downright refuse to do that. It makes me angry that they expect it. As revenge, I changed my industry from ‘Entertainment’ to ‘Dairy,’ and that amused me for long enough that I wasn’t angry anymore. I’m the CEO of a dairy company, y’all.

Yesterday I was kind of depressed. Yesterday was kind of a hard day. Today was much better.

First off, it’s been raining like a motherfucker. Just pouring down from the sky in buckets. That’s not traditional Seattle rain — which is really more of a mist. I am loving it and I am thriving on it. I am taking pictures of it.

I know this girl named Andrea. I don’t know her well — she’s a friend of a friend — and I see her every now and then, and her mascara always looks great. I asked her, a couple months ago, what kind of mascara she used. She emailed me back with the name of a boutique in Fremont and a hard-to-find mineral makeup brand sold there. Like I said, this was two months ago, and I’ve hardly seen her since. Today, since I had nothing else to do, I decided I’d go to that boutique — called Burnt Sugar — and get the mascara. I’d never been there before. I walked through the door and practically ran over Andrea, who was also there to buy the mascara. Isn’t that just the most random thing ever? Anyway. Love the mascara. Bought it. Felt the universe was proud of me for being in that boutique today.

I decided to poke around in some more of the boutiques in the area, which have really phenomenally beautiful clothes at heart-stopping prices. Like $700 for a top. And that’s on sale. Gorgeous top, though. But it got awkward because these are tiny little boutiques that were practically abandoned, and I’d go inside, and then I’d be trapped there with the shop owner because it was raining too hard for me to leave. I got to know many of the shop owners today. They did not give me any deals.

I did, however, find pretty much the only really amazing swimsuit shop I’ve ever come across in Seattle. It’s called Tininha, and it’s as good as anything they have in LA. Beautiful, sexy, creative swimsuits. I was blown away by some of them. I didn’t buy any, but I did get a jacket there, which is my new favorite jacket ever.

Then I went to Whole Foods — the one farthest from my apartment — mostly so I could drive through the rain for a little while longer.

Tonight was my friend Desiree’s birthday party. I love Desiree primarily because she’s an awesome girl, but also because she looks a lot like my little sister and also reminds me of her personality-wise. My little sister turned 26 almost exactly two weeks ago. Desiree turns 26 tomorrow. So they’re basically the same age. And really they do look a lot alike. (Even though I’m going to get an angry email from my sister tomorrow like “That girl looks nothing like me!”) Being around Desiree makes me feel like I’m around my kid sister, whom I never get to see because she lives in San Diego. For some reason it makes me feel less guilty about being an absentee sister, like I’m somehow involved in my sister’s life through Des, and it makes me feel protective of and bonded to Des. Anyway. It was good to be at her party.

After a couple hours, everyone I knew had left the party — there were still plenty of folks there, I just didn’t know them and Des was busy entertaining — so I peaced out. I texted my neighbor Danielle to see where she was at, and ended up meeting her and our other neighbor Shae at this bar called Fun House. It’s about a mile from our apartment complex, directly in the shadow of the Space Needle. This is a pic from the patio area:

They were there because some of Shae’s friends were in a band that was playing. The band was called Hell’s Half Acre, and I actually really enjoyed their set. I don’t even know what kind of music you’d call it, but I was rocking out.

There were a couple other dudes there who were friends of Shae from way back, and I guess before I showed up she’d told them I’m always talking on Facebook about how much I like Glee. So as soon as I walk in the bar, this one guy’s like, “Sasha! Remember me? We met at the premiere of Glee!” I was so confused. He would continue to fuck with me like that the entire night. At first he basically just invited himself over to my house to “spoon” and I politely declined and was thoroughly creeped out by his blatant attempts to spend the night at my house. But there was something about him that was attractive to me — something interesting and honest and good. And he really does love Glee! After he’d gotten the blatant flirting out of the way, we had a great conversation, I felt really comfortable and happy around him, and between him and Danielle I was basically laughing so hard my stomach hurt the whole night. This is Danielle telling an animated story after heavy drinking:

And this is me expressing my gratitude to her for making me laugh so hard:

But anyway. Back to this boy. There was something about him I liked, and our lives are very different, but we have a lot in common as people, and I really had a great time talking to him. And, no, he didn’t come back to my apartment. But he did manage to get my number when Danielle and I left the bar a little after 1 am, and we’ve been texting back and forth for a couple hours since. So who the hell knows what’ll happen — I’m personally still reeling from Julia Allison’s breakup, so I’m not sure if I’m in any position to trust men right now — but it was refreshing to meet a guy I find interesting. It’s such an elusive quality in men. Plenty of men are smart, plenty are funny, plenty are cute and erudite and accomplished. So very few are actually interesting. So, if nothing else, tonight reminded me that there are still men in the world who can engage my interest.

I have no plans at all for tomorrow. Am considering packing up Leo and driving to Leavenworth for the day. Remember Leavenworth?

1) I am sunburned as fuck. Someone at the tanning salon was less-than-accurate in her appraisal of how long I should stay in the state-of-the-art body toaster. I like to think she was just being stupid, rather than maliciously deceptive.

2) I don’t care and I will still go back again. After all, I paid for a monthly pass.

3) Ballet class summary: You know those teensy, tiny, near-imperceptible little movements ballerinas make with their feet and heels and toes? The ones nobody pays attention to because we just want to see them jump and swing? We practiced those. On Thursday. I am still extremely sore from it, all over my body. It is possible that ballet is the most physically taxing athletic activity in existence. (Except for dodgeball.) But I wore my leotard and skirt and ballet slippers and leg warmers and I looked PRECIOUS. I also noticed for the first time that I have really nice shoulder muscles. Shout-out to my trainer Kristen on that one.

4) The inviolable rule of Internet dating: If you post anonymously or under a pseudonym but describe yourself reasonably accurately, your former flame will send a desperate-sounding reply within the next five minutes. He will send it from a fake account as well. You will know it is him because he sends along a picture of just his chest, and you recognize his chest instantly, because it has a distinctive feel, a tightness and a smallness and a roughness and a pinkness around the abs — it’s a non-classic but still perfectly sexy chest — and also you recognize the bookcase in the photo behind him. You stare at the photo for thirty seconds, knowing that it’s him, before you read the email, the one that contains his real name. He stopped returning your calls a couple months ago. You look again at the picture of the chest. You miss him. You respond with a joke, calling him out. He will text you later in the night, he will invite you over. You will decline politely, and you will sit impatiently through dinner with the date you’ve selected instead, and you will hurt his feelings when you leave before dessert because all you can think about is this chest. You will text him, this chest, as you peel away from your date. “I’m sorry. Can I come over?” He replies kindly, “I’m going to bed. Let’s talk next week.” You are crestfallen, and you wish he hadn’t reappeared like that. You wish you hadn’t been so hurtful to your date. You wish none of this had done any damage. You just miss him, and you want to lay against his chest again.

5) LA trip, baby. Looks like I’m going the last week in October for the #140conf, a conference on all things Twitter and social media. Mostly I’m there to network and see my old LA friends and hopefully appear on the “Police chiefs that Tweet panel” and it would be a huge bonus if I get through the whole thing without punching Justine Ezeriak in the fucking face. I’M JUSS JEALOUS!

I play on like 85 sports teams now. Honestly I’m basically Jillian Michaels with my workout schedule. I play on my volleyball team. I start ballet tomorrow (SO EXCITED). My neighbor offered me a permanent spot on her dodgeball team (SOOOO EXCITED). I work out once a week with my fabulous trainer Kristen. I work out twice a week at the gym in my building. I basically have the fitness level of an Olympic gymnast at this point. But at least I can be certain that I will, at no point during any of this, lose weight. Why? Because my body is fundamentally resistant to weight loss. It’s also fundamentally resistant to weight gain. My weight will never, ever change for as long as I live, no matter what I do. Only three things are certain in this life: death, taxes and my weight.

At last, it is consistently cold and rainy in Seattle. I’m delighted about this. But I’m getting pale, and that depresses me and makes me look fat. So I’ve decided to be a typical Seattlite and use the tanning salon as my sunshine. I’ve been getting spray tans for years and years, but I haven’t actually been in a tanning bed since probably college. My Lord, these things have come a long way. When I was a teenager, they were just claustrophobic, boring, hot steel traps. They all looked exactly the same. These days they have mp3 jacks and speakers and fans coming from eight directions, and I swear they come in so many varieties you can basically choose which color you want your tanning bed to be. I was flabbergasted and confused. They also give you little stickers to put somewhere on your body before you climb in so you can see how tan you’ve gotten. It all feels very advanced. I feel old. I feel like a grandparent, like, “Why do we need all this cable television? What was wrong with the first four channels? Nothing at all, that’s what.”

I’m still on a lower dose of my meds, and so far it’s going well. I definitely feel more creative energy, and I’m sleeping much less, although I’m also sleeping less soundly. You’d think the constant exercise would help me to sleep well, but so far, even with my sleep meds, I’m not really doing much sleeping. But in general I do very well during the day, but then sometimes I’ll get a little spike of anxiety and it’ll scare the shit out of me. It’s like taking off the training wheels. I’m trying not to get panicky about it. It’s so weird, because for like 90% of the day I’m doing great and I’m feeling awesome about myself and independent and fantastic, and then all of a sudden I’ll be all like “Oh my God my life is going nowhere and I have no idea what I’m doing and everyone else is getting married and I’m going to be alone forever and I have no idea how to fix it.” And then I basically hyperventilate. And then twenty minutes later I’m fine again.

My dad had really good advice about the sugar binges. See, he’s a nutritionist, and I have been basically begging him to put me on a diet plan, and he keeps just telling me to exercise more. Last night I was like, “Will you please tell me what to eat?” He was like, “Look, Sasha, I know you. If I put you on a strict diet, you’ll go into an emotional tailspin when you can’t stick to it. And, trust me, you can’t stick to it.” Heh. So he said to make sure I eat three healthy meals a day and then to eat whatever the hell else I want in addition to it. He said not to count calories or sugar or anything. He said as long as I make sure to eat three solid, nutrient-containing meals a day, I can also eat an entire box of donuts and it’ll be fine. And you know what? It kind of works. I think it’s a good plan for me psychologically, and I didn’t go on a sugar binge tonight for the first time in awhile. Don’t worry, though. I still won’t lose any weight. My body doesn’t do weight loss.

Hiiiiiii. I have nothing exciting to say. I’m doing very well. I’m a happy camper. Still a little bit bummed about Leo’s banana costume — and thank you to all of you who offered to stop by your local Target for a version in his size — but I realized that right downstairs from me there is a dry cleaners that also does alterations. I may take it in there and see what they’d charge to have the little hat part sized properly for him. I think we can make the body portion work.

I also took Leo to daycare today. It’s hard, now that it’s cold and dark, to give him a lot of exercise and socialization every day. In the summers, we sit up on the roof deck for hours at night and he plays with the other dogs, and we go to the dog park on the weekends. In the fall and winter, that doesn’t happen. We do go on walks and he gets to run around the deck and play fetch, but it’s not the same as the playtime he gets in the summer. I’ve been feeling really bad for him. So today I took him — just for the afternoon — to his boarding place for puppy daycare. They said he spent the first half an hour in the corner being scared, but then he perked up and had a grand old time. They said he made a lot of friends. And I felt less guilty about spending the day in the office. So Leo may be spending more of his afternoons in daycare. I’m getting more comfortable with the idea of parting with him for several hours a day. I think it’s probably healthier for both of us. We still spend like 75% of our day joined at the hip, so it’s not like he’s not being parented or something.

I am also trying a new approach to curing my nightly sugar cravings. The approach goes like this: I just eat a lot of sugar at night. If I just eat a Hostess cupcake and a cookie and a mini Butterfinger bar, I don’t have to eat like 20 cups of rice trying to satisfy my sugar cravings. I don’t know that it’ll be better for my weight or my blood sugar levels in the long run, but it sure as hell makes me feel less insane.