The weather is weird. It’s getting down to 45 at night. It’s breezy and dry during the day; it’s like living in Eastern Washington. Clouds roll in at dusk. To go out after dark I need a sweater. Today I’m wearing a long-sleeved shirt, corduroy pants, and socks. Of all things! Socks! In August!

Last night I stood so long gazing at pantry and refrigerator, I decided I must not really want to eat anything there and went to town for a meal alone with a book. I drove home as the day ended: the sky was brilliant with strange and wonderful colors and the clouds were a ridged deck above the fading sunset. At the horizon, the light was golden, and strangely green and yellow, and above it a slender band of orange and red, and still higher it faded to a million shades of chilly blue. It was cold enough I ran the heater in the Jeep. I felt all the bittersweet pangs of late Autumn, that almost-depression of year’s end. And it’s only August! The crops aren’t even in yet, and I feel like it’s the week after Halloween.

Strange, strange summer. We’ve only run the A/C six or seven nights, and I haven’t once been swimming in the triangle pond.

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I still miss Brett. It’s so strange not having him around. I’ve been lazy, taking my own little vacation; aside from paying bills and a few dishes I haven’t done any chores. No dusting, sweeping, laundry, or even cooking. It’s fun, but lonely.

Joe’s around to keep me company, but I’m not in roommate mode any more I guess: a roommate is neat, but a roommate is not a husband for comfort and companionship. It is nice to have an evening chat with somebody, though – without Joe I’d probably be downright melancholy between the weather and an empty house.

Stella moped for two days, then righted herself. Dogs are plastic.

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I’ve still only received three logos and three pictures from my latest web client, and haven’t gotten much done. I’m hoping he’ll innundate me with content and I’ll be able to crank out the rest of the site this weekend, before Brett gets home.

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I am so tired of my hair falling out. It’s becoming obvious now; even with perfectly clean, dry and fluffy hair my scalp shows in several places because my cowlicks are now too light to fall right. My hair is so thin I had to buy smaller scrunchies as the older ones would just fall out. I don’t have any fuzzy down around my forehead anymore because it fell out and quit growing back. If I pull all my hair into a ponytail and twist it, it’s the thickness of an exexutive pen. It’ll be the thickness of a pencil in another few months if nothing changes.

It’s astonishingly distressing to be going bald at 35. I really don’t like it. I don’t like it for the usual reasons of vanity, but also because my head’s always cold. Without that thatch of new hair coming in, without that underlayer of short hairs, every breeze goes right to your head and makes you chilly.

Good thing I can knit myself all the hats I’ll ever need for the winter, I guess.

I’m going to get some Evening Primrose Oil; it’s supposed to help with the hormonal conversion going on (it has something to do with testosterone) which causes follicles to shut down and fall out. It can’t hurt to try. And Friday, I will be aggressive: I will call doctors until I find one who will make me an appointment and give me the blood tests I want. Period. As much as I hate having to be aggressive or even rude, I will find a clinic to sell me the services I want and not what they decide to give me.

At least I feel fine, aside from horrible, debilitating cramps every month. I haven’t been having the mental/emotional problems of last year. Anxiety and depression are horrible, awful things, and no one should have to live like that. (I might be mildly depressed, I suppose, since I don’t feel terribly social, but if so it’s depression so mild it doesn’t come with any self-doubt or grief or fear or any of those other paralyzing problems. I might just be old enough not to want to have the same conversations over and over again, or just lazy! LOL!)
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