A friend posted a few “typographic conundrums” on Facebook recently, and I was very taken by them. In fact, I was smitten. They were so simple, so perfect.

The word “lie” was written in tiny, frosty type against a slate background. What was it? A little white lie.

The words “here” and “there” were crossed out in another. Get it? “Neither here nor there.”

I was hoping there’d be one that had the word “once” snugly embraced by a familiar, sapphire-hued celestial body. What would it be? “Once in a blue moon.”

Last week — Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning, to be exact — I had one horrific night of sleep…largely because I got very little. Three hours, max. You can find a lot of things to do during the wee hours, or not so much. I suppose it depends on how badly you want to fall asleep, or rather whether you think you will at all.

One of the things I did, from the coziness of my bed, was a Google Images search for “blue moon.” I wanted to see if I could make my own typographical conundrum, but ended up actually finding an example of it that was so painfully executed it did a whole lotta blue moons a lot of injustice. Note to self: make my own, pronto.

In the process of looking for a blue moon, I found a lot of beautiful images, though. “Wow,” I thought. “I wonder if that’s what heaven looks like.”

The next thing I knew, I was Googling images of heaven. Tip: don’t do this if you’re strung out on a terrible, havoc-wreaking pain medication that has robbed you of quality snoozage. You’ll feel like you’re on the verge of a breakdown, which I feel like often enough without having any assistance from any meds, pain-related or OTC. I was bawling.

One of the images that popped up on the first page of results was what appeared to be Jesus welcoming someone into heaven. It was a beautiful picture, and one that had me sobbing. Sometimes I wonder what people would think of me if they knew what I know about myself.

Would I still be considered their friend? A confidant? Someone that people look up to? A person who can inspire and motivate? Someone who’s like a sister? Good enough to be a maid of honor?

I can’t answer these. Not one. And sometimes it scares the crap out of me because, really, as believers we all want to get to those pearly gates and be welcomed in. But what if all all the good isn’t enough? What if there are too many wrongs to ever right? Are there reasons for all the things I speak of that I’m not yet aware? And, if so, can they please reveal themselves before I go crazy wondering about them?

More questions for which I have no answers.

The daily devotion I read two nights later with tired, red eyes spoke directly to me, and it made me feel a little more calm, a little less worrisome, a bit less of a mess. And for it, I am thankful.

“What God is doing you may not know
But someday you’ll understand why;
Questions that taunt you and trouble your mind
Will one day have heaven’s reply.” -Hess

I don’t know how they do it — mine, or anyone else’s.

I don’t know how they have the energy to focus on anything more than when their next nap will be. I don’t know how any quality sleep can ever be had when their ears never rest. Even the slightest noise that’s out of the ordinary has them up and out of bed in a flash.

On a really small level, I feel like I’ve finally experienced the parent gene. Granted, it’s because of my cat, but it’s something.

He’s had a cone on his head due to an abscess and related surgery on Friday. I came home yesterday and found that he’d managed to weasel out of it, so I put it back on. He’s not happy with me, but he can’t get it off which means he also can’t make his wound worse. So I’ll take it.

This morning around 5am, I heard a faint squeak of a meow and jumped out of bed without hesitation to find my cone-headed cat trying to headbutt my bedroom door, attempting to get in. I spent the next hour petting him, getting him calmed down and back in his pile of blankets. The cone doesn’t make for quality sleep, so when the purring stopped, I took my red, bloodshot eyes back to bed. He was in the same place when I woke up a few hours later.

I’m dead tired. The first night with the cone was the worst, and while the second night was better, it has me wishing there was one more day of weekend left. But it left me thankful for my mom and dad who spent years getting broken sleep and with one ear to the rest of the house so that they could be ready in times of need.

I guess there are just some things you do for your kids, whether they’re children or pets. For years of caring for dogs and cats, and decades of my parents setting an example, I am thankful.

One of my all-time favorite albums is one that pulls from many. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ greatest hits compilation is a collection of tunes that takes me back almost two decades – back to when I first started listening to it.

Do you have a song that reminds you of a certain person, place or time? The whole album reminds me of many. I can remember listening to it as I drove home from college each summer. I remember listening to it in Illinois, through Missouri and in various other parts along I-40.

After college, it became my go-to whenever I’d take a short roadtrip somewhere. San Francisco, Arizona and Las Vegas were all surrounded by great music and good vibes. If I wasn’t so into driving, I’d have just pulled off the highway, found a roadside shack of a restaurant and enjoyed a cold one while the music played from my car. But there were places to go, schedules to follow.

It was the soundtrack for my drive home to California after living in Connecticut, and in recent years it’s become my daytrip soundtrack for short jaunts to and from Temecula.

Every time I’ve enjoyed the album, it has been paired with a sense of freedom, adventure and camaraderie. Today I drove up the coast and dusted it off once again, realizing immediately the effect it had on me. It can brighten a gloomy, overcast coastal sky and turn bumper to bumper traffic into the open road in a heartbeat. It’s never been paired with sad times, breakups or a stormy season of my life, and that’s probably one of the reasons I still love it to this day.

Tonight, after all these years, I am thankful that an album still has that ability to elevate my mood, inspire adventure and remind me of so many great times from days gone by.

My cat has been fairly aloof this week — more aloof than cats tend to be, that is.

I suspected a few days ago that he’d been in a brawl, because I heard the distant screeching of two felines mixing it up late one night. He also reeked the next morning of cat spray — something I discovered when I picked him up to bring him inside (ew). Since he’s long-since been fixed, I knew he’d been up to no good. I briefly considered giving him a bath, but wasn’t in the mood for my arms to look like they were made of shredded beef.

Last night, after getting home from an appointment where I got the results from my thyroid biopsy, I discovered the reason for his aloofness: he had a serious head wound just behind his right ear, proabably the size of a quarter. A giant patch of black fur was missing, and in its place was pale pink flesh that looked like it had stopped bleeding only a day or two before. Yikes!

Congratulations, you don’t have thyroid cancer. But your cat is really jacked up.

I knew I’d have to steathily tackle him to get him into the pet carrier this morning, but his hind legs weren’t having it when he found out what I was up to. So I grabbed a towel, turned him into a burrito, tipped the carrier up on one end and lowered him into it. He scrambled out of his fabric tortilla and yowled all the way to the vet.

The doctor called a while ago. There’s an abscess where the fur is missing, so he’ll need to be hooked up to an IV, given antibiotics, sedated, cleaned out and stitched up — after they run some lab tests on him. The upside (for me, not for him) is that he’ll get to wear one of those stylin’ head cones for at least the weekend. The downside is that I plan to corral him in the bathroom that’s just on the other side of my bedroom, so I’m sure his displeasure will keep me up all night.

He also needs to get up to date on his regular shots. And a teeth cleaning. And a bath so that he can stop reeking like another cat.

Cha-ching.

Today, while I am already mourning the loss of the tax refund that I’d been able to sit on for the past few weeks, I am thankful it’s there to help my beloved furball get back into tip-top shape. Hoping the little guy won’t hold the events of today against me for too long, but assuming the sedation does the trick, I’m sure his fuzzy (har) memory will go a long way towards forgiveness.

A long time ago, someone told me that you could tell a good establishment by conducting a simple sign test. If the word “cocktails” was mentioned on the signage, it was supposedly a good place to take a load off. If it simply said “bar,” one should move on. Quickly.

Interestingly, and more often than not, I’ve found this test to be true.

I think the same can be said of people. There are some signs that indicate greatness, and others that indicate mediocrity.

Some signs indicate action, while others indicate complacency.

Some signs indicate happiness, while others indicate ho-humness.

Some signs invite you inside, while others — once you’re there — really have no intention of deliverying. On anything. It was all just a facade.

Alas, some signs aren’t easy to read. They’ve faded over time, they’re broken or flickering, and they don’t read properly. Sometimes just a letter is missing, other times it’s the entire subtext.

Today I am thankful for reading the writing that wasn’t initially obvious to me, but which makes complete sense in retrospect. While the future is sure to provide more difficultly in reading people, it’s nice to know that hindsight is always 20/20 — even if there’s a delay in clarity.

I filled a new prescription last night to help with my shoulder issue. Not really a fan of ingesting 1000 mg of pain medication, but I was certainly looking forward to its effects.

The literature, I noticed, said something different than what I remembered my doctor telling me yesterday morning. Or, rather, that I thought I remembered him telling me. I suddenly was unsure, since a) pharmacy directions are usually pretty accurate and b) my doctor is a concise, to-the-point dude who has you captivated by his perfectly pronounced words, carefully crafted statements and moves efficiently from one appointment to the next. He’s not abrupt or rude, he’s just on a mission. To save shoulders.

I thought I remembered hearing from him that I should “take the medication either at breakfast or at lunch,” but the pharmacy’s directions said to take it at night with food. Maybe what I really heard was him telling me to “not take the medication at breakfast or at lunch.”

Hm. What to do, what to do.

Since it was after hours and my shoulder pain was pretty intense, I didn’t really want to put off taking it for a whole day while I called to confirm which directions were accurate. So I followed the pharmacy’s directions, read the side effects — none of which seemed bad at all — and proceeded to pill-pop.

The day was another stressful one, so I was looking forward to loading my body up with drugs, getting a good night’s rest and waking up pain-free.

Nope.

I woke up at midnight briefly, but fell back asleep. Then 2:30 rolled around.

Wide. Awake.

After a half-hour of tossing and turning, and the pain in my shoulder not being any better, I wandered into the kitchen to re-read the side effects. Turns out one of the less frequent side effects was insomnia. Leave it to me to snag one of the issues that plagues, like, 2% of the people who take the stuff.

I never fell back asleep, so I passed the time by jotting down some writing ideas, Facebooking, reading the news and tossing and turning some more — just to feel like I was making an effort.

Come 5am, I figured I’d just get ready for work. I arrived at the office at 7am, along with the rest of the early birds who come in at that hour so that they can leave by 4pm.

One of my coworkers was amusingly perplexed when he saw me sitting here. Good times.

I called my doctor’s office to see if I could confirm their instructions, and the gal who was going to relay my message to my doctor asked, “Wait — what medication are you taking?” I told her.

“Oh! You should absoLUTEly take it in the morning. It causes insomnia.”

Great. Pretty sure that tidbit would’ve helped me keep the directions straight, versus the more generic “take it either at breakfast or lunch” with no further explanation.

I feel pretty close to death today. That old saying of there being plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead keeps coming to mind, and I feel like I’m nearing that point. As I told my boss, it’s bad enough that my quality of life is affected by my non-use of my right arm (I expect it will atrophy and fall off any day now), but now I have to be a zombie thanks to insomnia? Fantastic. As he pointed out, however, zombies are really in right now.

While I don’t understand how taking medication at a different time of the day will combat insomnia since, you know, the drug will still be in your system for the remaining 1,439 minutes of any given 24-hour period, I’ll give it a whirl on Friday morning. I figure if I still can’t sleep come Friday night, at least I’ll be a zombie during a bridal shower on Saturday instead of walking around coma-fied in the office. For now, whether it pans out or not, I am thankful for drug clarity, new dosage directions and a weekend just around the corner.

I have a fairly high tolerance for pain, but I’m about at my limit.

2013 is no longer going to be known as the Year of the Snake. It shall henceforth be known as the Year of the Needle.

Since February 14, I have been poked by needles 17 times. Four of them came from my dermatologist; 12 of them came from my endocrinologist, all at one appointment and all in my neck. Er, thyroid, to be exact.

Another one came today, thanks to the dude who operated on my knee at the end of 2011. Today, however, the issue was my shoulder which he identified as being plagued by “multi-directional instability.” I was the recipient of a painfully long and drawn out injection to help with the pain.

Can I throw in the towel yet? Please?

I feel like an animal that’s on the verge of needing to be put down. It’s exhausting.

Let’s forget for a moment that my thyroid biopsy results haven’t come back yet. Let’s also forget that I also now have a month of physical therapy on the horizon (and by that, I mean it starts next week) for my shoulder — not to mention yet another prescription of the anti-inflammatory variety to take for it.

More time, more money, more issues.

By the way, why are time and money seemingly always the cause of the majority of our issues these days?

I think I get my awesome genes from my mother. She’ll be having hip replacement surgery sometime this summer. Love you, mom.

Did I mention I also recently cracked a tooth? The fun never ends. I assume it happened while snacking on raw almonds or munching on ice. My first tooth issue. Ever. With four more needle pokes to come on that front at the end of the month.

21 needles? Really? Since Valentine’s Day? I’m sure you can imagine that I’m not feeling the love.

It’s like I’m finally growing up, although in reality I’m really just growing old. Tear.

All I can do is laugh at this point, or at least grin and bear it…although I haven’t gotten to either of those just yet. You try laughing and/or grinning when needles are making an assault on your person. Everything aside, I am thankful that my issues aren’t that big in the grand scheme of things (not yet, anyway), and I am thankful for the access to great health care providers when many in the world have never known such a thing.

Hi, friend. It’s nice of you to stop by for a read. Unfortunately, I don’t have much of anything for you tonight.

Today was one of those days that made me feel guilty. I felt guilty for feeling ungrateful, guilty for feeling like I’m done with everything, guilty for feeling like I have too much on my plate and guilty for the amount of energy it took to muster a smile or a laugh. I have it far better than that and I know it — but it was hard to remember today.

I wasn’t in the mood for happy, peppy songs on my way home. The ones that skewed melancholy were just my speed, not that it helped matters any.

I had an appetite, but felt like going straight to bed instead of satisfying it. That wouldn’t have helped either, though, so I made an egg for dinner and called it good.

Even the cat seemed to be in a mood. Each time I’d reach down to pet him, he’d slink away as though he was off to do better things. But then he’d come around again, only to do another great job of evading my hand. Sheesh.

The worst part about today was that I felt something that I’ve never felt: I felt like I could be done with this blog and not really care.

I checked my email and saw a bunch about screenwriting, playwriting, how to write better, how to finish a draft. Didn’t care about those, either.

But from a whole lot of nothing will come something — that I know. It always has before, whether it be a feeling foolishness the next day for being so glum, or maybe even a little nugget of inspiration to write about. Tonight I am thankful for knowing that ideas can sometimes come from the strangest of places, even if any writing is nothing more than a time-filler (blog-filler?) in the meantime.

Today’s writing posted to another of my blogs accidentally — instead of posting to “Thanky.” Here’s that post, brief as though it may be, and regardless of whether my other space is still being read or not.

***

Do you ever feel like you don’t relate to people? Tonight I feel like I do, in fact, relate to people,

I am thankful for those who make me feel like I am not in the minority, for people who make me feel included, informed and in-tune.

***

The above is where I felt I was netting out after the dinner, the salad, the bread, the wine. With two good friends and one life to live, we all felt thankful for each other.

Today, and for them specifically, I am grateful.

I’d been craving a hamburger since before Christmas, so I finally gave into it the other night.

I ordered at the drive-thru, and my vittles came to $4.41. For once, the speaker was delightfully clear with nary an ounce of static, and the gal inside was articulate — although incredibly distracted by someone talking to her and laughing in the background. I pulled up to the window and gave her $5.41.

She was rummaging in the till for what seemed like an eternity; the sound of coins accumulating in her hand made me wonder if I was going to get my dollar back in pennies.

“Here’s your change of $0.99,” she said to me.

(..really?)

“I gave you $5.41. The total was $4.41,” I said, raising an eyebrow at her handful of change.

“No, you didn’t give me the right amount,” she said. The guy in the background was still vying for her attention and talking to her.

I explained that I did, in fact, give her $5.41. “There’s no way I’d want you to give me $0.99 back. Trust me on this.”

(And, by the way, if I did happen to be a penny short, wouldn’t you say to the person giving you the incorrect amount, “Hey, do you have another penny, by chance?”)

“Oh! So your change would’ve been an exact dollar,” she said.

I love it when a light goes off. I nodded and smiled at her.

“So…can I just give you another penny then?” she asked me.

“I’d prefer you didn’t,” I said with a laugh.

At that point, I’d have taken four quarters, but I ended up getting my dollar bill and finally pulled forward for my grub. I was handed a bag, thanked and then the window shut. I stayed put. The window opened again.

“Can I get the drink, too?” I asked.

“She didn’t give it to you at the first window?”

Sigh. Oh, that crazy first window.

The week had been a long one, and the day had dragged on forever with a good dose of stress added in, as well. But it was Friday, and the weekend was before me. I had no energy to deliver any frustration, so I didn’t. And really, who would get nasty over incorrect change and a missing beverage? Oh, right. A lot of people would.

The first window reminded me that while you can move on from one issue, another might be lurking just ahead. Sometimes it takes driving away and leaving the vicinity entirely to reflect on how else things could’ve gone, say, if someone else had been in my shoes. But after a week that left me without an ounce of fight, I was glad for the stress it had given me. I didn’t know it at the time, but it left me mellow, ready for nothing more than a burger and bed, and looking forward to the weekend. 

Tonight I see the big picture, and I am thankful for last week’s stress.