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Friday, July 10th, 2009
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12:20 pm - When that random nightmare pays off (not that I'm gettin' paid, seriously...)
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Fantastic Horror is putting out an anthology with their favorite stories from issues 1-7.
"Gray" is the most disturbing story I have ever written. The best story, too.
Also, I am unsure if it is a good or bad thing that I am evidently the only chick in the collection. Or that I refer myself as a chick.
Regardless, this rules.
(And one other thing - I have the brain damage. I have not been able to make a post lately that has not been heavily edited later because I left out verbs. And nouns. Which are important to making one's self understood, I am told.)
(And I had to edit the above edit because I misused a word. Oi! This was supposed to be a post that indicates that I do not suck. SEE HOW IT DEGENERATES?)
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12:05 am - DOOM IS IN THIS BLOG AND ALSO IN THIS HOUSE!
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I need to get the hell out of this house so I can produce something other than depressive, paranoiac, f-locked entries. I seldom f-lock. This journal is a barometer of sorts. Excessive f-locking, for me, is bad (AND NOTE I QUALIFIED THIS STATEMENT!!!).
Some new people moved in one house over and they have two huge, dopey looking dogs they take for walks each evening. I see them at night when I load the dishwasher. They seem our age or a bit younger and seem to have no kids, which is weird out here in the suburbs. They waved at me once, when I was standing in front of the kitchen window. Our fence is still in transition but I was so unaccustomed to the idea anyone could see me that it took me a second to realize they were waving at me and I didn't wave back.
I'm putting Fatty into his stroller and taking him out tomorrow in the hopes of meeting new people and animals. I will smile and make eye contact with people. I'm pretty good at that when I remember to do it. Don't worry about Adolph's pugnacious nature, lack of a leg and absence of front claws (and to new readers, I had nothing to do with the latter). I zip him up when it seems like dogs may get too near. After he jumped out that one time in order to infuriate himself with the knowledge that dogs pee against trees, I take no chances.
Also, I need to replace the bad battery on my laptop. I wrote the bulk of an oddbooks entry today and it would have been nice to have been able to confidently leave the house and go someplace where I could sit amongst people and work. Also, most places I think about going when I want to write outside the house smell like coffee. I cannot drink coffee and Henry needs no caffeine so I never get to smell coffee, and it always cheers me up. For some reason I associate the smell of coffee with winter, and winter would make me super happy right now.
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| Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
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10:03 pm - Porn fail
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I was starting a legitimate business when I broke my leg, went bat shit crazy, etc. and bought a huge number of books from the personal collection of a romance writer based in Austin who was sick of writing and was packing up, moving to Taos and trying to live a life where your karma cannot be ruined by USA TODAY. She was cool, she had an amazing dog, and she autographed a Russian copy of one of her books to me. Yes. There was a time I knew some Russian. I'll save that for later.
Anyway, because she was a mid-list writer, she clearly got crap sent to her by publishers. I know she did not buy some of these books herself because she seemed a woman of taste and discretion. One series in particular was a clear give away she got it from the publisher - the first book in the series was read. The rest are as new as they would be coming off the printing room floor. After the first book, she could not bring herself to read them anymore. I am listing them on Amazon and decided one book was not up to the standard I want to sell, the first one, the only one she clearly read, and I had to read it for myself. It is in bad shape. I can imagine the author, lending it to her friends, saying, "Get a load of this shit."
It was, beyond a doubt, the worst sort of "erotica for women." I hate the word erotica. I prefer to call it porn, because I just feel we ought to be honest about this sort of thing.
I would not say I am a connoisseur of porn but I know a thing or two. Possibly three or more but surely less than a hundred. But I know women born in or just before the digital age cannot stand this sort of thing and women older than that generally don't buy enough porn for this kind of book to have a solid market. It wasn't romance, this book, because it was way too dirty. It wasn't really porn either because I can't see getting off to this (well, that's subjective as hell, but I declare this just on general principle). This book is what would would happen if you put a gun to Mamie Eisenhower's head and said, "Tell me about the last time you fucked. Pretend you were wearing a costume."
Oh dear. So many buds. So many opening flowers. So much nibbling. One male, Dougal (it's historical porn), "gentled his embrace." I can only imagine what was meant by that. Also curious was the phrase, "he crashed behind her." Into what? Her? Crashed? Really? It takes about ten pages before any "thrusting" happens. This a short story collection so that's really egregious. Also, when it finally did get interesting, it felt like you were listening to your first grade teacher, the one who wore SAS shoes with support hose, get all graphic on you. I've never been embarrassed reading a book before, like I just wanted it to shut up and spare us all the indignity.
Yeah. I couldn't finish it.
I could have saved myself an hour had I read the back cover. "The Spinner's Dream weaves a seductive fantasy that will leave every woman wishing for her own private love slave, desparate and running for his life."
Yes, terribly frightened men give good sex, it seems. Desparate, frightened men. Whether the back cover meant "desperate" or "disparate" it is hard to tell. Also, the blurbs reference a Sultan and a character called Lady Antonia Blair-Sutworth.
I don't even know.
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5:40 pm - BPAL
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Does anyone else here feel weird because they were never able to get into BPAL?
Henry got me one of those samplers for Yule and except for one, they all smelled like something I should spray to kill off bugs, each one formulated for a different species.
The sole one that didn't smell like bug spray smelled like when Cicero's anal glands get infected. Just as oily, too. After I opened each of those little vials (imps? I have no idea) and recoiled from each one, I rewrapped them in the bubble wrap they came in. Noodle tried to air-bury the bubble wrap. I had to put them in a drawer in the spare bathroom to keep him from tearing it up. I still don't know if he was trying to get at them because he liked them and wanted to roll in them much as he would do with a decomposing gopher carcass, or if he was affronted by the odor. Either one is not an endorsement, and Noodle is generally a fastidious cat.
Yet I want to buy some more. BPAL just seems so interesting. I love the website. I want to smell what they think Neil Gaiman smells like. But 15 little vials of the stuff and all of it was scary. I have no idea if that is enough empiricism to state that my nose and BPAL cannot be close friends.
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| Monday, July 6th, 2009
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11:29 pm - A photo essay
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4:18 pm - ...?
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So if you use Flickr, explain something to me.
Why would a picture, seemingly apropos of nothing, go from 10 views to several hundred in the space of a day?
This happened once before. All the pictures of my ankle - x-rays to surgical scars - went apeshit in March. I assumed my family found my Flickr account and I just deleted the pictures and the journal entries that accompanied them because, you know, that's what you do when you're a paranoiac on potent post-surgical painkillers who makes it a point to avoid blood kin at all costs. Also, just a tinge of that much younger, cuter girl who had people use her pics for weird purposes remains, but there was nothing pretty or really that interesting in my x-ray pics and scar.
Now it's a picture of two of the cats in the library, one specific cemetery picture of an angry angel, and a picture of Henry playing with Adolph. The former and the latter are posted in my LJ, but if every single person on my f-list clicked on the pic, that would explain only a quarter of the views. Add to that that the views are all in the last 48 hours. If the flurry of views was LJ generated, it would have happened when I posted them. The cemetery one never made it up anywhere but Flickr, though another version did get posted. I took all three down because I wasn't thinking - it would be much easier for someone to explain it if they could see it. So work with me theoretically.
Does this mean someone somewhere likely took a shine to the pics and uploaded them somewhere that gets way more attention than my humble Flickr account generates? Does Flickr just get confused sometimes? I logged out of the account and looked to see if I could even link to them and couldn't but it's not like I have any idea if someone could get around that.
I honestly don't care if anyone uses my pics. I don't even know what my pics are set to - reserved, creative commons, whatever or even how to set the status - because my head is mostly up my ass. Anyone anywhere can do whatever they want with them and I'll be flattered someone somewhere found worth in them. Ultimately, this doesn't matter much but I'm just wondering what the hell?
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1:47 pm - Okay, well, plan b in effect
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Went back to sleep. SLEEP! YES! Just now woke up.
One has to be flexible in these matters. Honestly, right about now, if I start being all, "Get your lazy addict ass out of bed and do shit!" I'm not going to do myself any good. Only non-negotiables right now are eating, showering and letting the Tripod out of my office because he is screaming. Since he needs food specific to renal failure treatment, he cannot be let loose because he eats everyone else's food, but if he sleeps in here with me, he punches me in the face with his Fatty Paws of Rage all night long and chews on my hair until I yell at him, hurting his feelings. So he has to be locked up for his own good until a qualified adult can supervise him.
My life is endlessly interesting, no?
The first two days are the hardest. Yesterday, I ached, itched, bitched, was nauseated, dizzy, uncoordinated, had a headache down to the roots of my teeth, blurred vision and smelled lemons. Yes, smelled lemons. Given what I could have smelled, I consider myself lucky.
Today is much better.
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5:13 am - Monday
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I got over the worst hump of the physical misery yesterday, I slept for almost five hours on 30 mg, wakening in the middle of the night. There was a 10 mg stash left by Henry in the event this happened, so I took the 10 milligram pill Henry offered because I am operating on little sleep and this may help. If not, it's an interesting look at managing the dosages. Whether it works or not, I will still be 10 mg less than the dsy before.
I have to do things today. I stayed in bed for two days, riding out the worst, so now it is time to start on small chores.
1) Shower, shave, body lotion, makeup, clothes that require shoes.
2) Laundry. Since I am unsteady on the stairs, carrying a laundry basket may be my demise. I will throw the clothes over the landing to the first floor and Henry will carry the clean clothes back up when he gets home.
3) Deal with the hardwood floors upstairs and down.
4) Experiment making a meal called cheesy tuna rice (thanks ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) scarybaldguy for mentioning this dish from my childhood).
5) Cook chicken penne pasta for supper, clean up.
6) Iron a few shirts.
A light day, but each item is simple, easily done and will keep me busy in a far more productive manner than talking about feelings in rehab. All I do is think about feelings. So may as well work and think.
Fascinating, I know. But this is how sober sausage is made, people.
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| Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
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4:55 pm - My favorite stone at Oakwood
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| Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
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8:19 pm - 30 of 30
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1) I did it. I got behind two days and I caught up both times. I had a hard time on some days limiting myself to one entry, but managed it some days, so I'm pretty happy. I did it when I was very physically sick and in the middle of a serious pharmaceutical detox. I did it. Period. Yes!
2) My life is very boring. These entries made that clear to me. Instead of writing about cemetery or abandoned building explorations, I wrote about how I feel and how it made me feel feeling that way. Instead of recipe experimentation, I worried about meds. Instead of reading incessantly and keeping up my book sites, I agitated over things I have no control over. Instead of doing, I spoke of emotions, and that is not a life, really. I need to do so much more and now that I am untethered in so many ways, I think I can.
3) Inexplicably, despite feeling like a boring wad of skin, I attracted a lot of new readers over the last 30 days, about half from the 30 in 30 group. I wish I had interacted with the people on that list more, but when you get into an antisocial mindset, it is often hard to break it. But it was heartening to learn that even when I feel like I have little to write, there are those willing to read it.
4) I needed to see that I have the discipline to write on a regular schedule, as loosely defined as that was in terms of 30 in 30. I hope I am able to apply this to my regular days and begin to write, be it in any of a number of unfinished novels or at oddbooks or ireadeverything.
I can either pull myself together and continue to fade or I can, even on the smallest level, engage in the world and create a body of work as I wander through the world in my own weird little way.
Last summer I was accumulating weird Texas history information to launch a site called macabretexas.com. Some people think that Jack the Ripper got his start in Austin in 1884-1885, then emigrated to England. I wanted to find the victims' graves. This is the grave of Susan Hancock, one of the Servant Girl Annihilator victims. She was the exception who disproved the rule about who many think the Annihilator was and her grave may not even be extant now. I had to pick it up and move it back to where it was supposed to be according to the map and am unsure if vandals or time were responsible for her stone breaking. She's a part of weird history and she is fading away. I'm glad I found her stone when I did.
It is near criminal that I have not written up my findings about the SGA and posted them somewhere. Time is wasting.
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| Monday, June 29th, 2009
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11:41 pm - 29 of 30
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Appearances.
When I lived in Dallas, I had a wardrobe that I still covet and that speaks volumes since it would be 13 years old by now and sort of out of style in some respects. I was a long, pencil skirt type, black from head to toe with some white and gray, amazing clunky but still sleek shoes, and the skin on my legs never saw the light because I wore opague black tights year-round. Red lipstick, heavy black eyeliner, china doll haircut, and I was the perfect gothic librarian.
I tried to maintain this in Austin and was okay for the first couple of years, then became increasingly miserable. In Dallas, there were few restaurants without AC. Some even had AC blasting on the outside patios (YAY FOR WASTE). I recall one horrifying day that H and I went to a burger joint on Barton Springs and sat outside. The makeup on my face melted. Worse, the makeup in my purse melted.
I continued to wear tights and 3/4 sleeves in summer, clinging tightly to the notion of who I was when I looked in the mirror. I looked old compared to most Austinites. Dowdy. And hot. Hot as in sweltering.
I broke in about 2005. I bought t-shirts that ended mid-bicep. I purchased my first pair of jeans since high school. And it was downhill from there. I stopped cutting my hair for a long time until it was almost to my waist, then I cut it off. I repeat this cycle every three years or so. Stopped dyeing my hair, too. I like my white hairs. Hell, I hope the white takes over my entire head. I stopped wearing skirts for the most part. All my shoes? Utterly comfortable. I developed a deep love of Converse and Chuck-knock offs.
I'm miles away from being a soccer mom, and I am not quite a hippie mama now, but I will admit I have gone two days without wearing shoes. When I go two days without wearing a bra, the hippie mama transition will be complete. Don't see that happening.
It took me almost a decade to bend to my new literal environment, for Austin is hotter than Dallas, but also to gain the sort of flexibility wherein the person I once looked like wasn't the whole of myself, something to cling to instead of just changing my clothes. I was afraid that if I went from the gothic librarian to the casual me, somehow I'd be a traitor to myself.
But in a way, I needed that level of betrayal of my old self. My clothes were armor and a disguise, a way of drawing defense between me and all the big-haired blondes in their jeans, heavy eye shadow and no lipstick, a look that denoted a certain sort of girl whom I definitely was not. Hey, y'all! Screw you and your stupid-ass, overprocessed, crunchy, enormous hair!. Dumb and adolescent, but how many of us still operate our lives in reaction to who and what we were in high school. A shocking number, I'd reckon. I wasn't me. I was just the reaction I once was. (But don't get me wrong, occasionally I remember how much effort I used to put into myself and I sort of admire my old style. I don't admire the extreme amounts of money I had to pour into it, though.)
I guess I was afraid that if I wore t-shirts and jeans, sneakers and my hair in a ponytail, it was a defacto sign I had given up.
And it was. There is nothing wrong with giving up. I was fighting a dumb fight.
I like to think I look cute these days. I have Chucks and fauxChucks in several colors, I wear jeans a lot. People who knew the old me might not recognize me (weight gain as well as breaking nose twice but really, it's the way we dress ourselves that give us away, I think). And that's cool because I devised my old style just to avoid those people anyway.
Borderline Austin hippie mama for the win.
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4:25 pm - 28 of 30
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Unpleasant music
Okay, I openly admit to having questionable tastes in music, and the problem is that I like music that sounds violent, or contains violent imagery or just sounds like it was not really meant to be used as music but rather as devices to annoy prisoners of war (though if Gitmo has taught us anything, it is that the Barney the Purple Dinosaur song is best in terms of sheer torture.
Don't get me wrong. I listen to fluffy music sometimes, too, but for the most part, there is something disturbing about the sound or content of my music.
Items recently appearing on my playlist:
"Anything, Anything, Anything" by Dramarama: The least disturbing of the bunch - just a dysfunctional couple and their assorted addictions. Little to see here, really. Just mildly unpleasant.
"Conjure Me" by The Afghan Whigs: "I smell your blood but I can't taste it yet." Then it goes on to explain how the speaker is going to fuck over his girlfriend before she can fuck him over. Not too disturbing but not top 40 to be sure.
"Jack the Ripper" by Morrissey: Pretty song, unpleasant imagery. "Oh you look so tired, mouth slack and wide..." And since the song is sung from the killer's perspective, this is creepy: "Crash into my arms, I want you. You don't agree but you don't refuse. I know you." I love this song.
"Jezebel" by Acid Bath: "If I took this cigarette and put it out on you, would you love me?" Or better yet, "She screams bloody murder as they chop off her fingers, so is how it feels to die. But it's okay."
"Helena" by The Misfits: YES! Two songs back to back about dismembering women. "If I cut off your arms and I cut off your legs would you still love me, anyway?" I know, I know. :slaps hand: Bad feminist!
Then Random fails us and brings up The Psychedelic Furs, "Love My Way." But never fear...
"Shove That Warrant Up Your Ass" by gg allin: One of allin's sweeter songs, actually. It has a singsongy quality, and despite the singer, it's not so unpleasant.
"The Dawn of a New Age" by Satyricon: Unpleasant vocals that are a cross between grumbly cookie monster and traditional black metal screams, with groans that sound like punch-belches. Lyrics not so disturbing because they just quote the Book of Revelation.
Then random proves again I am not completely beyond musical redemption. "9 Crimes" by Damien Rice, which is depressing, but not in any way disturbing or unpleasant to behold.
"Masturbating the War God" by Nile: Yeah. Not a pleasant song in terms of sound or imagery. COOK-IE MON-STER VO-CALS! "Yea we impale them on the massive stone member of the Ithyphallic War God until the backs of their throats are torn out and their Bowels are ripped apart." It just goes on from there, and I had to look those lyrics up. No way a semi-normal human being could have derived those words from the vocal noises the singer was making.
This is where I cut it off because I could have gone on forever. I wonder what my mentality would be like if I just gave Lady Gaga or Nickelback a chance?
What would worry your mom if she had access to your music? Share. Discuss. Appall me with your own disturbing music (or rather, delight me with it).
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| Sunday, June 28th, 2009
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5:17 pm - 27 of 30
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Privacy
I have none, living with so many cats. I should just cue that du-duh, du-duh music every time I use the bathroom because I ought to know by now a cat head, usually Baby or Noodle, is going to pop up over the side of the bathtub and stare at me the entire time. Not as lethal as the shark in Jaws unless SOUL DEATH counts.
H snuggles up to me to give me a smooch? Something sneezes under the bed. Should the smooch lead to anything more? At least one pair of eyes at the foot of the bed, watching intently. And watching if we're lucky. Adolph is old enough and anthropomorphic enough to know better to leap around naked human beings. But he does. Three legs, and he's still there, and because he's old and frail, you feel bad about arm-sweeping him back to the floor or tossing him out of the room. He knows this. He capitalizes on it.
We sometimes turn on the vacuum to clear them out of the room, but even that is a Pyrrhic victory, as we know within minutes we will see a cat arm up to the shoulder waving under the door, followed by mournful howls. Just try to read a book in this house. Or eat a meal without a curious beast intruding to see if they want any. I dare you. Want to sleep? One of at least four cats will, if given the chance, crowd your pillow or chew on your hair (and what a pleasant smell that is to wake up to - cat breath hair).
I guess we should be humbled that these beasts love us so much that they want to be up our asses every minute of the day.
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| Saturday, June 27th, 2009
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10:32 pm - 26 of 30
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Food wank
Cynthia Davis, a Missouri state representative, not so subjectively made a complete fucking ass out of herself last week when she went on record saying that school lunch programs that feed economically under-privileged kids during the summer hurt families, that kids could get jobs at McDonalds if they needed money for food (plus, they could get free meals on their breaks, which is both untrue and a notoriously hard thing for a ten-year-old to do), and denied the link between low incomes and obesity. She actually says that people who are struggling with food bills generally do not have an obesity problem, as if years of National Center for Health and CDC reports proving a causal link between poverty and obesity just didn't happen.
It is quite surprising to me that everyone who does not make six figures a year has not gone apeshit and demanded the heads of Davis and all like her on a pike. America is a weird place. The poor feel ashamed of themselves here, like they deserve economic pain and shame and would not have either if they were somehow better people. I know that's how my parents behaved.
But back to food. H and I are notoriously bad about taking note of food prices as of late, and while I deleted the post wherein I described a recent accidental act of his that pushed us to the financial edge, after that accident, Baby and Adolph's vet bills and the attempts to mitigate and then repair our broken AC, we are broke. Say broke with two syllables, because that is how broke we are.
So we are on a tight budget and have only a certain amount we can spend on groceries. Years ago, when I was massively frugal, the two of us could eat for about $40 a week. But we also ate out, which I didn't keep track of, and ate tons of processed, empty calorie carbs - ramen, boxed mac and cheese, and similarly awful foods.
It was stunning today. I took a calculator and added everything we put in the cart, and we had made a list of exactly what we would need for the week, including his lunches at work. We ended up spending just under $90 on food. NINETY DOLLARS FOR TWO PEOPLE!!!
Of course, this is every meal accounted for. $2.14 a meal, and that is artificially skewed because we have lapsed on vegetarianism and bought some free-range chicken - four breasts for $13.00. In order to make this work better, we will need to be complete vegetarians again in order to refill our savings.
But aside from some sugar-free pudding and trail mix that keeps H away from the vending machine when the munchies hit, everything in that cart was an ingredient. No crap. No sweets. Nothing but components of healthy, mostly vegetarian meals. Dead animal configured into ONE meal and it still cost $90. And the high total, chicken aside, was because of the fresh fruits and vegetables. Of course, according to Davis, we could garden, and we could also go fuck ourselves because the clay in our backyard is insane. Not even the auger for the fence could cope with it. I guess there are community gardens nearby, but frankly, my talents do not lie with raising food. I am a terrible gardener. I've tried. I kill all plants. It's almost epic, how bad I am with plants.
I'll admit that it costs more for us to eat in the summer because the cheapest meals I know how to cook are soups and chilis and the like, which are too damn hot to eat now, so the bill likely would have been $30 cheaper were this December. As I get better at cooking again, because I really haven't cooked since late January or even really shopped critically since then, the costs may go down. There are alternatives to the supermarket, but frankly the prices for food at coops and farmers markets are just as much. God help you if you buy eggs at a farmer's market. I used to do that. It was steep. Ethical but expensive as hell.
I thought about Davis and her asshattery when I looked over the receipt. Even with food aid, I can only imagine how bad things can get for families on the edge, and the quality of the food they have access to must be low. If families run out of food and moms cannot cook meals as Davis and presumably god intended, and they have no access to gardens, and the local food pantries only have Kraft box meals, what do they do?
Are only the rich supposed to have kids, or are only the rich supposed to have kids who eat anything but ramen and canned fruit, whoring themselves when of age to fast food establishments in order to get the worst sort of subsidized food? What kind of a fucking asshole do you have to be to find justifications for denying food to children? What kind of a monster are you to find holier-than-thou reasons to yank free lunch programs when the very diet recommended by the FDA costs $90 a week for two people?
May Davis one day have to live the very bad, unthinking, unfeeling advice she gives to the poor. /soapbox built on sheer disbelief and anecdata
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, June 26th, 2009
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6:26 pm - 30 in 30 is too limiting right now; long entry is long
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1) H claims all that is wrong with him is not being able to sleep because Adolph and Noodle suck. If Adolph is not sitting on one's chest, pounding on one's face, Noodle is on the nightstand knocking things over, one by one. I understand what he means because I haven't had more than two hours of connected sleep this entire week. I am so tired and hot I sort of forget words, too, but not being able to pull out a word is different than forgetting the word exists at all. And forgetting it exists while actually speaking it. I don't know what to do with him. You can only make an adult do so much and then he is on his own. I am not his mother. Or at least I'm not anymore.
2) We tried to put Noodle and Adolph both back downstairs this morning, creating a barricade to prevent them from coming upstairs to the largely unairconditioned second floor (where it is currently 107 degrees outside of the bedroom). They got past it, and I woke up around noon (didn't fall asleep until 6:00, so don't judge, yo!) to find them both laying, seemingly almost dead, on the landing. The carpet in front of the barricade is torn up from where the two of them clearly sat there for a while, worrying at it, until they were able to get under it. I forced them back into the bedroom, Adolph tanked up on water, went and hid in my closet the way cats do when they are isolating themselves to die, then woke up bitching when I came back upstairs a bit later. He then puked and puked and puked. Then he raced to the door, complaining to be let out again. He wants to sit in the hottest place in the house until his kidneys are little better than pebbles. Aren't cats supposed to be smarter than this? Have a call in to the vet about potential dehydration combined with his renal failure, and he will probably have a concussion soon from racing the door and ricocheting off of it every time we enter the bedroom.
(ETA: The vet says to bring him in next week, but that if he is active, alert, eating and drinking, and he is all four, then he is in no clear danger. We need to add a little to the typical lactated ringers dose tonight, and he should be fine but keep him in the bedroom no matter how much he fattypaw-punches us in the face. I love him but he is a very bad cat. He is El Gato Muy Malo.)
3) I am giving up on all forms of medical intervention at the moment. May come back to it, may not. Physical therapy seems to be a joke. They use heat and TENS for "pain relief." Heat makes my ankle swell, which is uncomfortable and the TENS units never help at all. The exercises are no better than anything one can read on the Internet, and I get to pay a $35 copay for the privilege. After reading what the pain management guy does, I refuse even to keep the appointment. Pain management via drugs, not pain management via finding a way to get rid of the pain. It may come to that, but it seems pretty early in the game to say this is permanent and possibly needs permanent medication to treat.
When I remembered to do scar massage and to desensitize the area around the plate, I was doing pretty good. The nerve pain began in earnest when I was on the psychotropics that made me unstable and mostly bed-bound. Inactivity combined with forgetting the pain management skills I learned are why my ankle hurts. And the more I read, the more I think that if this sensation of feeling the plate does not go away, then the plate needs to come out rather than me be on a regimen of pills for nerve pain and pain in general. So I'm going to give it a couple of months and see what's what. If it doesn't resolve with basic, consistent care, I'll seek medical intervention, but for now, I haven't done all I can do to remediate this and frankly, I am sick of doctors.
4) Lyrica. Was on it for two months for nerve pain. It helped but then it stopped helping and I went off of it. I was on it at the same time I was on Ambien, Lamictal, and Klonopin. There was a commercial for it today on television, and it had one of those disclaimers at the end. It said, or words to this effect, "Lyrica can increase a patient's risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors." Dude...
So I was on four separate drugs that each can potentially increase a patient's suicidal ideation. And was not weaned off of three of them. Just cold turkey on Lamictal, Lyrica and Klonopin. Not saying what happened from late February to about two weeks ago was linear with taking these drugs, but it is interesting how much better I feel now that the half-life of all of them in my system is spent and I am not taking them anymore. No suicidal rages, no sleeping all day, no sense of despair. And again, since I carry a list of meds I am on and the dosage of each all the time, how is it that at least one of four different doctors didn't have an "Oh shit!" moment when I turned up looking like the living dead, speaking of wanting to die.
5) Ambien withdrawal. The therapeutic dose for Ambien is 10 mg. I topped out at 80 mg and took them all day to sort of self-medicate myself into sleep because I was, quite frankly, in pharmaceutical hell (and if you take my pharma failure personally and think I am being insensitive to mental illness, you must not have been reading here long). I am now down to 15 mg, sometimes 20 mg, and I do my best to sleep first without them. Doesn't work yet, sleeping on my own, but I do get so tired the reduced dosage works better. I anticipate being completely off in two weeks or so.
6) I feel so much better. H and I still have a craptacular marriage but it isn't as bad now that I don't feel like dying literally every hour of every day. I should regret my rant and its subsequent follow-up rants but I don't. Shit happens, and everything I said was true. I was just so messed up I didn't mind yelling it to the world in the most melodramatic way possible. And I can sure as shit cope a whole lot easier right now. H says he feels hopeful. I feel cautious optimism, but it is a dual optimism. We can work it out, or I feel strong enough to leave. One of the two will happen. Continuing misery is no longer on the table for consideration.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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1:23 am - 25 of 30, revisited
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Edited because I realized my first 25 of 30 was likely uninteresting to many people.
LJ. Human nature. Do they both disappoint you at times? Discuss wildly.
For me, at times this place becomes a microcosm for why I am a hermit. Sometimes, I can't figure people out. Then other times, I loathe them. Most times I am baffled by them.
Examples (and details changed enough to ensure I don't end up flamed because I don't need that shit right now):
1) No one is ever obligated to add anyone back or stay friends with anyone or any of the stuff that some get so worked up over, and I don't get too worked up when people unfriend me. In fact, I put a disclaimer on my info page to that effect so I can avoid that awkward song and dance when people unfriend each other. But what do you think when someone who has been around for six years unfriends you without a word? I feel weird. Was this a mistake? Is it because I went a little bat shit? Is it because I talked too much about going a little bat shit? Is it because I don't post enough, or any for that matter, n00dz. Come on! We exchanged Yule cards for years. You sent me a little gift when one of my cats died. I let you e-cry on my shoulder during your divorce, which took forever, by the way. Dude. At least say goodbye. Tell me I suck. Something. Anything. This wasn't some six month, "Crap, does she ever talk about anything but her cats!" unfriending. I could send a message, but pride. It stings.
2) What do you think when someone you e-like turns out to be friends with terrible people? Good e-friends, too. You know there is no way they don't know about these people. And I mean terrible people. People who troll family of suicide message boards in order to mock the shocked and bereaved. People who have made impassioned arguments as to why man-on-guinea-pig sex is a beautiful thing based on personal experience. People who have killed guinea pigs. What the hell do you do? Ignore it when you see comments from that terrible person in a post where you wish to comment? Mind your own business but wonder if your e-friend is secretly into violating rodents? Flounce audibly?
3) Content. A lot of people bitch about Tweets imported as entries, and I largely don't care. I did it for a while, then decided I have nothing to Tweet about, and stopped. I am not bitching about Tweets. I am talking about LJ content (but feel free to think Twitter is the undoing of mankind - I got so bored with it I was unable even to continue the Tweets for El Gato Muy Malo). What do you do when someone who has posted excellent content suddenly goes into Tweet-like one liners, like, "I ate a pretzel, nom nom nom." Or, "My god, the sky is cloudy." These are the sole entries, under cuts so you have to click to see them, and they are f-locked so if you go away now, you can't lurk and see if they developed a resolvable attention span issue. Do you dump them? Scroll past and hope that cut doesn't contain something awesome? Speak to me not of f-list filters for I am a simple woman.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know LJ isn't life. But we develop friendships here, sometimes meaningful ones, and real life protocols often don't work. Or maybe I'm just awkward. Probably that.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, June 25th, 2009
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10:54 pm - Not a 30 in 30 and I cannot shut up, okay?
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(True conversation, I am not making this up.)
H: I think I have dent in my head where the fence post hit me.
Me: Fabulous. Just remember, I tried to get you to go to the emergency room.
H: (wanders out of the bathroom) I've forgotten the word for salt.
Me: What? Do you mean sodium?
H: No, the other word.
Me: You mean salt? Salt is the word for salt.
H: (stands there, looking baffled)
Me: You just said salt, H.
H: (looks even more baffled and wanders back into the bathroom)
God.
I hope he doesn't have brain damage. We don't have enough money for this to become a Lifetime Movie of the week. Those women all have granite counter tops and decks that look out over evergreen trees. And helpful girlfriends who say, "But you can't be expected to change his diapers yourself all the time. You need some ME time, honey!"
(And if you're worried, so am I. I can't make him do what he needs to do, though. He's stronger than me. I checked his head just now. No dent. But if he has one more insane memory skip like this, I'm calling his sister and his dad and together we will tag-team nag until he stops being a fucking he-man Neanderthal and goes to see a doctor.)
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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7:19 pm - Not a 30 in 30
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I have nothing to say. Not because I am unhappy but because it is too hot to think at the moment.
My laptop battery is fried or I would spend my days at a book store, wallowing in the air conditioning.
Our AC unit will be replaced Saturday at 8:00. It cannot get here fast enough. It reached 107 today and even with the window unit blasting away in the bedroom, it is 86 degrees in the bedroom.
Someone corrected me to tell me that it is A/C, not AC. The former means air conditioning, the latter means alternating current. Thanks. That helps.
Umm... Blow me? Who corrects grammar and usage in a friend's journal? I was a bit cranky in my reply and the helpful grammarian deleted the comment. Only by the remaining tendrils of my civility achieved via clinging to memories of how H used to keep it too cold in the house did I not unfriend and then banset. Oh, the heat. How it strips you of your ability to laugh. Remember laughter?
And now I plan to use AC until the day I die because I am stubborn, the heat has made me unpleasant and I probably won't remember the lesson anyway.
It has to be said: Michael Jackson was never my cup of tea even before the whole "is he a child molester or not" mess. But now I will remember him forever as the man whose death borked LJ for 15 minutes when everyone went to post about it. Coupled with Farrah Fawcett's death, we're lucky the Internet didn't explode.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
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1:37 pm - 24 of 30: The cats will always remember the day the AC died
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We have spoiled and pampered our cats to no end, which is how it should be when you've rescued them from bad things people do or parking lots strewn with glass. When our AC went out, it seemed an outright betrayal to some of them. The frailest of the cats, Adolph and Noodle, immediately went into the bedroom where we installed a window unit (and Baby is absent from these pictures as she has always lived in the bedroom). The rest had to wait until we could install one downstairs. It is now pretty pleasant downstairs and will remain so until the old AC unit is replaced sometimes this week, but those harrowing 36 hours before we could install the downstairs window unit is etched on their souls.
"How could this happen?" their little eyes said, then they became bitter. This is Texas, and it is hot. How could they, covered in fur, be expected to endure? "We hate cold water, and resent it when fans ruffle our fur. All your interim measure disgust us!" So they stretched on the floor and let their hate grow. I suspect some of them will need therapy.
( This is made of balls and suck, Food Monkey, says Sally )
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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12:25 am - 23 of 30
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What is it that makes you you? What do you surround yourself with that could, if looked at correctly, tell the world what they need to know about you?
For me, it is cats and books.
If you stop and think about it, if you've known me for any appreciable period of time, both make so much sense. Cats are embodiments, however incorrectly this may be on the micro-level, of curiosity, nervousness and solitude. I am so curious about the world as a whole, and like cats, I can develop intense but skittish attractions with people (as well as topics and subjects). Some cats will pester you for pettins but I am more a nervous Siamese who will talk at you a while then run when you when you get within arm's length. Like books, I am passive, preferring to be self-contained and for experience to come filtered to me rather than stalking it down. Sometimes I just have to go out and look into things, like my cemetery and high weirdness stomps, but I generally do it alone and I read and read and read about it before I do it.
Both, I think, sound more negative than they really are because cats are not nearly as finicky and disloyal as some believe, and books have a certain nobility to them, as well as a complete democratization, as they can be high-falutin' as well as base and earthy. I'm weird but I'll have your back, and I love Tennyson and fart jokes.
I've posted this pic before, and am posting it again because it is the best visual representation of what makes me me.
So, what makes you you? Share in comments, if you like. Use pictures if you want because it would delight me to see literally what you think of yourself. Wanna just comment because my fat Cicero Cat is the most motherf-ing handsome cat ever? Knock yourself out. Complete stranger? My god, speak up!
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(16 comments | comment on this)
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