Happy Mother’s Day
Hope everyone has a happy Mother’s Day!
My mother is doing a little bit better at the hospital. If you’re not on my Facebook profile (and you should be as I don’t bite!), I was given some shitty news from my stepfather that turned out to be a lie. He was either told the wrong information, or he intentionally gave me the wrong information, and that is really an awful thing to do to someone. So I went into panic mode. I was really afraid that my mother was going to die. Then I went to see her on the 8th. She was stable, her body is fighting the infections she had (pneumonia and sepsis with some fungal infection). She was asleep because of the infections and is now on morphine to stop the pain. But she is alive, she is stable, and I want to repair my relationship with my mother. This bad-ass attitude that I have towards her is really for the birds and I have to get my affairs in order.
As of May 7th, for the next few months, I have a new shrink. I’m not crazy over him, but he seems to want to help. First thing he wants to do is stick me in the institution and have some observations and test run. Of course he does. What the hell? Am I the first schizophrenic patient these shrinks have ever encountered? Oh well. Might as well get it over with while I still have time off from work.
Have a fun, safe Sunday, everyone!
The First Night
Tonight was the first night of a series of dinner parties, mingling, and the first time that I have been able to come out on an outing with my husband as is, and not as “husband and wife in private”. I don’t even have to make up some story about being a cousin with HIV. He really wants me in his world, all around! It was going to be great. Outlined, it was that we were going to attend a series of dinner parties, whilst our children were entertained in the resort. There was a pool, dining halls, and game rooms. It was geared for children; it’s one of the many places where famous and important people dump their children so they can attend adult conferences and other places where they do not want to be bothered by their offspring until the little ones are old enough or unique enough to start raking in the dough themselves. I hated leaving the kids there, but they didn’t seem to be so sad to be unattached to their parents for a few hours. We didn’t even say goodbye.
Dumping our luggage in the suite, I was surprised to see there was a whole separate bedroom for the kids, with two beds. We were in a hotel with two bedrooms and three beds! I’d never saw anything like this in nursing school. Dennis told me I should get used to it. Lots of places are set up like this, apparently. I unpacked my meds, changed, grabbed a clutch and we both hurried to the elevators. Glass, fast moving elevators took us down to the lobby, where we met up with some friends and band mates of Dennis’. I was glad I had my iPhone. Possible human contact. I was ignored on the way to the dinner hall. It never occurred to any of them, these people that my husband supposedly gets together with frequently, that he had a new date. There were people there that he was quite open and comfortable around that I had never saw before. People who saw right through me. I suddenly wished I had packed some Vicodin.
Dinner proved to be different. Dennis ordered something that looked, and smelled like, cat food that a house cat had thrown up onto his plate. I ordered a single plate of spanish rice and a glass of white wine. I ate slowly, tried to get myself into the conversation, but every time I said something, they would either ignore me (the band members) or look right through me (Jewish friend and co). Even the women. Even the other band wives. Alright. Fuck ‘em. I didn’t have to stand for this. After clearing my plate, I pushed back in my chair, and hurried out to the patio outside. If I couldn’t be accepted by the stars inside, I could wax poetic on the stars outside.
Sitting on the rail, watching the sky above me, I started thinking that maybe it was a mistake to come to this. After all, for the next three days, while Dennis mingled and became more important, someone else was tucking in our kids, I was being ignored, and my urge for Vicodin was rising. My back hurt. My shoes were painful and the bed was hard. I wasn’t craving because I am some kind of a pill popping maniac. I stopped a waiter carrying a tray and took another glass of white wine from the tray. He acted like I slapped him and then kicked him in the nuts, but I didn’t care. This wasn’t a place I’d be invited back to any time soon. A roar of laughter came from Dennis’ table. I turned away sharply. Fuck ‘em, I thought, when I become famous I’m never doing anything here. And if they invite me I won’t even RSVP. It was then that I realised that tears were on my cheeks. I was crying! Over this! Why? It wasn’t a vacation. I knew this was business when I agreed to come. What was wrong with me?!
“Break up with someone?” A soft voice asked from behind me. I spun around. “What?” I asked. A man dressed in a white shirt and black pants stood behind me with a kind smile on his face. “You’re upset about something. I don’t recognise you, so I assume you’re a date that got kicked out when fame came crashing back down on your date,” he replied. The fuck…? Get outta my head, asshole, I thought. “I um, I came alone,” I said. “Really? Were you seated at the wrong table?” “What’s it to you? What are you, a reporter? The interesting people are in there.” “I’m not a reporter…” he began.
We made small talk out there on the patio. He was surprised that I was a band wife, bands never bring their wives to places like this. He should know, his band never did anyway. I was surprised to find out who he was. In retrospect, he was familiar, but I couldn’t place him. I asked where his wife was, and he shrugged. Never had one, don’t need one, hasn’t found any to change his mind. By nine-thirty, my head was throbbing. S, as I will call him, ordered me an entire bottle of the white wine, and I had hogged it all. We talked of many things. The most common was how badly we hated that place, and the crowd of people inside.
The Groupi in me was coming out. I wanted to offer him a lay. Sex, with no strings attached, that night, just as I would if it had happened in 1996. I wanted to be that Groupi again. I wanted to have the freedom to do what I wanted right then and there. But all the swarms of changes came back to me. My children would be sleeping in the next room. Dennis would know. I would know. It just doesn’t seem to be in the stars that I love so much to be coming true. S made the first move and handed me a piece of paper. “This is my room. We’re staying at the same place. You should come by and visit me if you want to talk again,” he said. “Thanks, let me go get my car and I’ll be there,” I replied, somewhat drunk. His eyebrows rose. “You drove here? You can’t drive back, drunk.” I replied with some off remark. He took me by the arm and said he would make sure that I got back to my room safely.
All the way back, the focus was on sex, and when it was going to happen. My inhibitions were gone by now, and I openly expressed that I wanted to screw his brains out. I also blurted out that Dennis and I were in an open relationship, so it wouldn’t be cheating on my part. Something that was only partly true. In order to keep our relationship secure, we tried being open, but when the time came for one of us to get laid by someone else, usually me by his brother Billy, we couldn’t do it. We loved each other so much back then, we couldn’t turn away from each other. I slipped my silver wedding band off and dumped it in my clutch. “Bastard never got me a wedding band, either. But that’s alright. It’s not like I don’t know that he gets lucky every time he’s with that group,” I said. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to go through with sleeping with S. Sure, I was pissed at Dennis for bringing me here, and then making believe that I was invisible, but was it really worth an affair? With a man technically old enough to be my father?
I had an idea. I promised S that if I needed him tonight, I would call. We said goodbyes, and then I contemplated that if Dennis could fix what happened tonight by talking to me, I wouldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t. An hour later, he staggered into the room, and flopped down on the bed. “You’re drunk,” I replied. “You came here?” he asked, “And I’m not drunk, I just feel bad. Nothing that sleep won’t fix.” “We need to fix something else, first. Us. Can we talk?” I asked. “Sure. Just let me get ready for bed and put on my earbuds, Cee, I’m exhausted. Plus I think the tuna was bad tonight. And so what if I had a drink or two? I’m not in AA or even NA anymore!” With that, he hurried into the bathroom to change. I sighed. I was in pain. I hadn’t bothered to get undressed for when he came home, so I was still pinched with the dressy clothes.
Getting up off the bed, I wrapped up in a robe and hurried out of the suite. I tiptoed down the hall to the room number written on the piece of paper. When S came to the door, suspiciously scented of vinegar, I blurted out, “Do you have any Vicodin? My back is really killing me. My feet too.” He seemed surprised at my request, but nodded, and stepped back inside his room. When he returned with a ziplock with four pills, he asked me something that I was not expecting, “Are you sure this is for your hurting feet and back? Or your hurting heart? Cray, I think we shouldn’t break up your family.” I grabbed the bag from him. “I just came by for the narcotics. That’s all. You didn’t think I was serious about sleeping with you, did you?” I threw in a small laugh, turned and hurried down the hall. I knew if I scurried right, I could get back before Dennis was out of the shower, and he’d never know that I had been gone.
Back in the suite, I was right, Dennis was still in the bathroom, still taking a shower, and I was there alone. With the kids sleeping in the room next to ours and the ziplock baggie of Vicodin. I opened the bag and inspected the pills. They were Vicodin. A little strong for my liking, and use, but hey, S was right, I didn’t need them for my back and feet. I needed them to heal my hurting heart.
End of an Era
It’s no secret. I take meds. I take them in the morning, I take them at night. I take them for diabetes, I take them for psychosis. I have taken them for the past four years of my life, with little to no change in the outcome of my mind, starting with the death of my best friend Christopher (oddly enough, I dreamed of him last night). My life still sucks, I still sense things I am not supposed to, whether I am gulping down drugs or dry-docked for the night. My nights and days are the same whether I am on my meds or not, and it has come time where meds are starting to become a chore for me. I feel no therapeutic effects from the medications anymore. To me that’s a signal to either stop the meds cold turkey or find some that do agree with me.
What I am specifically referring to are the psychotropic drugs that I have been on for the past six months or so. They were supposed to make my life better, but I still see it as major suckage, with senses on overload, and my primary care physician is no longer comfortable with prescribing psychotropic drugs for me and wants a psychiatrist to exclusively prescribe them, so I am stopping the meds with the honor of my primary care physician in agreement only because it’s determined that I can no longer afford to see a psychiatrist. Either financially or emotionally. So I no longer need the psychotropic drugs.
See how pharmaceuticals work in this day and age?
I didn’t know a cure was that close!
This also cures my sleeping disorder, but only through my primary care physician. I can’t afford to see a psychiatrist on a regular basis, that’s $40 per session. But Byron, the neighbourhood drug dealer, doesn’t charge for sessions, just a 10% mark up from pharmacy prices, and a bigger guarantee that I will fall asleep or he’ll be back with something stronger the next night! Hey, I wonder if he has something to cure my nightmares while he’s at it?! Probably! There’s no end to what I can get cured when I am in total, one-hundred-percent of the drugs that are dispensed to me from Byron. Now, the only difference between Byron and my pharmacy? They have a license to make the psychotropic drugs I need legal to be sold to me. They care about me as much as Byron does; MONEY! and REFERRAL! Oh, and don’t report them for the mouse carcass in the middle shelf of medication, and we’re sitting pretty. Yes, everyone I know is doing something against the rules and laws. No, I have never turned one in, yet.
What has come to annoy me the most is that I had no warning that I was going to have to get the psychiatrist to renew and start refilling these prescriptions, that, for the past four years, my primary care physician has filled, and was the original prescriber, without issue, for four years. Then all of a sudden, the rug is pulled out from under me. This caused much bitchage from my mother, whose phone I had to use because my better half is using our land line for god-knows-what, and I am out of minutes on my cell phone. Unless doc would take calls at 5pm, I can’t communicate with him through the cell phone, and seeing that he won’t even honor and renew prescriptions that he has been the primary writer of for the past four years, until my appointment on May 10th (a week away), then I don’t see him bending a finger to try and resolve this anytime soon.
No, that is not a typo.
Doc could have refilled my prescriptions with one more refill, that would have lasted me through this up coming visit, and then dropped the bomb on me. But since returning hom from Las Vegas and since I was starting on the road to recovery, and we can’t have that, I am in the process of changing psychiatrists, one to suit the needs of my higher up, and I did not have the knowledge to ask on my final shrink visit April 24th. No warning. No letter. No nothing stating that doc was too much of a pussy insecure to finish my prescriptions on his own. It doesn’t come as a shock to me, just as an annoyance, as I have been getting my pain medications from a pain specialist/weight loss asshole doctor for over a year now, because my primary is unable to write narcotics for someone in chronic pain. Yet anything my mother asks from him, he does. No matter what. Bent over backwards with the lube in hand, I might add. This just breeds her asking constant questions of me that I cannot answer, so the normal answer is, “I don’t know.” or “He doesn’t know.” and this ultimately pisses her off.
Don’t tell me seeing a therapist is going to be another one of those life-long things that I will forever fear being locked up in a nuthouse for for the rest of my life. I couldn’t live like that.
Back in July of 2005, I was asked to be a moderator on PlayList. PlayList is just what you think it would be, a place where local and famous musicians can request their MP3s to be collected in a monthly “play list” for subscribers on an iTunes community. It’s run by my friend Josh. After getting my first iPod in October 2004 and submitting numerous playlists, I was asked to be a mod. Fine. The rules of PlayList are that your version of a song can only be added ONCE to PlayList. You can add a live version, but you cannot add two of the same versions. Mostly I submitted my own and my husband’s music, sometimes my nephew’s music.
In January, a fairly famous person submitted several MP3s of his music for the January 2012 PlayList. One song had already been submitted and published in June 2007, but this somehow slipped past the other mods, who were obviously star struck and over stimulated at the thought of the cards and free front row tickets this artist had sent to the mods who listed their mailing addresses. I didn’t get shit, but that’s not why I did what I did.
I went back through the main archives and saw the song was listed twice, the only difference was a few seconds on the songs. I played them both and they were identical studio versions, so I cut the latest song from the January 2012 PlayList. This caused the artist to fall out of the top five artists on PlayList, and I sent a short email to him telling him why I had cut his song and that he needed to check the main archives before submitting another song. Of course this particular artist has to be the best and at the top of everything, even a small community of outcasts PlayLists. He threw a fit, called Josh, and played the gay card. In other words, he told Josh that I cut his song because he’s gay and that I told him this is why I cut the song. Nothing could be further from the truth, but Josh doesn’t log email conversations, so when said artist deleted my message to him, there was no proof I hadn’t said these things.
Here is where Josh and Co. should have known me better. They have known me for over twenty years, long before any of us had internet access. Josh made a post on the message board of our community, and asked what people thought. Of course because said artist had sent out tickets, cards, and gift baskets to most of the mods, they sided in with him: I was jealous and upset because he had not given me anything. Sure. Whatever. Why not? After all, why else would I have this poor guy under the microscope and delete his awesome song that had been okay with everyone else for three months?
Josh re-instated the song in January’s PlayList, removed my moderator status for the weekend, and told me to check with him before I do any other modding on the community. What.The.Fuck. The whole point in making me a mod was so that I could make decisions when the owner wasn’t there! Now I have to “get permission” before I could make any changes? Um, fuck no. I replied to Josh’s thread that he should have believed me, even if God himself got on that message board and told a lie about me; I was his friend, not the artist. The artist didn’t even reply or look at the message board post, which is weird since he’s made more posts in the communities than anyone else on the entire site, that I have witnessed so far.
So I resigned as a Mod.
I thanked Josh for letting me be a mod, because I did not have to pay to get an awesome music list every month, and I was replacing several of my songs that I lost when my mother sold my CD collection, but it wasn’t worth it to be belittled, lied about, and have everyone picking sides. I also told him if he wanted to boot me from his blog circle, I’d “understand”. You know, because one would have to kick me out of everything because of a conflict in one community. I’ve been through that countless times on Livejournal.
So far he hasn’t replied to me, and I don’t expect him to until after the weekend. Passover, Easter and some kind of fasting that he has to do. It’s a religious thing, so I won’t question it.
For anyone interested, here are the Easter photos so far this year.
1700
I have nothing to say tonight except that I hate, hate it when we have to fight. No matter who wins, he never remembers them or the vital information that comes afterwards. Or that’s been the last couple of times. I’ve done all I could and should do as a wife and a lover, but he wants more. I’m starting to think that maybe Liz can give him that more and I should step aside. No one has come right out and said it, but it’s been implied plenty of times.
Or maybe when they offer me a free trip to the nut house tomorrow, I should go. Not look back. I’ve done it voluntarily so many other times, why not now? Why not get a simple institutionalisation for “free” once? At least they can write on my record that I didn’t suggest it and it wasn’t voluntary, so I’m crazy enough to think I am still sane. Perhaps that will for some other type of therapy, or maybe even something else that is so desperately needed, onto me. New medicines. Surgery, if they’d do a lobotomy, I’d still go. New therapists. New procedures. Maybe in a month or three, it would be recognised that what will really cure me would be a new life. A new family. A new chance just to get the hell on with things and never look back.
It’s a shame, too. I was really looking forward to work on Friday. It was pay day. I’m quite confident that Liz will spend my hard earned money wisely. Probably on hard alcohol and some female condoms. Or maybe even a remodel of the bedroom, you know, to get my touch out of there.
Either way, I’m doomed.
Spare A Kidney ?
Well, it’s finally happened. Come Monday I am going to be briefed on dialysis and then scheduled for my first trip some time next week. The whole idea depresses me like I have never been depressed before. Why is this happening? I have asked that question to myself many times. While I know why it happened, biologically and chemically, it was only a percentage that I was in, and the majority of this not happening was on my side. Yet it happened anyway.
My (asshole!) doctor wanted to blame the chemicals that I work with. They can cause severe kidney damage. Sure. If I had worked there for fifty years. He then blames the metformin that I have been on for the past four years. Well, he wanted me to take it because it causes weight loss. He also told me there were no horribly wrong side effects. Um, sure. See, I knew better. If I were an everyday person I could have a lawsuit against him at the moment, but as a bio-chemist, I knew the risks of taking the medicine and I still took it. Having my mother tell me that at 173 lbs, losing 30 lbs since Halloween night, made me less of an embarrassment to her. Of course she’s in her 60s and living off me, but I’m the embarrassment because I was a few pounds overweight. Technically for my height I wasn’t even obese, but I stopped eating, got depressed, and here I am. Though my loving doctor and mother want me down to 100 lbs even by summer. I was encouraged that I could do this. Ever see a 100 lb 6′ 1″ person? We don’t look good. We look like we survived the holocaust. We have no energy. Ten years ago I was down to 100 – 90 lbs and I looked like total shit. No tits. No energy. Constant pains. But damn, I wasn’t an embarrassment to my mother, her family, or my doctor. The people whom I should have truly been trying to please weren’t interested in my weight; I’ve always been perfect to them.
I was put on a double transplant list yesterday. Monday I pick up my pager to wait for the news that there is a kidney or lung (yes, those are fucked up too). I’m not sure if this will affect my trip to Sydney, or the trip to Las Vegas in March. I’ve already paid for my tickets and I want to go. My plane to Sydney is supposed to leave on Thursday morning and I return on Sunday the fifth. I had everything planned, from a new camera to a ton of GBs of space to take pictures and video. I even stocked up on spare batteries and a fast charger so I wouldn’t run out of juice on the trip. Then there’s my “artisan” make up because I was supposed to be a part of the filming we’re going to. I can’t get on camera with a dialysis cath in my arm with the bruises to go with it. This all has screwed up my entire pleasure in looking forward to the trip; I haven’t been to Australia for pleasure since 2003. Dennis was also looking forward to seeing DW again. I guess he can do that without me there, though. Nothing would be stopping him. I haven’t told anyone about this, other than posting it here, for people to sympathise with me over it. Let’s have that Pity Party for me!
On a lighter note, I have a couple of family members who are going to take blood tests and such to see if they match and I can get a kidney from them, possibly. I know my cousin BJ got tested. I’m not sure if I truly need my lung(s) replaced. That’s one of the things we’re going to discuss at the doctor’s office Monday afternoon.
Oh, and my TimeCapsule died and went to hell a week ago. I’ve gone through the motions of removing the hard drive in it (and have the pictures to prove it), and now I am waiting on my check to go into my card so I can get a cord for it. I have another TimeCapsule, but I can’t get the computer to recognise it. I hope that wasn’t the error with my older drive. After harvesting that drive, I feel as though I can harvest the drive from my old strawberry iMac, just to get the data off it. That would be pretty awesome if I could get that drive too. I may update next with pictures of me harvesting my TimeCapsule drive and the iMac drive, if I can get it out. Right now I have to sit at my desk and update, and that’s a bitch. I usually update from my bed while I’m watching TV. Not anymore! Not until I can figure out how to get that TimeCapsule working. Any suggestions? Advice on anything I’ve posted? Email me if you do. Or leave a comment. Whichever is good for you.
Don’t forget to add my feeds:
here, there, and facebook or just plain add me on facebook. I’ll love you forever!
Listen to the Wind Blow, Down Comes the Night
We’re having some kind of a weird wind storm tonight, and the wind is rattling the windows, as well as it is howling fiercely outside. Kind of scary. My mind is elsewhere tonight, and I don’t know why I opened up my site to update. My family has been driving me nuts, and it started with Dennis bringing home a copy of Skyward Sword. He was so sure that he was going to beat in the first day he had it, that he just had to play it all day since Thanksgiving morning. Which left me to do laundry, cook the last couple of days’ worth of meals, and finally, tend to the kids. The boys were ok to tend; they just needed love, supervision, food, sleep, and clean clothes. It was Chloe who was difficult.
The kids ganged around their Hero of Time father, hoping to watch him succeed in beating a video game. All he really managed to succeed in doing was keeping the bed from being made for the past few days, twisting his ankle, and breaking a window, on top of hitting the potted plants in the bedroom, causing them to crash down to the floor. I was glad we don’t have carpeting in the bedroom. It was easy to sweep up the potting soil, but then I had to stop what I was doing and re-pot the plants. Three of which were thorny cacti and my thumb is still burning.
This morning, Chloe announced that she did, indeed, have homework this Thanksgiving weekend. Ok, so maybe she wouldn’t have had any if she had sat down three weeks ago and did it or even started on it. She has a diorama due on Monday, but there is nothing done! I gathered up the supplies for her, and an hour later, she wasn’t doing anything with it. Still watching daddy play his game. I read the directions for the diorama and fine-tuned her supplies, and still she did not touch it. I offered to help her with the cutting and placement. Nope, didn’t interest her.
After dinner tonight, she had the audacity to ask me if I could do the diorama for her! Um, no! She asked Dennis, and he lovingly introduced her to super glue. Yes, super glue! All that accomplished was Chloe gluing my desk drawer shut.
*snarl*
I gathered up her supplies, then gathered her up, and put her in her room and told her she was going to do the project tonight and tomorrow, or she was going to suffer the zero on the assignment. No help from momma or daddy, now. Her reaction was to cry, and scream that I was a bad, abusive mother, then scream for help from her daddy. When I saw the boys giggling about the ordeal where she could see them, I told them to either go back and watch the Link game or go to their room and shut the door. I then closed Chloe’s door and went back to working on sorting laundry. The boys scattered. I haven’t saw them since and I have a feeling I won’t see them until breakfast.
I am glad I took the super glue away from Chloe. She was going to glue my laptop shut and glue my phone’s charging cord to the wall. Little brat! All because I was ‘bothering” her to do her homework. Dennis asked me in mid-battle with some kind of strange monster on the game, if I was sure I had made the right choice in making Chloe do the assignment right that second. “Well, she’s had all month to do it, just now told me that she had an assignment, and so, yeah. I think I made the right choice in making her at least start the project,” I replied.
Upon checking up on her, Chloe had about 70% of the diorama done, and she was sleeping on the covers of her bed. See? It wasn’t that hard!
I have my NanoWriMo to finish and then I have my court on Wednesday. I have to call the judge Monday and tell him that I will be there. I thought the lawyer was going to do that. Oh well. I plan on being there, no matter what.
Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving, and that your Christmas shopping is going smoothly! Have a good night and a good weekend!
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