Yesterday that weird panic feeling changed into a complete and utter exhaustion. Not really a true physical exhaustion, though that was part of it. It was a deep emotional exhaustion. A sense of being just fried. I hate reaching that point. If the world were ideal, I’d be able to go sit on a beach somewhere. I don’t even like beaches, but anywhere but here would be fine. It was not swimming against the current, it was sinking.

In the past two weeks we have treated this house repeatedly for fleas with no success. I have never in my life seen anything like it. I talked to our vet, and he said it is the worst year he as ever had with fleas. It appears the little fuckers are immune to the Frontline treatment we use regularly on the dogs. The other problems if the parrot flings his food, and in this ancient house the little mice come up thru the holes in the corners to grab the food. They bring fleas from outside. So, not that we have an all out infestation, as the terminex guy told me, but we still have a problem. In my book, one damn flea is far too many. We changed the treatment on the dogs and of course the fleas are hungry so I get eaten. It is awful. Some people are very sensitive to the bites, and others not at all. I happen to be in the former group. Fucking lovely. So, after trying every remedy known to man, vacuuming, bombing, dusting, and trapping, we gave up and called Terminex. Not like we remotely have any money for this, but it just had to get done. They told us we would need to be out of the house for 4 hours. After a full day of work, the guy shows up to spray at 4pm. You have got to be kidding. They couldn’t do this while we were out of the house. Needless to say, we did not walk into the till 10pm last night. With it still reeking of chemicals. The poor bird had to spend the night on the deck in a cage under the canopy. Until the thunderstorms came thru very early this am and we had to run to bring him inside. I hope it is ok. It would really be awful if something happened to him. Yesterday pushed me way out there to the limit of what I can deal with. It wasn’t really the fleas, or the chemicals, or the timing of it. It was this on top of everything else that has been going on. It was that one last thing that just tipped it over the edge.