just enjoy the game

you get far enough down 'thanksgiving walking dead meme' in google search, you forget why you were even there

I got lost in that search last night before I caved and went to bed. I think I'd go to sleep faster with a brain chip letting me mindlessly cruise nonsense.

So last week today I was 203 pounds and super calm before surgery. Within 24 hours I'd zoomed up to 215 on IV fluids and whatever my body started hoarding because it must've thought I'd been attacked by ice picks and had a piece of me stolen slick as slick. That was a little alarming so I looked it up, guess it's common to do that with surgeries, basically just take good care of yourself and let the fluids sort themselves back out. Today I am down to 206, which is fantastic compared to some people in the med forums, and apparently means my kidneys are in great shape chugging it out, yay! And that is why you wanna take care of your kidneys, people.

Another thing I learned, since I'm not a surgery queen and usually stick to the more mundane whiny chronic stuff, is that an ileum is about the last thing to come out of the whole knocked out stupor, and everything trying to leave ahead of it is like the worst traffic pileup you ever saw. I wasn't given after care instructions on anything diet or digestive except start slow and eat what I want. By day 4 I was becoming an expert on looking all the things up, and after all the stuff I've read from every point of view imaginable, it really doesn't matter a hill of beans what you eat and you should always have a bottle of milk of magnesia on hand anyway. Softeners and hydrating didn't work at all, moving around more while slacking off on pain meds backfired into every conceivable regret, all the correct food in the world can't make a difference if it's at the back of the line, and probably the only thing I'll do next time I have surgery is stick to clear fluids the last 12 hours or something. At any rate, we're all very happy now. If you've got a friend or family member going through surgery and don't know what to do for them, trust me, a bottle of milk of magnesia is pretty wonderful and will make you the hero.

And then of course, I just started typing in whatever question popped into my head into the search bar. How long do my incisions hurt after gallbladder surgery? Hundreds, maybe even thousands of people had asked the same thing. Some people hurt for weeks when they sneeze or move wrong or sit too long, so grain of salt, I'm keeping in mind that I got stabbed by ice picks and there are lots of little nerve endings in skin and the tissues underneath because being able to feel stabs kept our ancestors alive longer and they probably fought back, ducked and dodged, or ran for cover while I was knocked unconscious and purposely stabbed under some big lights. That stab memory will probably always be there locked in the tissues now, and it'll just become part of my overall nerve pain disorder if it becomes bothersome. Other people yapping about weeks later sneezing took a big load off my mind. It's easy to imagine the worst when someone else pokes a hole in you.

And I got to thinking, it's funny that people will let their gallbladders go defcon and become emergencies while they ignore them, but then fret over ever little sensation while they heal after surgery. Humans are weird.

Bottom line, if you're not taking good care of yourself before the surgeries start rolling in, don't expect to heal on demand kind of thing. And the opposite is true, too, ran into a lot of people getting back to their workouts too quickly and winding up back in surgeries to fix rips in what wasn't done healing yet. Y'all need to chill. Just because you think your body should such and such in your mind doesn't mean you're the boss of reality. Just because people are going back to work in 3 days or a week doesn't mean everything super healed super fast and you're a chump because you can't live up to a rumor standard. As far as I can tell, it all sucks, we all suffer, and it all takes time.

When I was in ER earlier this year, hanging out for a few hours in the waiting room, there was a guy dripping blood down his arm who had managed to elude everyone and went straight to the public coffee cart. I was mind numb with pain in a wheelchair after an ambulance ride, still waiting to get triaged, everyone around me pulling back from this guy and I'm parked right there. I just smiled and said You need to keep pressure on that. I mean, crazy or not, I'm probably crazier, so who cares. He got bashful trying to cover the blood dripping and getting coffee at the same time, evidently priorities are a problem in his brain, and he said he pulled his IV out. I laughed and said It's not like TV is it? I did that once, ripped it out in a bathroom, blood everywhere like the zombie apocalypse. And then everyone around us started relaxing and people finally found the guy and got him to the police desk to get his arm bandaged, and someone else cleaned up. I cleaned in hospital one year, I had no problem with that blood. I am OSHA trained and cleaned stat contagion many times all over the hospital. I was also the only one who talked to that man like a human being. The rest was just funny to me, but I thought that part was sad.

Around Thanksgiving, Americans make big deals about going to homeless shelters and feeding people. There were plenty of people in need around me in that hospital waiting room. One woman was clearly homeless but very organized. She had a travel case with wheels and a couple old pillows tucked into the pull out handle. Everything she needed was in that bag, including a book. I take a bug out bag with me nearly everywhere I go, too. I feel safer when I have all my little comforts with me if I wind up stuck some place waiting for something, like having my car worked on. When pre-triage came out to get her vitals, she clearly stated she was there because it hurt to pee, and apparently knew how to get help about it, was probably the best behaved person in the whole waiting room because she knew how to stay out of trouble. Conveniently, it was also better than being outside in the cold. I'm sure she knows every public area open through the night all over town. On my own really bad days when I can't stand being alone, I take my bug out bag and go hang out at the library or the hospital, some place big where I can move around a bit and still have facilities and people around me. I used to hang out at the airport when I was younger. I don't think I'm alone doing that. I think a lot of people hang out all over town like that. Some people go shopping and don't realize they're using the excuse to be doing something when they really just want to not be alone. When I retailed, there were customers who knew the store better than we did.

If you don't know what to do with yourself or your life and you want to be helpful, go hang out at a hospital on a holiday. Just move around from one waiting area to another, check out the coffee shops and gift shops, notice the families camping out around births and deaths and horrible accidents and cancers and stuff. And then go check out the opportunities board and ask about volunteer positions. Volunteers are awesome in big buildings. They train you to help move patients in wheelchairs after check in, or answer questions at a desk, or other stuff. A lot of places have volunteer programs. You don't have to just do it on holidays and twiddle your thumbs the rest of the year.

This meme cracks me up because I saw someone actually do this on a minecraft server, just purposely dump a lot of leveled up diamond armor and weapons into a deep ocean after a bad day. Sometimes you let go of the material stuff and just enjoy the game.

click for diamond memes

I've got Bunny tomorrow while her mama works, and Papa's work is having an employee cookout, so I think me and Bunny are going to try making shortbread cookies. I'm stuck with gluten free flour and no xantham gum, and it hit me that shortbread might be the ticket. There are no eggs or leavening, just 3 basic ingredients, and from there I can add gingerbread spices or melt chocolate chips into butter or whatever, and we can do cut outs and colored pinwheels, and I also found a shortbread spritz, so we can get the cookie press out, too. I haven't had a real cookie day from scratch in a long time, and I think tomorrow will be a really good day for that.

I've also been getting my own Turkey Day menu assembled, getting that cooked up today so I'll be out of the way tomorrow. I'm making cornish hens with homemade herbed biscuit and cornbread stuffing (yes, all gluten free, super allergic to wheat), a mashed tato and steamed broccoli. I'm going to record Macy's parade on Thursday in case Bunny misses the balloons, because she's high energy and will probably be too excited to be that patient. I stopped my pain pills so I could save one for tomorrow and one for Turkey Day, so today I'm having a little bit of a withdrawal headache, but I'll be ok. Me and opioids probably go back through several lifetimes, I'm pure addict on those, and have mentioned my love for vicoden in the past outweighing my love for anything and anybody else. If you know someone who has quit drinking or doing drugs/meds over the holidays, please be kind and gentle with them. They won't be feeling well because it's a real bitch dealing through that thick haze of suck, and it takes awhile to get through it. I still crave every single day and it's been at least 25 years since I quite drinking and smoking, plus here I am back on an opioid for surgery and doing low dose xanax this year staying mood stable (I check in regularly with both psychologist and psychiatrist). Holidays are very stressful. If you're stressed out, then you know the person in withdrawal is very stressed out, too. Not the best time to talk politics and religion. If you can't just enjoy your family over a nice meal, maybe make other plans that are healthier for your mental and emotional function.

Sorry so wordy, this might be my last chance to hang out on Pinky blog for awhile. Not sure how the rest of the week is going to go.

Love you guys. All my people. You know who you are. 💕

day 4

Crazy weekend smashing junk around but I think we're making it. I seem to be past the worst of pain med withdrawal, got a little unreal for awhile earlier today. I can't express enough how serious a problem that is for people like me who spend like 2 chronic spoonie decades surviving med addictions and withdrawals, especially after meds have impacted organs. My liver has been the star of my medical history for about 15 years, more notations have been made on it than anything else in my body, and I'm not even a drinker.

I planned the tree getting set up this weekend way ahead of time, so I got that on track this morning when I was able and Papa was awesome with Bunny getting it up. It's the old easy tree, prelit and only 3 pieces to put together, and Bunny is big enough to do the decorating herself now. We can keep adding colorful candy canes and tinsel as we get closer to Santa. We've come a long way from the winter an undecorated tree sat there for several weeks through the entire holiday while Bunny's mama was in another hospital across the state for complications, same surgery I just had. That was 11 years ago.

I think Bunny just had her 3rd basketball game this weekend. Heard she tackled a little boy to keep him from getting the ball, lol. 😁 Has made a few baskets here and there, so she's getting the hang of it.

I'm barely aware of time flow, being so medicated, but ran across a couple of difficulties others are having. Brianne's family lost their home and everything they had this week to a fire while they were out of town. If readers know her from the #Snarkalecs or other groups on twitter and facebook and are wondering what to do for a holiday charity, there you go right there. I don't know if she'll be available for DMs like where to send gift cards, and I'm still waiting on a link for a fund page, but don't let me being goofy on meds after surgery stop you from being awesome, ok? And if I get more info I'll come back and link it here. Ok, here is the fund page. I've known Brianne for several years, huge Stargate fan, loves teaching, had the coolest Stargate wedding on live facebook and her kids were part of it, thought it was pretty special that she included her media friends in that. She's a bright light in this world, so like I said, if you're looking for a charity, she's needing our help right now. 💕

I'm still floaty but I think I can hang in there for #latenightmovie tonight in the chat room at SyfyDesigns with @LNMGang around 11ish pm eastern time. 🍿

gotta see your face some more

*floating*

My first opioid since the 5 mg shot of morphine in ER last year that sent me straight into PAWS hell. Post surgery medication this time sent me super floating straight into euphoria. I. love. EVERYONE. And now that I've been intro'd to high dose vicoprofen, I'm already planning strategy getting back off it before I abruptly run out. Can't break them in half because enteric coating, so trying to stretch them out longer in between. So far handling nearly 6 hours between doses now. I know they want my pain well controlled but I started with only 20 pills every 4 hours and that drop off is going to be pretty evil.

And my dreams are wildly unreal. Everything disconnected the first night, literally watching myself doing cartoon dishes in a cartoon house, everything in my dream was animated and blinking back and forth between minecraft. Cartoon, blocks, cartoon, blocks, I finally just got up for awhile. When I went back to bed I started having memory dreams from being under anesthesia, like when my airway was put in. Felt my teeth clonk, abruptly woke up. It was fake. Felt a knuckle bump on the top of my head and abruptly woke up. It was fake. Kept falling back to sleep and abruptly waking up as I relived some of the prep before the really deeper going under, so just staying up nearly all night was easier. Couldn't really function, so just played on facebook. Sorry if I flooded your feeds with super share, lol.

The really cool thing was pre-op before anesthesia. For the first time in my life I had absolutely no anxiety at all in a medical setting. I don't know if I finally just reached a state of too tired and didn't care or what, but nothing at all bothered me or stressed me out. I knew I'd be knocked out soon and was looking forward to it, answered questions over and over again like a string pulled doll. I managed to do the smile and eye contact thing, everything went smooth with interaction, yay.

Pre-op was sad for the people around me though. A much older guy on my right was there for lots of lymph removal around his face and neck, would be a long surgery, and he rattled everything he knew about American presidential history, all the places of historical significance he'd traveled. Heard quite a lot about Andrew Jackson before someone asked him if family members were there to drive him home, then he stopped and there was a sad no. Was anyone out there for him? His pastor... Did he not have family living nearby? A son and a daughter, and neither one made the time to be there with him. He's obviously end of life in a high risk surgery and his own kids weren't there. He stopped talking after that.

An older woman on my left just quietly cried. Not quite sobbing, but nonstop quiet crying. She was asked if she'd like family to come sit with her, said no. Was anyone out there for her? Yes, her mother and her daughter. Was she sure she didn't want anyone? She answered with a very miserable sounding quiet no. I guess the relationships were better held at a distance. She wound up having a very horrible surgery involving vulva repair after leg loss, and we wound up in recovery beside each other. She was right, both her mother and daughter were emotionally distant. At least they were there, though. She got a call from her husband on dialysis during recovery, and she asked how much he'd been drinking before dialysis, sounded like he made it to fourth in a bottle of fifth and it wasn't even noon. She got after him, hung up, rolled on her side facing me and shut her eyes, didn't talk to anyone. At least he called, and at least they were there.

Through all this I reflected on my own life. I have family who loves me. We're not perfect and quite a lot of our backgrounds are highly dysfunctional, be we love. each. other. We are there for each other every day, we talk and say I love you every day, we care about each other having sucky days. And I felt fine in pre and post op knowing I was loved and I loved my people. I was truly at peace.

It's really nice to reach a place in aging life where you realize you don't have any sadness left in you about relationships. I've reached out, done what I can to heal with my loved ones, let go of the rest. Every day I do my best to reach out to someone, be there for someone. I don't always feel reciprocated, but I know those are my own brain chemicals, not theirs. I know all I have to do is say "I need help" or "please help me" and they'll be right there. If I feel blown off, I don't sit and sulk like I used to when I was younger. I ask the TV to be paused and I start talking. We talk until I either get tired of my own voice or feel like I said what I need to say. No one yells at me, and I know my own tension is a burden so I try to reign it in. I don't put head games on my people because I know I'm the one with the personality problems from my mental health diagnoses, and I do my best to communicate clearly, effectively, and succinctly. I need you, I love you, thank you.

And then realizing all the changes I've been working on also helped-

• I changed my diet in 2011 and started healing my diabetes damage
• I started physical therapy in 2011 and worked on better mobility and endurance
• I have been working with a psychologist on depression since 2007
• CPAP has been wonderful helping me get my brain problems under better control as I'm learning to sleep properly
• Being on gabapentin has helped so much with the nerve pain that my anxiety levels have gone down in general
• Being able to see success in what I'm doing through stats gives me goals, something to work on, so I feel productive. I hadn't looked at stats on wordpress in a long time, so when I got a real question asking for help yesterday with a real problem, I got to work focusing on helping someone instead of whining about myself after surgery. And then I looked up my stats and was blown away. Aspienado is my most viewed wordpress blog. I don't like using wordpress and rarely check stats, and Aspienado is a work blog for my first book and mostly private. But what is available to read gets found, from all over the world.
• I also spent much of today downloading and reading a new book that I'm writing a review on, and I want to do a good job because I know it'll be seen over time by thousands, including a handful of directors, producers, actors, and a worldwide fandom. It's important to feel successful doing real work, and opioids through pain have made it really easy over the last 24 hours to focus on work. This is how it was for years, opioids and pain. I remember feeling good about being a difference to someone even with so much pain. Lately I've diverted into genuinely enjoying playing and being creative on a game server with a family of very diverse people, some with their own physical and mental/emotional challenges, but it felt really good getting back into writing over this last 24 hours. I'm glad I have built all that up to fall back on. I've come from hermit to twitter gang to facebook groups to #clanfam. I have a large network of people who care if I show up, and I love seeing them online, as well. I even got a phone call today and was elated. Barry is glitchy, too, like me, and we're both working on reconstructing how our friendship started. Imagine years of memories just falling right out of your head. We both know what that's like.
• And most of all on my list of how I've come to be at peace is my joy. I was depressed for so many years, at times quite severely, and I hung on so hard. Bunny's little face very day is my joy, and I'm glad I'm still here every time I see her. She's my baby's baby, my pet kid, my challenge, sometimes my boss, lol. It's very fulfilling when a little kid genuinely loves you. I guess I was needing that.

Through all these things I've been learning how to balance my natural innate negativity through embracing publicity, challenging my baditudes and praying to be good for other people. I have prayed for 2 things for myself through the years. Usually prayers are for other people or all of us or something, but 2 very definite things I have prayed for myself.

• Years ago during my worst illness and growing ugliness (hair loss, weight gain, attitude affected by meds and pain), I cried and told God if I must lose everything else, at least let Scott come home happy to see my face. I looked pretty rough for a few years, and I had to stop fixing my hair and wearing makeup. I couldn't afford nice clothes with all the money going out for medical, and we went bankrupt before I wound up with full disability. I was so depressed. God, please let Scott be happy to see my face, because I don't know how he can stand to even look at me. Well, my hair still hasn't gone gray and I barely have a wrinkle on my whole face and I'm 56. I've been told that being on estrogen therapy for 20 years can do that, but was also told I'd start aging very quickly after getting off those in 2012. Not really holding my breath resisting, still can't wear makeup, but I've been able to grow my hair back out and Scott and I laugh together about something every day. I'm glad to see his face because he's my best friend, and I guess and hope he's still glad to see mine, even when I still have bad days and get very cranky with him, and he doesn't deserve it. My brain is my enemy on those days, not him.
• I also reached a point where I prayed for healing. I was raised stoicly believing that to pray for one's own anything was vain, so I've never really prayed for my own well being. We are all here to learn through our suffering, right? Well, after some deep thought just before I met my latest doctor in 2011, just before Christmas of 2010, I prayed for healing. I had come through some very hard years of months and months of back to back viral illnesses on top of severe nearly unlivable nerve disorder pain, and I was reaching a point where I wasn't sure I could keep hanging on out of spiritual duty. I was breaking inside and could no longer hide it. I reasoned for a few days that if I really do pray for healing, I mustn't be stupid about it. God doesn't work miracles for us to toss it back. If I commit to that prayer, then I commit to true healing with everything possible I can do to help take care of myself. I wouldn't get better to be stupid about it and ruin my health again. One day I was ready and I prayed. The next day the holes in my pierced ears had both closed up. They had never done that in 20 years. I immediately decided it would be blasphemous to get them repierced and gave all my earrings away. From then on has all been positive progress. It has been long and hard, but I wound up with the best possible primary care doctor, got diagnosed immediately and fast tracked so the right specialists and physical therapy. Years of doctors before him were just struggles with very addicting medications and the long slow descent into the hell of premature aging, without hope.

So laying there in pre-op, I knew I am ready now. I've done what I've apparently set out to do in this life coming to this earth, and I felt at peace. I've learned how to heal relationships, how to take much better care of myself, how to network with other real people with success and hope in mind for all of us. And I want to continue that. I know I'll have brain crash days and be very mixed up and brain chemical spills splashing on others, and I hope they can keep forgiving me. I'm facing a future of dementia as I age, and since brain problems run in my family, I've accepted the idea that I need to keep brain training now while I can to be good for people before I lose more control of this wonderful machine I live in.

This is very long and right now my brain is tired. I've made it through nearly 24 hours of fairly high dose opioids and enjoyed it immensely, but soon I let it go again. Addiction is a bitch, protracted withdrawal will make me mean again, and I wanted to write these feelings out before I forget I had them.

goin nowhere in slo-mo

Part of the big lead up to surgery is covering all the bases so there won't be any medical mistakes or accidents. I'd love to go into it blissfully ignorant and trust that things will all work out fine, but of course I have just enough experience to know how those stats really work and not quite enough access to my own records (notes of interest) and medical knowledge (search engines and acing medical terminology and nursing school go only so far) to wring any confidence into my head. I'm extremely grateful I got such a good critical care nurse calling me for preregistration or I'd probably have backed out by now. I could tell that person had seen it all and knew every detail mattered for every possible fail rescue.

The propofol from a test last week screwed my brain rhythm, so I've been shunting through extreme depression and worse mood swings. Can't wait for general anesthesia to add to that. Plus the preregistration questions about chest pain and family history of everything cardiac and brain fail prompted responses as me being already there with the pain/fail stuff since spoonie nerve probs, pretty much whatever statistical outcome for more serious chest pain and brain fail during recovery might not even be noticed. I live with fibro of the chest wall and on meds to help control Lhermitte's sign level pain, so just saying 'chest pain' is pretty complicated. I won't even go into the brain part again.

 

And of course I'll be asking a nurse tomorrow to get a note to the surgeon to please consider a different pain med than he's used to scripting and then having to deal with protracted withdrawal all over again on top of recovery. While my support system at home keeps zooming around full blast over-planning, the main question is how quickly will I be able to be left alone again. Um... I just asked my husband to make sure I don't do anything stupid and not to assume I'm ok. I'm pretty sure my depression will be more severe for a few days with my brain coils all tangled up again.

I'm very much looking forward to this particular pain being over after surgery/recovery. I'm also very much looking forward to holidays. But I've already been through the kind of fail that kept me from driving for 4 months or being able to read or watch TV for a couple of years. I sincerely hope I'll be touching base as usual as soon as possible, but it may or may not be a few days. I don't know yet.

I don't have any contingency plans in place, so if I'm one of those weird statistical fails, oh well. The only things I've done for real are getting laundry and dishes caught up and the bathrooms cleaned, and untrusting everyone on my game server claims. Don't want to come back to my stuff pillaged if I can't log on for a week or something. j/k #clanfam Hopefully, though, I can log on and play through recovery for distraction.

Apologies for my rough week. A few people got caught in a bit of brain flux.

that cheerful Howdy! hasta stop

I forgot to get the good pic again, but remembered to grab one coming back thru on my way home this time. The other side says Partridge Family. Also noticed this time it's for sale. Don't know if you can read that, maybe next week I'll get a better pic.

And I felt bad for not doing the neighbor's squash blossoms justice last week, so here's a better shot.

I have done my planning, my shopping, and yesterday initiated my original paleo / South Beach / Rosedale health plan combo diet. The only thing I purchased with Rosedale was the book (used, spent under $2), didn't buy anything else or take any supplements, and the rest I just studied online and did on my own.

Back around 2009 I had become desperate and bent my mind around putting together my own health care team. By 2011 I was cleaning off years of medications and lost 50 pounds in 4 months, but it took a lot of research on how diabetes actually works, how 'nutrition' is skewed into the wrong foods by big companies, how to survive without medications by actually paying attention to what I put into my own mouth. It's work paying attention and keeping track, but it's very easy with all the mandatory food labeling we have nowadays.

This is my public trail through healing.

pill phobia at its finest - coming out of the stupor of medication addictions, poor medication management, over prescribing

my problem with healthy food - challenging the healthy grains concept

Holidays With Diabetes- Easier than you think - An easy way to understand what the holidays do to diabetics

Diabetes and Steroid Meds - Surviving steroid treatment for other chronic illnesses and allergic reactions while maintaining control with diabetes

I've come a very long way since I wrote those articles. I've slipped off my own path a bit, regained a little weight, backslid into pain complications and medication problems, and now I'm very tired of 2017 dragging on like this. Time to get my control back.

Because I keep after continual physical therapies throughout the year, I am still not only maintaining function around my home, but keeping up with far more activity than I ever dreamed I could do. I still can't get on my knees at all without destroying them and have almost continual pain somewhere in my body during everything I do, including reclining and sitting, but it's manageable. However, I've lost my grip on that manageable part a few times this year, and I want it back. Part of losing that grip is because I'm slipping on my nutrition planning, and it doesn't take much for the diabetic headaches and slower healing and stomach problems and nerve pain to pop back in my door with a cheerful Howdy!

It's too easy to grab quick and starchy bites on the run because I have high energy young people in my house now. I must menu plan for MYSELF and stick to it. I work around food allergies, so I heavily depend on dairy for proteins, but some dairy has lactose and lately my glucose spiking is worse on lactose because of my new blood pressure pill. So, I bought an extra dozen eggs this week and boiled them up. One boiled egg a day will replace my second cup of coffee with creamer (canned milk).

I also bought bacon. Bacon gets a really bad rap when it's actually much better for you than cookies and cake and pie and spaghetti, especially when you're diabetic. It's easy to cook up a package of bacon and then keep it on hand in the fridge. When others grab a cupcake, I can grab a piece or two of bacon, and later I can use the bacon drippings to cook up a big load of pan roasted brussels sprouts, which are even more awesome with aged balsamic and grated parm.

Guys, I lost 50 pounds in 4 months one year without even trying just doing THAT and stopping when I reached 1500 calories. I could nibble all day and still dropped 5 bowling balls off. It never really hits home how much we carry around until you pick up a bowling ball and go wow, that was IN ME.

Anyway, I reached a point in 2011 where I felt like a skinny fat person, which was really fun for new clothes (got down to an 18), and I would really like to go past that now. I've been in size 20 jeans for awhile and if I'm going to be having difficulty with pain and possible falling (the klutz is becoming strong again), I'd like to be easier for others to help getting back up, knowhutImean? So I bought butter and bacon and eggs and cheese and brussels sprouts and broccoli and lettuce (I love lettuce wraps around chicken tenders!) and stuff like that, and let's see how the rest of the year goes.

I've been hovering just above 200 pounds for months, I wanna break through that. Can I do it? I've never lost weight on gabapentin before, plus I'm back on low dose xanax and still on daily zyrtec. In 2011 I was NOT on meds bossing my weight/water retention around, because I had spent 3 years cleaning off most of my meds and got into physical therapy. We'll see what happens. I do know that I gained weight this year on baclofen and higher doses of gabapentin, so the baclofen is gone and the gabapentin is back on very minimal pain control.

I. Want. This.

click for more fall gifs

I feel better, so much better

click for official Doc Brown Lego

I hope I'm not jinxing myself to say I'm loving these 'nightmares' that metoprolol is known for.

click for links to people freaking out about their nightmares

So last night Scott and I were checking out a new game on the internet and wound up with super stack overload from pausing while we went out to eat and then coming back to frozen screens. And then that turned into meeting Clara and thinking she never shuts up (well, in a good way, I suppose) and she showed me a note where The Doctor (Eleven) had written that he'd introduce to her to someone with the added "by the way, she LOVES to talk" notation, and when I ran into him later I was all Hey, is that my mom you wrote to Clara about and he smiled and put his finger up to his lips and said Shhh just in time as Clara walked up, so she got to go talk to my mom and they really hit it off. Then for some reason a bunch of super tornadoes got stuck by Kansas City and failed to do any damage because #fail, so me and a couple people went outside after dark ghost hunting, and alla sudden we ran into a lifesized Lego of Doc Brown turned into a Minecraft zombie with a Minecraft Lego villager zombie right behind him, and next thing you know Lisa Marie Bowman was narrating us through a Late Night Movie with more Minecraft Lego zombies spawning all around us and standing there menacingly at us, and then a big white cube appeared out in the field with 'Note to Pinky' on it. My last thought before waking up was How do I take a page off a minecraft cube to see what's written next?

If that's a nightmare, yes, please. I've been through several weeks now of the cutest nightmares I've ever had on my life. Just hope it doesn't backfire because I really don't need psychosis in my life. From Metoprolol-induced visual hallucinations: a case series - "For decades, beta-adrenergic blocking agents have been known to cause adverse CNS effects including psychiatric syndromes, bizarre and vivid dreams, sleep disturbances, delirium, psychosis and visual hallucinations"

I suppose I'd better let my psychologist know this is going on in case I get extra weird and wind up in a 72 hour observation thingy or something. So far it's just dreams though. I suppose last night's dream could have ranked nightmare level status if Doc McStuffins had shown up to turn Doc Brown back and save him from being a zombie, especially if Doc had joined Doc in song.

Fandom smashing. It's what I do. If I were anyone significant in merch I'd be creating so much smash merch that you'd be able to get Minecraft Lego Doc Brown zombie in a Funko. My motto would be We have a Funko for that.

Meanwhile, we're working on an Elsa-Rapunzel braid like super cool superfans DO. Ignore the equivalent of tiny tot cursing.

in position at the top of the slide, goggles on

The Cassini Grand Finale was kind of like a TV series finale, wasn't it? Years with characters and a storyline, and then it's just over.

I wish Spaceman Spiff was a TV series...

So the really biggie this month was the flip off atenolol to metaprolol. Unless you're on long term meds, you probably don't realize this is a very sucky thing. Current and Resolved Drug Shortages and Discontinuations Reported to the FDA Fortunately for me, this slide over to another med actually made my life a little better, and a couple of long standing issues seem to be resolving. Atenolol is known for cold hands and feet and poor circulation, and may have exacerbated the nerve pain in one of my feet badly enough to making walking difficult. Three weeks on metaprolol seems to be relieving that issue. X-rays reconfirmed degenerative arthritis at L5S1, very common spot where nerve trunk compression causes all kinds of referred pain down the legs (hip joint and foot x-rays are fine), and since I've already been through all my physical therapy options, the best I can do is stay mobile and do the good nutrition, hydration, exercise, and sleep thing so my body will be in top shape to get through the possible shots and surgeries that come next as I get older and this possibly gets worse. It's vital that my foot be able to handle walking as long as possible, and my blood pressure pill change, of all things, seems to be helping that. Who'd a thunk.

The next really biggie this month was completing the 12 visit atlas-axis correction therapy with my chiropractor. X-ray confirmed old whiplash healed wonky and was right there on all the trigeminal and cranial neuralgia. I spent ten years working slowly up to this spot because the pain was so bad for so many years that I could no longer tolerate medications and couldn't handle conventional therapeutic hands on. Short story, I still have issues because all that scar tissue is still healing, BUT getting through focusing on this one spot for a month definitely made this year's stalled out feeling go away. My neck glide from side to side is improved (I couldn't even turn my head left 5 years ago) and I've gained in my control over pain flares. My jaw pain is nearly gone at the moment, and the pressure at the base of my skull that kamikaze'd me through two med fails this year has eased off, thank goodness.

Overall big picture, I'm still saying I'm running to keep up. This wasn't even possible 5 years ago. This year I am keeping up with a real time 3-way schedule- @bonenado's work hours, Bunny's school hours, and her mama's work hours, and I'm able to keep my balance and actually help them keep theirs. I am able to consistently be a positive function with the meals and clean up around here while they do what they need to do to keep everything going, and I'm enjoying my family. That's the really important thing. Just 5 months ago I was having a difficult time with that part because pain and meds.

We'll see how the holiday slide goes this year. This is the time of year I get all my holiday stuff lined up because by the end of October I'm usually so aspienado shutdown that I can't function, so I duck into a hole and let it all gloss over me while I look at the pretty lights. Got my chicken stock (recipe with pix if you want to try it) done up yesterday for the freezer, so the Thanksgiving prep has begun.

Keep moving, guys.

let's go down

click pic for tons of cute emoji food ideas

Power point? Yeah, bcuz stuff.

💦 Ever since I read where a vigorous antibiotic resistant strain of a superbug was found growing in hospital sinks, I've felt very suspicious of my own sinks until I got this bright idea to squirt toilet cleaner down the drains, because that stuff coats and clings and will sit there for ages torturing whatever slime is down there, right? Well, DON'T DO THAT. Not that anything terrible happened, but I felt a twinge later and read instructions and looked up warnings and yeah, don't do that. Especially if you have a chrome sink like me. I love my chrome. It looks like I got something icky on it now around the drain.

🍩 I've taken to hiding my chocolate chips in one of my sock drawers. (Yes, I have 3 drawers for sox.) (Now you wish I'd go take pix.) I'm the one allergic to nuts and peanuts, so I'm very picky about chocolate because 1- if it's candy manufactured in a plant that also manufactures or uses nuts and/or peanuts I'm screwed and 2- if the chocolate ingredient in my food come from a facility that processes cocao beans into chocolate AND also processes nuts (very common) I'm screwed. I have been able to handle Hershey's milk chocolate chips just fine even though I've had reactions in past to Hiland chocolate milk and other chocolate foods, so my chocolate chips are like gold in this house. I live with 3 other people. When someone has a half eaten chocolate bar for impromptu microwave s'mores sitting on the counter for days and casually digs into my bag of chocolate chips while we're talking, it's time to hide the bag. Depending on the store I get them from, I can pay up to and over $3 a bag for those, and I ration them because I'm diabetic. One bag lasts me about a week. So I went to get them out of my sock drawer last night while Bunny was in the tub, and apparently my bedroom is warm enough to melt chocolate. The dresser is up against an outer wall and it's been very hot out, so I guess that's not the greatest place to keep them. I'm not sure where to hide them next. I live in one of those kinds of floor plan homes where there are no hallways and that keeps our heating and cooling bills down, but there's also no privacy at all. My main bedroom opens right onto where the livingroom and kitchen join, so it's very inviting. Parts of it are still inaccessible to Bunny, like way high in my closet, but there really is no place to hide stuff from each other since we're all over 5 feet tall. And I can't be too clever, we've all accidentally taken turns throwing stuff we've hidden away without digging through an old box or sack first, and @bonenado loses stuff all the time and Bunny's mama is always looking everywhere for her keys and phone, so I'm pretty sure chocolate chips would turn up really quickly no matter where I put them. I have bendy restrictions, as well, so I can't just put them way back on a shelf behind a bunch of pans, where they'd be discovered anyway if someone wanted a particular pan. You get the drift.

✅ I think I'm losing the point part of a power point.

📱 I dreamed last night my sibs and I all went with my mom to a big place, and we had all thrown our phones into her purse and I forgot to grab mine before we split up at our destination. I went all the way back to the big building that purse was in, dug around the phones, and grabbed one apparently very similar to mine and ran back to where I was for something really important about to start. Got there and had to wait for a few minutes, so I turned on the phone and discovered it wasn't mine. It took awhile to figure out it was my brother's phone, and I was super surprised it was built like a Johnny Depp fan phone, with a Lily app and many other cool and confusing things. Texting kept turning out half in French, so I gave up and used the screen to write with my finger, which was a bit better but still kept screwing up, and I woke up right after I hit send. That is probably the first phone dream I've had where I was able to use the keypad halfway decently and actually got a message off to someone. Anyway, I'm guessing Johnny Depp stepped in because I was thinking yesterday about my brother's Johnny B Good song aaaaand we lost internet, just like that. Live blogging. Yep, just as I was about to link it, so maybe it's a sign and I won't link it. Sorry. Actually, we lose internet constantly around here and keeping our fingers crossed our carrier goes fiber optic really soon. Living near a state forest is kinda like living 3rd world sometimes, anything radio signal is very blinky and the only way we could get local TV for awhile was through satellite, amusingly. My dad still lives in the stone age, but I'm pretty sure I'd lose the rest of my mind if I couldn't get onto a minecraft server. Speaking of, here's my latest bird flip at the economy. I spent months building up an emerald hoard stash via raking up money pumpkin farming. It's silly but it makes other players moan about being poor and they get even whinier about how hard it is having to work, so I get a few chuckles. Being a power player is fun, and believe me, I'm really mediocre compared to a few others. Anyway, here's the priestly whatever that building is (oh, it's a church) paying homage to the almighty emerald.

pic clicks to Mo Creatures

👕 Welp, may as well go get ready to go while internet is down. Bunny has dental surgery today because that's how they do really young kids now and it's called surgery because they use anesthesia. Beats the trauma of sitting on a kid and forcing them to comply with big scary sometimes painy stuff.

🎈 Sweet, came back and internet is back up. I'm what, 15 days off the baclofen now. I felt it change a couple days ago, like my nervous system snapped back and *boom* lost 2 pounds overnight, probably fluid retention. Food cravings stopped, crap mood swings flattened out, and now all that's left is the pain part but at least I'm not morphing into a slavering werewolf ripping heads off. Likewise, stuff kinda winding down around here after the big funeral, and although there's plenty more on our plates, I think I'm close to seeing my own lawyer about what happens when I make money later on SSI, omg please let that be a thing... Go big or go home. I can't bear the thought of letting all this go and sinking back into the depression with nothing to hang onto.

evil villains don't thrive on feeling good

for @bonenado
clicks to source, and the article is making me laugh after the week he's been through with mother, sisters, daughter, and wife

This is my 11th day sans baclofen. I spent 3 weeks breaking pills down to taper slowly, finally jumped off after 2 days of 1/8th of a pill. Still in withdrawal. My moods are horrible, my nerve pain sucks in ways that are so much worse than before I ever started, and I was on the smallest dose only once a day for less than a month before I started tapering. This is about the nastiest med I've ever been on, heavenly and super addictive, screws diabetes all to hell, rebounds like a super ball on a trampoline, and the mood swings, omg.

I've had difficulty walking ever since I jumped off. I'm finding that happens to other people, too. Yes, you heard me, literally having difficulty using my legs and feet. I don't know how this med isn't outlawed. Anyone making a big deal about opiate or benzo abuse gets a hardy laugh out of me after this one.

This has been fantastic for context, though. Next time I think I'm miserable with nerve pain, I'm going to remember this withdrawal, pull my big girl panties clear up to my chin, and suck it up. I can't even begin to describe what charlie horses between every facet of my whole spine is like. Every joint in my body hurts like I got smashed around in an accident. My neck feels like I've been whiplashed. Whatever sciatica hell I'm in reminds me of the year in college I could barely walk, and I'm wondering if that must've been a med withdrawal, too, and I just never knew it. It's really stupid when a med withdrawal is worse than the condition that is crippling you.

At any rate, most of my crabbing has been spread out so at least I didn't hit you guys every day on Pinky blog. This is my obligatory crab post here since it's been so long since I posted last.

swearing off

I can't even describe the weird sick nerve headache I got all over my body about 30 minutes after my body discovered the quarter chip of baclofen was all it was getting. Thank goodness it passed or I'd be curled up in a ball. I've been on a quarter pill for 4 days after a half pill a day for a week, and 3/4 before that, etc. That's how super med sensitive I am. I can't even just drop off, I have to grain it down like I did getting off benzo meds. I'm doing my best not to pile drive my face into a food mound. I poured the coffee out after my second cup so I wouldn't go after a caffeine substitute.

That was yesterday. This is today.

Accidentally deleted the rest of that with a slash maneuver instead of shift. My right pinky is so klutzy.

Last night's shock is still ripping around my head. I think we can agree she was the best of our twitter gang, and the least deserving of an early fate. I think it's hitting us older ones a little differently because she's the same age as our own kids, and with her baby only a year old, all the meemaw feels. I appreciate P letting us know. A lot of people just delete all their stuff and/or disappear without anyone knowing what happened.

#Snarkalecs. Always.

swimming in the kool-aid

Started last night.

Hello again
How are you doing
What do you want from me?
A new beginning
A magic ending

And then I woke up. I never found out what the last line in the stanza was, probably something about to rhyme with 'me'. It was a simple song, light piano, kind of like it was being sung on stage, young female voice in semi darkness. It's occurring to me that the reason I'm not fond of musicals is because I go through processing my life as musicals so often in my dreams. Some of them are cool, though. Beats dreaming in cartoon. I've done that a few times, it's unimaginably creepy realizing my brain can adapt me into a 2D medium like that. The minecraft dreams are awesome, like the entire world really is minecraft, but apparently tonight was musical night.

I'm still in very slow med taper, and even though I got 100 on my sleep score last night, tonight is horrible because I cut the dose a little again today and I'm hurting all over and it keeps waking me up in weird ways. I know it's nerve receptor pings making my brain feel things too much, getting the day's processing mixed up with real life sensations. It's not real, yet real enough to drive me out of bed over the suckage.

The obvious move would be to just take the stupid dose and feel better, but the side effects have gotten so ridiculous over the last 6 weeks that I really can't wait to be done with this stuff. I rarely get edema, usually from meds messing me up, and I certainly didn't have it before I started this one. A month of not realizing it was screwing my blood sugar is very slowly cleaning back up, and since that kind of stuff affects skin and hair on top of turning my inside fluids into a syrupy glue (visual for all you diabetics out there still eating junk and brushing off your A1Cs), that means everything in my body is having to clean house, and stuff like that typically takes about 3 months. Also, this is the closest I've ever come to feeling like I could develop congestive heart failure, which would be even bigger suck, so yeah, this med screwed me. I can take a little taper withdrawal, but not without torturing you guys along with me.

I haven't checked pinterest in awhile. I know people live in there and never come out, but is 22.5K monthly views normal/average for a really dormant account? I think I've pinned about 5 things in the last 6 weeks. I'm having a hard time believing that's a real view count.

I see they've spiffed up their analytics since I checked last, oh what, maybe a year and a half ago? At least.

Ah, yes. "Impressions." We all know what I think of impressions. Not actual eyes on, but the possible eyes on that could have seen these pins via certain feed parameters being engaged.

So that makes my top pin this month being a Star Wars pin more credible. Out of 12K 'impressions' it got 65 actual saves.

I still can't believe this one is my all-time most saved/shared pin, and even has 30 comments. But yeah, nailed me. (Scorpio)

This one has always been my most clicked. I loaded it myself, and the stat thingy says this pic is on 5.99K boards now. It has nearly 9000 total impressions since 5 years ago (I actually dated it in the description) and 40 saves in the last 30 days. Pinterest has labeled it a 'rich pin'.

This one had twice the impressions and triple the saves over the last 30 days, but it's not a 'rich pin'.

And I'm bored now. I took a real pain pill, the ibuprofen kind. I haven't had one in about 3 weeks because my doctor pulled me off these, too, but at least it's not addictive and it's helping cut the extra chatter down to a mild nausea. Maybe I can sleep now...

And now it's today.

I have a very long day. Moved a chiro appointment 3 times, so I'm long overdue. Then I broke a tooth (don't worry, no pain) while my dentist was on vaca and I got a call yesterday that they had a cancellation and can get me in today, and thankfully all this stuff is in the same town so I won't have to run all over creation. May as well hit the Walmart over there while I'm at it.

My head has been like Cirque du Soleil nearly this whole year already, and whatever I'm treading in feels more like a big mess from the Kool Aid Man tripping and spilling himself all over my world. My queue of work to do online is petrifying into glyphnotes. Get it? Glyphnotes. Nevermind.

Anyway, my jetsetting crew is healthy, we're past nearly all the big holiday stuff, I'm actually looking forward to 4th of July, and hopefully all other transitions about to hit go smoothly and the tech hangs in there through it all.

Time to go fix a tooth. Ignore this cover frame, the entire thing is a megamix of artists and WoW.

Who picked this planet, anyway?

Pollen map pix click back to Pollen.com
I got these screen shots last night, so today is 'tomorrow' on these charts.

We're starting April early this year, huzzah! I'm already on both round the clock zyrtec and benadryl through the day.

Before I got the hang of pollen maps, counts, and forecasting, I lived on antibiotics for the aftereffects of sludging through (often mistaken for powering through) the slime that tree sex causes throughout the tissues in my entire head and sometimes goes into my chest. Now that I've got a firm grip on antihistamine dosing, I'm able to avoid the antibiotics for things like really bad ear infections, ridiculously painful salivary gland (parotid gland) infections, slimy eyeballs, and of course, our friends the sinus cavities becoming a thriving metropolitan for germ overlords.

I don't know about you guys, but tree season heavily impacts not only my health, but my depression and anxiety levels as my body reallocates prioritizing system management, and if I don't manage all of this, I wind up in walk in clinics and even ERs for some pretty big med management that goes on to super screw my diabetes, and life becomes such a joy that I hate everyone and everything and my baditude affects relationships. THAT is what trees do to me.

I live in Mirkwood. I am surrounded on all sides by rugged terrain thick with Tree People. Some of them live in state and national forests, but quite a lot of them live all around my house. They fight for dominance, and their spring mating dances, while not as raucous as frog ponds (I love hearing froggies in the spring), are violently spew worthy. Everything turns yellow for about 6 weeks (last year was longer), and humans turn into snot manufacturing plants.

I vote the trees win and we leave this planet. Don't know what committee picked this one, but I think we should be living in a dome on a forsaken rock and watching videos of trees from a safe distance. I know, I know, our ancestors could have crashed here and it's not really their fault and we're awesome for actually surviving and conquering a hostile planet, but that still doesn't change my vote.

One of the things that came up with my psychiatrist last week was my idiosyncratic reaction to gabapentin, one of the purportedly safest meds on the planet. #transparency I decided at the beginning of the year to lose some weight, as many do with resolutions, and had lost 4 pounds by the time my gabapentin dose was ramped up. I gained those 4 pounds back and added another 2 almost immediately (faster weight gain than prednisone, folks), and even after ramping the med back down kept adding until I had put on a total of 14 pounds. If we take off the 4 pounds I lost first, that's still a 10 pound increase over one dose change in a very short time frame. I'm calling it what it is, 14 pounds.

This is unacceptable, and now that I'm 1- pretty much back to my weird normal mindset and 2- ready to plunge through tree season, what better time to go back to carb counting and calorie restriction? And exercise. That was the most epic fail part of the dose change. I'm retaining fluid in my FEET and they HURT NOW when I walk around exercising, so I've been taking it kind of slow while the fluid leaks back out. Between physical therapy and antihistamines, I'm actually feeling a little dehydrated and having to remind myself to drink a glass of water once in awhile. In the meantime, staying focused on proteins, healthy fats, leafy veg, and a much better attitude.

You know where to find me.

bcuz CAKE

Still kind of holding my breath, but I think we actually skipped winter this year.

Ok, what's going on with Pinky? What a very long week I've had.

March is my favorite birthday month because of a couple of my fave peoples, so I caved and made cake. Before I share, you must understand that I've not had actual CAKE in a very very long time. I think the last time I had a cupcake was months ago. Even last fall on my own birthday I veered into a chocolate waffles experiment, so the cake craving has grown really strong.

These are a delightfully moist gluten free adaptation of Hershey's Chocolatetown Special Cake recipe. In place of regular flour I used half King Arthur gluten free multi-purpose flour and half Domata gluten free recipe ready flour. You need the xantham gum in Domata for it to rise, but using all Domata turns the batter into bubble gum with the mixer. I also went with a basic cream cheese frosting- one block cream cheese, one stick real butter, 4 cups powdered sugar, 6-7 tablespoons of canned milk. Imagine my first bite of yummy moist cake in forever. I baked it off in giant muffin tins.

And of course I'm diabetic, so I can eat only a bite or two at a time every hour or two, but it was still very pleasant being able to do that.

Anyway, happy birthday to my loved ones. I celebrated. 🎉😁🎈🎂

Have been back on original gabapentin dose (100mg 3xday) for what, a week and half now? My regular doctor is holding me at that dose the rest of this month while I get through physical therapy. I think he'd like me to stay on it indefinitely, and commanded me to touch base with the neurologist about monitoring my dosing. Doctors have a very hard time 'treating' me for fibro and pain the last few years because my PTSD over 'going down' on meds or illness is so bad. I've crashed so hard on handfuls of meds taking down my immune system and spending years recovering that it makes me cry to even just talk about it out loud with my psychologist (#transparency), so from here on out is like walking the line between pain control and mood control. I'm not joking around about any of this, and I'm not saying any of it lightly. I can tell that the darker harder core lurkers hitting me daily are probably in the same boat, and I'll keep saying this forever- you're not alone. I'm here, too, walking the webs in the long, dark nights looking for sparks of hope and distraction, anything to hold onto while I keep hanging on to wisps of myself falling apart.

In the meantime, I've fixed up my skin! Finally! some of you say. Yeah, I've seen some of you stop and stare at me on Mo Creatures, it's been kinda funny. One guy looked me all over real good because my last skin was so sloppy and crap, like a cracked Easter egg that a 2 year old did. Yeah, that's me running around like I just threw any old wrecked up skin on... Anyway, I'm going with this for awhile now, adapted on Nova Skin. The original is from one of the many Galaxy Girls a lot of different people have done. I might go tweak it later on, but it's kinda the colors I want. I'd prefer black hair, but then the eye accents don't work. Anyway, the overall effect is supposed to be like the galaxy hair and makeup kind of stuff people are doing nowadays.

Kinda having a headache, so I'm going to keep moving. Need to get on laundry and get food lined up to cook later, might or might not have a big Bunny day, I'm already getting all over pain control, and part of that is moving around, so here I go.

stoner pinky

Muchas gracias a mi médico favorito que tomó mi caso en sus propias manos. Estaba un poco sorprendido por mi reacción med durante el último mes y me va a seguir de cerca, y ya me ha preparado para más terapia física, ¡ay!

In short, drugs are bad, mkay.

Ok ok, for those of you who don't know how (or think you don't have time) to copy-paste stuff over to a translator page (which I do fairly often, being an international fan), that says "Thank you so much to my favorite doctor taking my case back into his own hands. He was a bit shocked at my med reaction over the last month and is going to monitor me more closely, and has already set me up for more physical therapy, yay!"

I feel like it's back to the ol' drawing board. I started off great at the first of the year, super mangled that into backsliding for a solid month, and now I'm working with a setback and starting over, whee. I could wallow or I could pull up my sox and get busy being busy again. Stoner Pinky was just a blip in the bigger cosmos, the rest of us are slapping her around yelling What were you thinking???

Also, back to the stone age on my phone, so aren't we having fun pulling up websites on Jawn again. I feel like I'm back in 2012 in many ways.

Quickie recap-

• Lost 4 pounds in January only to regain it and put even more on for a grand total of 8 pounds gained during that stupid medication experiment, which started on 1-19, so it's barely been a month and I've put on 8 frickin pounds. You can imagine how I feel about that, I'm sure.
• Floated away in a stoner haze and stopped money and calendar syncing and I have no idea where I'm currently at and how much of a mess I need to clean up or get ready for. Thank goodness I was too wasted to spend any money, right? How I've made it to appointments on the right days is still beyond me, but I am notating that some of those were nearly missed entirely except that vital clues managed to slip past the barriers and activate some kind of portal sequence, and I magically arrived at destinations in the nicks of time. Somehow.
• Actually fell behind on laundry a couple of times. Me. The one who actually likes doing laundry. I ran out of bras, @bonenado ran out of jeans, it was all a fuzzy chaos.
• We seem to be eating a succession of homemade soups. What in the world is up with that.
• @bonenado is the one who saved the day on the audit and insurance forms. He's the one who made sure those got filled out and mailed out, huzzah! The land hails him as Awesome.
• Oozing down the last of the stoner slide into benadryl country. It Is Time, said Mother Nature, and lo, all the junipers and cedars started the yearly tree fertility dance.
• Our flu shots must be working because we've been exposed to a couple of people with type A flu and we seem to be ok (hope I'm not jinxing myself).
• Thank goodness for minecraft helping me kind of focus through all that.

K, dropped the Plan, attempting to pick it back up, may be reformulating over the rest of the month. Kind of like a false start happened or something. Hey, this was the first Valentine's Day EVER since my kid was a wee tot that I didn't buy any Valentines or bake anything special or mail any cards (save one) or *anything*. Valentines is a biggie around here, and I didn't even have a ball to drop and apparently was off in the wrong building. If I hadn't been so wasted, I'd have been bummed out. I'm barely able to feel the shock of looking back at that as it is.

I'm thinking about changing my header. Hopefully I don't do anything rash.

fear and loathing

So auties freaking out about MIT, didn't hear you outcrying when China purposely created autistic monkeys to inflict experimentation on. I've been saying for years that we're on the brink of the nastiest form of human genocide we've ever seen. I've stopped freaking out. Also, all you Trump haters so obsessed with the guy that you're saturating everyone around you with pix of his face- ever thought that you're part of the indoctrination process? Really tired of miles of his face in my feeds.

Here's the thing. When you obsess about something, anything, your brain works overtime on something you fear or loathe, and that prevents you from truly enjoying something else. It's one thing to be "concerned", it's another to be so obsessed that your feeds are crammed with whatever, or that you even create artwork around it. *wow*

I used to worry that I was the messed up one. I'm fine. Some of the rest of you probably need to look into psychoneuroimmunology and mindfulness.

Moving on. Reaching a level of relief as I'm nearing the original dose goal. The nasty withdrawal headaches seem to be lessening, I'm kind of starting to sleep again, and I actually held it together going into town yesterday for an equipment update and a lengthy grocery list.

Anyway, I am a proponent of neurodiversity.

"To me, neurodiversity is the idea that neurological differences like autism and ADHD are the result of normal, natural variation in the human genome. This represents new and fundamentally different way of looking at conditions that were traditionally pathologized; it’s a viewpoint that is not universally accepted though it is increasingly supported by science. That science suggests conditions like autism have a stable prevalence in human society as far back as we can measure. We are realizing that autism, ADHD, and other conditions emerge through a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental interaction; they are not the result of disease or injury."

This proponency started long before the autism witch hunt. I was shocked at the ADHD witch hunt decades ago. I couldn't believe how many parents could get so selfishly vicious over something so innocuous as children not being posable dolls, boiled down. I learned a long time ago in anthropology that 10% of ANY population is considered a normal part of distribution, and even necessary to the health of the whole.

There are people out there who want you to hate. They want you to fear and loathe. Why? Because they get money for it. The more freaking out and opinionating you do, the more monetizing someone else gets.

Zoom out and look at bigger pictures. Look at what is really going on. Fear and loathing is the most lucrative machinistic process on this planet, and every time you pass on your auto-fear and auto-loathe, you are doing their dirty work for them.

George Orwell didn't foresee how the proletarians would be used by social media.

I don't know how I'm even wording

You know it's been awhile since you've done stuff when everything in your system prompts 2-step verification. I'm busy.

Little bit late for Valentine's, but just so y'all know, my Halloween sox have all bitten the dust. I wear them nonstop year round, so that's not surprising.

Totes duked it out with CPAP last night. I imagine it's still the med withdrawal, but the panic attacks were incredible. Aside from an eye twitching, I seem to be ok today. Well, no I'm not. #transparency Let's just say I'm sort of wobbly ok at the moment coming back down off a med that had me not only super stoned, but puffed me up with 6 pounds of fluid in 2 weeks flat, and I didn't tell you guys about the week my gums were oozing blood. Yeah. Aside from a very nice cessation of neverending nerve stabs and constant itching (it's like living with wasp stings and poison ivy with no visible causes, simply put), for me personally, it turned into the med from hell at 900mg total dosed through the day because it's super seductive and rather delicate getting away from it. I might've been able to hold at 600mg per day, but by the time I was going back down to that, it was like being in systems crash and I had to prioritize a reset. *I* control me, not a med. I can choose to use a med to help me control, but when it wrests control away, f* that. I've been there. There is no rescue from meds except cleaning off them. I've seen how prescriptions pile up until there are so many to control side effects other meds are inducing that the original reason for being on meds in the first place gets utterly lost, and the patient floats away in a hellish kind of slo-mo Titanic. If you are one of those people and desperate for more info, comb my blogs at spaz and Bluejacky (some posts might be private, that blog kinda crashed). My survival plan goes back to 2008, and it works. Yes, working on a survival manual. Sorry it's taking so long.

So since January 19, I've gone from tripling that med in a less than a week, being stoned outa my mind for a week, and then knocking it back by a third over another week, and then I had to get permission a second time and a new script just to ramp back down to original dose, which is still in progress, down to 400mg now, shooting for 300mg (original dose was 100mg 3Xday), actually hoping to just get completely back off while I'm at it and take a real break from it so I can get some context back. If a low dose is no longer working because it creates addiction dose monitoring and I keep hovering between not really getting help vs going off a cliff, I need to rethink this med. And it's not one of those pills you can just cut in half, it's in capsule form and not easily titrated like I've done with xanax. Imagine getting off caffeine, nicotine, and codeine all at once. Yeah, like that. The suck is strong with this one because it very strongly affects certain brain receptors. I'm a mess and a half.

But I've lost a pound of that stupid fluid, finally. 5 more to go... 😠

And I know it's there if it ever gets so bad that I'm really that desperate, but this little experiment has prompted my survival instinct, and I'm more redetermined and recharged back out of that stupid depression I was sinking into through the holidays. One could argue that maybe I just needed to get stoned, but I would argue back that putting on 6 pounds in such a short time doing it is reason enough alone to do a risk assessment on pros and cons of this med on overall health. I *get* how depression works, I've lived with depression most of my life, pills are not fun toys, and me spinning out of control again emotionally is not a good thing. This went beyond crying jags into weepy meltdowns that lasted several hours at a time, and I think I mentioned I was starting to scare people. I should probably let a few people know right here that I'm kind of back out of that part now, it has scaled way down.

I feel like I'm still barely braining, though, and the only way I'm able to keep moving forward is running a playlist. Thank goodness I made this, it really is helping, got a shower and preparing for a recap meeting on the phone, have chicken thawing for supper, and pulling a grocery list together because we are OUT of stuff and starting to scrape the backs of shelves. So far today is the most capable I've felt in weeks, and I feel like I'm brain crawling like a slug. Actually, I may have just used up the tiny quota I had available today, I should stop this and go stare at a wall before that phone call catches me flatfooted in uber stupid mode.