My psych, who is a lovely crusty old dame of about 70ish, gave me some meds and said “Take these if you have an anxiety attack or insomnia; but if you have to take them at work you’ll need to go home. They’ll knock you out.”

Yeah.

I’m beginning to believe she’s a mistress of understatement.

As in, I took it at 11PM one night, thinking it was supposed to be back out of my system in about 8-9 hours. I had my alarm set for 8. I wanted to get up and do work on the commissions in my oh-so-copious free time. Instead I was woken by my husband at 10 AM, who had to *shake me to get me to wake up*, and for the rest of the day I felt like someone had slipped me a ‘lude. Hard to get anything done when that happens. The only upside was that I had a ton of weird and vivid dreams. As it was, I spent all day in an utter fog, feeling as if I hadn’t slept at all.

Guess it’ll be the last time I mess with that. Being a fibromyte means that my sleep is a touchy and special thing. I need a specific type of sleep, and a certain length of sleep — and if I don’t get it, life is difficult and sad until I do.

Medicines have always hit me oddly. They gave me morphine in the emergency room once; I still don’t understand why some people take it for fun. It acid etched my veins before it knocked me unconscious. Thinking back I can still feel that awful sensation, in arteries I didn’t even realize I had. It was a frissioning boiling feeling, a very uncomfortable trip.

Percocet, however, has been a godsend for me. It’s the only thing that really cuts through the pain, with no side effects that I’ve been able to notice it. I can use it sparingly because it is effective. I don’t have to stack eight or twelve or even 16 ibuprophen and do some unknown amount of damage to my innards.

The biggest medication to affect me was Metformin. I was put on it because there was a possibility at the time that I had Poly-Cystic Ovarian Disease, or PCOD. My general practitioner let me know that there was a severe side effect called lactic acidosis but it was so rare that the likelihood of me getting it would be very small.

A week later I went back to my doc with a complaint of acute chest pain and all over muscle soreness. I asked my doc if there was a possibility of this being the rare side effect. They gave the answer of “Oh no, it’s much worse than this.”

Two months later and they were right — it *was* much worse!

Lactic acidosis is part of what happens to the body during the process of rigor mortis; in a way I was living and dead all at once. (A very novel feeling, but I do not suggest it to others.) It felt like my lungs and chest were turning to stone and set on fire and wrapped tightly in barbed wire at the same time. My muscles hurt all over; I was taking four and five percocet a day just to sit upright. But a day after stopping the Metformin, the symptoms began to fade and in four days they were gone.

Lactic acidosis has a hilarious fatality rate; I feel that I came very close to dying because of several misdiagnoses of the situation, and numerous doctors who failed to listen to me and my appraisal of my symptoms. Later that year I got a tattoo because of this experience — a human heart wrapped tight with barbed wire, with phoenix-wings of flame shooting from it. It got it out of my head and on to my skin, where I didn’t have to think about it so often.

Ever had a medication give you a higher effect than you were told it would, or a horrific side effect that causes you harm?

Tags: courage, dead, illness, medication, medicines, sleep

I’ve decided that every Tuesday I’m going to go back and reread an issue of Transmetropolitan. It seems appropriate, what with my stream of brain medications and my endless frustration with the planet. If you’ve not read Transmet you need to, even if you’re not perhaps fans of comic books. It rocks the world. Think Hunter S. Thompson in a crazy future with more exciting drugs and more interesting weapons, bringing the light (and the chairleg) of TRUTH into the City.

Issue 4 – On The Stump

Depends on the dog, really. There are a few I wouldn’t mind seeing dead.
Band name: Carcinoma Angels.
I don’t treat life as an autopsy. Life is bouts of creativity between stomping down the motherf!ckers.
I love Spider’s face on page 15. Also page 17.
Gods, this issue is full of potential icons.
Frankly, only GUNS strike fear in the heart of criminals. Everything else is just a bl0wj0b: pleasurable lip-flapping that makes one feel better about themselves afterwards.

Shorter entry today; not really feeling up to much. There’s a lot I need to get accomplished, and soon.

Tags: Spider Jerusalem, transmet

You know, I was going to call this the Music Review Monday, because I was planning to review music. Then I realized that this was a freaking lie and in the end I was going to review whatever happened to catch my transient interests at any time. And while I do enjoy the occasionally untruth, now is not one of those moments.

Anyhoo, tonight I’m watching Eddie Izzard’s Circle, and I’m finding it to be a pleasant surprise. One of the complaints I’d heard was that he was not as funny in this show as he was in “Dressed to Kill” and “Glorious”. Which is true, but does not remove all merit from this performance. It’s still quite funny in its own way and very blasphemous — a style that I always support.

And there’s also Eddie himself, looking fantabulous. The makeup is fantastic, the shirt is stylin’, the pants have freaking D RINGS for crying out loud (always a favorite) and the shoes make me weep. Lovely pointed toes and high heeled boots. The pants are incredibly tight, though, and that makes me wonder inappropriate things.

Like: Surely he must tuck. Surely.

Another critique I’ve heard is that it is poorly edited. Also true but again, not a show-killing problem. In a way I find it charming, because it feels less polished and more as if I’m watching the show live within the audience.

Truthfully I’m quite charmed by the whole show and I would not mind having a copy should I find one cheaply or some fantastic online admirer buy it for me from my amazon list…

On to Le Chevalier D’eon! I have a soft sick love of anime, and I find myself drawn to watching this particular example. It *is* slow in some places and does have a tendency to be talky, but the action and the tremendous costumes of the time it portrays are amazing.

The scene is set in France of 250 years ago, when D’eon (a surprisingly butch bishonen, I must say) finds his sister’s undecaying body floating in a coffin down the Seine. what follows is around 24 episodes of the random items:

Despite or perhaps because of all this, I can’t wait to see the last two DVDs. Plus I would love for some amazingly rich Anime fanatic to commission me to make all these dolls and costumes. Madame du Pompadour — I love her color scheme, and usually I don’t care so much for orange…

So that’s my cinema for the day… what have you guys been watching lately? I’d love to have more to fluff my Netflix list with.

Tags: eddie izzard, le chevalier d'eon, monday review

I don’t mind smokers in a philosophical sort of way. I’m a Libertarian, which means that I think other people should be allowed to commit suicide however they please, as long as it doesn’t inconvenience others or bring traffic to a grinding halt. Thank you, overpass jumpers, I AM talking about you.

I DO mind when I have to work in close quarters with smokers. Never mind the fact that with a barely-functioning immune system and a fairly delicate respiratory system I find the scent of smoke pretty irritating in more ways than one.

Seems like some of my local smokers attempt to find the most disgusting coffin nails that man has ever rolled to light up. They come in utterly redolent of noxious odors. If I came into the office reeking of a different but similarly nasty scent, perhaps of garbage or offal, I would be politely asked to go home and shower and change clothing.

I wish I could have a rule made to have all smokers spritz themselves with some fabric cleaner when they come back into the office. Oh, the smell of chemically cleaned offensiveness; there’s nothing quite like it in the world. I doubt this will occur as some of my managers enjoy a toke or two themselves. Granted, the managers appear to smoke a better brand of cancer stick that doesn’t disturb me quite as much.

I do enjoy an occasional clove cigarette (or cigarillo, as I suppose we must call them now since the government decided it was illegal to sell such pleasant-scented little delights to consenting adults); I smoke them whenever I feel self-destructive. I wake up the next day with a sore throat and lungs and a scratchy voice, which reminds me why I usually stick to alcohol.

What some of my coworkers smoke are not cloves; these are not cigars even, although some smell worse than others. This stinks almost as much as skunky ganja — again, something I’ve unhappily experienced on the clothing of other people. At this point I’m almost ready to explain to some of these people that a bullet is faster and gunpowder has a less obnoxious scent…

Ever had someone offend you with their odor? What was it, and how did you react?

Tags: fibro, illness, RealJob(TM)

This is not a city for depression.

The beginning of a depressed state starts almost like a bad horror film. Everything goes flat and two dimensional; events around you are simultaneously less important and more painful. Time draws out into slow motion. Movements are profound but lacking real meaning.

There’s no escaping it, this self-involved masochistic trip. The mind in its dull desperation seeks to blame others, but there really is no one else. This is a walking Purgatory. This is an ambulatory Hell.

You watch other people move through this flat paper-doll world. You envy them their normalcy; you as three or four dimensions of solid melancholy are covered in ten thousand papercuts, oozing.

Sounds so incredibly emo, I know. But that’s because it’s in words, and language for all its usefulness is no more than trite in the end. Words don’t press into the reader’s mind the feelings described; words don’t put you into my shoes.

If words could do that, a fair amount of people in my past would be far more understanding than they actually were.

Voices blend. More than one person talking at once turns into a meaningless susurration; a vibe edging towards menace.

Sometimes the phobias rise up. One gets suddenly very mindful of how many people touch the bathroom doorknob, the time clock, the microwave. The food stalactites in the microwave left by other careless humans begin to terrify — each one is a little dagger of contagion waiting to plunge into your harmless lunch. There are things left in an office refrigerator that have evolved to join the Old Ones, sleeping in long strange ages, hopefully unmindful of the light from the door.

You can hear the coughing and sneezing and snorting and hacking and sputtering of those around you. You can smell the stale reek of cigarette smoke on their clothes. You have no choice; you must be here in the plague pit with the plague victims and eventually be physically assaulted by the plague virus.

Your stomach churns. The burn from the acid, from the anxiety and melancholy made manifest, gives you flashes of hot and cold. Maybe the over the counter medications in happy manic shades of pink calm your guts for a few hours.

Maybe the Fear is too much.

Somewhere there’s an island for me. There’s a beautiful place with warm weather, and a wonderful empty beach as far as the eye can see. There’s caves with plenty of shelter, and an inexplicable supply of safe food, food that I can have. And there’s the husband, and some cats, and the Yarn.

So. Much. Yarn. More yarn than a woman could crochet in ten lifetimes.

And there’s nothing to do on this island but eat and walk and love and crochet. And there’s no one else on this island but those that cause no harm.

My body’s in the City; my heart and soul are on the Island.

Tags: bless me yarn art, depression, medicines, The City

There’s a verse in the Bible that states “Thou shalt not muzzle the oxen when he treadeth out the corn.” I learned that from Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments, by the way. I can apply that to my ultra-modern trip in the following way: I need to have my breaks at the same time every day.

The government has, in its stern “Big Brother” way, decreed that one must have at least one hour of breaks in an 8 hour work period; 2 fifteen minute breaks and 1 thirty minute lunch break. My RealJob(TM) in its infinite kindness gives me ONE WHOLE HOUR for lunch. Awfully sweet of them.

But sometimes they switch my breaks around. Mostly the first break is 2 hours into my day. Sometimes it’s only one hour and 45 minutes in. Sometimes it’s even 2 hours and 45 minutes in. Usually my lunch is at the four hour mark. If they put it even 15 minutes later I start twitching.

I can’t help it. Those of us who are differently sane like our regular schedules. I am guided and comforted by the sameness of it, supported by the rigidity of it. I know when to eat and when to take my meds. My body falls into the rhythm. It saves its natural demands until the appointed times. It’s much like being imprisoned, but the pay is better.

Most importantly, however, it makes the work day that much tolerable to split it into roughly equal increments. Something difficult to swallow is easier when broken into smaller bites. At the beginning of the day, I think “I just have to make it to the break.” At the break, I think “I only have to get to lunch.” At lunch I think “Half the day is over, all I have to do is get to the last break.” And at the last break I assure myself “The day is nearly finished; I just have to survive until I can go home.”

I can’t have any middle ground; I need either absolute schedule or total freedom. The quasi-disabled side of me looks forward to the rest of a more relaxed work day; the frosted side of me looks forward to getting up and taking a walk (or getting a drink of water or going to the damned bathroom or getting a snack or ANYTHING) whenever I freaking WANT.

I think it’s a simulacrum created by corporate world; in something as big and lumbering as a massive company you can’t be monitored or managed directly for the most part. All they can see is your time. Not how well you use it, but how much you check in.

I do have an objection to this method, however feeble — I’d love to believe that the quality of my work is worth more than the quantity of my hours. But that’d take more effort to judge, wouldn’t it?

Tags: fibro, illness, life, medication

I’ve decided that every Tuesday I’m going to go back and reread an issue of Transmetropolitan. It seems appropriate, what with my stream of brain medications and my endless frustration with the planet. If you’ve not read Transmet you need to, even if you’re not perhaps fans of comic books. It rocks the world. Think Hunter S. Thompson in a crazy future with more exciting drugs and more interesting weapons, bringing the light (and the chairleg) of TRUTH into the City.

Issue 3 – Up On The Roof

- The cop with the “Submit Now” written on the riot shield, man. Wherever we spit, cops we run… endless streets we run…
- And our first look at the lovely auburn hair’d Amazon Channon, oh she the valiant stripper sans nipples, former body guard and pay dacoit.
- I need a t-shirt that says “I’m a completely different kind of bastard.”
- “The smell of scrotal sweat and dirty panty elastic…”
- So many of my freaking ex’s could have been labeled “A p3n1s with a promise.”
- Two tugs of a dead dog’s c0ck. That phrase has served me in good stead across the years.
- The black panel with sparkles on it showing the cops leaving after they beat the sh!t out of him is by far one of the best renditions I’ve seen of a near faint. Bravo.

Tags: Spider Jerusalem, transmet

I heard somewhere on the intarwebs that DST started as a joke by Benjamin Franklin. I think I can believe that, knowing the brilliant old rake had a biting and subtle sense of humor. As someone with Fibromyalgia, I absolutely despise Springing Forward — but oh, how I love to Fall Back!

The week before springing forward holds serious dread for me. I’m about to lose a precious, precious hour of sleep, and it will be darker when I wake up, which makes it more difficult for me TO wake up. And for the week after springing forward I walk around like a zombie, always wanting to go to bed one hour later than I do; always needing to sleep one hour longer than I will. Eventually I get used to the modified schedule, my body adjusts to the different sleep hours, and life goes on. I’ve always meant to do what has been suggested by various Fibro websites, which is to adjust my sleep time by 15 minutes every night for 4-5 days before DST but frankly I’m just not that organized when it comes to sleep and I wind up paying the price.

I couldn’t wait to fall back this time around. I’m beginning to believe I may have a touch of seasonal affective disorder — getting out of bed while the sky is dark seems almost impossible. I actually felt well rested on Sunday morning when I woke up and the sky was bright; since then it’s been easy to go to sleep at night (what with feeling like it’s later than it actually is) and then when I wake up the sun is shining through the curtains and is helping to burn away the sleepies of the night.

In Gluten-Free Triumph News, I tried a new GF food today that actually TASTED like what it was supposed to be. I’ve got a box of Kinnikinnick GF glazed donuts in the freezer and heated one up in the microwave and it was heavenly. Very spongy, and the glazing was perfect. Made me actually crave funnel cake, which I haven’t had since I went GF. We may have to work out a recipe.

Here’s what I’m *nominally* working on, all at once:

Pyramid Head
Bronx
SOMETHINGVERYPINK
Anubis
Set
Isis
Light Rook
Several quilt squares
A beautiful granny square jacket (for a change!)
An afghan for myself for the couch.

And here’s hoping I can finish up more commissions this weekend, in between doing some overtime for the RealJob(TM) and driving the husband to his weekly dose of swordfighting.

Tags: commissions, fibro, food, gluten, illness, life, sleep

I’ve decided that every Tuesday I’m going to go back and reread an issue of Transmetropolitan. It seems appropriate, what with my stream of brain medications and my endless frustration with the planet. If you’ve not read Transmet you need to, even if you’re not perhaps fans of comic books. It rocks the world. Think Hunter S. Thompson in a crazy future with more exciting drugs and more interesting weapons, bringing the light (and the chairleg) of TRUTH into the City.

Issue 2 – Down the Dip

For once, he’s the most normal person on the cover.
If I had a dime for every time I’ve wanted to put a cigarette out in someone else’s eye, I’d be living in Fiji.
“Incredible tension: like they’re all living in the second before the bullet hits the bone. They’re all waiting to be killed.”
“Make your things on the floor stay, Fred. I’m tired and emotional and I really DO feel like shooting something.”
Gods, I can’t wait until until Fred gets his.
I love the Bazooms neon sign with the heart-shaped nipples.
Our first shot of the nasty b!tch, the two-faced cat. I can’t wait to make a doll of her, complete with lizard and cigarette in one muzzle.
I’d love to hear some of the side stories mentioned here, especially the one involving how so many people died the last time Spider was alone with a phone-line in Prague.
So much Icon Fodder in this issue.

The one thing I really want to learn from Spider is how to say something and then let it go. Not to look for approval nor shrink from disapproval.

My favorite Margaret Mitchell quote is “With enough courage, one can do without a reputation.” It does take bravery, not to care how other people think of or feel about you.

Tags: courage, Spider Jerusalem, transmet

Alrighty, it’s the end of the year and what that means for business is that I have only SIX commissions left before I close my list for an indefinite period of time. When I reopen them in 2010, I will have fewer commissions at a higher fee.

So if you’ve ever wanted any of my works, now is the time to secure your place. Current starting price is $55 for my regular commissions, and $10 shipping within the US. You can also get rush status (within 3 months of receipt of payment) for an additional $30 per rushed item.

When I have the six commissions or we reach December 31st 2009, my list will be closed until I finish my current commissions — at this point, probably at least until July – October 2009. When I reopen, my base price will start at $100 per commission.

So email me at voxmortuum @ gmail.com to let me know what you’re wanting and we’ll work out the details.

Tags: bless me yarn art, commissions, crochet