Just plain awesome.

Rocky springboards jumps, originally uploaded by Bеn.

woozy and freaked out, where are my boots?

I'm just having one of those days. I felt righteously awful yesterday, felt better this morning, but then slowly slid back into awful via hot, shaky, cold, nervous... just... discombobulated.

But... but my Wii says I've gained weight. I want to work out. How am supposed to do that if I feel like my hip muscles are seizing up and I'm light headed? I've tried working out on days like this before. Sometimes it makes me feel better. Sometimes I end up with a migraine. One day I just quickly laid down on the floor and grabbed my cell phone on the way down, just in case. I'm so sick of this shit, but it's never going to go away, so tough patooties, eh?

Where's my damn boot straps? Oh, here they are...

52|365 ||| it snowed.., originally uploaded by .bella..

It looks like a scene out of my fondest imaginings right now. Cold and cuteness. Delish.

willpower not a good painkiller

Narcotic withdrawal is bloody awful. After being on painkillers regularly for years, I decided enough was enough and weaned myself off of them. It was so bad I asked my doctor to put me in rehab but she's a dumb bitch and didn't. At any rate, I was sick with it for maybe five months, trying to step down slowly and it's been a month, maybe two now, that I haven't taken any. I still have some in a bottle in case it got bad enough to want them. I haven't had a day so bloody awful as this in months, apparently. I dreamed about them last night, even. My husband woke me up at 1:30 because of my vocalized sounds of anguish in my dream, and it's hard as hell to wake that man up, I have to wonder if I was screaming in his ear? Whatever I was doing, I lost the dream as soon as he woke me, which is very perculiar- I can remember dreams I've had thirty years ago. My dream recall is astounding. I just remember pain, so much pain. The dream that woke me up this morning was the same theme- pain. I had splinters of glass in my right leg, everywhere. I was hopping around some bizarre bus station of hell in the dream. At some point I got to a pharmacy and they gave me the wrong medicine, and there was tons of narcotics in the box. That both thrilled and horrified me as I knew I wouldn't take them but liked knowing I had them anyway. I never did get the glass out of my leg or make it out of the bus station in my dream, but when I woke up I could see the first glimmers of daylight and got warily out of bed. Usually I can work the pain out through stretching and a percussion massager, muscle relaxers and a hot shower, something. Today: nothing. Zero, zippo, zilch. I crave those damn painkillers just for a break in the never ending pain, but I know that's all it will be- a break. So I keep plugging away at getting my body to stop this wretched mutiny, proud that I'm not giving in to a tempting bottle of pills, but I have to confess that my pride is not as relieving as narcotics would be. Back to work...

the green eyed exorcist, age twelve

My son is so freakin' funny sometimes.

We were watching TV, actually watching the infomercial for Chuck Norris "Total Gym", just laughing and joking (and secretly admiring and coveting) when I announced to my son that I had to go the bathroom.

From out of the blue, my son hopped up and did a very good impersonation of a TV evangelist and loudly beseeched our ceiling with his arms outstretched, "Gawwd, release the brown demaaaaaahn!" referring of course to poop, natures most hilarious of subject materials known to twelve year old boys.

I laughed and laughed, actually snorted a few times while I was gasping in air, trying to stop laughing before I wet my damn pants. Thank you, captain out of left field hilarity.

Side effects may include WTF, minus F.

Alone by Metin Canbalaban.

Back when my doctors insisted I go onto Zoloft (a very bad idea indeed), I got fat, depressed, but it didn't really affect my sex drive per say, other than being fat and depressed. My husband did not understand. If fact, he was more than vaguely lacking in the sympathy department, something I still am harboring a spark of resentment about.

Lest you think of me as a grudge mongering bitch, I'll explain.

I was whining about being fat. My husband has always had Issues (capital I) with his blood sugar, and I have witnessed I don't know how many bajillion binges of him eating peanut butter and honey by the tablespoon, pouring maple syrup (or honey) straight into his mouth from the container, eating chocolates or cookies or freaking anything until there's nothing left- my son knows my hiding places for sweets in the house, my husband does not. Does that say anything much? I think it does. I repeat: my twelve year old is privy to the secret location of candy, and knows my husband is not to be clued in, ever. I believe I have painted a clear enough picture about that. Ok. So there I was, whining about the Zoloft making me fat, and my beloved husband ever so sympathetically says to me, "You know, you wouldn't have a hard time losing the weight if you would just stop eating all the time."

*sound of screeching brakes*

Was he actually stuffing Teddy Grahams and mini Reeses Peanut Butter Cups into a tablespoon of peanut butter and eating it when he said it? I don't know. I do have a picture of him doing that, however, and it's in a file on my computer labeled, "All The Time". As in, I could lose weight if I wasn't eating ALL THE TIME. This coming from the freaking Binge Master himself. He still had a nice metabolism going at the time.

And then his doctors put him on Paxil? Celexa? I forget which was first. He's tried quite a few. It doesn't matter which one he's on, they all have had the same effect of making him, oh, how does one nicely say it....?

Fat.

His eating habits haven't changed. A little, maybe. For a while he was eating better. For a while he was working out. Then he stopped and took up smoking instead.

*more screeching brakes*

Oh, shit on a Pop Tart, are you kidding me? Blech.

For the record, I did bring up the subject of my All The Time folder, which is no secret. It also now contains pictures of him asleep on the couch, fat gut poking out of his shirt, snoring all to hell and beyond. The pictures aren't for anyone to see but me. I want to remember.

That by itself maybe seems weird. I get it. One time I found a letter in my mom's stuff, a horrible little letter my step dad had written her when they were in a very bad place, having a hard time, and it was a nasty little piece of work indeed. I was in my teens, and decided me going through her stuff and getting busted for it was worth confronting her about it, because I read that letter and wanted to knock my step dad's teeth out. It didn't matter if I wasn't getting along with my mom either, I would defend her against some OTHER human trash talking her, especially HIM. She just looked at me funny, kind of a stony expression I wasn't used to seeing with her, and told me she was keeping it.... to remember. "WHY?" I implored her. She wanted to keep it to remember how mean he could be. I didn't understand at the time. I didn't understand until I was much older and had men put me through the ringer repeatedly and realized that the signs were there, sometimes over and over again, but I managed to conveniently forget them. I started keeping track. Finally I understood why she kept it. A person can put up with a whole hell of a lot of emotional abuse before their spirit is so crushed they can't get up the nerve to leave. And after two relationships like that in a row, I started keeping notes. I still do. The All The Time folder is almost a joke, really. The shit we've gone through the last few years got far uglier than that. That was... a thoughtless, insensitive thing to say. Since he's been on SSRI's and has gotten fat no matter how he fought it (at first) he is, um, far more sensitive to my plight. Well, it's his plight now, because I outright refuse to take them again, EVER. So guess who is fat now and who isn't?

I don't rub it in his face. I did just bring it up the once, gently, delicately, because it did hurt me so badly when he said it. It was important to me to make sure he understood the sense of helplessness behind the weight gain, and to just imagine for a moment if I said something like that to him... his face clouded over and he apologized. Good enough. Did I erase the folder? No. I've got journals to go with it.

Really though, that's not what this post is even about. It's the background, the details, giving you, the reader, a sense of the texture, the depth, the feeling behind what is currently bothering me:

I miss having a sex life.

His sex drive is nearly nil. After a discussion in counseling one day, we agreed that Yours Truly needs some new sex toys, STAT. You see, MY sex drive is just as revved up as ever. The er, shoe, is on the other fat foot now, as it were. Now we're trying to work around the week of my cycle, my state of pain (chronic), feelings of exhaustion (either of us), the usual mood swings that anyone has, if my son is asleep, if my husband can get it up/keep it up/get off, his feelings of physical attractiveness, and now, to add to all THAT, him smelling like a freaking ashtray, holy freaking turn off Batman.

Sex life? What sex life?

The anxiety that he suffers from makes any discussion of him changing meds a potential nuclear explosion. We did discuss it in therapy last week, and his shrink made a note in his chart. The other doc (same building) that does his meds (not therapy) had an assitant call the next morning to get him in to make an appointment and talk about his medication.

(sigh)

He heard the voice mail and immediately flipped out. The man had a panic attack about making an appointment to go to his doctor and get on a better medication that would help him stop having panic attacks. That was two weeks ago, and he still hasn't called to get that appointment. I really don't know how he could drive home the need for better medication any clearer than he has by that reaction. When I reminded him yesterday (via text, I'm no idiot), he responded that he had one next week, was that not soon enough? (Can you hear the tick tick tick in that loaded question? Geez.) It was the appointment he already had, so he just wanted to wait (three weeks) until then. (Shakes head) Ok. It's a hard subject to discuss. With him, I mean, not in general. One time when we were discussing it he accused me of not understanding, of having no idea what he was going through, did I not understand that this was a physiological condition he had and nothing he could control?!?

It took everything I had not to scream and laugh at the same time. Who the hell does he think he's talking to? I've had panic attacks since I was twelve! They only worsened over the years. I've been on almost every piece of crap SSRI out there and a pile of other medications that can be used on an off label method for anxiety over the last ten years! What the hell would I know about it? Hi? Hello? That's why that one doctor put me on Zoloft, that whole me getting fat thing, remember my darling husband? The time you insisted I try it anyway, despite my utter horror at what could come of it, because it was, I believe you told me, "for my own good." And months later when I was still having panic attacks and was then also fat and horribly depressed (my usual SSRI reaction, duuuuh), you told me to "stick it out for a few more months, maybe the effects are cumulative?" at which point I got even fatter, more depressed, and it took me nearly two years to get even HALF of that weight off? Remember? No? Not while your having a panic attack, huh? Hard to think straight when it feels like you're going to die at any second for no reason whatsoever, isn't it? How would I even understand such a think unless I'd been living with it myself for the last TWENTY TWO YEARS, but hey, try the know it all high horse approach, see how far that gets you.

Resentment? Yah. I have it. It'll get worked through, given time.

Sex life? No, not so much. It'll get worked in, given... something, and time.

Yah, well, so it's Friday afternoon and my son left for his friends house and I'm home alone so it looks like I'd better do me quick because if I don't do it, who will? Thoughts like that do not usually lead to a feeling of wanton sex toy lust, I gotta say. The reality of it all is simple: my husband doesn't go anywhere or do anything, and with him AND my son in this little ole apartment, that doesn't leave much room to squeal like a happy little piglet. So, carpe diem, yo.

Seize SOMETHING, anyway.

bookworm Christmas in my Inbox

The local library system has an online service that allows patrons to search for books, put them on hold, and then choose which library it is most conveniant to pick them up at. The librarians then pluck your book off the shelf, put it in the trucks, and have it brought to you. As if that weren't enough, you can then have them send you an automated e-mail informing you to pick up your book, the subject line reading, "You have holds available." What has got to be the absolute cherry on top is the option to pick them up in the library drive thru. You read that right: drive thru service at the library. Just show them your library card and presto read-o, they hand you the books you've been wanting.

Oh library, how I love thee! Let me count the ways...

When I check my e-mail and see that subject line, I'm like a kid running down the stairs at Christmas, quickly scrolling down the page to see which book (or books) are now available for my visual consumption.

*squeals!*

Alas, this morning I scrolled down to see something about monsters and thought, "Wait.... what?" I then remembered my son had put a book or two on hold using my account online before we realized it and signed me out and him in to his own account.

Well. It appears it is Christmas instead for my son, who is rapidly consuming books about Dungeons and Dragons.

Dungeon Master proclaims +10 smiting points for my excitement, but you can't love EVERYTHING you unwrap, eh?

There's always tomorrow morning...

This message brought to you by The Public Advisory Bored (pun intended). Motto: Fighting brain rot and e-mail apathy one book at a time.

"A little sweat ain't never hurt nobody..."

I'm fucking LOVING Beyonce's B'Day Deluxe Deluxe Edition album, most especially working out to it. For me, working out involves my beloved Wii Fit Balance Board, and if anyone has it, you know what I'm talking about when I say the aerobics section has a double length hula hoop exercise, right? I've been doing two sets of the double length (along with an hour of other various things) for the last two days, just setting my music player back to replay this song every time it starts:



Oh, FUCK yes.

That's all. Just FUCK yes.

Now I'm getting in the shower. Shoo.

the dangers of napping in wakeful company

My son and I have been hanging out all day, all lazy lazy lazy summer vacation day.

At one point I fell asleep while he playing a game, and had some bizarre dream about the government picking me up in some alien helicopter pod looking thing. It had no driver, just worked on its own once I put on my seat belt (a habit I am so die hard about it apparently also applies to alien/government abductions in grassy fields in my own dream scape).

I remember weird houses I had to share with other (oddly post apocalyptic but seemingly normal) people.

I remember trying to find a pair of Converse in my size (houses and shoes, even post apocalyptic I have my priorities, right?).

I remember thinking I should switch my wedding rings to my right hand since my husband was dead (my ex is, so that vaguely made sense), and I wondered how long it had been since I last had sex, and if I could find that hottie ex of mine so we could get it on, and seeing him at some dance club (not jiggy but ballroom or salsa or something) and I woke up, looked around confused and thought, "Oh boy, oh boy, I hope I wasn't talking in my sleep..."

intuitive Betty Crockerism

One of my best friends just had her third baby, and I am so delighted I've been dancing about the house driving my husband to napping. To his credit, he laughed at my antics, then napped.

My delight is due in part to how very much she and her husband wanted children, and the difficulty they had for years in becoming parents. My delight is also due in part to how truly amazing both she and her husband are- any child born to this couple are well blessed to begin with.

Now, due to the glory that is social networking sites, I've been able to follow along all day as she was induced (in Alaska) and he was awaiting word of his daughters birth via a phone call (in Iraq). Finally, word came in, proud papa third time 'round announced the details, and I've been hopping about and whooping ever since.

What to do with this excess of energy? What any woman does when a friend has a child: start baking.

Does it matter that it's ten o'clock at night and the spiced pineapple zucchini bread won't be done till nearly midnight? No.

Does it matter that I can't even ship it to her, being a bazillion miles away (although still closer than her husband, by golly)? No.

It was merely bake or implode.

It's nesting via proxy, but maybe that's a side effect of the internet age. Go figure.

Perhaps knitting would be more useful, although I wouldn't trust me with knitting needles right now.

And really, wooly yarn doesn't make my house smell this good.

God I am so drunkenly slap happy with joy.

Congrats to two people who deserve all the children they could ever want. I'm going to eat baked goods to celebrate.

a REAL vacation

Green Drina, originally uploaded by Katarina 2353.

It's summer, and the amount of friends and family announcing various plans for vacations is making me a bit green with envy, I confess. You see, any vacation I have taken since my husband and I got together has been a "vacation". That is to say, there is always a reason, some underlying task involved.

We have gone to visit family and once, friends (although that time involved a visit for my son to see his biological dad, which was no vacation for anyone). Don't get me wrong, I love my family and friends. Hell, I don't see them often ENOUGH, since most are scattered hither and yon.

It's just... well, I'd like to take a vacation whose sole purpose was FUN. Relaxation. No time table, expectations, fears of hurting so and so's feelings if we didn't see them, see them again before we left, or spent X amount of time with them before we went home. It's gotten so we plan a day of vacation after we get home from vacation, just so we can be able to relax from our vacation. Not to unpack (which I do anyway), mind you- just to finally unwind.

In one day. At home. While unpacking. No pressure there. Ha. Hell, we don't even go out to eat that day or even order a damn pizza! Hmph.

This phenomena is so common now that part of "going on vacation" involves me spending the week before cleaning, doing all the laundry, making sure the grocery shopping is done for a week after we get back, packing for the trip, and then leaving the house immaculate- just so there is less to stress about while we're trying to unwind the day we get back.

THAT is something worthwhile, a habit I'll keep even for a "real" vacation. It's genius, if I do say so myself. I've witnessed people trashing their houses while packing, just excited to go, and maybe they possess some joie de vivre I don't understand- I'm just happy as hell I come home to MY house and not THEIRS. Perhaps I'd be happier if I lived in filth and didn't care. Perhaps if I wasn't allergic to most filth (dust, mold) I could find out.
*cocks one HEPA happy eyebrow*
I'd rather have allergies. Really.

Part of the problem is my OCD/OCPD husband, who is doing much better at learning how to relax, but isn't ready for an actual vacation yet. Yes, immersion therapy sounds great, theoretically, but unless he's going on this vacation with his shrink, I want no part of it. I don't want to have to be The Bad Guy who reminds him over and over that relaxing can be his only Task, but learning calculus, studying new programming languages, staying current on cutting edge IT and AI and freaking ET technologies are not Tasks that one should associate with vacation. If he could approach such things with a relaxed attitude, maybe, but he's still got a ways to go before one could describe his attachments to learning things as much less than "obsessive" and/or "compulsive", and his reaction to being interrupted is usually some varying shade of tightly restrained rage.

No, thanks. It's like asking a Type A med student to blow some money on going somewhere fun the week before final exams and trying to get them to lay down the books and have fun with you. Sound fun to you?

Me neither.

Don't think I'm pulling this out of nowhere- he and I had a conversation, a few months ago, about this lack of real vacation conundrum. He stared at me like I was a total asshole and said, "What would we DO on a 'real' vacation? Lay around and do nothing? I'd have to bring a calculus book along just for something constructive to do." I thought he was kidding, and dropped the conversation dead in the murky, murky waters as soon as I realized he was actually serious.

So.... go without him? Wait until Some Day?

I married him for better or worse. This doesn't fall under the "better" category, but is it that big a deal?

Footbridge over Nam Khan river, originally uploaded by Bеn.

*sigh*

veggies and Vader

It's so wonderful to feel understood.

While making myself my daily gargantuan bowl of salad, I called to my husband and asked him, "Do you want a salad, honey?" His response was a lackluster, "That's sounds like something I SHOULD want..."

Well then.

I informed him that anything less than sheer wanton desire for my salad made him unworthy of it (I am an admitted salad whore), although I am tired and it came out as a stuttering sort of jumbled sentence. I ended it with an ever so eloquent, "Oh, you know what I mean."

He did. He walked into the room and delivered a deadpan perfect impression of Darth Vadar, "I find your lack of lust disturbing."

Yes. That was EXACTLY what I meant.

There are moments when I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I have picked the correct mate. That was one of them.

(For the record, he ate no salad, just made more coffee and ate a pile of peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon. I rest my salad stingy case.)

priorities

Just got home fom seeing the optomitrist, and squinting hard to see keypad on my phone. Mostly I'm relying on my awesome thumb memory from texting so very much just to knnow where the keys are. Go thumbs, go!

Friends are sending me texts and I have to keep going to my son and asking him to read them for me. I can't see much more than lines. The keyboard of my Blackjack has lit up white letters on a black background, and for whatever reason it is easier to read than black text on a mutually lit up white background.

After my shock wore off that they allowed me to drive home like this (and I did, not living far away and having way too much experience driving after taking Zanaflex, this was practically a breeze by comparison) my biggest concern was the sudden realization that I'm at a good part in my latest Dresden Files book and I CAN'T READ RIGHT NOW. Damn! Having my son read a few texts is one thing, parking my butt in his room and saying, "Read me my story, I'm impatient!" is just doofy.

Working out on the Wii Fit also seems a bad plan. Man. I like my eyesight. Nothing like having the world turn into a visual mush to make a person cognizant of their love of sight.

Enough. I'm squinting so hard to even type this I'll end up with a migraine or at least some new wrinkles if I don't stop. (Again with the funny priorities.) Plus I heard another text come in while I've been typing and I have to go have my son read it to me...

help me sing it

I woke up this morning with The song "The Girl Is Mine" running through my head. I hummed it making bagels with peanut butter, honey, and bananas. Odd, really, I haven't heard it in a long time.

Clicking through my favorites links on my mobile phone, I checked BBC headlines a few minutes ago. It's really the only news source I read with any regularity. As I explained to my father a few months ago, it saves me a lot of agony. Reading headlines about every nasty thing that happens in the world, the country, the city, it's just grim. Totally morbid. It's a lesson I learned growing up in the metro Detroit area. No one needs to hear that much morbid horrible crap at ten o'clock before they go to bed. Or at eight o'clock, right when they wake up. Even though I moved away at nineteen, I kept the habit. As a matter of fact, I remember one year when I lived in Asheville, NC and the murder rate had reached an unprecedented high: eighteen that year. Small potatoes compared to the crap I grew up with, but I still avoid the shock tactics of news stations in general. So I read the BBC headlines to see if anything big is happening in the world, and I'm sure a lot of news slips by me, but frankly I'm ok with that.

The top headline was about Michael Jackson dying.


*blinks*

I don't know why I find it so shocking. He wasn't old, so there's that. He didn't seem to live the wild parties and drug addled lifestyles of many contemporaries, but then, did Michael Jackson have any contemporaries? He was one odd duck.

I loved his music when I was in elementary school, and I think I still have the Thriller album on cassette. Doubtful the song "Wanna Be Startin' Something" has ever played within earshot and my ass wasn't shaking- that whole bit at the end just GETS me. So that's how I'd like to pay tribute to one of my childhood idols, I think.

"Lift your head up high
And scream out to the world
I know I am someone
And let the truth unfurl
No one can hurt you now
Because you know what's true
Yes, I believe in me
So you believe in you
Help me sing it, ma ma se,
Ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa
Ma ma se, ma ma sa,
Ma ma coo sa."

~Michael Jackson, Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'

how to save yourself a bajillion dollars and years of frustration:

Create your own medical miracle that can't be dismissed as a fluke by doctors.

"It's weird I had to solve my own medical problem," Terry told CNN affiliate KOMO. "There were just no answers anywhere ... I was always sick."

"Not knowing much about a disease you're growing up with is not only nerve-wracking, but it's confusing," Terry told the Sammamish Reporter.

That, THAT is freaking awesome.

sadist suit season

It's rather late in the season to be shopping for a swim suit, apparently. All the places I've looked are rather scoured, as if people are snapping them up left and right and maybe I live too close to the beach, perhaps it has that effect on people... but still.

I'm sullen. Cranky. Irritated.

I want a cute bathing suit.

It can't be any old bathing suit, lordy no. I have fashion styles, tastes to account for. Also, I have an issue with any strap that goes over my neck- besides the dorky tan line it causes, for me personally it causes severe pain. It doesn't seem to matter if it's sort of loose or not, I simply cannot wear a halter style ANYTHING, it just messes my neck up way too much.

That narrows down the playing field quite a bit.

So far the only suits I've found that made me squeal for joy were expensive, crazy expensive, more money than I care to blow on a bathing suit that may or may not fit me next year.

Like this one:


Holy freaking cow is it cute! The stupid neck strap is detachable. Ruffled skirt, to die for. Big fat bow- loving it. Do I want to spend close to $200 on it? Hell no.

Would I mind if it fell from the sky, manna suit from heaven? Not at all.

Maybe I'm cheap. Maybe my taste in suits is not. As I perused various stores websites I saw Juicy Couture, Ralph Lauren, damn, damn you labels! And Betsey Johnson, honey, you're killing me with the bathing suits. (The one posted above, also Betsey Johnson)

Right now the current winner is this cute as hell little number but really, $160 for a bathing suit? I would have to fuss about sitting on the edge of the pool, lest it snag the material, and I'm just not that kind of girl. I want to play, not fuss about if I've washed it in cold water and let it drip dry, or if I should pull my towel over so I can let my legs dangle in the pool while playing catch with my son but not risk ruining my silly expensive suit.

The ridiculous part is that all of this is so I can go out in the summer and look like a normal human, but really, I burn like it's going out of style, and I seem to be horribly allergic to every sunscreen out there, minus my beloved Burt's Bees:


Small bummer, it makes me look even whiter when I put it on, and it kind of weirdly crumbles if you try to put it on thick... beggars can't be whiners, really. That and the make up from bareMinerals.


That's a hell of a ad line, isn't it? I can SLEEP in it? Sweeeet. It took me a long time to find it, too, reason being the make up is freaking expensive...

Seeing a trend? Me, too.

*sigh*

Eventually I will have to give up my ideals of being cheap. (laughs) Growing up in a blue collar family makes me still see expensive things as ridiculous, although I am slowly coming to realize that some things are in fact worth the money you pay for them. Like my floofy expensive and utterly fabulous make up.

If I spend a moment and fantasize about the pile of bikinis that I currently have (all have damn halter straps and torture me to wear) instead being replaced by a pile of insanely gorgeous and expensive, yes, new swim suits... well, it makes me a bit giddy, really. Like maybe I just want to strip down, put on some beautiful bathing suit and dash outside to sit in the shade with a big floppy hat, but DAMN will I look GOOD doing it!!!

For now, I dream.