So I’m still here. It’s been a bit, I know. I’ll try to be better about it in the future. Right after the new year we had to titrate my meds again (more crazy makes me need more meds) and that takes a bit to get used to. Plus I also had some sort of sinus stuff that tried to eat my face off. Sinus stuff + new meds = broke down worn out Vox fit for nothing more than forcing herself to go to the RealJob and then coming home and sitting on the couch and crocheting granny squares until her brains fall out.

But now I’m better. *twitch*

Anyhoo, since this blog is all about saying things that I want to say (other than those that will scare horses and permanently scar the family members that I like) I thought I’d review the opening themes of two anime series that I enjoy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: anime, commissions, crochet, illness, medication, medicines

I woke up this morning and felt a bit of trepidation; I’ve got two commissions about 90-95% done, and one just started… and I need to have them all in the mail in 10 days or less. I CAN and WILL do it, but I do admit the impending deadline has me perturbed.

So I did what I always do when I’m nearly down to the wire: I cleaned like a mad woman. Today I’ve picked up, sorted, stacked, put away, wiped, washed, thrown out, and made up.

It started with organizing and moving things off our coffee table. Then I decided to pick up the floor around the table so that the husband could vacuum later. Then I started throwing things away that we don’t use often or that were damaged or beyond date. Then I picked up the books that need to go back on our (already overflowing) bookshelves to organize later.

An hour or so of hazy madness later, I have a surprisingly clean house.

I apologize if this entry’s a bit scrambled; I keep seeing things that I could adjust/organize/throw away and I interrupt my writing to do it.

All my stuff’s up off the floor; I’ve gotten rid of two bags of crap I wasn’t really needing. I’ve got a stack of books ready to be integrated. I’ve got things more organized than ever. I’m so domestic I’ve got a crockpot of no-peekie stew simmering on the counter, and I’m seriously considering making my family’s brunswick stew recipe (at 1/6th the volume; they used to make it for church lunches).

The husband’s been such a big help, as he always is. It’s so odd to have a partner who will clean and organize alongside me. I’ve just about worn him out with some serious labor today and I love him more than ever.

I do have to watch out for a tendency towards hoarding. The members of my family are prone to holding on to random and meaningless stuff, although we give different reasons for it. “Collecting.” “These might be worth something someday.” “I can’t throw it away now; I might need it down the line.”

Even a vague sense that we *are* our things. I know I once had that feeling.

When I was little I kept my room in a glorious state of clutter. No real trash and absolutely no food leavings, but my belongings were spread over every square inch of floor and horizontal surface. Even the bed was a zoo of stuffed animals.

Part of it was loving to see what all I had, to be inspired at any moment. Colors of toys or combination of light and shadow could send me off into a fugue, dreaming about everything and nothing in particular. Part of it was security device; if anyone wanted to bother me they’d have to do it over a mine-field of various slippery, sharp, pointed, loose objects.

I remember when various family members would come into my room and clean it. I remember sitting on my bed crying broken-heartedly as they patiently organized, removed, repatterned. To me it was an attack, an invasion and an assault. Other people… touching my belongings. Putting them back in an order that meant nothing to me. I wouldn’t be able to find things that I wanted until my fantastic haphazard filing method reasserted itself.

I recognize some of this as the start of mental illness.

What with better medication, better understanding of my own mind, and the love and support of someone saner than I am (or at least differently crazy) I have had only occasional clutter.

And now I don’t have even that. I have a Clean House.

There’s an Orange Clove candle burning on my coffee table. There’s the lovely smell of home cooking in my kitchen area. I’m a happy hooker.

Tags: cleaning, courage, hoarding, illness, life, medication, medicines

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.

Saint Cloth says that tattoos fade; I hope this one does.

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

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 was watching Invader Zim today, and I saw Zim and Gir sharing a Lik M Aid Fun Dip pack. Man, that brought back my childhood… getting stuck at one of my younger brother’s T-ball games, but happy that I had a book and was able to get a Lik M Aid or a Ring Pop or a Slush Puppy or any of the fun sugary things that make the helpless insanity of childhood bearable.

I woke up this morning at 7:15, falling face first out of a nightmare that was so long and felt so real that I could have marketed it as a feature length film. Then I woke up the husband, who brought me meds and drink and stayed up with me and calmed me. That’s why he’s the husband.

So we watched Silent Hill on a Halloween afternoon, as you do, and I worked on Pyramid Head’s… er, head. I thought the front part would have to be reworked, but looking at the screen captures I have from the DVD and the “making of” videos on it, I think I’m pretty close. The back of the head needs to be longer, though, and may need to be weighted. The point of the front of the head throws off his center of gravity and makes him want to bend at the waist instead of stand upright. Nonetheless, I can work something out. Trust the Dollmaker.

Finally I had to stop with Pyramid Head due to lack of Heather Gray yarn; now I’m working on a personal project with the Rainbow Boucle. It’s a delight to work with, but it always makes me feel like I need a manicure to do anything to it. It catches on every single little bump or rough spot on nail or skin.

So now we’re watching the Batman marathon on one of the Family channels; so far I’ve been surprised that they’ve not bleeped anything but “p*ssy”. We’re into Batman Returns and lately it’s been my hobby to look up the imdb trivia page for anything we’re watching. One of the trivia items is that a scene at the end of this movie (no OMG SPOILERS here) was filled long after the rest of the movie and shortly before the premiere, in a great hurry and at great cost — over $250,000.

It’s also been my hobby lately to take the excesses of others and translate it into my own life terms. The husband and I do pretty well on ~2K a month (or less, depending on how sick I’ve been), so the cost of that scene would have kept me and him fed with a roof over our heads for 125 months, or 10 years and 5 months. Fun, eh? A 15 second scene, and a decade of happy married life…

Apropos of nothing, I can’t seem to stop glutenating myself lately. First with the medication, then with the yogurt, and today apparently with cheap pepperoni that was probably cross-contaminated. Yay, hot and cold flashes and stomach pain! Thanks also to the nice male nurse who treated me, who wrote in my chart that I should go to the BRAT diet: Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, and Toast. Never mind the fact that I’m outright allergic/intolerant to two options on that list, and a third will cause me issues due to the high fructose… Fantastic.

Anyhoo, that’s it for tonight. May try to go to the store tomorrow, get more yarn, keep trying. I missed Finished Object Friday due to abject depression and apathy caused by profound glutening; I’ll post some FO’s soonish. Promise.

P.S. I’m inflicting this fun little video on you, my friends, because it’s stuck in MY head and I want it in yours too.

Tags: invader zim, life, medication, movies, pyramid head