**10/22/24

11:09pm

Just opened my meal planning doc in my notes app and the last dates entered were from June. Yikes.

Maybe not-so-coincidentally that’s also the last time I made a journal entry here on flounder.

Does this mean that was the last time I had my life together, or that was the last time I was grasping for dear life as my world was spiraling?

June I was stressed and insanely busy, so that’s probably why I was using my mental health tools a little more.

I’m back and white knuckling again.

We have freaking fleas and I feel like they are on me all the time. The Nathanial Ratliffe line “bugs crawling all over me” from SOB is constantly looping in my head every time I think I feel one. Just when I thought I had a handle on them and felt on top of it, I flea combed so many off the cats collectively. It’s just awful. Not to mention the guilt I feel for the poor cats. I can’t rest at night. I don’t feel at peace. I’m having nightmares about them. We can’t keep buying the expensive Capstar medication in between monthly doses of the topical stuff. I can’t stand the smell of the house spray anymore. I can’t vacuum and do laundry and flea comb every day like I should, I just can’t, I don’t have the capacity. It is so awful. How much and how quickly they lay eggs and mature is nightmarish. I can’t keep up with them. I don’t want to deal with setting up the professionals and paying all that money for it to might not work. We have mice in the basement and they’re bringing in the fleas. We can’t get rid of the fleas until we get rid of the mice. And getting rid of the mice is insanely expensive. I have to not think about it but if I don’t think about it then nothing will happen and if I do nothing then it’ll get worse and I will feel worse and it’ll be so much harder to deal with. I want so badly to not have to deal with any of it anymore. I just want them to go away.

So anyway, I’m going to try meal planning again to give myself some sense of control.