…a post brought to you by the letter “B”.

First, brain chemistry.

I have weird sleeping habits. I have always had weird sleeping habits. I’m most wide awake about eleven or twelve o’clock at night, and when the sun starts to come up, that’s when I start to crash. My body appears quite fixed on this quixotic schedule; I adapt quit quickly when I travel across time zones, and end up on the same sleeping cycle.

It’s really inconvenient. In fact, in high school, the only way I survived was to sleep in shifts; I’d go to sleep for a few hours right after getting home, wake up about 8 PM, stay up ’til 2 or 3, then go to sleep again for a few hours.

At one point when i was a kid, my parents actually took me to a doctor about it. He claims that while most people can alter their normal sleep/wake cycles just by changing the time that they get up or go to bed, there is a small minority of the human population for whom the Circadian rhythm is simply fixed and won’t budge, and that’s that.

That’s not the interesting bit; that’s just the background. The interesting bit is what happens when you mess with brain chemistry.

See, I have a new doctor. And when I went in to see him for the first time, I talked to him about my weird sleep schedule. And he, being apparently a practical jokester,decided he’d prescribe Ambien to me, to see if it’d sledgehammer my sleep schedule to something a bit more normal.

Folks, Ambien is some seriously scary shit.

A lot of folks have some pretty bizarre side effects. i didn’t get the really strange ones, like sleep amnesia (which is a pity, because I think it’d be fun to play with in a BDSM context–wake up one morning curled up next to my partner, with bruises all over my body and a pile of sex toys scattered around the bed, and with absolutely no memory of what happened until she handed me the videotape…but I digress.)

What I did get was a complete, radical overhaul of my internal perceptions of hunger.

See, for the most part, I’ve never really felt hungry. I mean, sure, if I go for a long time without eating, I’d get all shaky and stuff, and then I’d think “Oh yeah! I haven’t eaten in seven hours. Reckon I might want to see to that.”

But it’s never been intrusive, you know? Like, it’s never been something that I get all “OMG I can’t concentrate if I don’t eat RIGHT NOW.” And for the most part, that’s how I like my biological needs…non-intrusive. I resent them as it is; to have them pressing on me all the time, demanding to be taken care of, would just be awful.

But a week after I started on Ambien, I started waking up at 4 AM starving. I mean, in a very literal sense, hungry like I have never experienced hunger before. I’m talking like “I am so starving that if I don’t eat right this minute NOW DAMMIT NOW I am going to DIE.” For the first time in my entire life, I have an appreciation for what the phrase “hunger pains” actually means.

And I’d try to eat, but couldn’t, because…well, I wasn’t really hungry. It was a strictly internal, brain-chemistry thing.

And it was miserable. So much so that I quit taking the Ambien.

Now, three months later, my sense of hunger is still distorted. I stopped waking up with phantom hunger. Bu my perception of hunger is still much stronger and sharper than it has ever been in my life, and I do not much cotton to that.

Ambien: It’s the reverse of a diet pill! Fucking brain chemistry anyway.

Books!

So I got a big pile of books from Amazon yesterday, with a second big pile of books scheduled to arrive today. And I still have $30 in credit from Amazon.com!

Which, I discovered completely by accident while I was looking for old-school steel manacles to affix to the Monkey Rocker, also sells BDSM gear. When did Amazon start selling BDSM gear, and why wasn’t I notified?

Not only do they sell BDSM gear, they sell straitjackets. Brand-new straitjackets. In black!

For $29.

And I still have $30 in credit.

Let me repeat that, because I know it’s too much awesomeness to sink in all at once. I found a place that sells straitjackets. For twenty-nine dollars. And I have a thirty dollar store credit from this place.

*is blown away by the cool*

And finally:

_luaineach is doing a fundraiser to support breast cancer research.

Specifically, she’s doing a 60-mile walk to raise money for cancer research. And there’s a minimum threshold of pledges she has to reach in order to be able to do the walking part. Which sounds like a feature and not a bug to me, but it’d still be a shame if all the training she’s been doing goes to waste. You can find out more here.

So. An update on the income tax problems I’ve been dealing with of late: As I predicted, the IRS has been in contact with me again.

Saturday, I received a lengthy letter from the fine folks in the IRS explaining their current take on my situation. Apparently, they had assigned a team of auditors to combing through my 2006 tax return (a team? Really? I warrant the attention of a team of people at the IRS?), and that team had discovered certain…irregularities in my tax return. The very one that at first they claimed I didn’t file.

Anyway, it turns out, or so they say, that I somehow neglected to take a deduction to which I was entitled, with the result being that I overpaid my 2006 taxes by one hundred and forty-four dollars and seventeen cents.

Which explains the check I got in the mail last week.

So that’s, y’know, sorted and all, and apparently the IRS now considers the whole matter closed. Hell, if that’s what happens every time I get audited, they can audit me whenever they like!

In news of the less-good variety, my roommate David’s situation is not much improved after we were hit by a car on the way home from work.

The car that hit us was owned by a company, not an individual. The guy who hit us was unlicensed, had no ID, and was apparently illegal as well. Since then, David’s been on the phone with his insurance and with the company’s insurance for endless hours.

The guy who owns the company has been…um, “recalcitrant” would be a kind word for it. “A fucking double-barreled asshole with a side order of assholesauce” would be better. He’s been refusing to talk to his own insurance company about the accident, has been evading phone calls, and has generally made himself so disagreeable and unpleasant that his insurance company has canceled his policy and denied the claim. (There is, as it turns out, a clause in his policy specifying that he is obligated to cooperate with his insurance policy in the event of an accident.)

So David’s not getting anything from the owner’s insurance. The good news is that he has uninsured motorist coverage; the bad news is that it’s got a $1500 deductible, and his car is worth…well, you can guess the rest.

The only ray of hope in all this mess is that his insurance company is pursuing the guy vigorously, and if they prevail, he’ll get the full value of his car. If, y’know, they prevail. And stuff.

So as regular readers know, I’ve been having some problems with the IRS lately. At first they said they’d never received my 2006 tax returns (in spite of the fact that they cashed my check on April 16, in what has to be the only display of government efficiency I’ve ever witnessed), and then later told me that I needed to fill out some form dealing with income and expenses from my rental properties (despite the fact that I’ve…err, never owned any).

Well, yesterday they finally acknowledged that I have, in fact, paid my 2006 taxes…

…and sent me a check for $144 and change that they appear to believe I’ve overpaid.

I’m holding off on the celebration, though. Next month, I’m certain I’ll receive a letter from them saying “You know that check we just sent you? We’d like it back now, kthx. With interest.” Because, I don’t know, they’ll think i didn’t properly itemize my deductions from expenses incurred while invading France or something.

I knew my taxes were complicated, but apparently they’re too complicated even for the IRS to figure out.