iGaslight

Hello, loves.

First of all, all apologies for no acrochallenge last night. I'd planned one. I'd planned to have a week of stuff, Picture Sunday, Acrochallenge, Tuesday Blog in Earnest, and then a Request Blog.

Then Monday went all to hell.

It started when I came home from work. My instructions were to wait for my dad to call, and I was to go over there and help him pay bills, since Mom's still in the hospital. See, because of his sight, he can't write checks, and I was going to go help him do all that.

Which I did. But while I was waiting for him to call, I sat at the computer, checked my emails, and played a little Text Twist, a game with a bright blue background that involves tiles of letters moving around on the blue. I kind of got involved in it all and forgot to turn on the lamp that stands behind me.

So the call from Dad came, I got up to leave, and - well, I almost fell down. I was really dizzy, and noticed I had a dull thudding ache at the base of my head. I shook it off, chalked it up to a computer monitor in the dark, grabbed my keys, and went to the car.

Where things didn't really get any better, but I soldiered on and got to Dad's.

Now, forgive me for saying this, for I know this will be me someday if I live long enough, but I was kind of expecting to get there to a pile of bills for which I'd write checks, and that was about it.

When I got to Dad's, he was at the kitchen table. There was a place set for me. It had the check book and two pens, one erasable and one normal. I'd brought my own pen, because I'm a pen and pencil geek and I like to write with certain kinds of pens. Dad did not like this; he wanted the checks in his pen and the register in the erasable. I said, politely, no.

Anyway, I sat at my assigned place, and bill paying consisted of Dad picking up the bills, struggling to read them, telling me who the checks were to be written to, and for how much. It was frustrating and took a long time. He took his lighted magnifier and pored over every check I wrote.

Then!

Then, about halfway through, he leaned over to where I was writing and actually asked me, "You are writing all this down in the check register, aren't you?"

And I looked him square in the face and said, quite seriously, "No. I thought I'd let you all wing it this month."

And he got all upset, and I had to assure him that I was in fact doing this just like I do in my own check book, as I've been writing checks for 30 years and no one's confiscated the book from me yet.

Anyway, it lasted over an hour and I still had the horrible dull headache and felt - well, not dizzy, but just "not there."

I came home at 9pm and thought about dinner, but I just kept feeling worse and worse. I fell asleep for a little while, and when I woke up, I was a complete mess. Head in pain, short of breath, feeling like I was on the verge of passing out. I took my blood pressure and it was quite high, certainly high for me. I kept trying to talk myself out of it, but the symptoms were like no anxiety attack I'd ever experienced, and finally I just held out my arms and said, to no one in particular, "I'm at a loss here. What do I do?"

And something told me to call 911. So I did.

And so now I was the one heading to the ER.

To make a very long story a little shorter, my sister met me there. She told me she'd told Dad he couldn't come, a fact for which I'll be eternally grateful. No offense, Dad, but you're a pacer, hoverer, and worrier, the last thing I needed.

Oddly enough, I found myself with a very kind nurse and a very kind ER doctor. The doctor said, after asking all the requisite questions, he was pretty sure I was having a bit of a freakout, but he was going to do tests, chest x-ray, EKG, bloodwork. They hooked me up to monitors. The very first blood pressure reading was something like 102/60, so at that point I realized it was indeed me not handling the pressure, and that I'd wasted a perfectly good Monday evening.

Anyway, after the tests, and lying in bed intermittently giggling and crying with my sister, I got the OK. The doctor said I was very healthy, heart was great, blood was great, chest x-ray perfect, and that my liver was, and I quote, "fabulous," which made both my sister and I laugh and plan a good night of drinking.

And I got home at around 3:30 this morning. And felt like shit most of the day, sleepy, tired, and like I'd been hit by a bus.

But I'm better now. And am learning to repeat, "There's nothing wrong with you. Your liver is fabulous. Take a deep breath and relax."

Anyway, that wasn't even close to what I was going to write about tonight, so let's leave all that and move on.

I've often said my iTunes has a personality. That's the only way I can explain some of the things it does to me, often in the dark of night, things that creep me out. Like playing two artists doing the same song back-to-back, or playing six straight songs about geographical locations, or the latest one, playing two songs about San Antonio right together.

Now, over the weekend, I caught "2001: A Space Odyssey" on cable, and I found myself quite amused by Hal. Every time he spoke I seemed to giggle, especially after he was caught killing Gary Lockwood and was was pleading for his life to Keir Dullea, saying, "I am all better now."

It reminded me of Friday night, when I was convinced my iTunes was trying to drive me crazy.

I was looking for a group of CDs. They were CDs of blogs I'd recorded, ones I'd lost from iTunes somehow during the Big Computer Switchover of last year. I wanted my Barbie blogs, and my Musical Version of "To Kill a Mockingbird." And I was having a lot of trouble finding the CDs holding them.

Now, I have to admit that I'm a mess where CDs are concerned. I'll make a CD that contains one song, if it's a song I've just discovered and want to pop it into the car player to play over and over while I tool around town. Or I'll record one episode of the Hucklebug podcast for a trip. And I normally do all this on the fly, so I don't label the CD, so I have stacks of CDs with no label and I have no idea what's on them.

So I found myself on Friday night popping many a CD into the computer to see what was on them, to label and hope they might contain my old blogs.

Most of these CDs had about 9 or 10 mystery tracks. You know, Track 1, Track 2, and the like, and I'd listen to one track and say, "Oh, yeah, this was my Beatles trip." A few had 20 tracks, and so I knew they were CD Mix Exchange prototypes.

But I slipped one CD into the holder, and got a shock. Apparently, or according to the window at the top of the iTunes screen, I had a CD of the UA Cup Final, whatever that was. It was an hour long. It turned out to be a Hucklebug podcast.

Then I put in another. The iTunes window flashed that was I about to play "AR on City Folk WFUV mgr 2001." And I braced myself for the fun, and it was a CD on which I'd recorded one Sufjan Stevens song.

I had no idea what was happening, but it was intriguing me, and so I started to pay close attention to the iTunes window. I wondered how many rogue selections had slipped up there earlier without my ever noticing it.

My CD containing one track by the Hackensaw Boys, a live version of "Sweet Petunia," came up in the window as Kal Hyonim. One containing two Gillian Welch songs showed up as "Neat," by N-eat.

A track I'd recorded onto CD of a practice by Mr M and Jude the Corruptor doing one of my favorite Peter Schickele pieces showed up with the title "24/7," by Nid Paheim.

And Hucklebug podcast episode 10 was now titled "The Best of Laura Pausini." Which is rather sad as there was only that one track, and that made me feel kind of sorry for for Ms Pausini.

So is my iTunes messing with my head? Is it plotting to drive me crazy, so it can drain my bank account and then take up with a younger, prettier iTunes listener?

I do not know. But I'm thinking of unplugging my computer when I go to bed.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Remember, I'm taking suggestions for Request Blogs. Doesn't matter if you've suggested something already, I'm writing them all down. Can be anything!
* I found the blog CDs, by the way. Mainly because they were labeled. I also found Stennie's recorded blogs, and laughed late into the night.