The Darkness is Not Just a Band

I'm an adult.

I'm an adult with a slew of problems, both physical and mental... and sometimes spiritual and so on.  

I'm an adult...

And I'm, apparently, still afraid of the dark. 

Also, I seem to have a cold, so I currently have tissues shoved up my nose and look like this:

 

The snot.

Ew ew oh god, it's everywhere.

But, that's not important right now.

I'm gonna briefly relate what happened last night.

It's Rob's birthday, so I wanted to be helpful to him yesterday.  This mostly failed, since my body decided I was going to be sick instead. 

However, he still got a great art piece done and we had a nice relaxing time.  

OH!  Also!  He finished playing Madness Returns.  This pleased me.  Incredibly dark, but beautiful and-

*ahem*

Right.  

The darkness...  

I wanted to start a new little mini notebook.  I use them for to-do lists and to jot down ideas, and my old one was all filled up.  

So, the idea was to transfer what little was still on the to-do list from the old one to the new one.

The problem was that we had already settled into the bedroom and I had left the notebook (one of many) on my desk in the office.  

What was meant to be like Mission Impossible quickly turned into a survival horror.  

   

 I made it to the door and saw only black death.  There are no light switches beyond the kitchen, so one has to walk into the dark, fumbling and helpless, in order to turn on the goddamn light.

To rectify this, I whacked my keyboard to wake it from sleep, in hopes of lighting the room via the computer screen.  

I would have pictured the computer sleepily saying, "Wha?  Oh.  Okay." but I was too busy being in a completely unnecessary, flailing panic to think of cute things.  

The light was fairly useless, but I managed to find the notebooks.  Not knowing which color was which, I grabbed them all.

 And then I ran like I was being chased by the Boogeyman.  

Cause, you know, I'm a not entirely fully functioning adult. 

Yep.

 

Unsolicited Advice From Rowyn on Where to Put Your Stuff

I had noticed this a long time ago, but I had never thought to smoosh the solution to my own problem with those of ring-wearing people, or other small bits people have on their bodies most of the time.

In my head, the rings I wear are purely functional splints, but they really are decorative rings too.  They ALSO brace my fingers for me, sure.  That doesn't change the fact that they aren't actually permanently fixed to my hands. 


They aren't some cybernetic attachment, as much as I treat them as such. 

 
That being said, I still FLIP OUT when one comes flying off or gets caught on something and gets pulled off. 

This is A: because my fingers really are very uncomfortable without them,
B: because I'm so used to them, so it's just jarring to remember that they CAN be removed and
C: They were really expensive. 

So, early on when I didn't know if I was going to wear them all the time, I went looking for a container to house them so they didn't just roll away or be stolen by goblins while I slept.

Eventually I found a cheap but cute contact lens case:

 
Now, I've seen people *coughMOMcough* who have rings they'd wear all the time but sometimes need to take off, yet have no place in their purse or wallet or jacket to keep them.  I've seen plastic baggies where some rings can get bent anyway or just thrown into purses to be lost or damaged. 

I'm guilty of that last one with earrings, I'll admit.

Using a small container, be it a lens case or not, is really a nice idea.  It doesn't take up too much space and then it's there if you need it.  I've seen little inch or so tall jars for travel purposes that would do the same thing.

The lens case was just handy for me because I have two hands and each has a set of rings.  This way, I can separate them between right and left.

Because I typically wear them as much as humanly possible, this particular case gets used for my "spare."  …I put spare in quotes here because it only became so when I lost it as I slept, questioning if I had somehow gone to the bathroom and flushed it in the middle of the night.  I found it long after I had reordered one.  It was hidden under my dresser and found when I moved.  

It's the farthest joint ring which FLIES OFF more than anything else, so I don't know that other people really have this issue.  Most rings sit much closer to the hand, and most rings are not worn at night anyway. 

For these rings, this is a handy tool for by the bed or on a desk or wherever you generally keep things you don't want to lose, while not shoving them into a jewelry box with all the everything else's ever.  

That being said, I don't know that any sane person should take advice from me about organization and not losing shit.

I am not the neatest person when it comes to my work space, until I get too fed up and clean until the walls bleed.  However, I like containers. 

An animal skull Xena got for me that I think was meant to be a paperweight or just art became a thing to hold papers on my desk:

Another skull which I bought from Claire's or someplace a thousand years ago was a cell phone holder.  It does not hold a smart phone in any possible way, so now it holds wipes for glasses or sometimes business cards.  Really, it would be great for anything small, like paper clips or safety pins... whatever: 

 
A mug that I don't want to use for drinking became a holder for pens, pencils, a voodoo doll and Satan:

A "critter bath" from a pet store holds whatever I damn well please because it's freaking adorable and shut up: 

I also have a lobster on my desk:  

…


I have no excuse for the lobster.