diary – Page 31 – A Most Unreliable Narrator

she-bear

Henry Fuseli – Hamlet and his father’s Ghost (1780-1785). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Dear Internet,
TheHusband and I were set to go up to Throbbing Cabin last night but opted to stay home to circumvent the potential traffic bomb of travelling on a holiday weekend. Our plan, then, was to leave this morning and stay at Throbbing Cabin for the rest of the weekend, coming home on Monday morning.
This morning, however, had other ideas
When I woke up, I went into a massive panic attack where I refusing to not just not leave the house, but I was not going to leave our bed, or even get dressed or any thing resembling personal care. I became so agitated over the prospect of leaving, moving, interacting with people, I started to get into manic mind mode. TheHusband, who had been out walking the dog when the attack started, returned back to our bedroom to my meltdown.
When I saw him, I immediately burst into tears.
Needless to say, we’re not going anywhere this weekend.
TheHusband has learned to stop asking me what is setting off the panic attacks because I never know. Sometimes it’s mental, sometimes they are physical. Sometimes I can ward them off, and others, like today, I’m overwhelmed by their sheer control over me.
The attacks, or in this instance the need to shelter myself from the world, has become more intense over time. I often feel hyper sensitive to the outside world. People. Situations. In my head, when plotting a set of errands that require me to leave the house for long periods of time, I attempt to sort them to make them least painful and less having to interact with anyone. Sometimes, more often than not, I lie to get out of situations because the thought that I would need to be around other people, or more rightly in places that are not familiar, makes me anxious. My house is my touchstone and if I cannot have things set up the way I need them to be set up to function, then things start to break down.
While my depression in the past has been the cause for decrease in sexy times, the drugs have amplified sexy times, along with everything I have just explained. I’ve always had voracious attitude towards sex and with nearly a year on Lithium, it has dried up like an October leaf. I was telling a friend of mine recently, who was newly diagnosed as bipolar himself, I could have Alexander Skarsgard naked on a chaise reading a book in front of me, and I’d be, “Eh.” I don’t want to touch myself, let alone my own husband, and I could not even summon the desire for a naked Alexander Skarsgard. Or James McAvoy. Or any of my fictitious husbands. I used to be the girl who wanted to have sex every where and with everything, and now I would just like to put the kettle on and have a good pot of tea.
And yes, I have a fairly healthy vibrator and dildo collection that is currently gathering dust. Which is a shame as some of them are expensive and were gifts.
At my last medicating appointment, Dr. H. was absolutely positive that by taking Klonopin at night would help some of my issues. The idea being if I take the drug at night, I will get a sound sleep. If I get a sound sleep, then I will feel rested in the morning and more at ease.
Except that didn’t work. After trying this for a week or two and still feeling exhausted and pent up, I told Dr. P. who suggested I take the Klonopin earlier in the evening, say 7PM instead of 10PM. The reason is that Klonopin releases slowly so if I’m taking it later in the evening, by time I wake up, I’m groggy because the drug is still working. Then I start amping up on caffeine to get over the hump and the cycle begins again.
Dr. H. gave me a prescription for Wellbutrin, and after several weeks of circling it like shark, I bit the bullet and got it filled. Numerous friends of mine with similar brain issues have all reported good things with Wellbutrin and as it was not a SSRI, I figured it was worth a shot.
The first few days of Wellbutrin, I was downright cheery. I didn’t feel the energized pep that several friends reported, but I was honestly okay with all of that. By the end of the first week, the dark clouds started to form and for the entire second week, I was hell on wheels. It was not so bad that other people knew, or commented, but it was so bad that I picked up all the signs that this was not going to end well. My meltdown this morning was the final straw and I stopped taking the drug.
Some medicating therapists will have you push on through these periods because after the drug settles, it is smooth sailing. I can’t do this, emotionally, physically, mentally, or financially. My brain chemistry is such that what takes someone 21 days to metabolize a drug, it takes me 7. I may have a fight on my hands with Dr. H. this week because he’s going to report back to me my lithium levels are still in the therapeutic range and I’m going to tell him that regardless if they are, I need to get off that drug in a safe manner because I’m done with this experiment.
A year ago when I called Dr. P. to get my life on track, I was open to the idea of drug therapy because I wanted the pain to end. I wanted a way to chemically fix what was broken if talk therapy didn’t work enough. and to fix what behaviour modification could not fix. Dr. P. recommended Dr. H., who confirmed the existing diagnosis of ADHD, Bipolar I, Borderline Personality Disorder, with a top up of anxiety.
The idea was to get my mood stabilized with lithium, then start adding in the ADHD drugs to control that. Once we found the combination, everything would be grand!
Well, not so much.
Reading through some of those old entries, a lot of patterns begin to show. The drugs, mood/ADHD, are clearly not working. I can’t afford to emotionally keep putting my life into upheaval every time I go on something new to see if it works.
This nine month experiment, while peppered with good intentions, has crippled me more than I could ever imagine. Feeling myself hit the wall, time and time again, the disappointment I’ve laid on myself when something didn’t work, the guilt I built around me when I couldn’t complete a task, and the friendships I lost because I was not the person they thought I was.
The constant stress of wondering who I was going to be that day when I woke up, and how that affected work and personal relationships.
I’m done. I don’t want to be this girl anymore, who hides in her bedroom afraid of the world. I’m done not living a life because I feel too medically incapacitated to do so.
The new plan is to get weaned off of Lithium, and start a diet and exercise routine because literally, every book on bipolar talks about the lessening symptoms if you do these two things. Continue to see Dr. P. for talk therapy, once a week as current or more if he warrants it.
Anything has to be better then the now.
I want my life back and it looks like, I’m the one whose going to have to go get it.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #36)

This day in Lisa-Universe in:

Cabinet of Curiosities

Dear Internet,
This morning I met with my neurologist to confirm if my epilepsy has returned.
For this to make better sense, we need to go back to 1975 where Lisa, age 3, has a grand mal seizure. Over the course of the following decade, we would head to Detroit Children’s Hospital, where I was poked, prodded, and EEG’d to death to see what was the status of my brain. Drugs were taken, phenobarbital, mebaral, and lord knows what else. It is during this time it is discovered I’m allergic to the aforementioned drugs as well as penicillin.
Sometime in 1982 or 1983, the visits stop and I’m declared cured? Better? Healthy? Something? All I know is that at the age of 11 or 12, there are no more drugs or visits to Detroit’s Children’s Hospital.
In the later years, the stigma of being epileptic follows me like a lost dog. Some of my medical records have it listed and if it is missed in any kind of interview, it comes up with my drug allergies (“Why are you allergic to anti-seizure medications?” “I had seizures when I was a child.” “This could complicate things.).
It’s a shadowy grey area. Am I epileptic? Am I not? How much do I disclose when asked and do I make mention of this at all to anyone – employers, lovers, friends?
Over the years, I disclosed on when necessary and when warranted.
I did not have any seizures, that I can recall, in the intervening years.. That changed a few years ago, long before I started any of my second round of bipolar drugs, I had two of what I termed as seizure within six months of each other. One when walking through a tunnel in a fun house that had the pulsating lights and the second when watching the Kanye West video for “All of the Light”¹ .
This was in late 2011 and early 2012.
When I had the first ankle surgery in June 2012 and the follow up surgery in January 2013, the triggering EPILEPTIC on my medical history was potentially problematic with anesthesiologist.² And it was because of this that I decided to finally make an appointment with neurologist this spring, but there was nothing available for nearly six months.
Which brings us to today. I was so nervous, I showed up 25 minutes early.
I walked Dr. T. through all of my issues, matters, and concerns. After the interview, Dr. T. then put me through a series of neurological tests, which some of them made me giggle. After the tests were done, Dr. T. explained that he believes I did have epilepsy when I was younger, for there is a type where it starts out in very youngs kids and as you age, it starts to dissipate. By the time you’re late teens / early 20s, the epilepsy is gone and typically never comes back. He thinks this is what I had.
But do I have epilepsy now? Unknown. What he does think is what I thought to be seizures were actually migraines triggered by stress or other factors. Since I did not smell anything or get auras or get a build up, then I never associated with what was going on in my brain, in addition to the brain freezes (tremors, sometimes loss of feeling, sense of deja vu). I never thought of them as being migraines. This was news to me. When I told Dr. T. I didn’t take drugs for my headaches, he seemed incredulous.
What’s next? EEG to confirm the epilepsy (or not). That will be good times!
The most interesting thing out of this whole experience today was the discovery that phenobarbital and mebaral cause bone density problems. I have bones like a 90 year old, and they are so fragile at my first ankle surgery in 1994, they were surprised I had not broken anything before that. So drugs make my bones brittle, I have a double fracture in my right ankle, which then sets in arthritis that is the worst my orthopedic surgeon has ever seen.
It’s all goddamned connected.
Dr. T. is also ordering a bone density test and then depending on the results, vitamin therapy will be applied.
Can I get a new brain please?
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in:

1. The video was tagged by Epilepsy Action to potentially trigger seizures and I ignored the warning.
2. My neurologist says this is a teaching moment – anesthesia does not trigger seizures so riling me up before the surgery was unnecessary.

Magnificent men and their flying machines

South Eastern Wheelers from Waterford Bicycle Club circa 1909, via National Library of Ireland. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.

Dear Internet,
Unintentionally, yesterday was one of the laziest days we’ve had in a long while. I woke up around 8:30A to take Wednesday out and do her mourning rituals. TheHusband was still asleep when we came back to the bedroom, so I grabbed my laptop to start working on the archives while he slept. I made a lovely cup of tea to keep me warm as our house is freezing.
After a couple of hours, TheHusband finally awoke and we were quiet for a few more hours while he checked the interwebs on his tablet and I continued to work. Sometime around 1PM, we wandered downstairs for food and to plan our meals for the following week.
As we’ve been to-ing and fro-ing to the cabin every week, we haven’t had a grocery shop, like a serious one, since June. Maybe even May. When I’ve been alone at the house, I graze so chips and dip it is!
Because of all our to-ing and fro-ing, we haven’t had time to do much shopping at any of the local farmer’s markets either, which has kind of bummed me out. I discovered, by happenstance, a local version of Door to Door Organics called Doorganics, with most of the food certified from local farms. Our biggest problem when we were with Door to Door Organics was the food was almost NEVER local (though they claimed this to be so). With Doorganics, each item is marked with what farm it came from, which is awesome. The ultimate goal is to shop at the Downtown Market once the interior is finished, use Doorganics, and use local shops for missing items. While we’ve gotten good use out of our Costco card, we’re not renewing it but I should add, we did get a Sam’s Club membership for when we are up near the cabin, so losing the club membership isn’t really a tragedy.
With food and meal plans organized, instead of taking a shower and getting our shop on, we wandered back upstairs where I continued with working on the archives and TheHusband read on his tablet for awhile. He ended up taking a nap for a few hours, while the dog and I continued on with what we were doing. Sometime around the dinner hour, I walked the dog for her afternoon constitutional, refreshed whatever I was drinking, and came back to bed. TheHusband snored on.
Dinner plans were thrown about but only if the place delivered, both feeling too lazy to put pants on to pick something up. Not having take out delivered in months, I was hoping there were new places available to try.
I would be wrong.
I’ve been cheating like a mad woman on eating dairy and I was tempted to order pizza but I couldn’t chance what would happen if I actually went into anaphylactic shock. Eating Cheetos is one thing but solid cheese is a whole nother piece of business. In the end I ordered from a local Chinese place, while TheHusband ordered pizza. I eventually fell asleep sometime around midnight.
I calculated with walking the dog, bathroom breaks, and some to and froing to getting drinks or bugging TheHusband in his office, I was out of bed maybe only 2-3 hours out of my 16 hour day.
I didn’t even bother to take a shower or brush my teeth.
If you think this is unusual, you would in fact be wrong. The sheer amount of time I spend in the bedroom when I’m not sleeping is kind of frightening. After I get up, and rouse TheHusband out of bed, the bed is then made. So I’m not snuggled up in the bed itself, instead I treat the bed like a giant desk. Everything I could possibly need is in this room: 37″ HD TV with all the accoutrements, all my electronics, portion of my books, even an en suite for when I need to use the loo! With the kitchen located right off the stairs, everything is within reach.
I live in a beautiful house that is 3200 SQFT, I have my own private office with an Aeron office chair and a desk that dates back from 1923 and came from a college library that we picked up at an antique show. I don’t utilize any other room in this house (which only furthers the notion we definitely need to downsize) and to be fair, neither does TheHusband but I’ve taken it a whole new level.
So then why?
The explanation we’ve come up with dates back to when I had my surgery last year. For three months I was bed ridden. When I started becoming weight bearing, I had to constantly elevate my leg whenever possible. So when I came home from work, on the bed and up went the leg. Then there was surgery #2. Laid up for nearly a month, then back to partial weight bearing, then finally I am free.
For a year I have spent most of my non working, waking hours on the bed with my foot propped and a dog who thinks it was an extension of my left hip. So it makes sense, then, this has become my base for all things.
It doesn’t help the bed is a king and extremely comfortable.
It also doesn’t help my excuse for not working in my office is that computer is old and too slow.
For the last couple of months, I’ve been trying to move myself to a place where I could feel inspired, was outside the bedroom, and was comfortable. In June I created a work area in the solarium.
And then promptly never used it.
To be fair, the to-ing and fro-ing to the cabin this summer has impacted how I work, but now that is over, I’ve been putting a lot of thought into how organize myself so that I can get things done.
As much as I adored my lovely king size desk and the great distractions around me, work won’t get done while I’m set up this way. I’ve had a year to make this work, and granted a good amount of time was because I had to, not because I wanted to, but in this configuration is not conducive.
Forward on to finding a work space!
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #30)

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2003

In which I’m dreaming dreams, I’m scheming schemes, I’m building castles high

The beach, Scheveningen, Holland circa 1890-1900, via Library of Congress. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.

Dear Internet,
Tonight is my last night as a free person for tomorrow I head back to work. The nostalgia factor in my jobs doesn’t escape my attention, and in fact, we relish all the opportunities it gives me such as long holiday breaks, mostly summers off, and a bit more freedom than if I were a librarian somewhere else.
The bittersweet component I keep close to my bosom, trying to not let it suffocate me or me suffocate it. The proverbial question of what did I do this summer and what I wanted to do this summer, always separated by miles of truth. I had a lot of questions I needed to get answered, plans I wanted to put into action, and places I wanted to be. While I never got the opportunities to do the things I wanted to do or fuck, even have the vacations I wanted to have, I don’t regret the outcome of this summer at all. A lot of digging deep into my psyche was achieved and its given me a better handle on what I need to do for the future.
The one thing I learned this summer is I work much slower than I had envisioned myself to work. Meaning, I had plans in place to do X things at X times and never factored my actual TIME to do the thing so it was always a mess. Now I know.
This morning I did some work work from home and in the afternoon, worked on getting more content from the archives back online. I’m almost done with 1998 and there is a variety of adjectives about that jaunt down memory lane. 1998 is a good year to illustrate my maniaism. The primary descriptors of me at 26 would be whirling dervish. But I know that all changes in the following year, when depression comes and smacks me about like an angry Frenchman. I wasn’t on drugs in 1998, other than birth control pills, and it wouldn’t be until 2000 when my primary descent into my imaginary mental ward would begin. I smile a lot at Lisa at 26 (and TheHusband too since he and I were living together then), but I’m afraid for what happens after.
So let us talk about the good things then, rather than stew over what we cannot change.
Wednesday was back to the vet again for yet another UTI. She’s a low riding pee-er and this will apparently be the source of discomfort for her until her death. She’s two days on her drugs and so far, no more accidents in the house, no blood in the urine, and she’s not peeing 19 times a day.
This weekend is the kickoff for the 2013/14 EPL season and I am beyond giddy to find out a local pub is opening up early to start serving for the matches (Arsenal starts at 730A). I support West Ham United, whose game starts at 10A and which I’m dragging TheHusband to. TheHusband and I have an agreement: He’ll come to the pub with me for the games and I’ll sit through a basketball game.
I’m not quite sure which one of us is going to be more bored.
I also found out today the city’s rec department has an adult fencing class offered this fall, which I hope to get signed up for. I’m also going to sign up for swimming, starting with beginners and see how I do.
Also, the other big news is next week I’m going in to see a neurologist to talk about if whether or not I have epilepsy. I was diagnosed when I was a wee lass when I had a grand mal seizure, and until I was 12, I was carted to Children’s Hospital of Detroit to find out what is going on. So nearly a decade after it happens, I get the “eh” clear from the doc, who my mother laments now she should have sued him for malpractice.
I’ve had small seizures infrequently over the years but I haven’t seen a neurologist in over 20 years. I need to make sure my i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed in case anything happens to me. Maybe THIS will explain it all?
Lastly, I got a bit of fiction writing done today but no major word counts to even worth mentioning. My Scrivener project for notes and ideas grows, so just as in all things, baby steps.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #26)
P.S. I forgot to mention EPbaB finally has a working contact form again which has been out of commission for most of the summer. Thanks to TheHusband’s nimble BOFH skills, and my bitching, he finally got it working.

the world is created from his body, or a quiet little revolution

Dear Internet,
If you are following Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes, which is posted every Saturday morning, you may have noticed a subsection under the Writing section entitled, The Lisa Chronicles. These are entries that had been offline for years for whatever reason and I was finally incorporating into the grand scheme of EPbaB. This weeks CCC will have over 50 entries of old-new content that has gone up. I felt like it was time to explain why.
This is the project I’ve talked about for a very long time, dating back to at least 2006 or so when TheEx and I had gotten together. With him, suddenly, I didn’t feel the need to write so much anymore. Without him, I had a whole lot to stay and I’m still trying to play catch up.
The whole process is basically a jumble of the following:

Incorporate entries from LiveJournal
- Started the import process and it turned into a huge colossal mistake. The import was not cohesive and skipped many months (and years). Will have to import by month or few months, slowly at a time.
- No decision made on what to do with my LiveJournal account, if any, once this is completed.
Import old entries from previous website databases
- Done for the ones that could be imported. Currently doing a lot of hand entry work for ones that could not be imported.
Import from old hand coded entries that were neither in LiveJournal or database driven.
Usual admin work: Make sure tags, categories match. Update links, if possible. Replace images, if possible. Spell check, if possible. Things that are obviously missing or broken, like likes, images, and URLs I have fixed. But the rest I have left alone: grammar errors, stylistic choices, all left just as the creator intended.

Getting this project off the ground feels good and to see the content fleshing itself out as the years start to fatten up in the archives is thrilling.
The archives are stored on my main hard drive and backed up to two different cloud services. Since this is all text, despite the sheer amount of files, the weight is tiny. Plus the bonus is I can do this work from anywhere.
This weekend I found a gorgeous plugin that allows me to have true, easy to use and navigate archives page. Better than any widget that collapses or piecemeal summary on the archives page (whether by category, tag, or month), it’s brilliant. Clicking on by month still gives you the monthly entries on a single page in all of their glory, but at least with the landing archives page, it is much more inviting now to read the past. And it’s easier, for me, to see what months and years are not quite filled out.
Also, a discovery! While entries exist back to 1995, it was on July 16, 1998 I decided to buy a domain and turn this into a THING. So now I have an anniversary, of sorts, and it feels incredibly intimate to have shared my life online for 16 years.
In the past, the arguments I’ve made for this project, this getting all of the content together in a reasonable archive (even if I wasn’t working on it at the time) was for curation, preservation, and historical access. I now I’m going to add postmodern literacy to the mix.
For the last couple of years, at least, I’ve noticed the tipping point of the web becoming heavily in favor of multimedia over written content. Twitter has 140 characters. Instagram is about pictures. SnapChat and Vine are about videos. Tumblr and Facebook is about all of those things as long as it is done in a microformat. These are social networks and their brevity is accepted and expected.
On the flip side, in terms of written content supposedly not attached to flash whiz bang, massively popular websites like BuzzFeed, Thought Catalog, Jezebel, and their ilk who should be writing engaging articles or pieces anymore, are not. No, it IS about an image, a GIF, a video, or the hated listicle like “9 Things To Torture Your Cat With While Standing Naked On A Balancing A Ball.” These sites are typically peppered with ads in the article, before and after the article, in the header and the footer. All of these articles come with bylines, the text is usually under a 100 words – and that’s a long article in their world. The longform content has now become quickie.
The question to me is: are these really articles? Sure, not all pieces should be Joycean in nature, but at the same time, do they all need to have the brevity and abstraction of cummings? If it contains image macros, preferably of a cute animal, a witty tagline, and a line or two, it is an article and why is that enough?
Best of all: someone got paid to do that work and put their byline on that piece.
MTV Geek has a call out for an editor for their blog requesting, Build and edit approximately 15 blog posts per day of no less than 300 words each. That’s 4,500 words. A day. And their ad requirements are a glimpse into what we get when we read our RSS feeds: dozens of articles a day from various sites around the web that are almost all brainless and thoughtless. Why post 12 articles on upcoming movies when you could have ONE article on upcoming movies. Because then you wouldn’t get the clickbait. Clickbait is what brings in the money, honey.
Not all sites treat content as a commodity to be brokered. Longform, McSweeney’s, PaidContent, and to some extent Salon are several notches ahead of the aforementioned link bait sites, but even they have their own problems. And don’t get me started on Huffington Post and how I do wonder, everyday, we’ve decided that site was fine and acceptable for news retrieval.
My point, as I wander around about shaking angry fists at everything, is that the days of writing on the web, for the sake of writing, seem to be disappearing quickly. A look through WordPress’ themes directory is filled with responsive, light, minimal themes. But only if you do video or photos. Dig around looking for a theme to showcase written word and you’re hard pressed to find anything worth using. Or you could hack apart a theme, as I often do, and make it bend to your will but that isn’t the point.
So I decided I’m going to have a quiet little revolution. In addition to rejecting the type of so-called journalism listed above, I will continue to write about my fancy, fill in my archives when I can, and present a pleasing text choked content filled site. I may not get the hits, or the money, or the fame from what I’m doing but when the rest of the world remembers only cat videos and fake Twitter accounts, this will be an always on reminder of the time we text used to exist.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #25)

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2003

In which the dog hate pees, my boyfriend shows up, and thehusband admits he has no sense of humour

Hercules vacuum cleaner, 1930s; State Library of New South Wales. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.
Dear Internet,
First I must tell you it’s much later than what the time stamp says on the entry. The second thing I must tell you is that I’m fairly high on Klonopin, which is in part thanks to having a physical anxiety attack this late evening. One pill couldn’t cut it, it seems, so I took two.
This week was kind of adventurous, which I’ve got started as another post-dated entry, but to bring you up to speed, we’re up at Throbbing Cabin which was solely to be for our vacation and not for renovations. Yet instead, it has turned into a comedy of errors.
As some of you may know, earlier this week I had a round of The Plague which changed everything, namely this entire week was to be our vacation week where the cabin was to be our actual vacation home and not a money pit of despair. The hope was to have day trips all over the area and see things we haven’t seen yet outside of our little 10 mile area.
We were obviously too ambitious.
We came up to Throbbing Cabin late Thursday afternoon, two cars packed with goods. After getting unpacked, it is discovered I left the non-perishable groceries on the counter in the kitchen back in Grand Rapids, which leads us to quick on the fly thinking of where to do for food, ending up having dinner at Little Traverse Inn, where their gastropub specialize in British foods with a twist. I really enjoyed the haggis parcels.
After a marvelous dinner, we head into Glen Arbor to grab the missing dry items left in Grand Rapids, head to the cabin to get ready for bed and sleep.
Except that didn’t quite happen. Wednesday had been acting odder than usual since I picked her up from the bordering place earlier in the day. I had thought it was their off her schedule walking that twas giving her troubles, but even after we right the wrong she decides to do two things:

She pees on the new wood floors right after we arrived
She pees on our bed at the end of the night, soaking through the duvet, sheets, and the mattress pad

Even better? TheHusband had been laying on some of the pee.
Thankfully we had back up sheets and comforters on hand. Also thankfully the mattress pad was designed for just such an occasion so the mattress itself never got wet.
Now I can speculate for as long as the day as long as to why both instances happened:

She’s 13 (or 101), and she’s incredibly picky how things are done. If they are not done just so, she gets upset
Boarding place said they had walked her twice before I picked her up at 11:30AM that morning, yet she almost immediately shat and pissed in my car. So see point the first.
We walked her more as soon she got home and after, yet our punishment was the peeing in the house.

It’s worth nothing that today she’s been fine. As a precaution, we’ve removed the water bowl we kept for her in the bedroom (since we’re upstairs, and she cannot get up/down stairs).
With that incident having now occurred, we knew we were going into Traverse City to do emergency laundry and then the thinking went, well as long as we’re in Traverse, might as well run a few other errands since we’re in the city.
Which completely shot our damned day. We were thinking beach! Hikes! Things! Not sit in a laundromat, watching DEAL OR NO DEAL.
My boyfriend, as he’s referred to, is the contractor who laid down our flooring and also builds homes. We’ve been getting price quotes from him to do work beyond our means, like rip out the second bathroom and redo it properly. We’ll also be contracting him further down the road to gut out and redo the kitchen (hopefully via IKEA).
He’s called such because it seems he only calls me, not TheHusband, for anything and we’ve now moved on to texting. The luck of the draw is that he looks like someone I would date. And there might be slight chemistry between us. But it’s kind of hard to feel the allure when the only times he’s ever seen me is when I look my not so very best.
After TheBoyfriend had come and gone to drop off some contract work, breakfast was made and consumed, we spent time putting together yet even more IKEA items from our haul this week. I prodded TheHusband to call a pest control person for we were finding little piles of dust in the master bedroom area and as luck would have it, the pest control could be out there early evening.
With our chores and bathing done, we started the slow trek into Traverse as we had stops such as at the recycling and gas station to embark on.
The bane of my existence during our courting years was TheHusband’s obsession on finding the perfect engagement ring. I looked at hundreds, if not thousands, of rings that all began blend into the same one.
Shopping for floor rugs with this man has the exact same experience. Online or off, there is always something not quite right about anything we have seen. We stopped at a rug showcase on our way to the laundromat and one after. My eyes were glazed over with all the seemingly same choices. My final threat was we were going to pick up something from Target, which turned out how our search ended with two area rugs thrown into our cart. Now we’re finding ourselves saying things like, “Well, if we don’t like it, into the guest room it goes!” which was also our mantra for Throbbing Manor.
Which explains so much about our decorating process.
Errands done, finally, headed back to the cabin, we meet up with pest control guy who showed up a little early. After poking and hunting around the cabin, he can’t quite find any trails to suspect carpenter ants are eating at the cedar. Since it’s either them or carpenter bees, and the bees are not here, then it’s got to be the damn ants. Traps were laid about the house and the outside perimeter was sprayed with poison. We report back to him in a week.
After all of this is done, it’s now closing in on 8PM. We wolf down dinner, grab the dog, and head to the local beach to watch the sunset and ended up staying for little over an hour. I was hoping to see more stars, with zero light pollution, but we were woefully unprepared for hanging out on a darkened beach.
We headed back to Cedar and got slushies before heading home, and here we are.
Mood update: Mood update has been pretty chill, though I’ve been sick for the better part of the week. I skipped a few days of the klonopin because I didn’t want to have an interaction with Day/NightQuil. I have not started Wellbutrin but several friends are reporting they are feeling good things about it, so that is still a might see.
I cancelled my appointment with Dr. H. on Monday because I had completely spaced on the appointment AND I don’t have the ready cash. Dr. P. and I have been unable to connect for a few weeks so hopefully I’ll get to see him soon.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #21)

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2003, 2003

receives wicked men after their death

Wooden bathing suits, supposed to make swimming a lot easier. Haquian, Washington, USA, 1929. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.

Dear Internet,
I don’t have much time this evening to write as I’m due to leave in about 15 minutes to pick up Beth from their airport. Tomorrow morning, she and I will head up to Throbbing Cabin where five other of our friends will meet us for a long girls weekend.
Seven girls.
All librarians.
Drunk.
In A Cabin.
In the Woods.
What could possibly go wrong?
Don’t be terribly surprised if communication from me is slow this weekend, namely here on the blog. And I’m not quite sure what the protocol is to tweet from jail.
(If you’re into that kind of thing, you can always follow me on the twitters or instagram to keep up with the antics.)
I was feeling pretty focused on work today, but some of the problems with MPOW’s website upgrade is trickling down to me and that is causing me some frustration. The frustration stems as student report vague web issue to library staff, library staff reports that to me long after the student has left so I can’t trouble shoot or fix the issue. I’ve been dragging my own laptop in to test the complaints but I can’t apparently duplicate them and as the student has long gone, I can’t work with them directly.
See. Frustration.
The problems all stem from students who have their own devices, and I have been walking library staff through asking a series of questions to narrow down at least the general problems but something in the communication either from me to them or from them to the student or somewhere else is getting broken. I just feel like I’ve been repeating myself A LOT.
Today is day #3 of no sleepiness and to test out my theory, I refrained from caffeine long after my morning Red Bull was gone. I drank water for the rest of the day and felt fine. Later in the afternoon I had a ritual Coke slurpee while I ran errands as I needed the extra push to make sure I was up when to I went to pick Beth up.
Much later.
It’s long after midnight and I’m still up. Beth’s plane was late by an hour, which turned out to be a boon to me as I was able to complete some packing and writing before I needed to leave. I smushed her face off when she came out of the gate, whisked her back to Throbbing Manor, gave her the abridged tour of the house and finally got her tucked into bed.
Mood ring says: Feeling pretty good. Pretty even. I’m gloriously enjoying the lack of sleepiness during the day. I’m also absolutely luxuriating in my morning routine, which is now including reading a short story while I eat my breakfast.
And if there is anything I’ve been discovering these last few weeks, the little things are everything.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #14)

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2012, 2012, 2012, 2012, 2011, 1999

i wandered lonely as a cloud

Satire on George IV in support of Queen Caroline, his estranged wife. Circa 1820. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.

Dear Internet,
If you have been paying close attention, and I know you have been, you would have noticed I missed a day this week — Monday. As the bugs get worked out of this system of daily writing, I’m sure to miss a day or two and I am allowing myself to be okay with that. But don’t be terribly surprised to find back dated entries showing up in your RSS feeds to feed my OCD monster.
Last night we apparently got a storm that myself and the dog slept through but woke TheHusband. He closed most of the windows in the house to prevent the rain from coming in and my clue was the half-closed bedroom windows that something was amiss. It’s been a cool summer, almost too cool in fact, but the spurts of extreme warmth continue to tease us and the storm didn’t dissipate the burgeoning heat. I ran around most of today wearing a cardigan, which was making me feel like I was sweating my proverbial balls off. Why I didn’t take off the damn sweater when I was in the elements is beyond me.
Work today was slow and not much was done. There was a meeting for the new faculty evaluation program that is coming into place and to be honest, it feels like a lo tof busy work for not a lot of real pay off. Okay, that may be a stretch since the pay off is having a job, but a lot of the documenting, professional development, and the like seems to be rather useless. It’s hard to talk about this here for changes come swift through the halls of academia and I don’t want to take any chances. The process, I’ll document over at Tales of a Cunning Systems Librarian.
I cut out of work early and headed over to the GrandCon volunteer meet-up, which was scheduled for tonight at a local bookstore. The organizer was late (he thought it was 5:30, not 5:00 as he told everyone else) but in the interim, I met a few of the other volunteers and they invited me to play Love Letter which turned out to be quick fun. Once the volunteer organizer showed up, the meeting was quick and there seems to be a lot to do in the next few months. I’m kind of excited about volunteering for this and if you’ve been following me around the social sphere for the last few years, my interest in comics and gaming has picked up considerably. I’m beginning to wonder if I should start putting together a comics resume of sorts because my activity is starting to increase significantly.
An interlude:

Wednesday night is Pub Trivia Night and myself, TheHusband and a few other friends play at a local bar every week. TheHusband and I have been absent the last few weeks as we’ve been up north, but the team has solidly rocked on without us. Tonight, however, we found out after we got to the spot our captains were unable to make it, so four us went for the glory and almost but not quite made it. I like our team and I like our event, but I’m not crazy about the location, the service of the staff, or even the food. TheHusband says he doesn’t care one way or another what we do, but I feel like we’re in a pickle.We’ll see how it is in a few weeks.
I’m thrilled to report that this is day 2 of not feeling like I’m going to keel over and sleep my way to Olympic Gold. It’s also day 2 of my period and day 2 that I went off the Metformin. What does this all mean? How are these related? I’m thrilled that I can get some semblance of focus and life back, but now I’m curious if I should start taking the Wellbutrin as directed by Dr. H. or not. I’d discuss this with Dr. P., but he had to reschedule our appointment tomorrow for Monday so I’ll wait until I see him before making any big moves.
And the coolest part about today? Thorarinn Leifsson, the graphic novelist/illustrator I mentioned earlier this week, found my blog and the entry about him and offered to send me his work in English, in PDF. I was so beyond thrilled, I was high fiving a million angels.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #13)

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2012, 2012, 2010, 2010

If you see a red flag, run

Liberal Unionist poster, circa 1905-1910. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.
Dear Internet,
Dr. H. has become pushy, for him at least, on what drugs I am and am not taking. I should not fault him too much, because interaction could mean death. But he’s been pretty insistent my Metformin script is causing the havoc with me as of late, and I have to say, he may potentially have a point. I was pulled off of Metformin, after being on it for years, last winter when my GP and I were attempting to figure out if I was diabetic or not when I was going through all my ankle surgery woes. I use Metformin for my PCOD, but since it’s original intent is for pre-diabetics and diabetics not on insulin, it made sense to pull me off of it to make sure my blood work was not throwing up false negatives.
This, of course, all starts before Dr. H. and I start meeting and I’m off of Metformin for months. I think I finally went on it back in March when I got the all clear from the orthopedic surgeon on my ankle and my GP that I was not diabetic. Hurrah! Shortly after I start taking Metformin again, it was around that time when the sleepiness and other bi-product of lithium would appear and then disappear a few days later.
Since my sleepiness has been ebbing and flowing the last few days, I decided to do an experiment of my own by taking myself off the Metformin and see what happens. Oddly the day I stop taking it is the day I start my period, and I hope ultimately this doesn’t end up as a choice: regular, pain free periods OR less crazy.
Dr. H. wants me to start Wellbutrin this week as he’s also pretty convinced this will save my soul, thus once I’ll get my prescription filled, the regime will be:

500mg Lithium, 3x a day
1 mg of Klonopin, night (during day as needed)
Wellbutrin, morning
Daily vitamin, morning
Glucosamine Chondroitin, morning
Metformin, morning (On hold)

I’m ending the Glucosamine Chondroitin as it doesn’t seem to do anything for me anymore. I need to do more research into the vitamin shenanigans before giving that up completely. I’d like to get myself off as many drugs as possible in the end. Too much evidence is showing me a healthy diet and serious exercise regime is much more therapeutic rather than dosing me up with chemicals. Except for Klonopin, as that is the savior to everything.
In so far as exercise, TheHusband and I walked two miles yesterday and today I did entertain the idea of rowing, so there is that.
I’m not terribly sure if it is because I stopped the Metformin today OR if my period started, but what I do know my sleepiness is not as terrible as the day has progressed as it has been for the last few weeks. This morning I still had coffee and later, a 12 oz Red Bull, but I felt like I kept my shit together while I worked and I did drink a lot of water, which later supplemented with a bottle of coke. Maybe my caffeine intake is spiked and I need to adjust that more? I did stop drinking caffeine when I was on the legal meth for my ADHD and didn’t really miss it. I’ve also done routes of stopping caffeine after say noon to help me sleep better.
Right now this is not so much as planning as it is talking out loud to myself. Like I said, the boring bits of every day life but one I would like to track with gusto.
Dr. H’s idea behind the Klonopin is if I take it at night, every night, then a lot of the stress and other triggers that seem to randomly come and go will be squashed. If I can sleep a full night’s sleep, deeply, without fretting then I own’t be tired in the morning, and if I’m not tired then I’m not mainlining caffeine of of a hooker’s ass, and well, you get the picture. The number that is counting up after my name in all these recent posts is the number of nights I’ve taken Klonopin before bed, so that I could keep track in some form.
After a week of this inhaling of my wonder drug at night, and still feeling like death warmed over on a daily basis, Dr. P. suggested I take Klonopin earlier in the evening, say between 6-7PM so that the entire life of the drug would have cycled through before morning. The reason why this is important is because by taking it at my usual time (9-10PM or so), by the time I get up in the morning, the drug has such a long half-life, it would still be feeling the zombie effects come morning.
Makes a lot of sense.
Even with all of the Klonopin inhaling, I am still having panic attacks. Nothing to the extent like they used to be, but they are still there. One popped up an said hello today at around lunch time, so I popped half a Klonopin and did some breathing exercises to exorcise that demon. No one has time for that shit!
My social feeds have been abuzz about Night Vale, the podcast that is eating up the airwaves. Told in the format of community updates of the small desert town of Night Vale, it is the most delightful podcast. The show has been on for over a year now and one of the lovely things about finding out about something long after it has started is that you can gorge on the episodes. I would highly suggest you checking this out.
Finally, after weeks of trying to make this happen, TheHusband and I were able to make homemade pizza for dinner tonight and I did not die! As I’m allergic to cow milk and I can tolerate sheep and goat milk, how would I fare with buffalo milk? Namely, buffalo mozzarella?
Apparently, in all of Grand Rapids, the locations to get true buffalo mozzarella are minute. Once we found a place, I grabbed some gluten free crust for me and made a wheat based crust TheHusband. Below is the gluten free version.

The taste? Not bad. I like thin crusts so that worked out well, the cheese didn’t spread as much as I had hoped, but as we bought only a single container, we weren’t sure how much would last for pizza. TheHusband made the sauce, which was sweet just as I liked it. Overall, probably the best version of pizza I’ve had since being diagnosed with my allergy and the ability to at least get gooey cheese was orgasmic. We will be making this again.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #13)

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2012, 2012, 2003

One Who Guesses Right

Portrait of an articulated skeleton on a bentwood chair, circa 1900. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.

Dear Internet,
The 12th Doctor was announced today. I’m not sure how I feel about the selection but as I said on Twitter, it’s not so much they went with a white male but the beeb, the show, Moffat – they have this AMAZING opportunity to take the show into new direction, pushing boundaries and make the show worth a damn! But no. Moffat on why no female Doctor, “It didn’t feel right to me, right now. I didn’t feel enough people wanted it.”
That has got to be one of the most cowardly statements ever published. Will I stop watching? More than likely not.
Today was a good day! TheHusband and I got up early, there was no leaping from the bed but early it was, and made some serious head way into the great weeding with the before illustrated below:

After two hours and stuffing to the gills a 96 gallon yard waste container, our yard looks exactly the same! Well, not exactly – the weeds between the bricks in the walk are gone. So there is something. TheHusband and I keep going back and forth on how to take care of this mess, knowing really if we spent a few a hours a day working on it, it would be fantastic. And knowing who we are, it’s not probably not going to happen.
But we continue to be optimistic.
After cleaning ourselves up, we headed over to antique row, which is a series of antique stores located in the old warehouse district south of downtown. This area, along with other blighted spots, are getting their own gentrification so now instead of it being a sketchy area to park and shop in, the streets are getting nicer and better shops are moving in.. The row has now doubled to contain six distinct antique and speciality stores, such as one store that specializes in Mid-Century Modern and another that does specializes in reclaimed materials. Reclaimed from what, we’re not sure, but it looked too high falutin for us.
Our needs were pretty simple: Look for Fiestaware, furniture, and a few other odds and ends we need for the cabin. We might as well been shooting for the moon. Several weeks ago, we lucked out when we found Fiesta plates at a local thrift store near our cabin for $1 a piece. At every antique store we visited this weekend, they were selling between $10-30 a piece. Now I know some of this stuff is worth the price, but selling contemporary pieces for vintage prices is a fucking dick move! We saw this in a lot of things we picked up, items that were retro made to emulate vintage looks but priced as of original. I Instagramed some choice pieces but overall, our time at the antique row was a bust.
I also feel like I’ve combed through most of the thrift stores and antique markets in our areas and either we’re not getting the right days or I’m missing something. It’s become pretty frustrating.
We ended our pretty busy day out with dinner at one of our favorite restaurants and we both tried something new. The evening was wrapped up with True Blood and some other mindless television before crashing.
So mood – how was my mood. For the most part of the last few weeks, my mood has been pretty steady even and the Klonopin at night has helped taken the edge off. But the edge is still there and sometimes I can feel it like a serrated knife against my chest.
I am so fucking tired. Of being tired. Sometimes I feel like all I do in inhale enough caffeine to keep me functioning for the moment and then I inhale some more. I feel like it’s a lost cause and I want to get off of Lithium so badly but I’m more afraid of the ramifications of going off the drug cold turkey.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #11)

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