Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I Love Ya, Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the day: Scheduled for induction at 8:45 a.m. My gestational diabetes has gotten a bit out of control the past couple of weeks and I am only 5 days from my due date, so it is time to "git-er done." Hopefully, it should not take too long. My last was over in about 2 hours, but that was a premature labor they could not stop as opposed to an induction, which generally takes a bit longer than spontaneous labor. Thank goodness for epidurals, though. (Yes, I am a wimp during induction, this being my third out of five pregnancies. In my defense, though, I had only a shot of, I believe, Demerol, with my first and NOTHING with my last.)

My boss is awesome. I was scheduled to work this weekend but she asked one of the other gals in the department to cover, so I would have a chance to rest up - and to stop worrying about coverage if I went into labor on my own before or during the weekend. I'm already walking into this with my "normal" MS fatigue (actually a bit worse than normal, since I've been off my Provigil for months, on top of being as big as a house and uncomfortable beyond all imagination - unless you've been 9 months pregnant, that is, and know the meaning of "uncomfortable"!), so a couple of days of rest was just what I needed.

I saw my NL the other day, and she seemed pretty unconcerned about my syringo as far as labor (even though I'm looking at a 9+ pound baby). She said if it looked like I was having complications from it, they could give me some steroids (and presumably a visit with the neurosurgeon and treatment).

We had discussed months ago my return to MS treatment, and this time we talked some more about the problems I had been having on the Copaxone. She is not entirely convinced that was what caused my symptoms, so for now we are going to try it again and see how it goes. I already have most of a box of it (that I already paid through the nose for) sitting in my refrigerator these past 9 months that is good for another few months, so no reason not to give it a whirl, I guess. She had told me before that if I breast-feed, I cannot start back on any of my medications, and I really need to get back on them to try to prevent another flare and to mitigate some of the fatigue and pain from the MS.

So, anyhow.... See ya on the other side, folks!

Something in the Water?

There has been a rash of celebrity deaths in the news of late, coming in far more than "threes," it seems.

Since he will likely receive as little notice in the wake of Ted Kennedy's death as Farrah Fawcett did when Michael Jackson passed away, I note with sadness the passing of Dominick Dunne.

Before I had to cancel my DISH thanks to the crappy economy, I always enjoyed watching his show Power, Privilege, and Justice.

Farewell, my friend. Happy journeys.

Some More Changes

As I did before with my recipes and my jokes, I am splitting off another chunk of content into a separate blog.

You can now find my political-type rants at:
We The People

I will be working on cleaning this site up and finalizing all my goodies on the other sites, trying to get my act together. Seems I do better when I "compartmentalize," so we're going to be busy for a while, straightening stuff out, so bear with me here (if any readers are actually left).

Since Kevin Demands It....

Kevin demands an update. Unfortunately, I still have little to say, suffering a particularly severe bout of blog ennui. So here is an "update" in the strictest sense of the word:

My due date has been moved up to September 19- heading for the final stretch and already roughly the size of a house.

I originally had not wanted to know whether we were having a boy or girl, but curiosity got the better of me; and DH wanted to know, to start pulling clothes out of storage and have them ready: We are having a girl. (Not-so-secretly, just what I wanted, he he!) The other kids are excited, especially my daughter and younger stepdaughter, who were jumping up and down squealing when they found out. Those two are constantly rubbing my belly, trying to make the baby kick. This was the first time I ever had a 4-D ultrasound, and they are pretty slick! (Sorry, my scanner is not working, so no way to post it.)

My gestational diabetes has returned, although seemingly not quite as severe this time - perhaps due to the dietary changes I made pre-pregnancy with the multiple sclerosis. I am extremely uncomfortable (still cannot take Lyrica) and exhausted beyond words (still cannot take Provigil) and somewhat perturbed that I cannot even rely on my standby "energy source" Mountain Dew - the taste of sugary stuff in my mouth makes me gag (also likely helping with the GD). The NP at my OB's office did, however, allow me to continue a good portion of my vitamin regimen with only a few exceptions (which I had already researched and taken myself off prior to being seen).

My two youngest just had birthdays, The Girl turning 5 and The Boy 4. She says "I'm a big girl now," but every once in a while I hear "I'm still a little girl" (mostly when comparing herself in height to others). The Boy needed glasses - and he is in a yank about it. He had them for 4 days and hid them. When Wal-Mart has their back-to-school sale on glasses, we will be getting spares.

My oldest will be 18 in about 3 weeks, and he is chomping at the bit. He has become my star pupil in learning above and beyond what the notoriously poor public schools teach. We are still working on my next-oldest, who seems to be having some difficulty pulling his head out of the public-school mentality (base stupidity) but has been open to learning obscure bits of history about our great state of Michigan.

My stepdaughters were recently forced to return to unsupervised visitation with their "mother" after 2+ years: A horror story of breathtaking magnitude, an unmitigated failure of CPS and the courts. An agent of the court hearing the custody case informed us that "the children have NO rights" but "their mother has a right to see them." So much for "best interests of the child" and the fallacy of CPS actually PROTECTING children.... No sooner had the court released the case from supervision, the games started again - from the safe house we had to request (through the courts) for exchanges due to her harassment and abuse to her continued abuse of us via the internet. Glad there are laws in place and being enforced regarding that kind of behavior.

Still working but not nearly as much as I was, thankfully not due to my health. One group I was doing transcription for went to electronic medical records and no longer needed me; a tragedy (for me), losing roughly one-third of my income. Another doctor I worked for moved to the west side of the state when his wife got a new job, and he was offered one there as well that he could hardly refuse. I wish them luck, but it is still a loss, in more ways than just the pocketbook.

Well, that's about it. Until I am able to get back on my MS medications after I deliver, posting will likely still be scarce. Still looking into my options for disease-modifying agents, since I have little desire to go back on Copaxone with the trouble I was having on it previously. I will be one happy camper when an oral medication is ready for use, since I am not particularly a fan of poking holes in myself with the injectable (currently the only type available) medications.

Take care, and until then....
A.

Loss of a Legend

For many years of my life, I had a friend to keep me company on the road to and from work. He made me think, made me laugh, made me cry, and made me appreciate the others in my life and whatever circumstances I found myself in - because there was always something to look forward to on the other side of the coin.

I just had to be patient to see whether heads or tails turned up and what the next coin toss would show.

Happy journeys, old friend. You will be missed.

Paul Harvey Aurandt
September 4, 1918 - February 28, 2009

For What It's Worth

I am delinquent in posting. Severely. I have dozens sitting here partially completed, waiting for my largeness to get around to finishing them.... I'll think about it, sooner or later. In the meantime, I have other stuff occupying my mind and taking up the entirety of my physical presence - and likely the reason I have hit a rapid downward spiral the last couple months with my health: I just found out I am pregnant.

With each of my last 3 completed pregnancies (and all of my miscarriages, actually), I vomited from start to finish and it never struck me as odd that I have been throwing up nonstop for weeks; I attributed it to my ganky eye, which makes me dizzy and throw up, A LOT.... I never put 2 and 2 together, until I realized I could not remember when my last period was (another bit of weirdness that never means much to me anyhow, being Irregular Flo for the past 25 years), which I tore my brain apart for and could only come up with something not completely normal some time around Christmas - so about 8 weeks or so ago.

The difference this time, however, would be the fact that I have been on multiple Class C medications in an attempt to control my MS. Fortunately, I have been off the Copaxone injections for a while; but I have continued to take Provigil for fatigue and Lyrica for pain.

And my neurologist told me I must stop them.

Of course, this has me concerned. I never had anything more than the routine triple screen with my prior pregnancies. Combined with advanced maternal age (now being 36), this makes me wonder if it might not behoove me to run the gamut this time around - not as a plan for aborting (I could not ever do that, period) but just to be prepared.

On the upside - if this is what is causing me to decompensate physically, MAYBE I will get back to my "baseline" in a few short months and not have to go on disability like my NL suggested! So, keep your fingers crossed that our Peripheral Psycho does not do to me again as she did before, harassing and threatening and stressing me out to the point of loss of my child (which elicited great glee from said PP, unsurprisingly), and that I get a GIRL.

Help Us All

Now, the worry begins in earnest. I did not vote for him, but I will fervently pray for Barack Obama's safety.... God help us all, should some asstard harms him and we are stuck with....

Joe Biden, President of the United States.

*shudder*

It hurts my brain thinking about what he may do as Vice President, let alone were he to be given the reins to the horse.

Giving Up the Ghost

My poor cell phone finally died. For good this time. And the Alltel guys were unable to get my phone book out of it, since it was so old and they no longer had the equipment to do so.

I had to ask, why was I paying insurance on the phone, when they told me they could not repair or replace it with a similar one? Well.... whatever.

I have a slick new phone, which I am having a bit of a time getting used to: An LG Glimmer. I have a sad, sick feeling it will not endure the 7 years my other one did....

My Continuing Assholery

To my friend Shannon: (Regardless of how you feel toward me, I will consider you always as my friend, worthy of respect and high regard; my loyalty runs deep, and I would stand by your side through good times and bad, and all of them in between.)

I am an asshole, and I admit it. I never denied it. My assholery was boldly declared right here on this blog, as a matter of fact, but I seem to have misplaced it with my last template change. I will have to remedy that.

BUT.... do not presume to think you have more than an inkling of what is going on inside my head based on a handful of posts offering a peek inside, across tiny flashes of my life. And frankly, you really have little frame of reference, my having been "out here" for only a year and a half. In fact, had you met me, say two years ago, you would be asking "Who the hell are you and what did you do with Anj?"

I am not the same person I was two years ago. I am not the same person I was ONE year ago. I am probably not even the same person I was two weeks ago. I cannot really declare that with any degree of positivity, fuzzy distortions and even gaping holes where I am quite sure things were before but can no longer be found. I can only "gauge" this difference based on what others tell me - and I have been told more times than I have fingers and toes upon which to count that I am different.

Yes, I am an asshole. Yes, I say things that are weird, nonsensical, or downright ugly. I am acutely aware of how off-kilter I sound most of the time; again, I am told frequently. Some of this comes from the fact that I am just plain weird, a fact that will never change and probably only worsen with time. Some of it comes from feeling stressed or happy or confused or deliciously yummy or depressed to the point of taking a really long look at a really big tree at the end of a really short road trip. Usually it is some confounding combination of all of the above, all at the same time.

That is what happens - to someone like me, anyhow - when over the course of two years (amongst other things):

1. Their mom dies.
2. They are excoriated repeatedly by a vindictive boss who despises efficiency and ingenuity in others when they cannot take credit for it without being caught.
   
3. They are targeted for destruction by someone who has turned her own life inside out and cannot stand to see anyone else who is not MORE miserable than she.
4. They have to "give up" two children to protect them from the manipulations of a "Child Protective" system (wrongfully targeted and destroyed emotionally, physically, and financially even after proven that actions instigated by the "mother" of other children in that person's care - BEATEN AND RAPED by her "boyfriend" and subjected to worse by her as well, after CPS allowed unsupervised visits despite having taken them from her TWICE before for the same reason - in an attempt to cover up their actions).

Oh, and let us not forget being basically eaten from the inside out by an incurable disease that shuts you down inch by painful inch.

So yeah, I chose the circumstances of my life. You know, the ones that made me venomous and hateful - while still allowing me to laugh at a funny joke, to appreciate beauty in every sunrise knowing I might not see the next, or to hold for my children a love so deep that I would die in order to spare them an ounce of hurt. I chose them by choosing NOT to check that tree out real up close and personal-like.

As for lowest common disgusting denominators, yes, it surely was disgusting; and it surely did seem to fit the profile of some of the other "lowest common disgusting denominators" floating around the ether published by some of our internet peers, but was it REALLY any worse than:

• White people are slave masters (all white people unequivocally declared so, end of discussion) getting a glimpse of the "coming role reversal" and they don't like it.
  
• "White people are just too stupid to see we {blacks} can't stand them."
  
• ANY reason for not endorsing Senator Obama, up to and including use of words like "inexperienced" is racist - regardless of one's political affiliation and/or ideology.
  

No, it is not; and I will be the first to admit it is no better, either. I did not say he was going to be wearing one. I expressed a legitimate fear that he will abandon his "blackness," having served its purpose, casting it aside and doing nothing to further the dreams of unity that some of us still actually hold; make valiant promises he has no intention of keeping and dashing the hopes of millions; or compromising an historic opportunity and diminishing the sacrifice of Dr. Martin Luther King in one fell swoop, for personal gain. Human beings all carry a streak of stupidity. In some way, each of us is guilty for picking at the wounds of society, not allowing them to heal.

I stated ages ago that this is a place to dump my "psychological diarrhea," and I was surprised anyone even read it. Part of me had an notion that some were here to gawk, to witness firsthand descent into the darkness that exists on the other side of sanity; if so, they will not have long to wait. My MS appears an aggressive type, with no benefit from "conventional" medical therapies. If you truly believe, though, that my motivation is to be venomous and hateful, you do not give me the benefit of the doubt: You have never once asked for clarification without first passing judgment and, in that respect, you are not truly "hanging in there." If so, you would have seen the changes - both radical and subtle - and understood the reasons behind them. Maybe not liked them, but at least understood.

There is only so much heartache - and I know you know this, with some of the glimpses you have given us the privilege of seeing into your own life and the situations you have faced - one person can bear.

Har De Har Har

WELL, HELL'S BELLS.... I changed my template again. I really like this one, so I'll probably stick with it for a while. Maybe. We'll see. I don't know, and I'm feeling a little weird(er) around the edges this week. I finally got my blogroll back up in 2 of the 3 bottom bars, the third for "goodies." If I missed someone, I apologize--just let me know and I'll get you added. I also put up a few of my photos I managed to scrape off my old hard drive, from Tahquamenon Falls and Sleeping Bear Dunes. Now I just need to find my CD with the rest... And I should probably fix my scanner and start scanning in all my old 35-mm pictures from all over the Upper Peninsula. That sounds like work, doesn't it? Fuck it. (PS: Those are MY pictures, and NO you may not "borrow" them, so I guess I'm exercising my copyright privileges, and of course I know I am an asshole.)

And yes, Fiar, it's another one of those left sidebar kinda thingamajigs and NO I did NOT look at the code or source or whatever it was you mentioned before.... I'm a hardware kinda gal, not software. I was caught fleeing the scene of that crime after my brief interlude with COBOL. A college class I voluntarily took for no good reason--and paid for. I really was (beyond) nuts in my younger days... But this new stuff is all Greek to me, and most days I just don't have the testicular fortitude to take on that challenge. My big brass balls are in need of some polishing, and I'm just too sick and too tired to bother.

DOS is more my speed. It's black and white and all in absolutes--no ifs, ands, or Booleans about it.

By the way.... Fiar is so awesome, I want to have his babies. (Just kidding, buddy.... I've already got a ball and chain. But I might consider a blo.... Never mind.) He was running (actually I think it's still going, since I still see it in the footer of his posts) a contest to win a copy of the DVD Unelectable. I couldn't resist, LOSER stamped on my forehead and the only thing I'd ever won in my life being a diaper bag full of baby goodies from Babies R Us, so I entered.

Dude, I got mine in the mail Saturday!!!! *squealing like a girl* Unfortunately, I haven't been able to commandeer the TV long enough to watch it.

So that now makes TWO things I've won in my life. I'm so proud.

And right now I am exhausted. I've munched down TWO Provigil today, something I haven't done in a few weeks now, but I am just run down from this nastiness I caught and can't seem to shake. And I have a shit load of work staring me in the face, it's 2 a.m., and I don't even want to touch the stuff (which has already been sitting here for a week, no wonder the dude fires me; I just can't figure out why he keeps COMING BACK to me, since I've not been the most reliable, but maybe he just likes my GUARANTEED PERFECTION). I guess it's time to break out the caffeine. That 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew makes a great accompaniment to my inhaler and pack of Marlboro Milds sitting on the desk....

Where Did THAT Come From?

Striking me in the head like a ball out of left field when I'm busy cloud gazing, it whacked me a good one and made me THINK REALLY HARD. I hate when that happens, but I guess we all need a good thunk every once in a while.

I have carried an intense bias—a prejudice—against Hillary Clinton for years. It grew roots even before she took her final steps as First Lady through the White House doors but lay dormant while she occupied her Senate seat: Out of sight, out of mind. That slumber was disturbed and that insularity grew at an astonishing rate throughout her bid to walk back through those doors and once again attach herself to one of the great American icons. I could never put my thumb on WHY I felt that way about her; I could be shallow at times, having other more important personal issues to deal with besides not really giving a shit and not feeling any pressing need to analyze my "relationship" with the former First Lady, the Senator from New York. After all, I don't live there, so she's not my problem.

During the primary season, I was deeply mired in the most horrid living nightmare imaginable, and I was just plain angry—all the time. Sometimes I felt as though I were outside myself, watching some asshole invade my body, stomping and snorting like a bull on the wrong side of the fence from a cow in heat. I wallowed in self-pity, but mostly I was just pissed off—at everyone and everything, all the while dying inside at the thought of my existence as a human being—who I am, who I have been and could still be, my legacy—being erased, wiped out with a toss of the dice.

I spent a lot of time ranting against Hillary (and her look-alike wannabe, *sneering and sarcasm dripping* my very own governor, Jennifer Granwhore), poking fun at her (both of them, really, but particularly Hillary) along the way until she finally bowed out of the race. I see now that most of it was just a diversion away from the reality of my own pain...

A veritable shit storm was brewing in my life. It churned and heaved, pushed and pulled, until finally the torrent was raging past the floodgates. Much like the response to Katrina, I threw a couple of sandbags at it and ran in the other direction, shouting a mantra of "I see nothing, I know nothing." My big fat ass didn't move fast enough, though, and all hell broke loose when it finally caught up with me. By that time, I was a broken person—physically, emotionally, spiritually. I never really dealt with anything, instead tucking issues away into the "Too Bad, So Sad," "That's Life," and "Oh Fucking Well" files, shipped off to storage in the recesses of my mind.

I was nearly destroyed by the chasm that tore through my life on September 12, 2007; although healing was allowed to begin on the 143rd day, the terrorist acts directed against my person created wounds that would take years to mend—and still leaving me with a horrible, twisted scar. I was a wreck, willfully tortured to suit another's obscene pleasure.
I got angry.
I railed against the system.
I bucked and bridled.
~~I screamed and cried and pulled out my hair.
~~I sat stoic and detached, isolating myself from the world.
~~I begged and pleaded to God Almighty for release.
~~I laughed and ran in circles like a lunatic dumped rudely out the asylum window, deprived of the mind-altering drugs that life and functioning were dependent upon.

You can only run from reality for so long. She is a relentless mistress, howling in the night and stalking you through the shadows and fleeting light of your mind, invading your dreams and every waking thought, finally reaching across the distance to tap you on the shoulder and announce her arrival. She will strip you naked and flay the flesh from your bones in a gruesome testimony to her power. You have to deal with her, one way or another.

Recently those files, previously casually dismissed, managed to hitch a ride back to Central Dispatch: Plopped down in the center of my desk, open wide and demanding my attention. I was overwhelmed at the enormity of the issues I failed to deal with in my life, but I knew I must tackle them, one by one. Out of the blue, it dawned on me what it was all along that bothered me, the reason I had such a bug up my ass about Hillary Clinton.

On more than one occasion in my life (3 to be exact), my "significant other" cheated on me; while the relationships had not been marriages, it had been expressed and implied as being monogamous. I hold a promise in high regard, and I despise broken promises; if I know I cannot deliver on a promise, I will not make it, but if I do make one then I will hold to my word. I can declare, resolutely and honestly, that I have never cheated—not even on a man I was "casually dating." On the other side of that nickel, I can resolutely and honestly state that I have thought about cheating in retaliation but realizing that petty act has no meaning since he has already done the deed, was obviously not emotionally vested in the relationship anyhow, and my actions would have been moot—nothing more than further degradation of myself and my self-esteem. So I never did it. I'm an asshole, but I'm not stupid.

Here's the thing, though. Having knowledge of this foul act devastated me. Why would he do that to me? Am I not good enough for him, that he has to find what he needs elsewhere? What is wrong with me?

Or... Is he just an asshole?

In my famous manner, I picked it apart and analyzed it—methodically, rationally, and objectively. I found that the answer—and the question—is the latter rather than the former. I am who I am, and that will never change. If someone doesn't like me for who I am, tough shit. This was HIS loss, not mine. I may have been stripped of some dignity, but I still had my integrity.

Seeing Hillary appearing to do NOTHING in response to her husband's wandering dick just really pissed me off. How dare she not stand up for herself? How dare she roll over and accept this kind of behavior from a man who swore an oath before God binding himself to her for life, denigrating her with his philandering?

HOW DARE SHE?

Then I saw this video:



And I realized... We all deal with the humps and bumps in life in our own way. I have mine, and Hillary has hers. I can't say how Hillary dealt with Bill's wandering dick, obviously doing so in private (as is her right)—but dealing with it, living with it, and moving on with life. Who was I to criticize her decision to stand beside her man instead of giving him a Bobbit, stabbing him in the eye with a high-heeled shoe, or telling him on national TV to fuck off?

To be frank, I was not drawn to this video by its intended message. What grabbed me, what made me grasp the absurdity of my previous stance against her, were the still shots of Hillary Clinton, the person:
~~The young bride in the arms of a husband whose adoration of her in that moment lights his face like the rising sun.
~~The new mother facing the uncertainties of parenthood but proud of the opportunity to escort one of His little ones through this lifetime.
~~A warm and radiant and truly remarkable woman...
In many ways JUST.LIKE.ME.

I felt a connection to Hillary Clinton for who she is, what she has been and could still be.
The woman...
The wife...
The mother...
~~And her legacy.

Not the politician. Not the victim of a philandering husband. Not the butt of a bad joke.

While I cannot say that I would have voted for you, even after my revelations of late, I can acknowledge my respect for you.

Getting Frogged

I'm starting to get a little frogged. I have a CD with all my photos, backed up when I salvaged the hard drive from my last computer after it puked, AND I CAN'T FIND THE STUPID THING. It seems to have been misplaced in the recent move of my office from the basement to the upstairs, along with a ton of other stuff, presumably in the mountain of shit I still need to move from there to here... in all my spare time. I did happen across one of my daughter's Spongebob CDs that she lost, though, so all is good in Lululand.

I also can't find the photo editing software CD that came with my camera, and I hadn't gotten around to installing on this new computer. A computer, by the way, that I really do not like; but I needed one fast and cheap, so I got this instead of the one I really wanted. I will remedy THAT soon enough, since the "hobby" I've turned to most recently is gutting and rebuilding computers. That's definitely something I would have imagined impossible even a few weeks ago with little to no use of my dominant right arm and, of course, the loss of vision in my right eye. That's all much better now with gobbling megadoses of vitamins 4 times a day. I'm obviously doing well if I can move most of an office full of shit and not feel worried about moving the rest of the mountain, right?...

Amazing how so much of life is a chain reaction...

Anyhow, this weekend I found an HP PC at a garage sale, $15 for the whole shebang. The OS is fried, which is easily solved, but it also doesn't have an ethernet port and needs a NIC installed (I just happen to have one lying around here). I want to install XP, since I used hubby's PC with Vista, and I can unqualifiedly say I DO NOT LIKE IT. But for now I gotta find those CDs. And the USB cable for my camera, which has also disappeared. And the battery charger, since the camera batteries are dead.

This sucks.

Contrary to how it seems, it's not all bad or even mildly irritating around here by any means. In fact, sometimes some pretty funny shit happens. My 3-year-old is learning his letters and he loves looking at books (gets his smarts from me, heh heh). He's rightly understood that the toilet is in the "library." DH walked in on him the other day, sitting there pooping and reading a book. Just now, I was in there peeing and he barged in on me to sign in his oh-so-cute way "poop." The book he had been "reading" before (mine, The Fifth Profession) wasn't there, so he came back a few minutes later with some new reading material. This time, he brought Webster's Dictionary. I about died laughing, thinking about my son shitting to Webster's.

Hooo-leeee Shi-i-i-i-i-it

I am so sick. No, I'm not sick in the head. Honestly. And I'm not talking about MS "shit" either. Just regular run-of-the-mill sick. One of the pleasures of sending your kids off to school is having a couple of hours of "free time." Another is cleaning up snot and puke when they bring home some nasty little bug that some other kid dragged to school because their parents were too selfish (I'm entitled to my alone-time hours, too!!!) or too stoopid (what do you mean a cold is communicable???) to keep their kids home when they are blowing chunks or snorting up loogies the size of golf balls.

I don't just get the sniffles like everyone else. Whatever malfunction of my immune system that has given me the gift of MS - a gift that just keeps giving - has also given me an uncanny ability to fall prey to monsters that other people would experience as mere common colds.

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter came home from school full of snot. She was out of school for 3 days, since I don't feel the need to shove my kids' germs off on others. DH then got the snot, and I kind of chuckled since - AMAZING!!!! - I didn't get it. I allowed myself to be lulled into a sense of security behind my barrier of 2000 mg of vitamin C a day (part of my MS thing). The other kids all went through their bouts with snot, and I signed in relief, thinking it was over - at least until the next time some dickheaded sends their sick kid to school to infect mine.

I couldn't get that lucky, now, could I? No way. I have been afflicted. Only I didn't get the snots like everyone else, I got walking pneumonia. I can't breathe. I can't smoke, because I can't breathe. I'm in a really pissy mood, because I want a cigarette, and DH is standing outside on the porch thinking I can't see him out there smoking... smoking MY fucking cigarettes.

I hack and bark, bark and hack. My ribs are crackling louder than my lungs, and motherfucker do they hurt. I cough so hard, I nearly black out because I can't catch my breath. I coughed so hard at one point, I fell off my fucking chair and pulled all my equipment down behind me, breaking the stupid little stereo adapter I need on my headset, so now I get to buy a new one - even though I just bought this one two weeks ago.

Why can't people just keep their kids home from school when they're sick? Have they no sympathy, that they torture someone like me who has a rogue immune system? Sadistic punks.

Died and Gone To Heaven

I love this new template. It so totally rocks. Yeah, I lost all my gizmos from before, but it's not a big deal to add them back - after I restore my pictures from my old computer to my new computer. They're backed up on a disk floating around here somewhere.... I've moved my office from one room of the house to another, so everything is kind of all over the place right now. For the moment, though, I have most of the important stuff up, including a new blogroll (created from the Blogger gadget thingamabob) but I need to verify because there are some not in my Google Reader but on the Desktop or in Technorati or.... you get the picture.

PS: Those are NEURONS in the header picture, because I'm, like, SMART, ya know?

All Roads Lead to Somewhere

"AH-HA," you say, "Dead-end roads lead nowhere, that's why they're called dead ends." Well, even those roads lead to something, just maybe not what you thought you were looking for in the first place. . . and not all dead-end roads are marked; so if it's not specifically posted as such, is it really? "Well, what about roundabouts? They don't really 'lead' anywhere, either." Ahh. . . but they do! They lead to alternate exits, and they circle back onto themselves, giving you the chance to choose a different route each time you circle around.

Now, my mind isn't really on "roads" other than metaphorically. Negotiating the "roads of life" is never easy and can be often downright treacherous. A map would be nice but, unfortunately, life doesn't come with a map, instruction sheet, owner's manual, or a frigging flow chart. Even if it did, my map was torn to shreds - and after my bold attempt to tape it back together, set on fire and the ashes left to scatter in the wind.

I have, throughout my life, gone from being a shy child bursting into tears upon being addressed to a bold adolescent tired of being whomped on and called "Tits" and learning to stand up for myself to a loud-mouthed young adult having an opinion and not being afraid to express it. As life progressed and I found myself a mother and wife (in that order) and mother yet again, I learned to temper my attitude with some amount of tact, to preserve my credibility so that what I had to say would be listened to and found relevant, even as I listened to and considered other people's positions. Yes, I wanted to hear them, but I wanted to be heard, too! Frequently, however, I was drowned out, dismissed, ignored out of hand. Too often I let it go, failing to stand up for myself and what was inside me - I don't know if it is residual from my early childhood fears or a survival function, telling me to keep my mouth shut to preserve my ability to support my family. Anyhow, I think I am just wandering to see where I end up next and, if it's not the destination I desire, plotting my next course to try to get there.

* * * * * * * * * *

I find myself waxing philosophical more and more now than at any other time in my life. I've always had strong opinions and beliefs and although the "cores" of these essential building blocks in the foundation of my interpersonal construction stand strong and true, I find that what is actually housed inside the buildings of my personality can vacate and be replaced as rapidly as tenant turnover in a shitty apartment complex. (I don't have the strength, mentally or physically, to explain that right now. Sorry. Strangely, I have a mental image of a box of donuts from a gas station convenience store - chocolate, powder, and plain - even after you eat the "good" ones, the plain ones pick up some of the powder from inside the box, so they don't look like it but are really still just plain donuts; I know this makes no sense, so blame it on the drugs.)

Part of me wonders why this change is happening, or whether it's been happening all along and I just never noticed it before. Is it age, mellowing? Is it chemical alterations from the MS and/or the pharmacy I now need to treat (not cure, just TREAT) it? Is it just a natural human reaction to opening my eyes and seeing the plight of my fellow man and an inherent desire to create a better world?

I'm very upset lately, confused and kind of. . . I don't even know the words anymore. I want to blame my disease for that lack of clarity I always had, but now part of me wonders if it's entirely the "cognitive impairments" associated with MS or something else.

Fuck This Fucking Blog

That about sums it up, eh?

It's crazy. I used to love this place and now I just think it sucks. All I do is spew bile and there's no fun in that. There were actually a couple of posts between this one and the last, but I never published them since they were just vile and better left unread by anyone. Including me.

Anyhow. I have a new roof on my house AND garage and a new patio slider door and front door on my house, all told coming to somewhere in the vicinity of $10,000. It was totally worth it, though. Now I can actually heat the house in the winter instead of heating the outdoors and scooping snow off my floor that came in around the door--not THROUGH the door, AROUND the door frame. Yeah. Nice, huh?

My dad built this house in 1979. Nearly everything used in its construction was the cheapest that could be had, including a lot of the lumber coming from an old church (my mom swore the house was haunted with the ghosts of those whose funerals were held in that church, but I look at it that my house has God's own blessing on it). He once told me he built the whole house for about $10,000. The whole house built 30 years ago for what it cost me just for a new fucking roof and some doors. It's not hard to believe, though, considering he used odd-size doors and windows (which of course are no longer manufactured so you can see the problem I have now that I need to replace them????? CAN YOU SAY "SPECIAL ORDER"?????), 3/8" drywall instead of 1/2", and drop-tile ceilings IN EVERY ROOM (STYROFOAM tiles in the basement--I'm not shitting, they really were). He hung cedar siding and stained it this shitty rust-colored brown (it's fucking ugly, trust me) and then never took care of it so it's gone beyond "weathered" to just plain nasty and looks even shittier now sitting under that new roof, so that's my next project when I grow a new arm and leg to saw off in order to pay for it. The biggest relief came in replacing that patio slider, which never had a screen door and no way to install one on the frame and, hence, no way to take advantage of the cool night air unless you want to be eaten by 4,326,782 mosquitoes the size of 747's.

We grow 'em big here in Michigan. Don't let them try to fool you with that "The robin is the state bird" bullshit. Our state bird is the Anopheles quadrimaculatus.

But, again, I digress. After 30 years of Michigan weather with little to no maintenance, my house was in rough shape when I got it after dad built himself a new house (using GOOD shit, of course). And ugly. I hate ugly. I've tried hard to remedy that. That new front door alone set me back close to $1500, BUT IT'S SO PURTY!

The crew that did my roof and doors didn't fuck around. They tore off the old shit, did repairs, and re-shingled the house AND the garage and hung new doors in three days.

Three fucking days. I almost shit my pants.

DH has been "remodeling" the inside of the house for 6-1/2 YEARS and there's not even ONE FUCKING ROOM completely done--and it's not for lack of materials since the garage is so full of shit I've bought for the house that you can't even park the car in the goddamn thing. I don't expect it to ever get done unless I hire those guys to come back and finish it--without FUCKING IT UP and then blaming it on me.

Unhealthy Obsession

I realized just now, at 6:41 a.m. on July 17, 2008, that I have an unhealthy obsession with data in general and the organization of data in particular.

I feel an overwhelming need to put everything in Excel. I think I would die if I didn't have access to it. Well, probably not DIE, but at least have a really big hole in the middle of my entity where Excel belongs.

My budget and bills and many other records are all neatly organized in Excel spreadsheets, each month its own separate sheet within the workbook, columns and rows keeping everything organized, colors and fonts to draw focus where needed, everything in order right down to the last comma and dollar sign.

I created a continuous yearly calendar with a section for notes for the month, each date consisting of two rows and one column, borders and numbering in place. It's easy to copy over to the next year, tweak a couple of formulas, and keep it going to the following year. I fiddled with the fonts and justification to make it aesthetically pleasing, but I didn't use any colors this time. Regardless, it's truly a work of art.

I used to do all of my billing and invoices for my independent contracting business in Word. They were neat and orderly, receiving a face lift now and then with font changes and lines and anything else I could use to make it stand out, distinguish it from the 40,572 other papers sitting on the doctor's desk, so he would remember to pay me. They served me well for more than 10 years, until earlier this year when I just couldn't resist the urge anymore: I was tired of adding lines manually on a calculator billing took forever doing it that way, the more accounts I worked (besides the fact that one of the kids stole my $65 printing calculator left over from my college accounting program days). Why am I torturing myself when Excel will do the work for me!?!? At first, I created billing sheets for each doctor and attached it to the invoice (with a note in the "details" pointing to the Excel data, of course!). Then recently I started sneaking copy-and-paste Excel tables into the invoices, to keep it all on one page and reduce the number of trees I contributed to murdering. Finally, I gave up and generated the entire invoice in Excel. Even that process has morphed recently, each invoice as a separate file now each DOCTOR as a separate "book" with each INVOICE a separate page within. Instead of hundreds of files in dozens of folders and subfolders, I now have 6 files - period.

The depths of my obsession should have become apparent when I made a "camping checklist" (I ranted about my camping stuff before) before my vacation recently so DH wouldn't forget things, said list proceeding immediately from his fingertips into the trashcan. "I know how to pack, I'm not stupid." Columns dividing gear, clothing, food, etc.

In retrospect, I can see that this isn't a new issue like my memory problems, something I can readily attribute to cognitive or psychiatric consequences of MS. In cleaning up my computer files - the time during which I decided to streamline the doc's accounting processes - I notice that I've been sneaking Excel worksheets into my life for years.

When You-Know-Who started bitching and moaning that I wasn't sending "her" money to her and filed a contempt motion against us for violation of the custody orders, I started a log: Each month I cut her a check for 1/2 of the girls' Social Security benefits received and recorded the date, amount, check number, and any amount she indicated to me (in writing!!!) to deduct, like 1/2 of their school lunch costs. After she cashed each check, I entered the date cleared by my bank.

Some dickweed keeps leaving my DVDs lying around, since putting them away when they're finished with them would be too easy, and many are lost, broken, or deeply scratched; another dickweed borrows them without asking then sells them on eBay. I have a list of all of the DVDs I've bought, separated into genre, with a column for those that are missing. (This was part of a document for my house insurance listing everything I owned, something about it being a cost of replacement policy.)

I didn't have the time or inclination to go buy real blueprint paper, so I made a grid to "blueprint" my staircases, each square representing 1 inch.

With the second FT job I worked a while back, I kept a workbook with each pay period - you guessed it - on a separate sheet with days, times in/out, and lines transcribed. We didn't have a "time clock" to punch, but we had to enter all of that into the time card at the end of the pay period. My time sheet book had formulas to calculate daily hours worked, lines per hour, downtime, and gross earnings. I have another that I made for my current job, when they wanted me to start documenting what I was doing each and every minute of my 8-hour shift every day (a story for another day).

I haven't gotten a notice yet on my 2008-2009 federal student loan interest rate and monthly payment amounts, but I have a spreadsheet to enter them into when I do, tracking the 10-year trend of this information, complete with the change in each from year to year since I went into repayment.

When I was working 2 full-time jobs and 1 part-time job, classically "employed" at 3 different companies, AND self-employed as an independent contractor for between 3 and 6 doctors across 4 different accounts, I made a schedule to plan my time, columns Monday through Sunday, time in 24 rows of 1-hour blocks, midnight to midnight. Each job was color coded, so I knew what I should be doing at any given time, when I could schedule a doctor's appointment and even when I could sleep.

The fuse box in our house had something not quite right going on with it. Although my office had been split across 2 breakers and the kitchen had been split across an additional 2 breakers (high usage areas, to prevent tripping the breaker), every time someone would turn on the microwave in the kitchen at the other end of the house, the whole kitchen and one side of my office would blow. We needed to map out the fuse box to see which breakers controlled each area of the house, since things got kind of buggered during the remodeling, so I made a chart.

There are no depths to which I will not stoop in order to create an Excel worksheet for something, but I can't organize my desk to save my life. Whenever I need an ink pen, I have to sift through a mountain of papers, which curiously are often hard copies documenting my passion for data organization, even though I have filing cabinets. Filing doesn't involve using Excel, so it doesn't interest me.

Another Hmmmmm.........

My right arm weakness has progressed and regressed and progressed some more, each time leaving me with less function to the point where now my arm is basically useless. Trying to find some type of support or bracing system that would maintain my arm in a position to still be able to use my fingers (which are as yet unaffected, just the muscles in my shoulder girdle and upper arm) is pretty much impossible. I found one that was meandering down the lines of what I wanted, but of course would not provide me the functional ability I want to be able to sign (speak) to my husband and to work.

Hmmmmmm...... my sparks of creativity are being fanned, and maybe it's time for this dough-head to enter the "inventions" market, designing my own brace.....

Okay, for This Week

I'm finally done (kind of) fucking around with my blog template again. I'm pretty pleased with myself this time around, too. It's slicker 'n snot on a doorknob, if I may be so bold. OH, of course I may? Why, thank you. I finally put my blog roll back up, too (about damn time, huh?). I found a template that got me all excited and I tweaked it all up all by my lonesome, from a 2-column to 3-column format with some trial and error (mostly error). I also added some "page" posts, where I can collect my favoritest of my favorite funny shit and whatnot.

Now to get over to my other sites and do sometime to spice them up, and then maybe I will actually get back to BLOGGING something.

It's just been kind of crazy around here lately, either I feel like shit or I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with work, most days feeling like shit AND overwhelmed with work or feeling like shit BECAUSE I'm overwhelmed with work.

I should just quit work and go live in a box.

Kicking Myself in the Head

Or I would, anyhow, if my leg reached that high but it d0esn't so I'll just imagine that I'm doing it.

I sooooooooo wish I had upgraded my RAM years ago.

I also wish I'd bought a wide screen monitor years ago.

I like the feel of my new keyboard, too, but neglected to pay attention to the "little things," like the hot key combination needed to switch between PCs with the KVM switch. . . DOES.NOT.WORK. on this keyboard. You have to push the button for the PC you want to use, on the switch itself.

Everything else is peachy, though.