Unrestless

I've been really bored at work today.  My mind is elsewhere.  I had a really hard time falling asleep last night, and subsequently waking up this morning.  I don't feel rested even though I got around 7 hours of sleep.  I was dreaming when I woke up, and I find that it's even harder for me to come out of sleep when I'm dreaming.  It's as though the wisps of the dream follow me into consciousness and I have just the slightest trouble differentiating between what's real and what I was dreaming of for a little while.  There are some dreams that feel so real and are so detailed that I hold on to them all day long and they actually alter my mood and my feelings.  This morning's dream wasn't one of those dreams, though.

I'm worried about Phoenix.  He's been acting strangely since before Christmas Eve, and he hasn't really gotten back to normal.  My working all day long three days a week has seemed hard for him because he was so used to me only being gone for three or four hours each day.  He seems subdued, not exactly lethargic, but just uninterested in anything.  I have to prod him to eat his dinner every night, and I have a hard time getting him super excited about anything.  He has his usual conniptive episode when I get home from work, but he's right back to quiet.  I have to almost force him to get into bed each night.  I don't know how to fix it.  I know that a lot of how he's acting has to do with the high stress level in the house, but even that has been pretty low since Christmas Eve.  I know that I need to get him out of the house permanently - as in move him out - because of how upset he gets just hearing my sister's voice being raised.  Last night she was in the garage having a loud argument over the phone with her ex-husband, and when he heard it, he laid down in my closet and started shaking.  I can't believe how he's reacting to things like that, and it makes me wonder what his situation was before I took him home from the shelter.  Anyway, I know that he needs to be removed from this high-stress environment because it really does affect him physically.  He was just fine before my sister moved back in.  I hope that he and I can both last another couple of months until I can find a suitable living situation for us.

I feel slightly restless, but otherwise I feel good.  I'm saving money and I'm making money, and I've got most of my finances in good enough order to keep me afloat for awhile, even semi-comfortably.  My physical health is good (aside from the ridiculousness that is my uterus which causes me nothing but grief), and I feel in complete control of my mental health for the first time in at least four years.  I'm definitely scared to be getting romantically involved with New Guy, not because I'm scared of the vulnerability that it may require, but of how I may react if it ends.  The momentary glimpse I caught of what I concocted yesterday is enough to frighten me from allowing this new thing to go anywhere.  I'm going to just move very slowly, taking one thing at a time. 

I was playing freecell at work today, and I was SO bored, that I wanted to see how many games I could win in a row without having to restart a game.  I got to six.  I was sort of surprised to find my strategy had changed since I'd last sat down to play the game in any serious compensation.  I wasn't looking ahead at the cards I needed immediately and trying to figure out a way to get those cards.  I was only looking at what I had in front of me, at the cards that were immediately available to be played.  It occurred to me that the way I was playing the game was very similar to how I'm living my life right now.  Instead of focusing on something that is out of reach in the future, I've been dealing with the problems that are right in front of me and working through what I can.  I even played almost an entire game while I was on the phone with a saleslady about getting a new windshield for my car, and I made all the correct moves while almost entirely preoccupied to win the game.  I find that to be both miraculous and ironic.  I guess that I'm capable of making the right choices even when I am not thinking about it.