On the evening that Zinnia was born, Dennis planted some Zinnia seeds. I watered them a couple of times, but yesterday I noticed they had sprouted. I’ve never started seeds in a terrarium before!
Thirteen years ago, I was contemplating sex with a stranger, at the risk of being labeled a slut. Today I am contemplating screwing the lead guitarist of a band that my father bought every album of, just because I will be covering the band’s concert here this spring. Open relationships mean one thing: Trust is more important than monogamy, and “hunk o’ burning love” is taken literally. The problem arose when Dennis did not want me sleeping with any man except himself, something that wasn’t fair, as he confided in me that he had had several “encounters” on the road, then “clarified” that they had all been between bandmates. What? He’s screwing other men? It’s not surprising to me, but it really threw our therapist back a few inches.
But if I had sex with another woman and he could watch, that was fine.
Isn’t it always?
I have been in conversation with the guitarist that I am planning on conquering this spring, and he’s really a nice guy. He doesn’t know what I’m planning, yet, and a good groupie doesn’t divulge what they are planning until the moment happens, but he offered to buy me coffee and talk about the tour. How nice. I needed a shot of insulin after that conversation.
Hey, my manager says I have to be nice to the bands that I interview! It’s out of my hands! If we give them bad publicity, they may shit on our publications, and we’ll lose readers. Normally. Knowing today’s youth, if a band said “[This] magazine sucks!” millions of people may jump out and buy it or order subscriptions. Unfortunately, the managers don’t think like that, and if we get bad publicity from a band, the reporter who caused that bad publicity is fired. Permanently. So, it’s my motto to be a groupie in disguise of a reporter! Besides, I’ve been a groupe since I was fifteen, and I’m still waiting for that one “bad thing” to happen to me to spoil it all.
Dennis has been trying to get me to rethink many things on my agenda. Things such as sleeping with this guy, packing up and leaving the family, and other “mistakes that I am going to regret” in the future. I replied that he sounded like a middle school teacher, preaching about “the future” all the time. I’m at that point in my life where I don’t care about the future anymore. I just want to make it through the present and learn to let go of the past. If that means that I am a whore or a slut, or a “druggie whore” as one of my lovely blog visitors has referred to me as (I can see those referrer logs, dumb ass!), then so be it. It’s amazing that people really care that much about what I think of them that they are willing to insult me over an invisible media. There’s the discussion of what this may be “setting for Chloe.” I can honestly say that my own mother’s promiscuity had no effect on how I grew up, other than I wish she had not physically and emotionally abused me in the process. Other than that, it’s her body, her pussy, her choices. I’m not married to her just as Chloe is not married to me. If Chloe grows up and has sex with Marilyn Manson, good for her! I hope she at least gets his autograph out of it all!
My biggest concern is that I don’t know if I can go through with it. I’ve been having that problem for a long time now. Call it a conscience, call it chickening out. I don’t know what to make of it. Ideas?
Before any rumors start to fly, why yes, I did some dumb shit and hurt myself this week:
She Hates Me
Vance tells me to write. He tells me that if I sit down and pour out what has happened to me over the past three days that I will feel better. I tell him that I will never feel better, because I really think that things are just going to go downhill from here, and get worse and worse.
Of course, that’s not the right attitude to have, I am reminded, several times, by my friends.
But how many times have my friends had to go through any of this?
So here’s a (semi) complete history of the whole thing:
A little over a week ago, our house guest beat the snot out of me, and I left to stay with a male friend. The friend and I have developed feelings for one another, but we have not acted on said feelings, yet. On Sunday afternoon (I think), I moved the kids in with me and my friend after Dennis refused to acknowledge that my broken bones were his fault for not defending me. Monday morning, the portraits were in, and my initial promise was that after the portraits were reviewed and our house guest left, I would come back with the kids. Monday afternoon, I am still working with students, my phone is on “Do Not Disturb” and Dennis flips his lid, mixes several medications with some household chemicals and drinks the entire cocktail. His younger brother came by and found him vomiting “foam-y blood” in the living room, called 911, and by the time I had woken up yesterday morning, I was informed that Dennis was in the ICU of the hospital. During that afternoon, I was pulled over for expired tags on my car, and given a hefty fine after the deputy found my prescription medication in the front seat. After my labs were done for the day, I went to check on him, and he was awake and alert. No one at the hospital knew what he had taken, and the nurses asked me to find out. When I asked him, he wouldn’t tell me. Frustrated, after several moments of attempting to get an answer, I actually shook him by the shoulders, demanding an answer. When I let go of him, he just smiled and made a remark that I’d always come back to him, no matter what. Still frustrated and now visibly upset, crying, I slapped him with all my strength. Which wasn’t enough, since I had not eaten anything solid since Monday morning.
Again, he just laughed at me. The nurses came in shortly afterwards, and asked me to step out while they attempted to insert a foley cath. I sat in a chair outside the ICU doorway, and listened, in distress, as Dennis begged, cried, screamed and pleaded with the nurses to stop. Little One must have heard him as well, because they became distressed too. Thirty minutes later, the nurses gave up, and asked me to leave.
This morning, I was notified via my phone, that I had to give consent for a PIC line to be inserted. I was told that Dennis had gone into respiratory distress last night and had to be sedated and then placed on a ventilator. His potassium levels are dangerously high, and after talking with his nurses tonight, I discovered that they had tried to wake him last night for his meds, and he was not responding, which was why they put him on the ventilator.
I then made the bad decision to tell Chloe that her father was ill and had attempted to hurt himself, which had caused him to be in the hospital on machines that helped him eat and breathe. She demanded to see him. I debated this, and then against my better judgement told her that she could come to the ICU with me later on tonight. As we talked in the car, she seemed cold and distant. I asked her if she no longer loved me and her response was nothing I could have guessed: “No. I’m saying I hate you. I wish you were dead!”
Making good on my promise, I took Chloe to see her father tonight. She did not go near him, but stood there and watched just inside the room. We came home in silence, and she’s now in her bed area here, asleep.
Some pictures of the monitors. Dennis’ heart-rate is irregular and not as strong as it should be.
The ventilator monitor:
This notebook was open on his bedside table:
Medications:
There’s more. Lots more. More pictures, more to say, but I am exhausted. This is all I can blog for now.
Fuck You, Cancer
Fuck you cancer, for this:
And this:
And this:
On January 2end, I discovered two lumps under Dennis’ right arm. On January 6th, they were still there. Upon some inspection today, they are still there. I found a total of four. When he asked me what that meant, I replied that there was a good chance he would be losing his lymph node from surgery. Metastatic cancer to the lymph nodes is what our oldest daughter died from. It is what made her cancer immune to radiation and chemotherapy because it had already spread so far. Stage IV. Started in her breast.
Dennis insists that he’s been cancer-free since 1985. But cancer is an asshole like that. It doesn’t care if you’ve got a family, if you want to live to see them grow up, if you love your life, if you want to live. Cancer is sneaky. It hides for a few years until you feel that you’re finally safe and that nothing can hurt you again, that your suffering is over and you’ll never have to protect yourself again.
We met up at a cafe to talk. I told him what had happened between his friend and I, and that I would be staying with one of my friends until our house guest left. Our guest is insistant on staying until the portraits and filming is ready for editing. I just can’t stomach living with him anymore. Dennis told me that he had no idea that I felt that way, and said he was going to put our guest up in a hotel for the remaining time that he is here. I smiled at the thought. Going home. It’s really what I want to do. The conversation turned to the lumps I had felt, and what it could possibly mean. Dennis is certain the lumps are just some gland swelling. I told him that I hoped he was right.
Of all the things I left unsaid in the conversation, on thing I was able to say through the lump in my throat, through the tingling in my nose, through the watery eyes, was that I couldn’t do it alone. I couldn’t keep our family together alone. Dennis said I have done some amazing jobs while he’s on the road, but that is different. If he were to never be coming back, and I knew this for certain, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go on. I would disintegrate in the bedroom, surrounded by my own sense of self-worthlessness. When we said our vows, I took in sickness and in health to heart. For years, Dennis has been there for me while I was sick, and I am not going to abandon him now, but the death do us part is not something I assumed I would ever have to face. Damn my situation and the thoughts racing through my head. With all the things going through my mind, I have to force myself to not think about this.
We have a doctor appointment set for the 25th. I wonder if our family doctor could pick a later date? After all, time is what feeds cancer. Time is what gives it its power. Time is what a patient does not have enough of.
But maybe everything will be alright, and I’m making a mountain out of a mole hill. After all, my harasser says that I like to dramatise my life to make people feel sorry for me. Of course I do. That’s why I don’t openly ask for money on my site, or steal photos of gorgeous women, like she does. One thing that amuses me – my harasser has a “dying woman” site online that I have yet to publicly post. I know she’s not the person in the photos, since she never posts her real image on her SEND ME MONEY! scam sites, but I need to find the identity of the woman in the photos before I comment on it publicly. If anyone can help, my email address is right over there.
Back to my situation.
I have faith. I have faith that Dennis will be okay, that this is just a plugged gland, or a series of pimples, boils, I’d even go for MRSA colonies at this point, because those are all things he can survive from, relatively painlessly.
I have hope. I have hope that I won’t be left alone to face the world without the one who loves me, that I won’t have to find someone else, not that I ever could, and hope that our children won’t have to face the world without their father, whom they all love very much. Especially Chloe. She loves her daddy more than anyone else, and she’d do anything for him.
On top of that, I have fear. I can hope and pray for the best, but fear the worst. Fear normally prepares me for the worst and gets me through it. There is no getting over what I am about to embark on, if the worst should happen. There is no consoling my heart if the worst is my fate. There is no hope for me, if my world should come crashing down. There is just fear, pain and emptiness. Three things I don’t want to spend the rest of my life going through.
I’m a little pressed for time, but I feel that I need to get this post made so that people can start helping me help them.
For the first time in my life online, I am having a contest that I am going to put together, let people enter, and the prize will be a prize that I won at a New Year’s Eve Party: A World AIDS Day support gift set from MAC. It has a lipstick, lip conditioner, and a little purse to keep everything inside. I assume the lipstick shade is a limited edition, but I’m not sure, since I really don’t wear MAC lipstick. The gift set is Authentic; it has a Nordstrom’s sticker on the back of the box. I also have the complete 2011 Wonder Woman make up set, that I am never going to use, and therefore, I will be giving it away as well in another contest.
My problem is: I don’t know what kind of a contest to hold.
Many bloggers have silly ass-kissing-esque contests, where people can only be eligible to even enter if they write a four or five paragraph about how wonderful and how much they love the blogger holding the contest, put up a year-long link, get all their other blogger friends to put up links, and then comment forever on the blogger’s blog.
While it would be wonderful to check my stats and see how many people really love me out there (I’m not feeling the love, people!), I certainly wouldn’t pick a contest winner based strictly on how many people schmooze me in a day or get their friends to schmooze me as well. I’d also love to be awakened in the middle of the night with my phone buzzing and the ring tone going off that I’d reached my maximum amount of comments in the que here, and I need to get my butt online or on my WordPress App and either approve, disapprove, delete, or label them as spam. Sadly, many of the comments I get here from friends I cannot approve because they’re just asking for trouble.
So my question: What kind of a contest would be appropriate for the World AIDS Day 2012 MAC Gift Set? Obviously women are going to be the ones entering this, so it has to be something that the ladies will love. Unfortunately, I surround myself with gay men and unladylike women, so I have no idea how a woman interesting in MAC would want to go about competing for the Gift Set. Assuming that the women who are going to be competing will be ladies. I could get a bunch of women like my friends who say “fuck” every other word. *laughs*
So, no wet t-shirt contest. No boobies on parade contests. No hide the weenie contests. No ass-kissing Christie contests. Hmm. What else is there???
So far, my idea is since this is a World AIDS Day Gift Set, the contest should be about AIDS. Okay. My unofficial proposal is: Write a post, an entry, a page via WordPress, or some other way, on your site or blog. Make sure the post/page is linkable, and one can find it via the front page of your blog. Write how HIV/AIDS has affected you. Do you have it? Write about your life with HIV/AIDS. Does someone you love have it? Write about your experiences of living with someone who has AIDS/HIV. Did you witness someone with HIV/AIDS pass away? Write about that experience. Be creative. Be a good writer. Capture my emotions and run like the wind with them. Make me laugh, make me cry, make me think. As a writer, I love finding other creative writers on the web. We could be writer friends! Unless you don’t want to.
Keep in mind, that for there to even be a contest, more than one person has to enter! But before that, we need to officially decide on what the contest should be about. Feel free to vote on the proposed contest above, or nominate your own contest (keeping it decent). On January 18th, I will announce what the contest will be, so be sure and check back then! Good luck!
The Adventures
I hurt myself the other day.
I ended up in the cardiac ward, with one of these annoying bastards in the bend of my arm. I slept all of thirty minutes there.
Oh, and the dog helped me wrap presents in her own special way.
Christmas was okay. I barely remember opening my gifts.
Today I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. The temporary bassist for the band has been undressing me with his eyes since we picked him up from the air port. I don’t like that. Not only is he married, but we had a fling back in 2001 when I was barely 21. I ended up in a lot of trouble because of that drunken one-night-stand. I don’t want to repeat history, but he seems to have jumped at the chance to help out my husband because he knew I’d be there. Chloe is in the Children’s Hospital tonight, with a horrible infection that caused her fever to spike over 104 F. That was at three in the morning. At noon, she was only a little better, after intervention at the hospital. By six, her temperature was no longer a fever, and I told her to get some rest, I’d see her in the morning. This is the first time since she was a baby that she is away from her parents, or her family. This is the part where I hurl insults at myself, because I should have been paying better attention. Should have.
I’m scheduled to do some recordings of my own starting at mid night. Not sure if I want to publish the photos from tonight or not. There’s a film crew in the studio, making things tighter and the room hotter than usual.
My heart is telling me to ignore the situation, be professional, and kind, but the physical part of me is saying “GO FOR IT!” Really? Go for it? No one else seems to notice anything strange. Maybe I am just over-reacting. I hope.
Back to work with me!
I should rename my entire site “Hectic Times,” because that is what I have been having
these past few days. Chloe’s birthday is coming up next month, and Dennis and I are planning that. Chloe knows this and she is bouncing off the walls, wanting her seventh birthday here now, damnit! It’s hard to believe that she was only five years old this time last year, and had just completed her first year of school. Now she’s looking forward to third grade in August and a seventh birthday in July. Where does the time go?! I still
remember when I found out I was pregnant with her, and how, I wondered, was I going to tell her father, who was undergoing surgery for a stroke. He was pretty sick back then, after being on different blood thinning and clotting agents, various emergency room visits and the commotion of his work being stressful. I don’t know how we made it through those fast times. It all turned out for the best in the end, though.
Today I bought myself a bottle of MAC foundation, Studio Fix Fluid in NC15. I am pale. I never tan, never had a tan, never a natural tan anyway, until I painted one on in high school when tans in a bottle first came out. I liked how the foundation worked out for me. Now, this doesn’t come with a pump, so I ordered one today, but the actual product does well on my face, if I apply it with a make up sponge. I’m kind of a newbie at applying make up because I’ve only done it when I was going to be in a movie, video, on TV, or in a play. My mother never allowed me to have make up, and the girls at school were jealous of my “beautiful” face and adorable looks that I did not need to improve on by starring in a mirror for sixteen hours before school to make sure my face was perfect. Almost everyone I encounter tell me that I don’t need make up, because I’m too pretty for it. But I don’t like my super-shiny face some times, so a good matte finish was nice to have for a change. I’m only going to wear foundation when Dennis takes me somewhere nice, such as all of the movies he has been taking me to these days. Even he says that I don’t need make up and really discourages me from buying it. Probably because I spend too much money
on it that could be better spent on books or instruments.
Ignore my medicine bottle in the background. I know it’s decorated with dinosaur stickers. I’m also aware of the cord in the background. *all smiles*
Dennis made “gut busters” for dinner tonight.
I had a really low blood sugar after eating. It just came on so suddenly. I don’t understand that. I had to eat six PopTarts to get it to go back to a normal range. When I checked my blood after my bath, it was 111. That really frightens me. What if this happens at night while I’m sleeping? What if I can’t get to food in time to get my levels up? Most importantly… Why did this happen? I have been drinking sodas and snacking on cookies all damned day, then I eat dinner and it plummets to the 30s. That doesn’t make sense! I think I need to make another doctor appointment, before something bad happens to me again.
There’s a cold front coming through here on Monday. Figures, huh? We’ll probably get snow! Seriously, that is the “coolest” it’s going to be here for the next 88 days or so. I am not looking forward to being holed up inside all summer long, especially when Chloe wants another amusement park birthday party this year. I just don’t know if I can physically survive the heat this year. I have a nagging suspicion that August is going to be the month that gets me, and that scares me more than anything. I’m glad that we’re blessed to have air conditioners and a cool place to be this summer. I am not happy about having a car with no air conditioning, but I can’t change that now. Of course I have to be the one to drive it this summer because I wrecked my good car. Punishment. It makes a lot of sense.
Bright and early Monday morning I head out for JournalCon/The Great MeetUp, and I won’t be back until the fifteenth of July. I’m going to try to keep everyone updated on what is going on, but my main focus is to get away from it all and relax. Just take things really easy and forget my troubles. Try not to piss James off too badly when I tell him I’m not interested in marrying him. Dennis wants to go with me, and so far that’s the plan. I can only imagine what is going to go down once we get there.
G’Night Everybody!
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