Tuesday 21 August 2001

Pic of the day: "My first reaction to stress is to eat more".

Waste of time

I don't feel too well tonight. I'm coughing a lot, not that it really helps. I think maybe the pressure on my respiration comes from my stomach and intestines. I have been eating too much. I do that when I am stressed. It is one of my first reactions to stress, to eat more. The last couple days my stomach has been full constantly. I suspect my soul is trying to provoke a panic attack, to make me slow down. I may be wrong, though.

***

My brother called this night. At first when the phone rang I thought perhaps it might be SuperWoman calling to talk about her exams. Yeah, as if. Everytime that phone rings, it seems I think perhaps it may be my best friend. Usually it's wrong number. This time it was my brother. Not that this is a bad thing really. But of course when I heard his voice, I had time to think that something terrible had happened. In my family, we didn't use to call much unless there was some crisis. I think this has loosened up a bit in later years. But my brother just wanted to talk about the estate after my mother, who passed away this spring. I assumed as a matter of course that there was next to nothing, probably a couple hundred dollars in cash and otherwise the furniture in her and my dad's part of the house. I was certainly not prepared to hear that there's tens of thousands of dollars. Ouch.

Fight over estates have caused enmity and the occasional murder among siblings since biblical times. I want nothing to do with it. And to compound the problem, my father has decided to give away most of his part to us kids. I can understand his feeling. But I can only pray that this can happen with no harsh feelings on any side.

From what I hear, each of us is supposed to fill in a complicated form and send the tax authorites, even though an inheritance of this size is not taxable. Presumably we shall declare what was in the estate at the time of death, and stuff. My brother claims it is horribly complicated; knowing Norwegian bureaucracy, I see no reason to doubt this. Quite the opposite. So I'm supposed to sign some declaration of my mother's estate? How in the name of the Name am I supposed to have the faintest idea about her estate? Am I my mother's guardian? Luckily my brother promised to make a photocopy of his statement and send it to me. I fully intend to write a disclaimer on it, that I have not the faintest idea whether this is true or not, nor do I care. (I know my brothers would not cheat me even if they were starving to death, but the fact remains that I personally have no clue about these things, and I hate signing statements that I have no clue about. Don't you?)

***

Apart from eating too much, I haven't accomplished anything noteworthy today. OK, I went to bed late (around 2) because I stayed up to post a roleplay entry. So I was late to work. So I was late home. Read up on online comics and journals. Mostly after I came home - I spend only a short time online at work each day. I know I'm not supposed to talk about work, but with all the talk these days about how workers spend their days flirting on the Net, I might as well mention it. I spent the lunch pause with LiveJournal, though.

So I had a bit to catch up on when I came home. Also connected to the Bible Gateway to read various translations of Ecclesiastes 11. It seems the Norwegian translation is decidedly out of the mainstream in the last verse there, where it says that "youth and dawn are vanity". Oh well. As if you care. I wanted to use that quote in a parable, but I guess it won't seem familiar then. And frankly, those of you I know don't seem like the type to go around remembering random quotes from Ecclesiastes. In Norwegian, the book is called "the Preacher". Somehow, I suspect that some of you might remember quotes from another Preacher. *shudder*

Oh, and I've been puttering with my Sim comic, as if I did not have a care in the world and all the time of eternity on my hand. I have a few vague ideas and have expanded the cast to include Designer Girl and Cool Boy. Heh. No Cutie, though. No Great Earth Mother. The comic removes itself further from reality with each passing day, which is probably just as well. (That, and there's a lack of extremely cute Sim "skins".)

In the end, I have accomplished nothing of importance. Go me! And now I round it off by writing this utterly unimportant diary. Such are some days. Perhaps I shall yet learn the secret of humility before I die.