“In rare instances, this medication may increase your level of a certain chemical made by the body called prolactin. For females, this increase in prolactin may result in unwanted breastmilk, missing/stopped periods, or difficulty becoming pregnant.”
- Ziprasidone pharmacy fact sheet
Gee, we’ve only DOUBLED my ziprasidone since my last period…think the two things might be related? I LOVE BEING MENTALLY ILL. IT’S SOOOOOO AWESOME.
So I’ve mentioned before how I’m fat, right? And I know I’ve mentioned before about HOW I got fat, right? Well for those who missed it, I was on this heinous drug called risperidone that made me VERY VERY hungry but also made my metabolism VERY VERY slow for a double fatty whammy that had me weighing an extra 60 lbs in a matter of 3 months.
That was, oh, 2 years ago now, maybe 2 & a half, and while I’ve had some success with eating protein in the morning to boost my metabolism and make my body burn more calories during the day, I’m still not the 105 lbs I was BEFORE I was subjected to that heinous drug and that’s a problem.
I was just watching Portia de Rossi on Oprah talk about her eating disorder and of course that made me think about my own weight and something I realized is that during my stint with the risperidone, I discovered that for the first time ever, I enjoyed eating. It was pleasurable. Never before in my life have I ever found eating pleasurable, it was always just something I had to do. Because you have to eat, that’s just how things are, right? So not enjoying food particularly + a super fast metabolism + smoking a pack a day + being 20 = 100-105 lb me.
While my metabolism is recovering because I’ve been off that drug for about a year & a half, it’s still not to where it was before and probably never will be. That sucks and there’s not a whole lot of things I can do about that, but another long term effect of this situation is the discovery that food is good, which, combined with the fact that I quit smoking 8 months ago, is probably a large part of my current problem. Oh yeah, and I sit at a desk all day, so there’s that too.
Anyway, it just occurred to me today that I’m now one of those people who likes food and I’m not sure what that realization means necessarily, but it’s something to think about that I’d never thought about before. It’s just kinda weird because now I look forward to meal times, they’re something TO look forward to, whereas before the only meal I ate was dinner and that was just because I had to eat something that day. Of course, I’ve always been a junk food connoisseur, but I had that whole speedy metabolism deal going on so it was never a problem and it really pisses me off that it’s a semi-problem now in that, I can’t live off of it anymore. It pisses me off that I have to give my food choices thought. I despise the fact that all of a sudden my mind is preoccupied with food when I never gave it a second thought before.
I HATE THAT THIS WAS DONE TO ME.
I’M PRETTY SURE I’VE MENTIONED THAT BEFORE.
I don’t know how much I weigh right now because I’m too scared to power up the Wii Fat. Last I checked, I was 130, which was 5lbs heavier than I was a couple of months before. 5 lbs, no big deal right? Well, I’m a small girl and these are 5 visible lbs. The reason my weight loss ended and I gained 5 lbs is for the following reasons:
And that’s it. That’s the whole reason why. I don’t make New Year’s (please note the apostrophe, there is only ONE “new year” – just a little pet peeve of mine) resolutions but I decided that starting today I would eat eggs for breakfast again, not because it was the new year, but because Blake would be back to work after a whole bunch of holidays and the kids would be back in school, so I could start getting my routine back together (although altered because I have a job now and that sort of interferes with eating). So what did I have for breakfast today? A Stouffer’s crustini thing. It’s like a hot pocket type of thing which ham, turkey and cheese in it, which is a miracle I’ll even eat it because there are 2 type of meat in it mixed together and that’s a huge OCD thing with me. Why did I have that and not eggs? Because we got a toaster oven for Xmas with a timer and in the morning I woke up to almost 200 e-mails that took me until noon to clear so at 11:30am, I ran in the kitchen, grabbed a drink, threw that Stouffer’s thing in the toaster oven and when it was done, I ran back in the kitchen and got it, not disrupting work for more than 30 seconds per trip.
So now I have to figure out how to do that with eggs. The thing that I’m stuck on is what to put the eggs IN that could also go in the toaster oven. Like something metal, I would think. And how long would you put them in for, at what temperature? Could I add bacon? Or would it not cook properly? What about cheese? OH YEAH, PS, I CAN’T COOK FOR SHIT.
Yoga. Our goal for 2011 was to go to yoga twice a week. Ideally Hatha on Tuesdays and Vinyasa on Wednesdays. If we could only do one, I wanted to do the Vinyasa because I really really don’t like Hatha. I think it’s boring and unhelpful. But the Vinyasa class was full and there was only one spot open for Monday’s Hatha class, so we’re stuck still doing Hatha, and only Hatha, on Tuesdays. Which sucks. I wish it was possible to go somewhere else, but it’s not with Blake’s commute. In fact Tuesday nights are even questionable because he often doesn’t get home until after the class starts. So that’s yoga. And don’t tell me to do it at home, I’m not doing it at home. If I had a clean, pet-free home that was at least twice the size of the one I’m in now, maybe then I’d do it at home, but as it stands now we can’t even bring our mats into our house because they’ll be covered in fur in 2 seconds. And Wii Fat yoga is a joke.
Today I got a call from the mental health clinic I go to about the metabolic clinic that I’m starting on the 18th that runs for 11 weeks and that supposedly most patients are having success with. Cuz y’see, weight gain is a huge part of all these drugs we need to function so they’re brought in a whole team of people to help us with this, all courtesy of our fine Canadian government.
In June I saw a nutritionist (is that the doctor kind? she was a doctor) and she asked me a million questions about my eating habits and activity levels and I was supposed to be signed up for the metabolic clinic starting in August or September but either the clinic was canceled or they forgot about me (haven’t gotten a straight answer about that…) and it never happened so after several requests, they finally put me into this group.
On the 19th I see a dietician and I have to keep a food journal for 5 days and the day before, after the clinic, I have to see a “recreationist”, which is about the most fucking ridiculous thing I’ve practically ever heard of. Check this shit out. “Recreation therapy” even has its own Wikipedia page. This person is going to…what? Tell me I should….skydive??? I have no bloody idea, it just sounds really really stupid and it kills me that this is an actual job that like, requires a degree. And I don’t mean to be a Negative Nancy here, but I know recreation. I paint. I write. I blog. I have slacked professionally for most of my life. The only physical thing I do is yoga and that is the only physical thing they will GET me to do so I’m really just going to this appointment to humour them.
The other thing I had to do as part of the metabolic clinic is blood work, which I had done on Dec. 21st. It’s a really thorough program by the sounds of it and as I said, it’s apparently really successful so hopefully they can get me on a manageable path. Maybe they can tell me how to make eggs in my awesome toaster oven with a timer.
I know I’m eating the right amount of stuff, for the most part, every day. I only eat 3 meals a day and try to keep each meal at around 300 calories with the option of 2 snacks per day and I know that’s right as far as calories consumed, I’m just not eating the right kind of calories, I guess. And a calorie is not just a calorie. I’m not buying that line anymore. A sugar calories is different from a fat calorie or a protein calorie. There’s a whole video on YouTube about it that I totally can’t find right now but it was a black guy talking about it and it was very very convincing, like with science and everything. If I can find it again, I’ll link it HERE.
Anyway, now that I’ve written over 1600 words about fat and food and my lard-ass woes, dinner’s going to be read in 10 minutes and Blake will be home at the same time, so…it’s time to EAT!
Hindu Group Stirs a Debate Over Yoga’s Soul
This is very interesting.
Our yoga class mentions nothing about Hinduism, unless you count the “Namaste” at the end, which I don’t say. I don’t know why I don’t say it, I just don’t. I guess I kinda think it’s cheesy. On one of the walls, our teacher put up a giant poster of all the various asanas and it has a faint, giant “om” symbol in the background but that’s really the extent of Hinduism in our class so I guess we’re totally appropriating.
HOWEVER, when you sign up for the class she makes you fill out a sheet with your info and sign a thing that says she’s not liable etc. but on it she asks why you want to learn yoga or why you want to take this class. On mine I put “to maintain weight” (which is so not working because we’re doing Hatha now instead of Vinyasa haha, but whatever, we’ll be doing both in the new year hopefully). But I think if enough people put on that sheet that they wanted to pursue yoga for religious reasons or even just spiritual reasons or whatnot, she would alter the class. She actually went to college to learn how to be a yoga teacher and she’s been doing yoga herself since she was a teenager so I know she knows all about it. But I think everyone says they want to do it for exercise purposes so that’s why the class is the way it is.
Sometimes she interjects during poses that “this one’s good for digestions” or “this one’s good for headaches” etc so she tries to make it more than athletics but not by much. I think I’m going to e-mail her that article and see what she thinks of it. She’s probably already seen it.
This week I got a new shirt. Let me show you it:
I like it a whole lot. In fact part of the reason I like it is because I can do yoga in it. All of my yoga-appropriate shirts are short sleeved and I wear a hoodie over them TO class, but I can’t do yoga with my hoodie on because the hood gets in the way and it’s too baggy etc., so this shirt is perfect for that. I mean, I like it and can wear it other places, but specifically I like it because I can do yoga in it, be warm and not look like a total schlep. The ooooonly problem with it is that it’s a thermal, so it’s that waffle material and holy hell does it ever pick up every fluff, fuzz, dog hair, MY hair and the like. But that’s okay, I’m a compulsive lint brush user so it’s all good.
So I’m sorta…avoiding and rambling because I couldn’t decide whether or not I should write about this because it’s not really supposed to be about me and I feel kind of selfish making it about me but it did and does affect me and I think for my own sanity I should write about it so here goes:
I’ve met Alex’s brother twice. Well, three times now, but prior to Thursday night, I’d only met him twice and had only spoken one sentence to him ever. But I’d heard stories about him through Alex & Ronny many many times and a lot of those stories had to do with the fact that he’s extremely paranoid and once was so violent to Alex as a result of his paranoia, she had to call the cops and ended up moving out more or less because of his behaviour. That was a couple of years ago now, but he’s still extremely paranoid. For example, he used to think that Alex was putting “stuff” in his shampoo to make his acne worse. (This is why he reacted violent toward her.) Hearing the stories, I have always suspected that he was probably mentally ill and I realize I’m not a shrink but from what I’ve read, I’d peg him as bipolar II or maybe even schizo-affective.
It should also be noted that he smokes a lot of pot, just as I used to prior to my stint in the psych ward in 2006. Marijuana doesn’t cause psychosis, but it has been written and I believe that it definitely exacerbates the problem and shouldn’t be used, or at least used with extreme moderation, if mental illness is in the picture at all.
Everything that has happened over the past week or so is a blur and most of it I only heard second-hand so apologies to Alex if I get the sequence of events mixed up.
At some point last week, Alex’s brother (I don’t want to use his name) told Alex that he’d had a dream and as a result of this dream he knew that he was a shaman and that she was too and along with saying this and trying to convince her it was true, he displayed other strange behaviours, although I’m not clear on what those behaviours were. I do know he wasn’t sleeping though and he had mostly stopped smoking pot all of a sudden.
Throughout the week, his strangeness and paranoia increased and after being told about it, Blake & I agreed that he was likely psychotic. Grandiose ideas, paranoia, hallucinations, etc. It all sounded very very familiar. We told Ronny & Alex to keep a close eye on him and at the first sign of total loss of reality to get him to the ER.
So they watched him for a few days. They watched him not sleep and become increasingly, well, nuts.
On Wednesday night, around midnight, something happened or he said something that alarmed them enough to take him to the hospital in Barrie which is called RVH and which is the same hospital where I was taken when I was psychotic. They were there until 4am because while Canadian hospitals, especially ERs, are great, it’s been my experience and now theirs, that they just don’t know how to deal with mental illness. They told Ronny & Alex to take her brother home and to bring him back Thursday when a shrink would be around to take a look at him.
So stuff happened. I don’t know what. But on Thursday he was acting so mental that Ronny & Alex called 911 twice and the mental health crisis line twice. The second 911 call resulted in Alex & her brother being taken back to the ER in an ambulance while Ronny followed behind in his car.
At the ER, a shrink, a young one, saw Alex’s brother for about 10 minutes, gave him a prescription of 200mg of Seroquel (which is like, NOTHING for a guy who’s 3 times my size and I think I was on 600mg daily) and Welbutrin (you do not rx an anti-depressant in a suspected bipolar patient until their mood is stable with something else because it can make them WORSE) said he was “likely bipolar” but that there were no beds in the psych ward and that he was going on vacation and wouldn’t be back until February so he wouldn’t be able to see him again until then. And then they were sent home.
So Alex & Ronny go to Shopper’s Drug Mart to fill the prescriptions and I guess Alex’s brother flipped out completely and was like, yelling that people should stay away from the vitamins because they were poison or something. They got the pills and took him home but not before he told them that he was the second coming of Christ, that the world’s problems were on his shoulders and that they had to kill him so he could die for everyone’s sins. He said that they had to do it because he couldn’t kill himself. Then he tried to throw up on a tree because he said that he had to expel all of the negative energy into another living thing and he was afraid that if he didn’t throw it all up on this tree, that it would infect Ronny & Alex.
After that I’m not quite sure what happened but they ended up back in the ER because it was pretty clear that Alex’s brother was getting worse instead of better and they didn’t know what else to do.
I was working when all of this was happening and so was Blake, but the second he got home, I told him we were going to the ER to wait with Ronny & Alex and to just lend support. Also, Alex’s brother, as I said, is a pretty big guy and if he decided to be violent or flip out, Ronny wouldn’t be able to contain him but Ronny AND Blake probably could. I also thought we should go because we’ve been through this before, at the very same hospital, so we would know better what to say to make sure they were finally going to be taken seriously and to have Alex’s brother admitted to the ward on a 3-day form.
It should also be noted that as of Thursday night, Alex & Ronny had only had about 2 hours of sleep in 2 days as a result of all this. Also, Alex’s dad was on a business trip in Ottawa so Ronny & Alex were dealing with this all alone.
We got there and were just as supportive as possible. I joked around with Alex’s brother, like when he said that everyone was looking at them (they weren’t), I told him that they were actually looking at me and then he called me an albino haha I screwed around with my phone a lot & showed everyone how I could watch porn on it, I used an app I’d never used before that scans the barcode of any food item and gives you its nutrition info, I tweeted, I e-mailed blah blah blah. I joked around with Alex and engaged her in a fart war while Ronny & Blake sat behind us and just talked about stuff I guess. After I think 7 hours in the ER this time and after the nurse gave Alex’s brother another dose of Seroquel, a doctor was finally ready to see him so Alex & Ronny took him into that area and told us that they could handle it from there.
The nurse, after talking to Ronny & Blake and observing Alex’s brother for herself, told them that she was going to recommend to the doctor that he go to the ward on a 3-day form, which is what happened and we all went home.
To “end” the story…Alex’s brother escaped from the hospital on Friday morning and the cops were out looking for him., He walked all the way from the hospital to their house because he wanted to have a shower. The cops waited for him to have his shower and then drove him back to the hospital. The hospital then decided that he was more than they could handle, so they transferred him to an actual psych hospital about an hour away which happens to be a VERY VERY good thing because I use this hospital’s outpatient services and they are excellent. Also, my own shrink either does work there or used to work there and she’s pretty decent so I know they’ll bring him out of psychosis properly, that he’ll come out of there with an actual diagnosis (whereas I did not when I was in RVH) and that his aftercare will be excellent.
He’s got a really really long road ahead of him but I think he’s in the best place possible right now so hopefully he’ll have an easier time than I did with the whole thing.
So having said all of that, after Blake & I got home from the hospital, I was tired and hungry and so on edge that I completely lost it and started sobbing uncontrollably because it was the same hospital, the same situation and I knew exactly what he was going through. I was so scared for him and so pissed off at the hospital for putting Ronny and Alex through all that bullshit. Then when I found out they were moving him to the actual psych hospital North of us, I was so relieved for him that I just bawled.
And I did a lot of crying over the last couple of days because this whole thing has brought up a lot of stuff that I’d thought I’d dealt with but apparently not. My shrink has even said that part of my problems now is that I never really dealt with what happened to me in 2006 so it’s no wonder I’m completely traumatized by this whole thing now. Supporting Ronny & Alex in this was a no-brainer and I’d gladly do it again and will keep doing it, but I’ve very glad that I’ll be seeing my shrink on Monday to discuss all of this.
It’s hard for me to even put into words all of the things that have surfaced as a result of this but I’m better today than I was yesterday and I suspect I’ll be fine in a few days. When we got home from the hospital I told Blake that there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be able to visit Alex’s brother with them while he was in the psych ward of RVH but now that he’s been moved to the better hospital, I actually want to go up there with them at some point just to see what the facility is like because I’ve heard so much about it.
In the midst of writing this post, Ronny called me and told me that they’d visited Alex’s brother at the hospital today with their dad and that her brother’s pretty disoriented, thinking he’s been there for days instead of not even 24 hours. You can kinda tell that the meds are starting to do their job because he’s a little pissed off that Ronny and Alex “put” him there, as any sane person would be if they were in that situation. The nurse that they spoke to while there said that she doubted he would be out sooner than a week, which I explained to Ronny as being very good news. As long as he co-operates and actually speaks his mind, he should be able to get an actual diagnosis and start the long process of trying to find the right meds.
And as I explained to Ronny, their outpatient services are excellent and that since Alex’s brother doesn’t drive and lives an hour away, they’ll actually send a cab to pick him up for appointments and another one to bring him home, all on the government’s dime. He’ll also be able to get his medications through the clinic so he won’t have to pay for them, which is good because he doesn’t work and psych meds are super expensive. In a way, this story has a happy ending.
In other news, my kitchen is finished. Blake and Madison and Madison’s friend are putting the cupboard doors back on and after a bit of touch-ups on them because the paint stuck to the plastic they were laid down on, Blake’s going to paint our shelves green (which are now white). Then at some point my mom’s going to wallpaper the backsplash and line the shelves with the same wallpaper, then we’ll put everything back in the cupboards and it’ll be done! It looks GREAT, the light in there is so much nice now that it’s bouncing off of a greyish blue instead of pineapple yellow.
Tomorrow night is the finale of The Walking Dead, which Ronny & Alex are going to come over for and that should be awesome.
The only thing right now in my life that isn’t so awesome is that I’ve been gaining weight again. This is partially due to the fact that I’m not eating my eggs for breakfast anymore, that I’m not eating dinner with the family anymore, I’m eating too many large assorted subs, I’m doing Hatha yoga now instead of Vinyasa and because now that I have my own money, I can afford more junk food. In other words, I am absolutely doing this to myself and it’s making me very angry.
So starting Monday, I will be eating my eggs for breakfast again and I am going to start eating dinner with the family again, while cutting out most of my junk food consumption.
See the thing is, if I’m eating my eggs and having dinner with the family, I can “afford” to have a bit of “vitamin J” every now & then, but with the combination of things happening diet-wise right now, I can’y and especially not in the quantities I’ve been having.
I know it’s a total cliche to say “the diet starts on Monday” but it’s easy to eat eggs on the weekend because Blake will make them for me, it’s NOT so easy to eat them during the week because I have to work and don’t have time to make them. (I think microwaving eggs is an absolute SIN).
And I absolutely have to give up my subs, or at the very least, limit it to a small one once a week, as opposed to a large one a few times a week. Truthfully, I’ve been eating them so much because I don’t know what else to eat since I haven’t been eating dinner with the family and since they eat gross things so often it’s just easier to get a sub and be done with it.
But the key is the eggs, so that’s priority one.
Anyway, I’m just babbling at this point, so that’s life right now and I hope you’re having a wonderful weekend! Mine is dedicated to watching really bad movies and painting because it’s been a while and I have a lot to catch up on. THE END.
It’s been…a week.
Yesterday, all I did was read A Thousand Splendid Suns (which is very good so far) at my desk and…that’s really pretty much it. I don’t expect today will be any different, aside from making this post.
Whoever recommended I download Mother Mother a LONG time ago, thank you. They’ve been keeping me sane-ish this week. Blake didn’t want to install iTunes on his computer, which I’m using until mine gets here, so I’ve been using Media Player and it didn’t import my playlists so I’ve been listening to albums instead and saw O My Heart by Mother Mother in my list and decided to listen to it, with their first album Touch Up directly after and I fell in love. This is the video for O My Heart, which isn’t my favourite song (I like Dirty Town, Polynesia and Oh Ana from their first album the best) but that’s the only video I could find.
They’re Canadian, you should all check them out.
Today the rain and wind let up long enough for me to go out and survey the damage to my garden. The vegetable garden (or should I say tomato garden) is okay but most of my sunflowers got knocked down even though I tied them up weeks ago. The wind was strong enough that it broke the string that I’d used. :o/
All the ones that were on the ground, I cut and brought inside to put in a vase and they’re not sitting on my kitchen table, along with the craptonne of tomatoes I picked while I was out there. There are still a lot of green ones out there that I don’t think will turn orange before the frost comes so I picked the ones that were more or less ripe or that would ripen inside in a few days and brought them in.
I also have about 6 more in my fridge…Katie, how the hell do I make sauce since I don’t know what else to do with all these tomatoes?
While I was out there, I also picked what I think will be close to the last of the cherry tomatoes. There are a lot of almost ripe or green tomatoes on the plants but there appears to be an abundance of slugs right now with all the rain and they’ve gotten a lot of them. Plus, with the way the weather’s been, I think frost is going to happen soon and then that’ll be the end of them. If things stay the way they are right now, then I should be able to get another 2 containers full of them but I think that’s it.
This morning Madison gave me the finger as she was leaving for school because I was making fun of her for looking like Justin Beiber (it’s her bangs haha). So she gave me the finger right as she was going out the door and then she came back in 2 seconds later to say “I was only joking plz don’t ground me!” haha Anyway, it was a proud moment. Her biological father used to tell me, when he was a teenager, that he’d read somewhere that if a child swears at their parents, it means they’re comfortable with them and feel secure enough in their relationship with them to know that things will be okay in the end. Does that make sense? I always thought there might be some truth to that, although I think there are exceptions to the rule, like when I swore at my mother, there was no security there. I didn’t think my mother even loved me until I was in my 20′s. Our kids KNOW we do and while Wes doesn’t swear, Madison feels comfortable with us to swear occasionally just in conversation.
Anyway, yeah. She gave me the finger. I was in tears I was laughing so hard. (Maybe you had to be there…)
Speaking of laughing…last night I was eating dinner and Blake & I were talking, as we usually do while we eat and as I was taking a drink, he said something really funny – we have no idea what – and I BLEW SNOT all into my drink, like it was floating on the surface. It was so gross but so fucking funny, I was just about on the floor peeing my pants as he went to get me a new drink in a new glass. Again, maybe you had to be there…
Okay, that’s the only excitement there’s been this week, aside from the whole wanting to kill myself thing. I’m gonna go make breakfast now and continue reading my book.
Oh, btw, I did submit to Touched By Fire. I’ll be very surprised if I get in, but I figured I had nothing to lose by submitting.
I see my shrink on Friday and the weather’s supposed to get sunnier as the week goes by, so I’ll come out of it (and I’ll probably have my meds adjusted) but right now I’m living in a world of suck and self-loathing. I’ve never really kept a calendar of these things ( I probably should) but I think the end of summer does this to me every year. The first day of school comes and I start to feel like I’m dying. And this weekend has been extra brutal because it’s like, as soon as Friday at 5pm hit, everything got cold and rainy and windy and miserable and it was like *bam*, here we are in fall. (I realize fall doesn’t officially start until Sept. 22nd, but it is very much fall up here already. The leaves are starting to change colour and it’s only about 12 degrees during the day.)
I mean, here’s how the year goes for me:
Spring: I start to thaw and come alive and suddenly the world is wonderful. I get excited looking for the first robin of spring, the first crocuses, the first ladybugs. In March I start plants inside and get excited watching them grow. My sleep schedule goes straight to shit though, as it does in fall because these transitional months wreak havoc with like, my biological clock or something, but it’s okay, it corrects itself by about June-ish.
Summer: I’m in loooooove. The hotter, the more humid, the better. Yeah, I bitch about the heat like everyone else, but the heat just means that the kids and I have all day to scrounge up change to go to the beach when Blake gets home. I nap a lot more in the summer because when we have a heat wave, it gets so hot you can’t move and you just get sleepy (especially because of the meds I’m on that make me sleepy to begin with) and so, I do a lot of my painting at night when it’s cooler, but also at night is when I go to the park across the road and swing on the swings and watch the stars and dig my toes in the cold sand. We eat fresh food, whether it’s from our own garden or stuff grown locally at the grocery store and my whole body just feels better, it feels more alive. Admittedly, by the end of August the kids and I are all getting on each other’s nerves and they’re ready to go back to school and I’m ready for them to go back to school too, but Labour Day weekend, I think, is usually still hot and this year it’s fall weather and that has me bummin’ hardcore.
Fall: I hate fall. I hate that everything is dying. (Well I guess everything’s not dying, some things are just going dormant and if the trees didn’t go dormant we wouldn’t have maple syrup in the spring…) I hate the Fall Fair. I’m really starting to hate Halloween because I have GREAT anxiety about people potentially coming to my door wanting candy when I have none and I don’t want to buy any because no one ever comes to the door, I just think they might, and the kids bring home almost a garbage bag of the stuff so we don’t need an extra bag of it when I’m throwing out half of their haul behind their backs anyway because it’s junk and none of us needs it…yes, I’m a horrible mother. I hate the wind and the rain and the leaves blowing all over the place. I hate the grass turning yellow and dying. I begin to worry about Xmas. I used to love the first day of school but now I hate it. The kids are going to come home that day with a million problems that I’m expected to solve by the next day and they’re going to lay 30 trees worth of paper on my desk that I don’t know what to do with for field trips and things we can’t afford but must shell out money for anyway.
On Tuesday there will probably be a fight on the way home from school, which I’m worried about. This 9 year old little shit up the street is jealous of Madison having a friend her own age and jealous of her boobs and just jealous of Madison growing up in general, as evidenced by the fact that this 9 year old tries to dress grown up in boob shirts (where there are no boobs) and high heels and wobbles down the street in front of our house, swinging non-existent hips with her nose stuck up in the air, lipstick on her teeth and a purse around her arm. When Madison uploaded pics to her Facebook last week (two of which I posted here on my site), this 9 year old’s jealousy really bubbled over and she told Madison she was “ugly and horrable”. Then when Madison blocked her on Facebook and MSN, the girl started telling all the neighbourhood kids that Madison was a lesbian because I guess when you’re 9 and live in a very small town, that’s the worst insult you can come up with. Madison laughed it off and set the record straight with the few girls who messaged her to find out if it was true or not, but the 9 year old’s been talking trash about her ever since. Because they walk home the same route, I know there are going to be problems on the first day of school possibly even violence because this 9 year old acts pretty big for her breeches. But the thing is, this 9 year old, in the past, has known that she can’t do anything to Madison, verbally OR physically because Madison would just ignore her. Madison towers over her and could push her over with one finger, but she’s wise enough just to not engage. So instead, the 9 year old goes after Wes to antagonize Madison into a fight. Blake said he has no problem, if this all plays out the way I’m afraid it might, going to the kid’s grandparents (who look after her and her sister) and putting an end to all of this shit but I’m the one who has to deal with it “on the front lines” so to speak and the whole situation gives me anxiety like nothing else has in quite some time because I’m afraid of Wes getting his nose punched in as a casualty of war.
Plus there’s also the fact that fall is another transitional season and my sleep schedule gets completely fucked up. Like, here I am at 5 in the morning on a holiday writing a fucking blog post when I should be sleeping.
So that’s fall, or at least this one.
Winter: Well if you’ve been reading this blog for over a year, you know how I get in the winter. I’m better now that we’ve identified that I have S.A.D. and I do my light therapy, but for the most part, all winter I just do my best to cope. It’s fucked up though, as much as winter destroys me, I wouldn’t live anywhere, I don’t think, that doesn’t have it. I think snow is beautiful and many times I’ve tried (and failed) to record what snow looks like through my eyes. I think that without the cold and snow, I wouldn’t have the appreciation for spring and summer that I do. I think my body is so attuned to the 4 seasons that missing one would be worse than enduring it. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t pass up a vacation to somewhere warm in February, but I couldn’t live there. And of course winter means dealing with Xmas, which, as I pointed out, I start worrying about in the fall.
Admittedly though, last winter, with the lightbox wasn’t as bad as previous ones, but I’m still definitely not at my best in any way, shape or form (although I do feel I do my best creative work in the winter because I’m inside all the time and have to use my imagination to entertain myself).
Life is so grey area, y’know? Nothing’s every black & white, as much as I want it to be.
Lately part of my depression has involved privilege, self-esteem and awareness of the issues around me that I never saw before.
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So add to the list that I’m feeling entirely inferior as a blogger, despite the fact that Blake pointed out that I get e-mails from people who say that I’ve helped them in some way by writing about my life and saying some of the thing I do “out loud”. I guess that’s something…not something I’ve ever striven for or done on purpose, but I guess it’s a positive side effect of being so self absorbed….
Onto other things…
Yesterday Blake & I went to Toronto to pick up my paintings from The Square Foot Show. The trip was pretty uneventful, we just drove there, went to the gallery, stood in a line and picked up my paintings. Nothing too exciting. When we were walking down the street toward the gallery, there was this guy dressed in shabby, dirty clothes and a shirt that didn’t fit (I don’t think he was homeless but definitely mentally ill) and as we walked by, he said to Blake, “do you have some spare change for a Coke?” We were walking pretty fast and Blake just shook his head “no” and as we were walking, I asked Blake if he really did ask for change for a Coke and Blake said yes, and so I said if the guy was still there on our way back, I’d give him the Coke that just so happened to be in my bag. (I’m on meds that cause dry mouth, I travel with liquids.) So we went to the gallery and got my paintings (I didn’t sell any, which is a good thing*) and on our way back, the guy was still there so I got the Coke out of my bag and said, “Sir? Here you go.” and he said, “I don’t want that.” Confused I said, “Isn’t that what you asked us for when we passed by here earlier?” and he said, kind of belligerently, “NO, I asked for a COFFEE.” So I said “sorry” and we just kept walking to the car. We know for a fact that he said he wanted a Coke when we walked past him the first time, especially since we heard him, as we were approaching him WITH the Coke, ask another person for change for a Coke, so Blake figures he really wanted money for beer or something, which just made me sad.
On the way home, as we were on the outskirts of our town, the clouds were pretty spectacular so Blake pulled over and I ran into a field to take pictures of them. Behold:
My pictures, admittedly, suck, and they looked much cooler in person.
*So like I said, I didn’t sell any of my paintings at The Square Foot Show, which is a good thing and I found it funny that there was a guy in line talking to a VERY outspoken American woman who was happy that he didn’t sell anything either (which surprised her). I’m happy to have not sold anything because AWOL Gallery takes 50 goddamn percent of the $225 they charge for your paintings plus you’re out the $20 it cost to get in the show (plus gas to get the paintings there, then going to the show, then picking them up), so really you don’t make any money at all. The show, for me, as I think I’ve said before, was just to have another show on my resume for when I apply for the Ontario Arts Council emerging artist grant which I’m told by one of the program’s directors isn’t even necessary so next year I doubt I’ll take part in the show.
I would like to somehow find out about other shows that are actually happening in my area but I don’t know how you go about doing that. There IS some sort of arts council in Barrie that I know of but I’ve been on their website and they only seem to advertise events after they’re already happening, so that does me no good. There is also a local like, arts club type of thing but you have to pay quite a bit of money to be part of it, if I recall correctly, and I don’t think I’d benefit from it enough to make the financial investment because I don’t live in Barrie and I don’t think you should have to pay money just to find out about art shows before they happen. There has to be a better way, I just don’t know what it is.
Since I didn’t sell anything at Square Foot, I am going to submit all 3 of those paintings to Touched By Fire. I’m 99.9% sure they’ll be rejected because they aren’t depressing enough, but that’s okay, I’m going to submit them anyway and see what happens. No harm, right? And if I get in, that’s kind of a cool thing because the show’s at the ROM in Toronto and I happen to know the food is excellent and that there’s a free bar. Or at least that was the case when I was in the show before.
Anyway, I’m just rambling now…which I suppose I’ve been doing this entire post. I think I’m going to check e-mail, go back to bed and when I wake up, I’ll post my new paintings to Etsy.
So I guess I’ll just make this a sort of state of the union post since I’ve been kinda vague the last few days.
- Being without 24/7 access to a computer has made me extremely productive. I’ve completed 9 ACEOs and 2 paintings this week. The ACEOs I obviously posted to Etsy yesterday but the paintings are going to have to wait a few days because it’s rainy & overcast here right now and that’s not the best light to photograph them in. Also, the sides of them need a couple of light coats of varnish still, so I suppose they’re not exactly finished, but pretty damn close. (The varnish I use on the sides is different than the varnish I use on the front and it dries in seconds, so doing the sides will take half an hour, tops, for both paintings.) I’m not sure what I’m going to work on next, but I did get my sketchbook yesterday for The Sketchbook Project, so I think I might get started on that. The pages of the sketchbook are verrrry thin and there are a lot of them, so I think I’m going to have to glue some of the pages together for them to support the watercolour paper I draw/paint my girls on. In the rules they said “no glitter” because it gets everywhere and that’s just a rule I cannot abide by. (When I use glitter, it does NOT get everywhere because I mix it with glazing medium, which is sort of like a very thin glue (well, the way I use it it is) and I varnish over it, so the glitter does. not. budge. Hence why I will not be following the “no glitter” rule.) My sketchbook’s theme is “facing forward” because that seemed the most conducive to what I wanted to do with mine but I see on their website that they’ve added some new themes that look pretty interesting. I almost chose “boys and girls” for mine because I really should practice doing boys, but changed my mind at the last minute. I’m thinking of getting Madison a sketchbook so she can participate too but I have to wait until I make a few more Etsy sales for that to happen because my PayPal doesn’t exactly have a balance at the moment.
- My new computer should ship somewhere between the 13th-15th, or so I’m told. We suspect that it’ll actually be shipped out faster than that but those are the dates Dell is giving us. Yesterday Blake got a call from Bell asking if I wanted 3 months of free internet service, which I apparently get with the computer. He said no. (It’s like, 2GB data xfer/month LOL We exceeded our limit this month 8 days into the month and I think our limit is 50 or 75GB.) In regards to this computer, I am extremely grateful for having the friends I do. <3
- The day before yesterday Madison and I got our new glasses, which I’d love to show you but I have no cam software on Blake’s machine and I can’t find my installer for ConquerCam. I know it’s in my e-mail….somewhere….and keep in mind I’ve only deleted probably every 3 e-mails I’ve gotten since 2001 so there’s a lot to go through and the search function doesn’t appear to be working for some reason. I blame Chrome (which I hate btw, I’m not sure why I’m using it…)
Anyway, we got two pairs of glasses each and mine are a super nerdy clearish pink pair that fit perfectly and a tortoiseshell pair that I have to go in and get adjusted on Saturday. Madison got…actually I forget what her first pair looks like (and she’s currently sleeping) but her second pair are a sort of goldish brown. She wasn’t happy about needing glasses at first but now that she sees them as a fashion accessory she’s all about them.
- Speaking of Madison, somehow this summer the girl turned into an almost teenager. These pictures were taken by Wes (age 7) of Madison (age 12) the day before yesterday:
They spent allllllllll day doing photoshoots, Wes the photographer in his baseball hat and Madison doing a million makeup and wardrobe changes. She posted the pictures on her Facebook page but these are the two I liked the most and she said I could post them here.
I think it’s hilarious that my mom calls Madison “pretty girl” because that’s what we call the cat. LOL
- Speaking of my mom…the birthday card that I ordered for her from Etsy STILL hasn’t arrived at MY house and my mom’s birthday was August 26th. I ordered the card on August 17th and it was being shipped from Colorado. It’s a card, it takes one stamp, it’s not like it’s a package that has to clear customs or anything. I’ve ordered cards from this girl before and they came just fine and in time, so I’m going to send her a convo today on Etsy to see what’s what. Also frustrating is that my mother’s birthday gift which I also ordered from Etsy hasn’t arrived either. That one is a small packet that shouldn’t require any red tape at customs either so I don’t know what’s up with that. Since I ordered it on the same day I ordered the card, like literally minutes apart, I’m assuming something’s up with the USPS right now or maybe Canada Post because both should have been here at least a week ago. My mother’s gift was from a seller I buy from regularly and I had them ship it directly TO my mother and since my mom hasn’t e-mailed me about it, I’m assuming it hasn’t come yet and that’s frustrating me because my mother already thinks I’m a shit at the best of times. Guh.
So note to self, and you, I suppose, when buying gifts from Etsy, especially if the item is not from your country of origin, buy at least a month in advance if you can. (Although for Father’s Day I ordered a whole bunch of stuff for Blake from one seller and 2 months later I hadn’t received the stuff so I convo them and they said they lost my order, like the piece of paper my order was on, and that A) they were now out of stock of half the things I’d ordered and B) they were going on vacation THAT DAY so I had only a few hours to decide if I wanted whatever they could send me or if I wanted them to issue me a refund. I went for the refund. And I left them neutral feedback just the other day because the woman never cancelled all the sales and while she did send me a small package with lipbalm and a note apologizing for the mix up, I just couldn’t leave her positive feedback and I didn’t feel right leaving negative feedback on like, 6 items.
Etsy is great, I love shopping there not only because it’s all handmade but because I DON’T REALLY GET OUT MUCH and everyone takes PayPal, but some shops just really aren’t very professional and I think that sours the pot for the rest of us, both buying and selling.
Blake is distracting me my being half-naked in my office…rawr.
- The kids start school on Tuesday and I could NOT be more thrilled. I love them, I love summer, but I’m ready to have my days back to myself. Madison’s not allowed to use the internet unless I’m awake and Wes isn’t allowed to play outside if I’m not awake and that caused a bit of issue this summer because I’m on a LOT of meds where the primary side effect is drowsiness so that means I often have 2 naps a day despite the fact that I went to bed at 10pm the night before and didn’t get up until 11am the next morning. The kids, of course, resent this, Madison more than Wes because her whole social life this summer has been on Facebook, but it’s not like I can help it and all summer I’ve been trying as hard as I can to NOT nap so they can do the things they want to do and godammit, I’m tired. I cannot wait until no one’s home during the day and I can nap all I want guilt-free. That may sound selfish, but again, it’s not as if I can help it.
- I see my shrink next Friday, which I’m not looking forward to. I’ve decided not to confront her about the unprofessional “spoiled brat” comment unless she does it again. This might seem cowardly considering that that was the 3rd or 4th time she’d said more or less the same thing AFTER telling me specifically I was allowed to live my life however I wanted to and then suddenly having a problem with it, but yesterday she called and left a message on the phone for me about Touched By Fire and even though that means SHE NEVER ACTUALLY LISTENS TO ME, her heart was in the right place. She’s just so hit or miss. With meds, she’s great, but when it comes to therapy, which ISN’T EVEN HER JOB BECAUSE SHE’S A PSYCHIATRIST NOT A PSYCHOLOGIST, she’s just not very good. I don’t necessarily think that she herself is the problem, I think it’s more the fact that we estimated that she has over 400 patients to keep track of and that since my meds are more or less stable, I’m not exactly a high priority case anymore. Since that IS the case, however, I wish we could just skip the therapy bit because it’s a waste of both of our time and it’s really kinda just going through the motions and just be like, “so, do you think your meds are okay?” I say “yep” she says “okay then, see you in 3 months”. That would be awesome. I mean, we’ve already established that I’m not actively doing immersion therapy or trying to overcome agoraphobia at this time (despite the fact that I *am* getting better, it seems, without really even trying), so I don’t really see the need for pseudo-therapy just to fill up my timeslot on her calendar. Does that make sense? Like please, go help someone else who needs it. I’ve got my drugs, gimme a lightbox for the S.A.D. in October and I’m good. We’re in the maintenance phase of my mental health issues, I don’t need to sit in her office for 45 minutes, especially because I have no idea what to talk to her about because really, aside from the odd “bad day”, I’m good!
I do think that this visit she’s going to make me go for my 6 month blood draw WHICH I HATE, but they have to check my liver function and my cholesterol (my triglycerides in particular because that’s what the risperidone fucked with) and it’s a condition of being on the medications I’m on. *shrug*
We also have to talk to her about getting my drugs for free through the mental health clinic because even with insurance, we are struggling to afford them. In total, all of my drugs per month are a little over $1,000 and of that, we have to pay about $250 out of pocket, which is almost our entire grocery budget per paycheque so if there’s a way that we don’t have to pay that, that would be great because we’re slooooowly sliding into debt that we can’t get out of, but that $250/month would really help with that. I’m afraid though, that we won’t qualify for it because every time we’ve tried to apply for anything like this (like the mental health disability money I’m eligible for), they turn me down because they say Blake makes too much money. Which is stupid because if they actually looked at our bills instead of just his income, they’d see we’re totally fucked. They also look at gross income, not net, so that doesn’t help either and I’ll never understand why all government bodies do that but they all seem to.
I feel horrible taking $1,000/month away from our local pharmacy that’s been nothing but good to us, like fronting me drugs when my shrink’s on vacation and she didn’t give me enough repeats (which happens a lot, actually) but we don’t really have a choice. I’ll still get my pain meds from them, but that’s peanuts compared to my psych meds. It’s also not going to be very convenient getting my drugs from the mental health clinic because it’s in another town about 25 minutes away and Blake is going to have to leave work early, like really early, to make it there before they close at 4pm. And if I run out of drugs on a Saturday or Sunday, I’m fucked, so we’re (I’m) going to have to be extra diligent about repeats and how many days worth of drugs I have left. I don’t use one of those pill containers that you fill by the day (do you know what I mean?), but I’m thinking I might have to start if I want to stay on top of all that.
Annnnnd I think that’s all I’ve really got to say this morning, especially since my meds are kicking in and I’m getting sleepy, particularly since I’ve been awake since about 5:30am. I want to wash our bedding today so I better nap now and get that out of the way so I can wash it all when I wake up.
Hope you all have a lovely day!
Since joining a certain Live Journal community that I’m a little iffy about and slightly afraid of posting in, I’ve learned the word “ableism”. This is what “ableism” is:
“a·ble·ism
–noun
discrimination against disabled people.”
Here’s Wikipedia’s entry on ableism, which I’m not going to put in quotes anymore because now you know that the word exists too and you know it’s a real thing.
As I’m learning about ableism by reading the posts in this Live Journal community, I’m learning that ableism applies to mental health because mental illness is a disability and the thing with mental health ableism is that most of it is inadvertent. Because people can’t see your disability they assume you don’t have one, but a lot of the crap I’ve experienced over the years by people who full out know I have a mental illness is also ableism, but a more insidious kind because it’s meant to degrade, hurt or devalue a person’s very real problem.
Want some examples?
My mother while I was in the hospital due to psychosis lamenting on the fact that she didn’t have the “luxury” of losing her mind.
People telling me to “just get better”. The whole “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” argument that no one would ever give, say, a diabetic, but for the mentally ill, it’s okay because it’s all in their head anyway, right?
People saying I’m lying about my mental health issues so I don’t have to work/don’t have to drive/don’t have to do groceries etc. Because psychosis and a 14 day stay in a psych ward is such an easy, fun thing to fake. And psychiatrists are so stupid, they all fell for it. Damn I must be a GREAT actress!
People saying I’m lying about my mental health issues AND taking all the pills I take for attention. Yes I’m taking approximately $1000/month worth of powerful psychiatric medication for attention. Ya got me.
These are ableist statements and most of them have come from people who are supposed to love me and support me. But now that I know that these statements have a name? Have like, a category? I can compartmentalize them in my brain as such and have them not affect me anymore.
So that’s all I really had to say. I just happened to see another post on this Live Journal community about ableism and then this Post Secret showed up today so I thought I’d make a short post about it.
Oooooh my god I have so many thoughts swirling around in my head right now that I can’t even begin to process them all unless I start writing shit down, so that’s what I’m going to do. It’s been a busy, happy (mostly) few days so I guess I’ll sort everything by day, starting with Thursday night.
Thursday night I was playing WoW with my friends Stephy & Keenan and eating Crispers when I lost a filling. I have nightmares regularly about this very thing and while I anted to freak out, I stayed mostly calm, especially because our dentist is awesome and I was pretty sure I could get it fixed, if only temporarily, the next day. Plus, it didn’t hurt. Still, when I got into bed I woke Blake up and freaked out a little bit, but not as badly as I would have in the past and then I went to sleep.
Friday morning Blake told me that our dentist could see me in the afternoon, after my shrink appointment, so yay.
My shrink appointment didn’t go as planned. See, the thing is, I only see my shrink once a month or sometimes once every 3 months, so she doesn’t always remember things about me or what we talked about last session. Plus, she’s sometimes quite a bitch, but despite that I mostly like her. It’s not her fault she has like, 500+ patients and at the mental health clinic I go to, where she works 2 days a week, she gets paid peanuts compared to her private practice and probably has more clients, all of whom she usually sees once a month. I’ve been in the waiting room with a lot of her patients and believe me, I’m definitely low priority and to me, that’s a good thing.
Anyway, I was excited to tell her about doing yoga because yoga is a huge deal for me in terms of social awkwardness and agoraphobia in general. A year ago I couldn’t do this. Two years ago, this would have been an impossibility. I expected my shrink to be like, “yay you!” but when I told her she wasn’t really that enthused about it and that wasn’t the reaction I was going for. She was more amused, I think, that Blake was doing it – omg a MAN doing yoga, imagine! – than me and that kinda bummed me out.
Then I thought she might be happy that I still haven’t smoked since April 23rd, but she didn’t seem to care about that either.
So the next thing I wanted to talk to her about, or at least make her aware of, is that article about picky eating adults I linked in Live Journal the other day and how researchers are thinking it might actually be a disorder and that they were doing a study on it, which I signed up for. So she read the article, which I’d printed out for her, and the whole time she had a kind of smirk on her face like she was trying not to laugh and when she was finished, she said that she didn’t believe it was a disorder. (She spent about a minute 30 seconds skimming the article, I might add.) Then Blake and I started telling her about all of my issues with food, which are actually pretty immense when you lay them all out and I think I’m going to write a page about it on my site sometime soon because maybe it would be interesting to other people, but anyway we told her about ho sometimes it takes literally 2 hours to decide what to have for dinner and then in the end I usually end up eating something separate from the family anyway and after laying it all out on the table, she looks me dead in the eye and says, “is it possible that you’re just a spoiled brat?”
I had no idea how to respond to that. This is my shrink. This is the person who’s supposed to help me with my issues and help me figure out how to live with them or fix them and here she is completely invalidating what Blake and I spent the last 10 minutes trying to explain? I mean basically what we were saying is that we think I have OCD and that it manifests itself with food. Y’know how some people with OCD are germaphobes? Well I’m pretty much a foodaphobe in a very similar way and she asked me that? What kind of bedside manner is that? That’s bullshit. Your shrink isn’t supposed to CALL YOU NAMES.
And what really kills me about this shrink in particular is that when I first started seeing her, almost years ago now, I told her “hey I sleep ’til 1pm and work at night and smoke and live a really weird life”, she said “that’s okay. It’s your life and you have the right to live it how you want to.” And she stuck with that for like, the first year, but after that she started trying to change me or openly disagreeing with how I live my life. She thinks I should go to bed at 11 or 12 and get up early in the morning all of a sudden. Most of the time I actually DO do that but it’s the principle of it, she told me before that I could sleep however I wanted to as long as I was getting enough of it.
And then there was the one time where I walked into her office and like, almost the first thing she said to me is, “why don’t you get a job?” Like lady, have you not been listening for the past few years? Do you not remember my issues? That was the most asinine suggestion I’ve ever heard in my whole entire life. I’m not offended by people thinking I’m whatever because I don’t have a 9-5, I don’t expect people to understand my life and I don’t care, but SHE SHOULD because I’ve (we’ve) spent hours upon hours explaining to her how we are, how we live, how life is, and she just doesn’t pay attention or listen or write the right things down.
And by the way, I have a job, thank you. I have several. I’m an artist. I’m a camgirl. (A bad one at the moment, but whatever.) Those two things are what I do to bring in money so my kids can have the things they want, which brings me to my other job, being their mom. They LIKE that I’m always home and that I’m always there for them. Our family is extremely close and that’s the way we like it and a lot of that has to do with the fact that 85% of the time, I am completely available for whatever they need. So fuck you and your “get a job” crap. I’m all full up. It pissed me off when people negate being a stay at home mom as a job. That’s fucking bullshit, especially considering the fact that I also work from home at the same time.
Anyway, she pissed me of with the accusation that I as a “spoiled brat” and after she said that, I sort of shut down and stopped participating in the conversation, but I guess Blake explained things to her and she conceded that I probably have OCD tendencies but that I wouldn’t like the main treatment (exposure, which wouldn’t work in this case anyway, if you read the stories on PickyEatingAdults.com) and I couldn’t have the other treatment which is high doses of anti-depressants because they would make me manic. So we all concluded that the best thing to do is to just continue trying to work around it since I’m not exactly starving and Blake can deal with it with me. And really, I’m getting better. Not with food, I’m still a wreck over food, but I’ve been actively trying to make things easier on Blake when it comes to my stupid idiosyncrasies.
So after my shrink appointment we came home for a while and then it was time to go to the dentist where I got a temporary filling and I have to go back this Thursday for the real thing. I hate when the assistant dentist girl tells the secretary that they’ll need 40 minutes for me. :o/
But that’s a milestone in and of itself. I have had a lifelong fear of dentists but I’ve been really lucky to have two really good ones the last several years, especially the one I see now, and now it’s really no big deal because I know after the needle part, I’m good. The dentist I see now is really gentle and understanding and I’m really going to miss him when/if we move or when/if he retires. (He’s kinda old, but I don’t know how old. He’s spoken of retiring while I’ve been in the chair so I know it’s on his mind. Oh yeah, and he’s the only dentist in town.)
After the dentist I had a much needed nap and when I woke up, we went to Wal*Mart to get Madison a new bathing suit and flip-flops because hers were fuX0red and last year’s bathing suit wasn’t fitting so well. So we did that and while we were there, Wes said that he wished he could have a Zhu Zhu pet, which is a mechanical hamster that makes sounds and runs around on the floor and is about $10.
We went to the toy aisle after getting Madison situated and I looked at these mechanical hamsters and when I saw one that was pink, I was sold. I told Wes I would buy him one but that he couldn’t have it until he earned it by doing basic chores around the house. He was good with this, so we put two of them in the cart, one for him and one for me, so we could play with them together just as I played with Tamagotchis with Madison at around the same age.
I also picked up the new “Hole” album, Nobody’s Daughter, which is really a Courtney Love album that she decided to brand as being Hole for reasons I can’t even comprehend. I wasn’t going to buy the album out of principle but then my completest nature too over and suddenly I had to have it. Also I watched Courtney’s “Behind the Music” the night before and that made me want the album. (Have I ever mentioned how goddamn susceptible I am to advertising?)
I also bought two spiral notebooks because my current one is almost full and they were on sale for $3 a piece for the big fat ones, so score! And I also bought new underwear because my bum is no longer a large (it hasn’t been for quite some time, but I haven’t had any money) and is now a medium to small – w00t! I just grabbed a 3-pack of Hanes Her Way bikini underbums because ideally I’m going to be needing to buy smalls eventually.
I know, you totally care. We also bought shampoo, how exciting!
When we got home, I opened my Zhu Zhu pet to see what it did and then I started listening to Nobody’s Daughter, which I expected to hate but I’ve gotta say it’s actually growing on me, or at least some tracks. I think it’s better than the abysmal America’s Sweetheart, but only by a fraction. This may sound kind of weird, but America’ Sweetheart was kinda contrived while Nobody’s Daughter feels more honest. What I mean is that Live Through This was about Courtney’s Life, more or less, as was Celebrity Skin because that’s when she was going through her Hollywood phase. During America’ Sweetheart she was completely fucked up on drugs from crack to coke and getting hauled off to Bellevue because she was out of her mind and hardly any of that is present on America’s Sweetheart. Nobody’s Daughter is very much a comeback album and what she went through to get here, I think, what she learned along the way. (I think certain songs might be about people she met in rehab and some of it is definitely what she discovered about herself through therapy.)
Anyway, I won’t lie, I kinda like it – so shoot me. (But I still refuse to call it a Hole album because it’s not. Certain songs are VERY Hole-esque, but it’s just not Hole.)
So as I’m listening to the album for about the 3rd time, I’m reading my Facebook feed and one of my friends posted that he was going to the Courtney Love show the next day and I was like “WHAT????? HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS????” and immediately I was upset that I couldn’t go because I was sure it was either sold out or we couldn’t afford the INSANE $50 ticket price, which was a shame because on Saturday, the night of the show, we were celebrating our anniversary by going to get ribs and strawberry pie like we do every year and thus, we had a babysitter (two of them in fact!) and could conceivably go.
I sulked hardcore and tweeted about it several times, trying to figure out a way we could go. I have two paycheques coming any day now (well one is) and Blake said he could lend me the money for us to go and I could pay him back with that but the cheque is only for $200 and change and I need that money for the kids for the summer so I didn’t want to blow half of it on this show.
But just as I was considering it, Saturday morning, my friend Heatha messaged me and was like, “hey I can give you a deposit on the painting I want to buy so you can go to the show” and I was like “fuck YES” and that’s what happened. The deposit was exactly enough to pay for the tickets, parking and if we added $10, which I did, get a tour t-shirt.
Before I get into the show though, first and foremost Blake and I were celebrating our 8 year wedding anniversary by going to Haugen’s for the best ribs and fresh strawberry pie in the world, stopping in Greenbank where I grew up, to the bakery there where we bought the best garlic cheese bread in the world, as well as some pretty kickass ginger cookies.
Voila:
Normally we get a whole strawberry pie to bring home with us and share with the kids, but we didn’t this time because we were going to the Courtney Love show afterward and we didn’t think it would keep well in the trunk of the car that long. Plus, we were trying to be as frugal as possible because really, we can’t afford to celebrate our anniversary, but it’s important to us so we do it anyway.
I slept all the way from Haugen’s to the venue and since we were early, I continued to sleep in the car until the lineup to get in was considerably smaller and after fixing my makeup we got in line. Security confiscated my PENS! I had 3 BRAND NEW Pilot Precise V5s in my bag, which are kind of expensive as far as disposable pens go, and they confiscated them because of graffiti. I didn’t protest because I know there’s no point in doing that in situations like this, but man, that sucked. Plus you’d have to have a lot of time and be really dedicated to tag the bathroom with one of those.
The security chick was like, “after the show just come out and I’ll give them back to you” and I thought “yeah right”. And of course after the show, those security guards were nowhere to be found.
Anyway, the show. The show was pretty awesome and I can’t help but love Courtney Love. I’m sorry, I know some of you hate her guts and don’t get why I like her so much, but whatever, she was great. Here’s a review of the show, which I agree with. Her voice was different than usual (I’ve seen her as the REAL Hole twice before), even different than on the album, and I noticed that her annunciation was different too and actually very Jagger-esque. She belted out tunes old and new and the audience sang along to a lot of it and all in all it was just a really great show. (Well, except that she sang Doll Parts, which is the worst Hole song, imo.)
We started off in the “pit”, which was full of little girls like me when we started, and we were about 3 people back from the barriers but when it got closer to Courtney coming on, all these goddamn Amazons pushed and shoved their way in front of all of us and when Courtney came out, the “pit” went fucking mental (as to be expected). We stayed in there for the first 3 songs but when the girl to my left threw her totally full beer into the air all over the crowd and the woman to my right started literally punching people, I decided it was time to get the fuck out, so I grabbed Blake’s hand and we watched the rest of the show from the back where it was cooler and I could actually have a drink.
Luckily, being a primarily female audience and not a very tall one, I could actually see Courtney from the back from the waist up and the sound at the venue is actually really good so I was happy with our position, except when 6 foot tall dickheads decided to stand right in front of me. Repeatedly. I was a 6 foot tall dickhead magnet, I don’t know why. Luckily they never stayed in front of me very long and the back was sparse enough for me to move around so I could see better.
When we first arrived at the show I went to the bathroom and it was totally clean. When Courtney finished her encore I went to the bathroom again and it was absolutely trashed. The men reading this may or may not know this, but in most womens’ public bathrooms, to the right of the toilet, is a receptacle for used menstrual products. When I went to the bathroom at the end of the show I checked every available stall and I swear to god that every girl in the whole venue was on the rag but me. These receptacles were so full that all around them on the floor were used pads and tampons. It was beyond disgusting and made worse by the fact that the floor was all wet for some reason in the whole bathroom, which made the tampons bulk up. SO GROSS.
After the show, we went home and hung out with Ronny & Alex for about half an hour, then they went home and we went to bed and now it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m writing this post.
The only thing I have left to say is that Ronny now lives in Canada (he’s from MI) because he and Alex are getting married on Saturday and he brought me Vanilla Coke Zero, Cherry Coke Zero, Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper and Cherry Dr. Pepper, none of which we have in Canada because….I dunno, we fucking suck. I just had a can of Vanilla Coke Zero and just about had an orgasm on the spot. When they discontinued regular Vanilla Coke up here I was so upset because I LOVED it and when Ronny told me that they had Vanilla Coke Zero in the US I was like “that’s it, we’re moving” so that’s why he brought these all up.
Right now I’m drinking a can of Cherry Coke Zero and I actually think it might be better than the vanilla.
Oh and one more thing: I got the most BEAUTIFUL wedding invitation from our friends Alicia and Tim in Georgia that blew me away on Friday and I wish so badly that we could afford for all of us to go because those two actually kinda met through me and I’d really like to see them become husband and wife. Alas, financially it would be an impossibility, but I hope they know I’m there in spirit. (And I think they should totally webcast it…*cough*)
Anyway, that is all. Have a great week everyone!
I really hate that saying. The one in the title. It bugs the hell out of me. EVERYONE gets bored and EVERYONE is interesting, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never met an uninteresting person in my whole entire life and I can guarantee that the most interesting of all the people I’ve ever met, happen to get bored too, whether they admit it or not.
And I think people don’t admit boredom because of that saying in the title. Because they’re afraid to appear boring. And I think that’s dumb.
So obviously, I’m bored. It’s is roughly 6.2 billion degrees in my little house, so hot that I can’t even have the lights on because the heat from the lightbulbs pushes the heat over the edge of tolerable and I can’t deal with that. It’s also very very humid and the humidity plus low light means that I can’t paint. And that’s really unfortunate because that’s what I want to do.
The low light also makes it very difficult to read, which is my other option. I could watch TV, but it’s 4pm and my best option would be Oprah, which I think is a stupid topic today.
So that leaves writing and napping, and I’ve already done the napping. Twice, in fact. So here I am in my darkened office blabbering on about boredom without a real plan in my head as to what I should say next.
And the weird thing is, I actually really like the heat, I love it when the weather’s like this, what I don’t like is the expectation (from whom? I mean really, f r o m w h o m ?) that I should get up in the morning, have my breakfast, start working and doing my thing, have lunch, work some more, have dinner, watch TV with my husband as that’s my wifely duty, to spend time with him after a long, hard day, maybe have sex, and be asleep before midnight. I HATE THAT. But do I hate that expectation? Or do I hate that I can’t adhere to that expectation because it’s so damn hot that I’m more productive between 9pm and 5am and there’s really no reason in the world, since both of my kids are in school all day, that I can’t sleep the day away?
I ponder this like crazy every single spring and make myself mental over it until about mid-June when I’m finally like, “fuck it” and keep the hours I want to keep. Nay, need to keep. Because like I said, who has the expectation of me that I be diurnal? No one important. No one whose opinion I should really care about. My shrink doesn’t like the idea but she’s not opposed to it either. As long as I get enough sleep, she pretty much leaves me alone on the issue. (Sleep is very important to maintaining good mental health when you’re bipolar or have other mental illnesses.)
Every spring, like clockwork, I hit this phase where my natural body clock resets itself or something and for about 2 weeks I get really bad insomnia. That’s what’s been happening for the last week & a half or so and like I do every year, I try to fight it because of this pressure I feel to conform to the “9-5″ workday model of sleeping and every year it’s useless because by the end of that 2 week period, I end up right where I am now and much happier for it.
The opposite thing happens in the fall. In the fall I start wanting to be awake during the daylight hours because I have S.A.D. and there’s a 2 week period where my sleep’s all screwed up while my body adjusts to a completely opposite schedule.
….and I feel like I’ve made this post before. Do I make this post every year? I may have to go back and check that.
Anyway, the kids are home now and I’m going to bribe Madison with freezies to get her to water my gardens. She’d probably do it just because I asked her, but I know what it feels like to be “paid” for services rendered, so I went with the freezies thing.
I think what I’m going to do right now is get a piece of cardboard and matte medium little swatches of every pink patterned scrapbook paper I have to it and then spray the whole thing, after it dries, with Krylon to see if the Krylon also turns pink dyes into orange like my normal Triple Thick varnish does.
Yes, I think that’s what I’m going to do.
PS. I am 26 days smoke-free.
It’s 3am and I’m restless & rambly.
I think it’s completely unfair that breakfast sausages have anywhere from 190 calories per 2 sausages to 270. The tastier the breakfast sausage, I’m finding, the worse it is for you. This is unfortunate as I kinda really like breakfast sausages, however earlier this week, not knowing the caloric value of them, I inadvertently ate a breakfast that was roughly 1300-1500 calories. I didn’t notice that there was nutritional information on the package until I went to throw it away, then I got out my calculator and just about cried. That night, this was my dinner (not that I’m complaining, I just would have liked something more substantial…):
On Tuesday I went to see my latest healthcare professional, Dr. D, who is an Irish-Canadian nutritionist with the world’s cutest accent to basically see if I was fat enough to get into her 10 week, comprehensive metabolic workshop. The bittersweet news is that I am, indeed, fat enough for this program, but the good news is that I’m on the lower end of the spectrum, only needing to lose about 20 lbs (but I’d be happy with 15).
The program is going to start in either June (I hope) or August and the discrepancy is a result of some of the speakers who well, speak, in the sessions, want to go on summer vacations. I can understand this, I really can, I just really hope it’s in June because I have S.A.D. and if it starts in August, I’ll be in full-depression mode by the end of it and not motivated to do a damn thing. Also, we’re planting our garden this weekend so we’re going to have fresh, organic vegetables all summer which is going to aid in achieving a healthier weight. I won’t have the same advantage in September and October.
Apparently the first thing they do in the workshop is give you a pedometer which is going to be a barrel of laughs in my case. I wake up. I go to the bathroom. I pee. I brush my teeth. I walk to the kitchen and grab a Coke Zero. I come into my office and sit at my desk. For a couple of hours. Then I go back into the kitchen and make breakfast which could be a protein shake or eggs, either way, my feet are firmly planted in the kitchen. Then I come back into my office and eat at my desk while I watch crappy daytime TV for the time it takes to finish my meal. I go back into the kitchen and deposit my dirty dishes in the sink or on the counter, depending on the state of the room. Then I come back to my chair and either do internet stuff or paint for a few more hours. I might get up to walk to the bathroom and pee. Or I might get up to go to the kitchen and get a drink (I drink a LOT). This continues literally until I go to bed at night – oh wait, sometimes I eat lunch, so those steps count – and then it repeats the next morning. This is my crazy, whacked out, OCD routine and I get very upset when it’s altered in any way. Also? My house is very very small. It’s only about 10 steps from my office to the kitchen, 15 to the bathroom, 20 to the bedroom. Yep, this pedometer is gonna be entertaining.
I wonder if it counts dancing? I actually do that a lot on my way to the kitchen or bathroom.
The other components of the metabolic workshop were kind of explained to me in a blur, but I know Blake can’t come with me (:o/) except for the two classes that are about cooking. They want the primary cook to sit in on those ones and that would be Blake. I know there is going to be a one-on-one session with a dietician at some point, but to be honest I don’t even really know what a dietician is or does. She also mentioned a session with a…fuck, I forget the title, it was like “actionarian” or something like that, but basically what she does is tells you how to move more. They don’t like to use the word “exercise” I noticed, she always said “have more movement” and things like that.
Anyway, the actionarian or whatever her title is, is going to tell me how to use my Wii Fit and I’m guessing she’ll be like, “do this game X amount of times and then switch to this game X amount of times, then do a yoga pose, blah blah blah”. I’m totally fine with doing Wii Fit, I mean, that’s why we bought it I suppose, but the obstacle I’m going to run into is that when this workshop starts, the kids are going to be home for the summer and I don’t want to do Wii Fit in front of them because the little shitheads are going to laugh at me and/or simply make me feel self-conscious. I’m going to assume this actionarian woman is going to want me to do Wii Fit every day, which I’m fine with, I mean, god knows I have nothing better to do, and I’m going to assume she’s going to want me to do at least 20 minutes up to maybe even an hour. How the hell do I get the kids to leave the house every day for an hour? And it’ll be at random times too, because I don’t really have a schedule. I go to sleep when I’m tired, I wake up when I’m not tired anymore. This is especially true in the summer for some reason.
And while I’m on the subject of movement (not exercise!), Blake and I have been talking about going to a yoga class together. Madison’s 12 now and can legally stay home and watch Wes, which gives Blake and I a little more freedom, especially in this regard because he found a yoga studio that’s just up the road, 5 minutes away, and Madison would be fine watching Wes for (I’m guessing) an hour or so while we do this. Part of me really REALLY wants to do it. In fact, it was MY idea, I was the one who brought it up, but when Blake found the studio and showed me their website and started talking like it was possible, I pretty much totally freaked out. There was crying. So what’s my deal with this? Oh my friends, I hope you’ve figured out “Sunny Logic” by now because you’re going to need it.
First and foremost, I am absolutely paralyzed with fear by the idea of FARTING. Or worse – omg I cannot even believe I’m going to type this – QUEEFING. There is not enough Ativan on the planet that would help me recover from such an event. I think I would literally have a heart attack and die if either of those scenarios happened in a room full of people. I mean, my god, how could they NOT laugh? I’d fucking laugh! (If it were anyone but me.) I’m breaking into a nervous sweat even typing this paragraph, that’s how absolutely terrified I am by the prospect of this happening. And don’t tell me it doesn’t happen because I KNOW it does. And it’s not like we’re in a hospital where “the doctors have seen it all” – I mean, it kind of is, I guess, as far as the instructor is concerned, but not the students.
Anyway, it would fucking kill me and this is problem #1 with doing yoga, like, in front of people.
Problem #2 is that I have this major issue where I’ll only do something if I’m automagically good at it. I don’t like learning. I don’t like the process of learning by sucking at something and being corrected. I want to be a prostar on the first try and I’m scared that I just won’t be any good at yoga. Do I fucking LOOK zen to you?
At the same time, I’m ridiculously flexible. When I was in the hospital, out of my mind with mania, I literally sat in a hospital bed for 3 days, cross-legged, with my head on the bed in front of me – if you can picture that. The only time I moved was when they made me take meds. I can squat on the floor with my feet flat on the ground and my bum touching my heels, which Blake finds totally bizarre and we’ve asked just about everyone who’s ever come into my house if they can do that and they can’t. My kids can’t even do it.
So what I’m saying is, there’s a very good chance that I’ll be excellent at yoga and my fear of not being good at it is completely irrational.
Problem #3 is the whole people thing. I mean, I don’t leave my house for a reason and it’s not because I’m afraid of fresh air or pigeons. I am absolutely socially retarded and just can’t deal with them. Blake says I won’t have to deal with them because everyone’s there to do their own thing, but what do I do if someone like, talks to me? Or worse, wants to be friends?
Problem #4 is money. Yoga is expensive. Blake says we can do it if we cut back on some things but right now we’re already in overdraft because of Blake’s CPAP machine and it’s not that I don’t believe him that we can financially do this if it’s important – and part of me thinks it is – it’s that I’m scared we’ll drop all this money on it and I’ll go once, freak out and never go again, wasting money we could have spent on, I dunno, FOOD. I suppose in a way, most of my fears are the fear of failure, which I know has been a problem for most of my life and I don’t know how to adapt and get over it and just do what I want to do.
So that’s the yoga issue.
The other parts of the metabolic workshop, as I said, were kind of a blur. I know that there’s going to be a lot of talk about food and its effects on metabolism and how different foods affect it differently. She said there’s going to be a lot of discussion on the importance of sleep, which I’m actually kind of already aware of because that’s a big component of bipolar disorder. They’re going to explain good fats vs. bad fats and stuff like that. I forget what else she said would be a part of the workshop, but she was so excited about it that it was infectious and I’m actually looking forward to it. See, though? I lied up there ^^^. I actually REALLY like to learn, like with my brain, I’m just not a physical person at all, I mean, I FAILED gym every year of my life. That’s another reason why I’m scared to do Wii Fit in front of the kids.
And then there’s the fact that the workshop is going to be 2 hours, every Tuesday, for most of the summer holidays, so not only is Blake going to have to use 10 vacation days (out of about 16) to take me to this thing, he’s going to have to bring the kids with him. (Although leaving Madison with Wes is an option to explore…but it makes me uneasy being 1/2 an hour away from home.)
I dunno. I’m in a weird place these days. In a lot of respects I feel like my life is sort of getting back on track but in other ways it’s completely off the rails. My creativity pool right now is very very low, which makes me depressed. I have two paintings on the go which should have been done like, 2 weeks ago and here I am barely in the first stages of shading the girls’ faces. I’m exhausted all the time and sleeping at stupid hours because in the “transitional seasons” by body goes all out of whack trying to adjust to a new sleep schedule that I can’t even begin to figure out the basis of. My dad wants us to come up for a visit, probably Father’s Day weekend and I really want to go because they just put a huge addition on their house and I want to see it, but at the same time, I hate the pain in the ass it is to go up there with the dogs and everything.
There’s more negative stuff but I don’t feel like elaborating on it because I feel like I’ve done it before. I probably do it every year.
In the positive, I am 3 weeks smoke-free. My dress from Free People that I plan on wearing to The Square Foot Show (which is an art show, for those not paying attention) came today and Blake’s going to pick it up at the post office tomorrow or Saturday. I sold a painting last week (I think? maybe the week before) and I spent most of the proceeds on awesome stuff from Etsy for Blake for Father’s Day and it should all be arriving soon. I also bought myself a ring to wear to The Square Foot Show because my wedding ring doesn’t fit due to my newfound fatness and I feel awkward being in such a public place without it. Despite the fact that I’m currently 20-ish lbs overweight, I still tend to get hit on often enough that my wedding ring (or in this case, a stand-in) to me is kind of like a shield from creepers.
I got new business cards from MOO that are pretty cool a couple of weeks ago, although I’m almost out of MOO mini cards and I’m hoping to sell a painting before the Square Foot Show so I can order some more to bring with me to hand out. Also with the proceeds of my sale, I bought 10 cans of Krylon because I want to experiment with different varnishes over the summer when I have the ability to spray outside. But just the fact that I had the ability to walk into Wal*Mart and buy 10 fucking cans of Krylon made me feel good about myself, like I was on the right track. The fact that I had the ability to spoil my husband rotten, who deserves it more than anyone I could possibly think of…shit like that just makes me feel independent and secure, somehow, which is something I don’t feel very often.
I also feel good about the fact that right now, my little Etsy business is making enough money to not only sustain itself as far as materials now, but I can buy promotional items like business cards, pay my Etsy bill at the end of every month and still have enough left over to buy myself a dress, a ring and Blake a whole bunch of crap I can’t even tell you about because he’s reading this. Not only could I buy 10 cans of Krylon, but I could buy 12 blank canvases too! The sale of a couple of paintings, for me, can be stretched and stretched and stretched and it just feels good to have my own money, to be able to buy my husband a gift with MY OWN MONEY. Maybe no one else will understand this, but in the (almost) 8 years Blake and I have been married, I haven’t given him very many gifts and the reason for this is because I think it would be stupid to buy someone a gift with their own money, especially when they can look at the credit card statement and see what it is.
So what I’m saying is that I feel good about being somewhat financially independent at the moment. Well, sort of…I have a tiny bit of padding in my PayPal account right now, enough to pay my Etsy bill for a couple of months, which actually makes me completely broke but whatever. My theory on money is that you can always make more and I *do* have two paintings on the go, one I’m fairly certain I can sell quickly and one that I’ll probably sell at The Square Foot Show. (I have to replicate “Shimmer” because it got ruined by a kid…)
I’m looking forward to the summer holidays with the kids. Madison has this friend, who I’ll call “E”, that I actually quite like and I’m hoping that she’ll be spending a significant part of her summer at our house because between her and Madison, they could do some really creative things with Madison’s sewing machine. E knows how to make her own clothes, and does, whereas Madison wishes she had those kinds of skills and the only way she’s going to learn them is from E. Also, E comes from a very…crappy background. She’s a foster kid and I think hanging out with our family and sort of being a casual part of our family may be good for her.
Another thing I’m looking forward to is the beach. I’ve lost enough weight that I fit into one of the bathing suits my friend Raya bought me a few years ago without looking gross, so it’s safe to go to the beach again and that makes me happy. When we first moved here, the first summer we were here, it was SO hot for a while there that I would have all of our beach gear packed up so that the second Blake got home from work, we could all get in the car and go to the beach for a couple of hours when it was less crowded. Often we’d get a couple of subs on the way and I’d bring a knife to cut them up and we’d have dinner on the beach. I miss that and I’m hoping for a very hot summer so we can do that again.
I’m also looking forward to reading books all night. Lots of them. I wish I had more, though. Right now I only have 1 & a 1/2 and our little library sucks. :o/
I’m hoping to sell a painting or two over the summer holidays so I can have cash on hand to do things with and for the kids. Like, I want to be able to say to them, “ya wanna make $2? go out to the garden and pull all the weeds,” which they would do because they like money and will have nothing better to do. Or, “hey do you want to have pizza for lunch? Here’s $15 and a list, ride your bike to the grocery store and pick these things up,”. Or, “here’s $5, go get an ice cream cone at McDonald’s”. Stuff like that. With my own money. I want to be able to do these extra things for my kids without being a financial burden to Blake, because they deserve it. They’re really really great kids.
Alright, it’s now almost 4:30am which means I’ve been rambling about basically nothing for the past hour & a half and I think my sleep meds are kicking in because my thoughts are getting fuzzy. SO! Goodnight!
