Dammit, why is it everything I like either makes me sick or is discontinued?

My husband wanders in while I'm asleep today and says "some contact lens solution is causing people to get eye infections". So, I figure, it's got to be the one I use. And on the five o'clock new there's a tiny little story that yes, Bausch & Lomb ReNu with Moistureloc (hit your refresh button if this doesn't load) has been voluntarily pulled after reports of people getting fungal corneal eye infections. And apparently this has been going on for over a month overseas...

Crap, why are we hearing about this just now? I've been using this product since I started wearing contact lenses (again) last fall. And I have an already damaged and infection-prone cornea (from RK surgery), and have been having even worse blurred vision than usual since I began wearing contacts, which my optometrist explains is most likely from my overly sensitive corneas.

I've got so many things wrong with my vision that one more problem doesn't make me run to the doctors office, though one of the people at the optometrist mentioned I should try ClearCare if I'm prone to eye infections. It's good, and easy to use, and I already have a bottle around and coincidentally just got my new box of contacts in yesterday, so today is a new pair. But ReNu is so good for dry eyes. And their eyedrops are fabulous, I wonder if they're pulling them too?

But then again, I wonder if any of this is even real. I used to hate conspiracy theories, but so many are true now that when I hear anything bad about a company I have to start wondering about their competition. I don't trust anyone anymore, it's very sad.

I sat and watched Prozac Nation this evening, Sparky taped it for me ages ago, but I was in a weird mood and wanted to watch something dark and dramatic tonight, maybe to make myself feel better, and I'm 'sort of' caught up on my Ebay work so I thought what the hell.

We have HBO right now, and Sparky was bored himself yesterday and sat and watched Spanglish on TV, expecting a comedy, which he decided was a huge mistake afterwards. He said it was a depressing film about miserable people and it had a very unhappy ending.

Prozac Nation was also about miserable, depressing people but it had a somewhat abrupt kind of happy ending, she got on Prozac and, after a suicide attempt, she got better. I had never read the book, but I had thought it was more about her experiences with taking the medicine, but most of the film she's in psychotherapy, which looked about as boring and un-useful as the short period that I went through. I only went because in the early 90's my insurance required me to receive my prescription from an actual medical psychiatrist, and required a minimum number of office visits.

Now you could probably get anti-depressants from your veterinarian... or at least your OB/GYN doc. Which is not necessarily a good thing. Prozac can be a great medicine, or it can really wreak havoc with your mind and body. Or it can do both. It's done both to me, but I'm not sure I could completely do without it. I have managed to back off from 40 mg a day to 10-15 (I actually dump half of the 10 mg capsule out, don't try this at home). All without medical supervision, because I do not have insurance, and even when I did the doctors I've dealt with have proven to be both uncaring and irresponsible about prescribing medicine, though I can see their viewpoint also - they see hundreds of people a week, they are overworked and understaffed, and the pharmaceutical companies are constantly marketing products to them, and they cannot keep up on all of the required reading. But don't get me started on the evils of the pharmaceutical companies.

But after a year or so of taking 40 mg of Prozac daily, I realized that I was actually feeling worse than I was at lower doses, and I was having lots of weird physiological side effects - such as feeling numb internally. Which was making it hard to do things like use the bathroom, I actually had lost my sense of feeling and could not use my internal muscles. Of course, the numbness could be sort of pleasant also, it masked some of the pain from my MS, but after my doctor gave me yet another medicine to help me be able to use the bathroom (Bethanechol aka Urecholine), I realized that this whole situation was terribly warped. Also the new medicine was horrifically expensive, which prompted me to reevaluate what I was taking and start hunting for side effects.

Back when I could take antihistamines (they cause an allergic reaction on me now, see 300 things) I used to take the super-allergy med Seldane. My allergist was giving it to me up to twice a day (it was a once a day drug), along with another daily new allergy medicine called Hismanal. I started having heart palpitations, so I went to my GP doc, who sent me in to have heart testing, I even wore a holter monitor for 24 hours, and they couldn't find anything other than my mitral valve prolapse. No one ever questioned what I was taking daily as a possible cause. But then one day I stumbled upon a sheet of Seldane side effects and - wow - heart palpitations were up high on the list. I backed off on using it, and the palpitations went away. Seldane was pulled from the market not long afterwards because patients were having serious heart problems. And I was taking a triple dosage each day under the advice of my doctor. So I'm not very trusting of most doctor's standardized prescriptions and opinions, I don't fit the standardized patient mold.

But I've been carefully backing off on the Prozac, trying to keep it to the 10-15 mg level. I was very lethargic a few weeks ago and I jumped back to 20 mg and it made me pretty manic, so I went back to 10. Physically things seem to be working a little better, though everything does hurt more. But my brain is a little clearer, my OCD is still tormenting me, but I care more about things. The higher dosage made me feel very mentally numb also, I lost interest in a lot of things. I thought I was just getting older and more jaded, but I know a lot of it was the Prozac turning the volume down on everything. Which, like I said, can be nice at times. If it weren't for my stomach problems I could very easily become addicted to things like painkillers just to NOT feel all of the weird signals my body is sending out constantly. But painkillers make my stomach hurt and make me feel like I need to be eating all the time, which is not good.

The other thing I noticed immediately was that time seemed to move at a normal speed again. It was actually quite slow now. I had a lot more time in my day to get things done. Almost too much time. Before, life just kind of whirred past me in a blur, I would spend whole days getting nothing accomplished yet feeling like I was always busy, just really ineffective. So that's one of the ways I'm judging if I'm on the right dosage now, if time seems to be passing at the correct speed. I'm wondering if I'm a little bipolar, though. I have times where I can get lots done and other times when I just feel paralyzed and can't seem to get anything done, can't even start. Like typing entries in my weblog, or even answering emails from friends. I need to find a balance between the all or nothing mentality. Logically I know it's a problem, and my conscience will make me do things I have to do when I'm feeling paralyzed, but it's hard. My poor husband has been wondering why he sometimes gets some really weird choices for dinner and at other times I just dive in and cook something, but when I'm paralyzed even thinking of what I'd like to eat is nearly impossible, let alone shopping for it and cooking it.

But it's probably just my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder acting up, I don't get the euphoria that people that are truly bipolar describe, I just feel like I need to work and get as much done as I can before I crash again. Or it might be my Multiple Sclerosis, that messes with your brain also. When you've got so many things going on at once it's hard to single things out as individual problems. But I've been eating some seriously crappy food lately, I know I need to work on that problem. And I need to do something to move my body more. My latest healthy obsession is with Shakira and her music. Listening to her (and watching her perform) is very inspiring and is hitting someplace deep inside me that remembers I used to love to dance.

Speaking of the most depressing day of the year, what did Oprah choose to show that day - what you need to know about Bird Flu. Ok, I had my pencil and notepad nearby to take notes, and the only thing I wrote down was 'have five weeks of food and medicine stockpiled'.

Soooo... the expert she interviewed basically said in a nutshell:

a. This epidemic (or a similar one) is eventually going to spread all over the world
b. There will be no effective vaccine available in time to help anyone
c. The vaccines we have today are useless

and

d. There's nothing we can do about it and thousands, possibly millions of people are going to die.

Well crap, I guess that's actually an appropriate show for the Most Depressing Day. Poor Oprah, she honestly thought the guy was going to tell us something useful or slightly hopeful, even she looked depressed by the end of the show.

The show the day before was What You Need to Know About Terrorism, which was surprisingly more upbeat and hopeful. The three experts on that show actually saw a light at the end of the tunnel (and more eventual attacks), but living in America was actually estimated to be safer than living elsewhere in the world due to the fact that most Americans are still really defensive and pissed off about 9/11 and will beat the crap out of anyone that tries to light his shoe on fire in an airplane.

And personally, I haven't flown in years, I don't hang out in large crowds or particularly popular places, so my own chances of being blown up by a suicide bomber are pretty low. My husband and I are hermits, we like our home, it's a hassle to leave it, and we'd rather stay in most nights.

But the whole health scare, global pandemic thing does sort of freak me out because my immune system is shot already, and my doctors can't solve the seemingly simple problems (like reflux and allergy) that are making my life a living hell already, can you imagine what would happen in a real health crisis? Like New Orleans, only much bigger?

The only useful thing the Bird Flu guy did say is that we need to harrass the govenment and ask them to do something. I guess the 2006 elections will be a good start. I'd like to ask them to leave and let someone else try and fix their mess, anyone, my cat could do a better job...

Writing offline... because my damn cable modem has been mostly offline the last few days, and this evening has been basically an exercise in not trying to pull my hair out. I'm so tired of watching little spinning symbols. Damn, there are so many things I can't do without an internet connection, and I had a bunch of auctions end this evening. Can't look up or research anything, can't print postage, can't send invoices or emails, can't answer questions, can't list anything for auction. And lots more auctions tomorrow, here's hoping Time Warner gets their shit together. Ebay also, the few times I was up tonight, Ebay was almost always down.

Well, I've made an initial commitment to picking my contact lenses - I'm trying three different presciptions as a start. All are bifocals with the "high" add. I found my brain won't let me do one low and one high, which is what the doc kept trying on me in different variations. One strength works pretty decent for driving and running around to the grocery store, etc., and I'm basically testing the other two for reading and computer work. Kind of fun, I can put 2.5+ in both eyes (I've got two of them on hand), or a 2.5+ and 2.75, or a 2.75+ and a 3.0+ for when I'm really blind. I'm SO bad at the "better... worse?" thing, they all look fuzzy to me, dammit. So I'm going to get to experiment on my own now. And when I get my three boxes of contacts in, I'm going to try two 2.75s for reading. And the eye shop I'm going to say they would meet the prices of Sam's Club - which will save me $20 a box on refills.

On another note, I need to remember to do things like color my hair before it gets cold. We have a 1950's tile bathroom and the thought of standing around naked waiting for color to develop is not very appealing when it's 40 degrees outside. We don't get much winter here in Houston, but I'm such a sissy. I have to force myself to take showers and washing my hands is just plain painful at times. I share a circulation problem with my mom, the name of it slips my mind right now (ah, Google is working - it's Raynaud's Syndrome), but any cold weather at all is intensely painful. RIght now I can't feel my nose, my toes are cold in my fuzzy Dearfoams, and my hands are icy and numb. And it's like 70 degrees inside the house right now. I need to start eating ginger root again, it helped with my stomach problems and one of the nice side effects was it kept me warm. Either that or have a shot of port...

Been battling a sinus infection all week which literally started the day the weather turned cold. I always get sick around the holidays, whether I stay inside and hide or not. We've been invited to my parents and the inlaws to be stuffed twice this Thursday. I may make Sparky drive for the dinner invite to his mom's, she's across town and I have this weird tendency to fall asleep after eating at her house already, after two turkey meals I'm probably not going to be real perky.

My mom asked me to bring a dessert (I love bringing dessert, I'm actually good at that), and Sparky's mom asked for a veggie so I'm doing green bean casserole. I was going to use fresh beans, but they didn't look too healthy in the store the other day. I'm not good at transporting food in cars (or on cafeteria trays, etc.), but I'll give it a try. I haven't turned our oven on since last Christmas (annual Xmas scones for my dad). Now I've got to start thinking about Christmas (and three holiday birthday, four including mine) gifts.

I think I've stalled as long as I can, I'd better go shower, brrr. Oops, can't go yet, the eight minute extended version of Donna Summer's "Last Dance" just cycled onto my iTunes :-)

P.S. I've got comments turned on to Moderate right now (I have to approve them). Apparently MT 3.2 isn't as efficient as Blacklist was. Or I don't have it tweaked correctly, who knows. I tried to "preapprove" my regular commentors, so hopefully it won't affect any of you. Too many damn spammers. Someone has picked up one of my parked domains and has been spending tons of emails all over the place using my domain name, I'm getting like 400 bounces a day from their antics, I hope it stops soon, how annoying.

Last Wednesday I finally got up the nerve (and money) and walked into a local optometrist office and asked if they could give me an exam for contact lenses.

Reader's digest history:

* I was born with 20/400 vision, hated glasses as a kid (ugly, inconvenient, made me dizzy)
* Got contacts in high school when soft contacts became readily available
* By my mid-twenties could barely wear them anymore due to allergies and dry eyes (they kept sticking to my eyes!) so I had the old-fashioned RK surgery
* It gave me bad night vision and weakened by close-up vision but it worked OK till my late 30's
* Then my close-up vision got steadily worse till I had to start wearing reading glasses, which didn't work well and made me dizzy
* Then my distance vision started getting fuzzy and I developed double vision in my right eye
* My stupid opthalmologist basically told me between my MS and the RK side effects I'd never see well so I should just wear cheapie reading glasses and suffer
* I went to an different optometrist who managed to give me a set of halfway decent presciptions for distance and reading glasses, which took forever to get used to and helped a little
* I still hate wearing glasses - they still make me dizzy, I'm tormented by glare because of the RK scars, and I feel like I'm looking at the world between bars or out of a tiny window, they actually made me really irritable and gave me panic attacks

So I finally decided what the hell, Halloween was in a few days, I would be wearing a ton of eye makeup, and contacts had to be better than glasses, even if I couldn't get near 20/20. And I know I could never handle bifocal glasses, my depth perception is non-existant with regular glasses.

So I plunked down my $260 and have been experimenting with different combinations of contact lenses. I had read that I would probably need RGP contacts (mega expensive) but the doctor has been trying B&L Multifocal soft contact lenses instead. Bifocal contacts? Wow, who'd of thunk it...

My only problem has been balancing the driving and walking around part of my world with the reading books and staring at a computer all night part. He tried making my right eye do distance and my left eye do reading, but my right eye wouldn't allow the left eye to be stronger without giving me a piercing headache. So he changed them up and gave me a third contact for my right eye to try and use for closeup work. Still giving me headaches, though, I think it's too strong. I'm trying not to be a pesky patient but I don't think I can handle using it till my next Wednesday appointment, I'm probably going to go in and bug them this weekend and see if I can get a somewhat less intense reading lense, the variation between the two is just not working.

The non-reading set is actually pretty good, though. It's wonderful to be able to drive around with my normal sunglasses, walk through stores and look at price tags without having to pull out my reading glasses, and just not feel like I'm looking at the world through a fricking window. And not to have to contantly worry about getting smudges on my glasses. My cat loves it, she can get right in my face without bumping into a piece of metal.

I know it supposed to take several weeks at the minimum to adjust to multifocal contacts, and I'm trying to be patient and let my brain adjust. The worst part so far, though, is when I take them out, my vision is severely blurred for several hours afterwards. Like my eyes have been dilated. I can't even see with my reading glasses on. Apparently my cornea was so messed up by the RK surgery that it's easily distorted even by soft contacts. So no more reading in bed for me (sigh). I hope that side effect fades over time, but I've got a bad feeling it won't.

But I keep telling myself... it's better than glasses. And I understand in the UK they've almost got the whole corneal lens implant thing perfected.

Royal at Esplanade Street -- click image for larger view

OK, I think the digestive problems I had the other day were not caused by food poisoning but by an accumulation of nerves and stress. I have a hiatal hernia and my entire upper abdomen has been swollen, painful and feels like there is a large rock in there, especially when I am moving around. I haven't had problems much in that area lately and I'm trying to remember what the hell to take for it. I used to take a generic anti-spasmodic called Hyoscyamine (sp?) but I think when I went to the doctor for my physical last I got a version with Belladonna in it, which I took once and had head to toe hives afterward so I dunno... It's been hurting for three days now, I might call my stranded friend and see if her husband can call me the old prescription in... I hate to bug him for something silly like that, but he's helped me out with antibiotics and things before.

Speaking of, I haven't talked to my friend Mary today. We tend to be late night chatters and I hate to think I'm going to wake up her baby, husband, and other relatives by calling too late. She's been mostly using her cellphone, but since her former household is all in one room now I think I'll let her call me.

I made a grocery store run tonight, we were starting to run out of "important" things like Sparky's Diet Mountain Dew and popcorn. And I was down to one minibag of Watermelon Jelly Bellies, my current sugar addiction. I actually like the Buttered Popcorn flavored ones better, but the little kiosk in my grocery store has only had Watermelon, Cinnamon and now Licorice (and several little multiflavor bags, I may have to get one of the Tropical Asst. next). I've falled off the sugar and candy wagon again... I'd like to start drinking again but I've been having too many bladder related problems and really don't want to deal with that right now.

I went to the store after dinner because I had to get some DVDs up on Ebay if I want to have any money at all this weekend (my commission people need to be paid), and I didn't get hardly anything done this past week. The store was full of unfamiliar faces, and a few yuppies trying to get their stuff and get out as fast as possible. I have to admit to one actual moment of being a little worried when a group of black teenagers got a little too excited in the back of the store, which I was headed to. They didn't sound violent, just way too excited to be in a grocery store at 10 pm on a Monday night. There were lots of young people shopping tonight, not at all the normal clientele. And some of the young men who worked there were discussing an episode of someone being robbed for flashing too much money, nice...

Last week's shopping trip was actually much more dangerous, and that was several days before the storm even hit. A young woman was robbed at gunpoint while I was in the store shopping, and because the way the place is laid out (it's a huge maze after a recent remodel, bad idea guys), all I could hear was someone screaming and cursing and them a lot of banging around. When I got back up towards the front of the store, I saw a young black female bodybuilder that I had passed earlier (she was beautiful, you had to notice her), pacing back and forth at the front of the store, screaming into her cellphone, and there were some displays of bicycles and things laying on their sides in her wake, which would explain the crashing sound. I had to sideline one of the sackers to escort me out to get the story of what actually happened.

I got an escort out tonight too. Besides feeling like crap (I had to load and unload all of the groceries once already), Sparky had heard some stories from the convenience store in our neighborhood that they were going to such extremes as not selling money orders after 4:00 pm for the safety of their customers and themselves, because there were a lot more people than normal walking around the area. So as my sacker is helping me out the door, and I'm trying to balance the cart (I stuff as much as possible into it each time, I hate to grocery shop) three police cars with lights and sirens fly down the street, in a huge fricking hurry. When I was a few blocks from my turn-in, I saw where they all were... right at the end of my street, great. There must have been eight police cars, two ambulances and I'm sure some wreckers in the melee, I turned in a few blocks early because it appeared the street was blocked in both directions. They were all out there for about an hour, so it was probably an auto accident.

There's just too much drama, I hate drama. I could live the rest of my life without any more drama, but there's just no way to avoid it. I think I'm going to channel some of my energy into ransacking my wardrobe and looking for things to give to charity. It looks like there are a few clothing donation centers that aren't too far away that I can give clothing to the hurricane victims, Star of Hope and Goodwill. I used to give to the Houston Women's Center a lot, but they stopped accepting donations directly. Purging with a cause makes me feel better, and I still have a lot more clothes than I wear working at home. I've given several cash donations to the Red Cross, Noah's Wish, the Houston Humane Society, and the Houston Humane Society (which I give to fairly regularly anyway), every little bit helps.

Last night was going along quite well until I got out of the shower and noticed that my vision was even stranger than usual... there were shimmering lights everywhere, growing brighter as I watched.

Hmmm... is it my eyes or my brain? Close one eye... flashing away. Close the other eye... yep still there. Must be migraine time. Nothing hurts yet, damn Sparky wants his dinner soon, guess it will be delivery tonight after all. I tend to get migraines during that wonderful PMS time, which I'm sort of in now because I've been screwing around with my birth control pills (didn't want to have headaches during my road trip or the week after with my dad having surgery). I'd take them non-stop, but the doctor bitches about it and I don't want to run out before my 12 months are up. I only go 3 or 4 days off anyway, nothing happens except the damn migraines (I seem to have reached perimenopause).

Luckily I have a large supply of Maxalt tablets, Merck will send them to you free if you don't have insurance and are poor enough, bless their black little pharmaceutical giant hearts. They cost about $16 a pill, so that's one less thing to worry about. I also get my Singulair from them, which retails around $100 a bottle, so two less things. I wish the Ambien people has a patient assistance program (can't sleep... clown will eat me...), that's my only other hovering around $100 a month prescription.

So I took a pill and lay down on the bed till dinner came (Chinese, isn't that a brilliant choice with a migraine!) watching the as the lights went from SpiroGraph frenetics to a tolerable pulsing. The Maxalt makes you kind of woozy by iteslef, and I don't usually even take one till I've been in pain for a day or so already, but the aura or halo lights really freak me out. I've had migraines for years, but this is only like the fourth time I've had the aura warning. Last time was after getting out of the shower also...

So it was sort of a forcibly calm evening for me. I do now believe the vision problem in my right eye (varying degrees of double vision and presbyopia) really is neurological (MS, optic neuritis related) and not as much actually a physical problem (from RK surgery in the 80's to correct my vision) because my vision got noticeably clearer after taking the Maxalt. Still not real good, but not a complete blur like it's been doing lately.

No headache by bedtime. I was going to go over to my parents to help my dad out with his spinal implant remote control (that was the afore-mentioned surgery, more on that to come) today but when I called at 1:30 (had to set an alarm to wake up that early) to see if the rep was still coming at 2:00, my mom told me she was already there, came early, and was almost finished. I lay there a few minutes accessing my situation, felt a pain behind my left eye and decided since I could go back to sleep for a few more hours I may as well take another Maxalt to knock out round two of the migraine.

Several groggy hours later I finally got up, and have been having another quiet evening. Actually made Sparky his spaghetti tonight (I need to go grocery shopping, dammit). I had one of my weird concotions - cranberry chicken salad from Sam's Club, with spring salad mix, strawberries, raspberries and walnuts wrapped in a flour tortilla. I've been on an "everything tastes better in a tortilla" craze lately, I even put my chinese food in there last night (I'm not a big rice fan).

It's time to take another shower before bed and now I have a slight throbbing beginning behind my right eye, hopefully I'll sleep decent tonight and wake up feeling better tomorrow. I don't really want to spend another day in woozy druggy land. I haven't been sleeping worth a damn the last few days, most likely also a hormonal problem. Can we just bring on the menopause and get this whole thing over with? I think the perimenopause thing has been going on about four or five years now. Oh well, I think I'll go test the hot shower theory again now. Vision's still pretty good, maybe I can read for a few minutes before bed too.

Hey, it's my 300th entry! And I feel like crap! Oh well. Last Friday I had some sort of spell of severe lower abdominal pain that was immediately followed by what seemed to be a Urinary Tract Infection, so I've had a yucky week so far. Friday afternoon (of course never on a Monday) I suddenly got this horrendous stabbing pain in my lower abdomen/pelvic area and (according to my husband) turned completely gray, started sweating like crazy and then both my arms and legs went completely numb. It felt like electric shocks were running down my arms and legs, I could not even move my hands. I seriously thought either my appendix had burst or I was having some sort of stroke or something. Scared my husband so badly he took me to the local emergency room.

But after we'd sat in the waiting room for about an hour (and they hinted it would be another four or five hours until I could be admitted) the pain subsided to bearable and all I wanted to do was go home, so we did. Then during the weekend I started having all of the classic bladder infection signs, so I took some of my all purpose Keflex and called for a Monday appointment. By Monday, though, I tested negative because I'd taken antibiotics, but the nice lady doctor gave me the requisite Bactrim and the analgesic that gives you neon urine.

So I'm winding up day three of five of my Bactrim treatment and it's helping with the UTI, but I've been feeling just totally wiped all week. Shaky and braindead, headaches, and I've been having some sort of weird non-stop acid reflux, which is a great appetite supressant -- maybe I'll lose some weight this week. I actually have a little burst of energy right now because it's been like 12 hours since I took my pill (next one's at bedtime).

So I grab my handy dandy Pill Book and look it up:

Side effects: Allergic reaction (itching, rash, hives, edema), drug fever, nausea, stomach upset, vomiting, abdominal pain, headache, tingling in the arms and/or legs, depression, hallucinations, ringing in the ears, dizziness, difficulty sleeping, tiredness, weakness, nervousness and FEELING OF APATHY.

What, no suicidal tendencies? Weirdly enough I haven't gotten my normal case of hives and swollen eyes that I usually get with almost any drug these days (I'm hyperreactive) but I sat on the couch all evening literally unable to move. And I had eBay auctions ending tonight, it felt like rocket science just trying to answer all my emails. Yeah, I'd call it a feeling of apathy. And I've been shaky, wek and nervous, had a headache, lots of stomach upset, and some additional abdominal pain. I'm already chronically depressed and I really don't need anything to increase my tinnitus.

But at least I know it's just the medicine, just two more days, bleechh. And then we have a dinner party and out of town guests coming in, I SO hope I feel better by the weekend. I haven't had a serious UTI in years, when I was younger I think they just gave me some sort of megadose of drugs (usually at the doctors office) and it just went right away. Must be old age (sigh). My poor mom had some sort of UTI for literally almost a year, so she was very sympathetic. I hope that's all this is, Halloween is coming up and I've got lots to do.

But my husband has been exceptionally sympathetic this week, and I verbally walked him through making his own dinner tonight. I wasn't hungry or up to standing in the kitchen for half an hour inhaling tomato sauce (which I'm allergic to) so he actually made his own favorite dinner - spaghetti and meatballs! I was so proud! He likes to say how quick and easy it is for me to make spaghetti for him but he got to spend a solid half hour hovering around the stove, stirring things to keep them from burning, and he dished it up himself. He'd go stir and then wander off and sit down to watch TV and I'd shoo him back to the kitchen to stir some more. I think he understands now why the sauce burns so easily (we have a crappy stove that doesn't maintain a steady heat level).

I'm trying to think of something to eat, all I've had today was a croissant and a sandwich. I do have a hiatal hernia so I'm a little paranoid about things backing up on me. But I've got to eat something before bed cause I've got to take another damn pill. But enough whining, just wanted to get that whole scenario out of my head.

OK, I was about to pass out but I'm having a little burst of mental energy, so one more entry before bed...

Due to lack of finances (not by choice) I was off of my Ambien for an entire month. I tried really hard to sleep each night, I just took my "normal" Lorazapam and things like Fiorinal, calcium, magnesium, and even some Valium I had around the house, but I still didn't sleep. My husband tried keeping the cat out of the bedroom during the day while I tossed and turned. She'll nap with me which is actually very nice, but she'll also come in and try to get into the windows and bang the blinds around which will wake up even a sound sleeper, which I am not.

Monday afternoon Sparky was making the bed after I abandoned it for the day when he suddenly let out a yelp. The fitted sheet at the bottom of my side of the bed was shredded! Of course, he blamed it on me, even though he has the toenails of death and I usually wear socks to bed. I'm still wondering if the kitty had anything to do with it because there were two parallel rips, but I honestly think it just gave out from age. We have a California king and he'll yank on the sides to try and tuck them in.

Since it was Labor Day, and my Foley's bill was due in a week or so anyway, I decided to grab the coupons out of the paper and drive across town (to the "nice" mall) and get another sheet set. I worked in retail most of my life so I do at least know how and when to buy linens. For $80+ bucks I got a top and bottom sheet (it would have been $130+ regular priced), but alas, no new pillowcases. I'm not real keen on replacing my pillowcases, though, because they're SOO soft and my skin is hypersensitive. I had to touch test all of the sheets at the store and ended up with some Wamsutta 300 count cotton sheets in a nice colonial blue. And I found the comforter set I'd been looking for for the past ten years (seriously). It's by Ralph Lauren and called Putney Paisley. Finding a cobalt blue paisley comforter is next to impossible, so I'm going to really work on getting this one. Our drapes are royal blue and most of the bedding I find is either navy (which looks like crap) or mostly white with a little blue. My two big goals for the bedroom are to paint the walls blue and replace the burgundy comforter set with a nice blue paisley one. So another $250 for a new comforter, $110 for a bedskirt, $80 for pillow shams (sigh).

So I came home, washed the sheets and added some fabric softener and we remade the bed. All of the damn sheets at the store were "extra deep" so it's still too wide (besides being a CA king, we have a Tempurpedic mattress which is not very deep), but it'll work.

But that night I lay in bed for like an hour, tossing and turning, and finally I actually got out of bed and tiptoed into my office, found the receipt for my Ambien and called it into the pharmacy so I could pick it up when I got up that afternoon. I just couldn't stand it anymore. I've never been good at sleeping and now I have additional stupid health problems that cause insomnia so I caved and spent another $80 to get a month's worth of sleeping pills. Even with them, I don't always sleep well, but at least the odds are in my favor again.

The final episode for awhile? I hope so (as does Sparky), but I'm supposed to give the mystery tooth another month and check back in if it's still hurting. (And the crown still has temporary cement on it) I got my final crown put on today, ouch. I was worried when I went in because I had such a bad reaction last time to the shot, so we tried pulling the temporary crown off without any anesthesia, which I wouldn't recommend.

So he gave me a lightweight shot, which didn't do a damn thing, it still hurt like hell. It's all metal sensitivity, I wouldn't mind having root canals on all of my molars just to kill all of the over sensitivity in my teeth. It's throbbing even now. Looks pretty, though, it's porcelain over gold. So now you can only see like four gold crowns when I open my mouth, three are all on one side which looks kind of strange but oh well. For some reason my front teeth have been really sensitive the last few days, just to air and cold, I may have to get some Sensodyne to use for a little while.

So other than the aching mystery tooth, the only thing I'd like to get done to my teeth is filling in some gaps in the front teeth that I've acquired from grinding. Besides sucking in air when I drink it looks a little too Madonna-esque. I really need to get my teeth re-straightened but after spending all of my teens in braces just to have them all move back forward it hardly seems worth it. Damn, I forgot to take my old nightguard in to show him. It's very close to fitting even though it's like five years old, except for one crown my last dentist put on a cuspid that made it bigger "to make my smile look better", which I didn't know till after he'd done it. (His work is what I've been having repaired and redone the last few months) But I've had several nightguards and can't keep any of them in, they drive me nuts but it's getting expensive replacing my crowns every 4 or 5 years from the grinding.

I was looking at websites recently and came across b4rb.com (ooh, she's changed her webdesign again, here is the very cool pic she had up last time), which has a very busy but interesting design, it's hard to load in some of my browsers. Opera is not loading the new design (though it worked with the last one), Netscape is loading it OK, now defunct Explorer for Mac won't load it at all. But the reference I'm trying to make is she has a problem with having a smaller than normal lower jaw (which gives her problems such as sleep apnea, see her June 16th entry, can't link to it for some reason) and after reading it and looking at some of her photos I realized I have that problem also. She does have me beat, though. I always thought it was just my overbite but I actually do have a small mouth and small lower jaw also. I also have TMJ so I can't open my mouth very wide (no jokes please, Sparky makes enough already). I think she's British, again no jokes please, I'm Irish-British-German and have the teeth and thin skin to prove it also ;-)

I remember when I was a teen and we'd have family photos done I'd always try and slide my lower jaw forward for the photos to try and look a little better, which actually made for a few very odd looking photos. I was editing some photos from one of our parties this weekend and noticed all of the photogenic girls have wide mouths and big smiles with lots of teeth, I have neither (sigh). At least I have cheekbones still.. I wonder if I have sleep apnea? I've never slept worth a damn in my life, and my husband claims I do snore some. Now he actually DOES have sleep apnea, I listen to him snore until he wakes himself up each night. He has to sleep most of the night sitting up, I can't sleep like that...

I need a caricature, though I really like my angel and spooky little girl logos I'm using on my site now a lot. I used to be an artist, you'd think I could do that sort of thing easily enough myself... Sparky just snored himself awake. Usually about this time of night he'll talk in his sleep, which is always unnerving. I used to sleepwalk as a kid but I've never talked in my sleep. I haven't been able to afford my Ambien the last week, so my sleep has suffered, though I've done better the last two days because Sparky has deliberately been keeping my bedroom doors closed (they're usually cracked to let the cat in and out), and he's been trying to restrain himself from coming in and telling me things when I'm sound asleep. He's actually brought newspaper articles in and read them off to me with a flashlight. I keep telling him besides waking me up, I don't remember anything he told me later. He went off to see a movie today (AVP) and the kitty woke me up at noon scratching at the door. I like having her in the bedroom when she'll lay down and sleep with me, but when she's hyper she tries to get in the blinds and plays with the cords for the draperies.

Someone please tell me why anyone would spend like two hours leaving 144 spam comments on a weblog and not even put the correct URL for their website? Good grief, like I'm not going to notice that many new comments...

We went out to eat with my parents tonight, it's nice being able to chauffeur them in my own car. Especially right now, my mom is recovering from a pelvic fracture from fainting from too much blood pressure medicine and my dad's back is just giving him hell. He's going to go to a pain management guy starting this week, he's had several back surgeries and a hip replacement in recent years and is not getting any help from his orthopedic doc, he also got overmedicated and was having dizzy spells. This new guy is an anaesthesiologist who can try some different things. I printed a bunch of literature for him on neurostimulation, which we're all hoping will work.

PLEASE let us get a President who is "interested in science" in office, and who is not a lackey to the drug companies. I'm trying to figure out this week how I'm going to pay for my four prescriptions, which even at Sam's Club's discount pharmacy prices are still going to be about $150. Sparky is telling me to just "do without" some of my medicines, especially my Ambien (which is $80 a month), but I'm not sleeping hardly at all with it so without it really scares me. I've tried several times to go without it for a week or so and I basically didn't sleep at all. I've never been a good sleeper, I think it's mostly the MS causing the problems, but any help at all is a blessing. My parents are paying a fortune for their medicines even with Medicare, and a gap policy. I think between the two of them they are also going to see a doctor about 2-3 times a week which ain't cheap either.

The last time one of my prescriptions expired the doctor tried to get me to come in for an $85 visit (even though I just had my physical a few months ago), and it took three phone calls to get her to renew the damn thing over the phone. I have about 8 prescriptions that I've been taking for years now, it's not like I'm asking for anything new and exciting. And I think I've just realized when I switched pharmacies last time that the new pharmacy is not giving me Fiorinal with codeine, just Fiorinal, which might explain why it hasn't really been working as well. Of course, that's the one I had to fight for over the phone, my doctor has a bad habit of not writing things exactly correct. I also need to see if I can get my Prozac split into two 20 mg pills a day instead of one 40 mg, I think the giant dose is making me sleepy.

However, I did find one way to save on two of my really mega-expensive medicines. Merck, who makes my migraine medicine (Maxalt) and the only allergy medicine I can take that doesn't contain an antihistamine (Singulair) has a patient assistance program that actually works. Because we are both self-employed and don't have insurance or Medicare, I am actually eligible for free medicine from them! And I really, honestly got it, three months worth of each. Maxalt is about $100 for 6 tablets (which is considered one months worth) and the Singulair is over $100 for a months worth. I wish the Ambien people has a program ;-) The most expensive medicine I ever got was some weekly self-administered (shudder) shots for my MS, which were about $2000 a month (I had real insurance at the time). Lucky for my finances, they didn't help me and actually made me feel worse.

My dental bills (and Sparky's soon-to-come ones, he's not in pain so he's spacing his visits further apart) are going to be the price of a semi-decent used car I'm afraid. Or a really killer Mac setup with all the bells and whistles. I'm thinking now the dentist must have hit a nerve or something with the injection on my last visit because the area he worked on is STILL numb and tender. I need to call his office again and see if there's anything they can do about this. And the mystery tooth is still worrying me.

My 30 day Carmax warranty is about to expire and I need to call them like today to get a few little things checked. Supposedly I still have part of the original manufacturer's warranty left also, it was 3 years and the car is a 2002, but the salesman wasn't sure how many months were actually left on it. One of my windshield washers isn't squirting, the light in my glove box is not working, and I think my headlights might be a bit out of alignment. It has Xenon headlights, even brighter than halogen, so I don't want to blind people. They're very nice with my night vision problems, though (which are mostly RK related), driving at night isn't as much of a nightmare anymore. I need to post my review of the car, just to get it out of my head. And speaking of cars, my first pricey insurance payment is due on Monday (gulp), I was paying just liability on the antique car but upped it to collision on this one. At least I have a good driving record, knock on wood.

I've almost gone through my first tank of gas, I think the tripometer is at 200+ miles or so, so even with the bigger V6 I seem to be getting much better gas mileage than my old 4 cylinder car did, which is nice. I haven't even tried the remote gas lid release yet, I guess I should do that before I take it in for service.

Excitement for today - I leaned on the panic button on my remote accidentally tonight while the car was in the garage still, scared the living crap out of both of us.

Geez, what a pain... I can't believe my face is still numb and swollen after almost a week, this is just SO not fair. I went to the grocery store tonight and got more soft food, flan, ice cream, danish... all the things I really need to be eating. And the mystery tooth on the opposite side is still hurting, my mouth feels so weird. Something must be infected. I'd like to know what it's like to not be in major pain or discomfort for just one bloody day, whine, whine, whine.

It's a full moon tonight and I have PMS also. Even the cat's feeling bad tonight, one of her eyes is red and itchy, poor thing. I've wiped her eye and face several times but she's still squinty. The grocery store had just two checkout lanes open and was packed. They have several self-checkout lanes open, but they all had very confused people standing in them waiting for assistance and I had a tomato and an onion to buy with no UPC bars and wasn't quite sure how to do that and didn't want to be one of the confused flashing light people. (Turns out you can self-checkout with produce, I'll have to try next time because I usually get along pretty well with the self-service lane). I wanted to get some Glyoxide (that sweet peroxide gel) for my mouth but they didn't have any. I'm tired of salt water, maybe I'll just swish some regular peroxide tonight. It's one of my "cure everything" remedies. I put it on wounds (warning, it can make scarring worse), I put it in my ears when they are aching and making me dizzy (probably not a good idea either), and have even gargled with it (just don't swallow the stuff!).

I was expecting over $100 worth of eBay payments in my PO box today, but only got $30, the big one is sitting at the post office waiting on a signature. It's registered and arrived on a Saturday so I can't claim it till Monday, oh well. Some idiot in a wrecker flashed his fancy strobing headlights at me tonight on the way home because he thought I had my high beams on, my new car has some sort of super bright headlights which I'm sure are really annoying to other drivers. I would have flashed him back, but I had a psycho in a wrecker chase me once for like 5 solid minutes because he thought I gave him the bird (I actually waved thanks at him after I had to cut in front of him because of sudden street construction) so I try not to piss wrecker drivers off. I used to have to work with them a lot as a security officer and they tend to be sort of defensive. And carry things like shotguns and crowbars with them. Not that I blame them.

I've actually never given anyone the finger, it's a very weird gesture to me. I'll curse at them, I'll honk at people (only if they do something really stupid, I'm not suicidal), but the whole finger thing is not a normal reflex for me. I'm not really coordinated fingerwise anyway, I could never play the guitar well. I can give you the Vulcan peace sign without thinking about it, but I'm a geek ;-)

The last two weeks in a large rambling, third-person nutshell...

When last we saw our heroine she had three temporary crowns and was awaiting yet another that hadn't been started on yet. And she was still having the same horrid dull ache in the area of the mystery tooth - which had had a root canal done three years ago (by another dentist), yet never felt quite right for years then turned grey out of nowhere one day beneath the composite white crown. So she went to her new dentist, who thought it might be a faulty root canal (too short), and he referred her to an endodontist, who discovered the tooth in front of that one was in dire need of a root canal and the mystery tooth was sort of forgotten. Except that the new dentist then removed the three year old crown and found there was decay beneath the tooth, which was removed and a new lovely smooth porcelain crown was ordered up to replace the yucky composite crown, which our heroine thought might be causing the aching because it was rough and not very hard (she grinds her teeth incessantly).

So in she goes when the three new crowns are ready, but has the foresight to warn the dentist that the mystery tooth still does not feel right, so he agrees to put the crown on with temporary cement and "wait and see" how it feels. And the newest root canal tooth gets it's tiny porcelain crown. But then it comes time to put the gold crown on the back upper molar (which had a gold crown on it but she had ground it down to a jagged mess). With so much going on in that area (all three teeth are on the back left) she didn't think she had any sensitivity in that tooth, but when the dentist cemented it on she just about came up out of the chair as a jolt of lightning went through that tooth. "It must be the cement", the dentist proposed, "sometimes it causes extra sensitivity".

One week passed and it was time for the next visit, but our heroine accidentally gave herself food poisoning with some tainted Alfredo sauce so the visit was put off another week after an uncomfortable sleepless night. The gold crown's sensitivity seemed to be lessening with time, but the mystery tooth still ached. So this past Monday it was time for the next appointment, which was supposed to be to replace a third destroyed crown (grinding, grrr) and fix a small filling on a front tooth. The dentist fought with and succeeded in removing the old damaged crown and discovered that not only was there major decay beneath it, but also on the edge of the tooth behind it (sigh). So he went to work on the newly discovered problem tooth, having to do a build-up on it before he could do molds for the new crown, which he had to also do a build-up on because of all the decay beneath the old crown.

In between taking molds of her mouth, he decided to work on the front tooth, but since it had been over an hour since he gave her a shot in the front of her mouth (he had been busy on the unexpected tooth), when he began drilling the old filling out, she screamed in pain. Oops, not numb anymore, needs another shot... He tries once, twice, hmmm, something's wrong with the needle, gets a new one from his assistant. So more anaesthetic, now her nose, face and tongue are numb. Killing time, he decides to do the upper mold. Which makes her gag, and is of a new material which did NOT want to come out without taking some of her front teeth (at least it felt that way).

But after almost three hours of forcing her TMJ-ridden jaw to stay open, and get yanked on with pliers, sawed at, drilled and other indignities, the two fillings were finally done, and the temporary crown was in place. Since her hubby had his gums scraped that morning at the same locale, she stopped and got ice cream on the way home for both of them, then passed out in bed for a few hours.

And awoke with the whole side of her facen swollen. Holy crap it hurt! All the way from her eye socket to the bottom of her jaw it's tender. That's weird, the only allergic reactions she usually gets from the shots are itchy hands. Maybe it's because she fell asleep on it, maybe she accidentally bruised it by laying on it... The ice cream came in very handy.

But the next day it's still swollen, and the day after that her gums are swollen also, this can't be good. She calls the dentist but he's out of town, "try warm salt water and Advil" she's advised and "call us in the morning if it's not better". But she's a bit more concerned about it than just the discomfort, what if a sinus is infected? Maybe something nasty got in her system from the defective needle... Three days and it's getting worse not better. And the irony is her husband had major gum work the same day and he was perfectly fine the next morning, no soreness or swelling at all. And the mystery tooth on the opposite side of her mouth still hurts so her jaws are sore from trying to eat and not injure herself any further (sigh).

Tune in tomorrow for the next episode, will the swelling be gone or will she be rushed to the emergency room in a hallucogenic fever? One thing is for certain, though, she will NOT be awake by noon Friday morning when her dentist office closes so it should be an interesting weekend.

Damn, I was thinking I didn't have to go back in till later this week... Well, another tooth down, several more to go. We did the molar next to the one I just got a new root canal on last week, so I got yet another temp crown for the left side. My poor jaw had not recovered from last week yet, I stopped by the grocery store on the way home today to get more soft food I shouldn't be having on my diet. At least the ice cream is sugar free ;-)

The tooth today was a pretty recent white composite crown that had been done about three years ago (by another dentist...) to cover a root canal and keep my tooth full of old silver fillings from crumbling. Unfortunately the last dentist left the silver in the tooth, and did a weird job of the crown (it was apparently pressing on the surrounding gum, no wonder it hurt so much), and the area where the silver was had started to decay making the bottom of the tooth turn grey.

I had told the dentist before we started that the local injections he gave me last week had made my hand swell up, but he dismissed that, and gave me several more of the same today. So after I came home and took a nap, I awoke with both hands full of hives and bumps and swelling quickly (sigh). They hurt worse than the tooth, dammit, and last week they took about three days to go back down... I'm glad it's only Monday, we're going to a friend's wedding this weekend.

What does one wear to a casual indoor/outdoor wedding in June here in the swamplands? The invite said "no shorts please", but I don't think I even own a skirt and I'm unsure whether even nice jeans would be appropriate. I don't want to get too formal, it's bloody hot outside, most of my "nice" things are not for June...

Because of my lack of eating full meals last week I actually lost some weight, despite the fact that I was literally force-feeding myself to keep from getting too run down (or nauseous from the medicine). I did get a few weird bursts of energy, though, dusted the bedroom one night, filed some stuff... so the week wasn't a total bust.

My morning/afternoon... drifting in and out, I can hear the TV in the den, Sparky moving around, car keys jangling... Weird dreams, for some reason my cat is suddenly part ferret and a woman is threatening to call the police on her because she got out of the house unattended for a few minutes... I can't find a toilet that has a door on the stall, recurring dream, means I gotta pee...

Awake! Why am I propped half up on two pillows? What time is it? Ow, my jaw hurts... oh yeah, dental surgery yesterday. Or is it still yesterday? The sun appears to be up, the clock says it's 1:10, wow. Slowly turn the dimmer on the lamp up... Why is my glass case open and sitting on top of the alarm clock, I only put it there when I'm reading in bed... Why aren't my glasses in it? Crap, where are my glasses? Last waking memory - I was reading, Sookie had just rescued her boyfriend from the vampires who were holding him hostage and she was driving out of the plantation, trying to sweet talk the werewolf who was guarding the gate, zzzzzzz.... Oh! I fell asleep reading, dammit.

My book is on the shelf on my nightstand, but where are my glasses? Move slowly, they might be in bed with me still. At least this is just one of many backup pairs I have and not one of my prescription pairs. They're not on the nightstand, not on the ottoman next to the bed, hmmm. Sit up, put my feet carefully onto the floor... There they are!... in my house shoe? Usually the only thing I find in my shoes are stuffed mice, whatever, at least they're not broken.

I was just joking about passing out, but apparently I actually did. I rarely fall asleep reading, and never suddenly like that, I usually at least am alert enough to turn the light out and put my things on the nightstand. Sparky, on the other hand, can fall asleep mid-sentence with the TV blaring. He's snoring away right now. But if I turn the TV off, he'll wake up immediately.

My hands are still swollen, actually mostly my left hand, so I think the dental injections must be the culprit there since all the work was done on my left side. I stupidly then went back to bed, and spent several more hours tossing and turning restlessly. But that's what I do when I feel bad, sleep, or at least lay in bed. It usually makes the time pass faster and encourages healing, but this afternoon seemed three times as long as it actually was. My neck is all stiff today, not sure if that's from sleeping in such a weird position or from trying to hold my head in one position for hours at a time yesterday, probably both.

I ate more two chicken salad sandwiches for breakfast/dinner so far today. We watched MSNBC while we ate (Sparky had spaghetti left over from last night), listened to the newest 9/11 tapes, Jesus, that's a whole new entry, not today, though... I need to get some work done tonight, even with the swollen hand(s). I've only taken one codeine pill so far today, I'm trying to cut back, I think I was probably getting addicted to them because of the constant pain in my jaw. Hopefully, when the soreness wears off most of that will be gone, even though I still have several more teeth to be done. OK, typing is too hard right now, but my brain is still too sluggish to do much of anything useful...

OK, working on knocking another major "to do" off my list, getting my teeth back in a state of repair. I thought it had only been two years since I went to the dentist (i.e. when our dental insurance ran out), but it has actually been three years (gulp). I called to make an appointment to have mine and Sparky's teeth cleaned at the same time, but since I was in pain they agreed to see me earlier.

So Monday afternoon I go in to see my new dentist, who is endorsed by my mother and only like a mile from out house, unlike my last dentist, who was about 18 miles away (hubby's family dentist). Nice offices, nice staff, nice dentist. So far, so good. Got an exam, lots of x-rays, and was told to come back the next morning for my cleaning, come in early Wednesday to get started on the construction work, and to see his endodontic specialist to check a root canal to see if it was causing the pain on my left side.

Got the cleaning the next morning (only got like 3 hours sleep, had to be there at 9am), they didn't have nitrous! Oh well, that's the best part and keeps me from clenching my entire body while they are scraping metal objects on my sensitive teeth. But it wasn't bad after all, even for three years of plaque. The hygienist used an ultrasonic cleaner and then only actually scraped a little bit and my teeth were actually whiter looking for the first time in my life. Got home, called the endodontist, they have an opening the next day... at 8:30 am. OK, gotta take it, get this crap all over with ASAP. Then I napped for several hours, my poor jaw aching from TMJ from keeping my mouth open just for the cleaning.

Got up at 7:30 am today, the cat actually woke me just before she stepped on my alarm clock and turned it off. I was only 10 minutes late to the endodontist's office (that's good for me), really ritzy place, nice view, very quiet... His assistant gets me situated and takes an x-ray of the bad side, which then immediately pops up on a 19 inch computer monitor, I'm impressed. They don't have nitrous either, dammit, soemthing about an OSHA regulation about having to vent the area, grrrr.. The doctor comes in, thumps on my teeth, doesn't get a good enough reaction so he takes a little metal rod and sprays it to freeze it and tells me to let him know it I feel anything when he touches my teeth. I actually came about halfway out of my chair, found the problem!

Not the tooth with the three year old root canal, but the bicuspid in front of it.... The suspected tooth (with recent root canal and crown) is decaying beneath the lovely white crown, though, which explains why the bottom has turned grey. But only one root canal is needed instead of having to redo the molar's existing root canal, which I guess is a good thing. Eventually I will have no roots left in any of my teeth (hey, no pain!).

So I asked if he should do the new root canal or my dentist, same price, he's can do it right now, so I let the specialist do it. Quick and easy, only one canal, done in less than an hour. $750 bites the dust... Then back home for an hour, and off to my other dentist, who seems a bit peeved that the other doc got to do the root canal, but hey, he referred me. He got me back, though, the next exciting event was drilling out the temporary filling the endodontist has just put in like an hour before. Then he went to work on the upper tooth just above it, a gold crown which I had chewed through and was also apparently rapidly decaying beneath the crown. I really do brush every day, I just also grind my teeth and have bad genetics, must be the British part of my DNA...

So several hours and another $1900 later, I've got two temporary crowns and get to go back next week to work on both my lower left and upper right sides to replace two more useless crowns (sigh), more money down the drain. Hopefully the new crowns will last more than three years... Jeez, xylocaine injections in both sides of my mouth, that should be attractive. I came home and went to bed again after todays ordeals were finished, only to awake with all of my codeine worn off and the root canal area throbbing. But since all I'd had to eat all day was an Atkins shake, I had to maneuver another one down before I could take any more meds. After a few hours (and several more pills), I actually managed to eat some soy ice cream and chicken salad with success. I did plan ahead and make sure I had liquid and some soft food available. The throbbing stopped pretty quickly, thank goodness, years ago, back when they had to do root canals in two stages, I thought I was going to die from the throbbing when the local anaesthesia wore off. And I didn't have any actual narcotics at the time, I plan ahead now, just in case...

My jaw is still semi-locked, I've bitten the crap out of the inside of my mouth, my hands have swollen up and are itching like crazy (probably from the dozen or so injections I got today), but at least I'm halfway there. "Three to four weeks" before my crowns come in, but I'm hoping I've gotten rid of what was most likely a major source of the pain in my jaw (and probably some of my ear & sinus problems on that side). So what else did I do after I got up this evening? Watched TV and then decided to file a bag full of dusty papers in my bedroom. No, I don't know why either and it was not easy with my hands swollen, but filing is comforting to me and it distracted me for a few hours. And got my major bedroom dusting obstacle up and off the floor, which made me feel better :-)

After the teeth are finished, on to working on my vision (RGP contacts are the plan so far), then maybe my poor car (if Sparky hasn't divorced me yet, I can't help it... at least HE has good teeth). Getting loopy now, must go shower before I pass out...

OK, I admit I'm rambling tonight, I still feel like my brains are not all assembled in the same room. And now my hands ache, I got my Yamuna Body Rolling Balls in the mail today and just spent the last hour or so inflating them. The little green one wasn't too bad, you have to use a hand pump (sold separately) to inflate them, they are shipped flattened, but I didn't think I'd ever get the larger red ball inflated. I'm still not quite sure if I've done them correctly, the book said not to overinflate them and I have no memory of how to properly deflate rubber balls, though it says you can flatten them and bring them with you when you travel. Right now neither is perfectly round but a bit more oval, I'm just waiting for my husband to walk by and say "Hey you didn't inflate these all the way!".

I'm glad I invested in the name brand therapy balls, though, instead of getting a similar cheaper one I saw on eBay. These really are very good quality and heavy duty. I also have a strange fear of things bursting, I hate balloons, and the one on eBay said "no pump needed, inflates with a straw" which doesn't sound either safe or logical.

I did finally take a step towards fixing my poor teeth, I made an appointment for my husband and myself to go in for a cleaning (together, so I can hold his hand). They couldn't see us at the same time till the end of the month, though, so I mentioned I had a couple of teeth that were painful (the magic word for dentists) and I get to go in to be looked over this Monday. We're trying a new dentist that my mother has used, and is two miles from the house vs. 20 miles, where my husband's family dentist is. He's the reason my teeth are currently so messed up, he replaced several gold crowns with pretty white resin crowns and my molars have felt "off" ever since to the point where I've ground through at least two of my upper gold crowns. Also the resin feels rough to me, despite his attempts at smoothing them, which is a constant irritant.

I hope the new dentist is good, and has nitrous. I actually have a very high pain tolerance, and have had enough major dental work to make most people faint at the thought, but I also have super sensitive teeth when it comes to cold and pressure and the nitrous keeps me from inadvertantly biting the poor dentist. Plus it's the only time in my life I've ever actually felt relaxed. I agreed to let the last guy do a gingivectomy while under it's influence, it must be pretty good stuff.

Well, I sat down to type that I was sick as a dog all day yesterday and today I'm feeling better... and then I sneezed (duh, duh, duhhh!). So I went into the bedroom and got my arsenal of nose sprays and took a Singulair, which is the only type of oral medicine I can take (I'm allergic to antihistamines). And got a new box of kleenex from the garage, I went through an entire box yesterday.

I've had bad allergies my entire life, and a couple of times a year I'll just start sneezing non-stop and I know I'm coming down with a sinus infection. Lucky for me, my best friend's husband is a doctor and he gives me a prescription for a season's worth of antibiotics at a time so I can head them off when I feel one coming on. I need to use my nasal saline more often, I've found that's one of the best deterrants to getting sick.

So I spent the entire day yesterday basically sneezing, blowing my nose, and coughing, which makes it difficult to do much of anything else. I managed to wrap all of my packages for eBay so Sparky could bring them in today, but I stayed up till 7am doing so and was too tired (and dizzy) to even take a shower by that point. So I took lots of Keflex last night and before bed, used some Afrin to make my nose temporarily stop dripping, took a couple of codeine for the headache and coughing, and half a valium to make sure I actually slept because that's the only way my body knows to heal. And I did feel much better when I woke up, thank goodness. Still stuffy nose and ears, swollen lymph nodes, sore throat and sore ribs but so far only one sneeze (knock on wood).

And to compound matters last night, my postage program, Endicia, which makes my life SO much easier, was down for monthly maintenance and was supposed to be back up at 4 am CST, and didn't come up till 6:30 am (grumble). So no packing tonight, I think I'm going to be lazy and go watch TLC's "What Not to Wear". I hope they're doing a girl, the guys are no fun at all...

I feel somewhat caught up (and slightly broke) after taking care of business the last few days. I try really hard whenever I get a bit ahead financially to actually buy things I need and that are on my wishlist instead of things I didn't know I needed. It seems like when I does have money, I can't think of anything I really need, but as soon as I get low it's really obvious.

I had bought a second book on Body Rolling, which required a different sized ball than the ones I already have (they sell them online, of course), but the exercises are completely different in the first book I got. So I ended up buying two of the balls from Yamuna Zake's website, I saw some on eBay that were similar and cheaper, but didn't really want to chance it. Had to buy a damn pump too, but I guess it's a good thing to have. The Miracle Balls I've been using have really been wonderful, great for both my fibromyalgia and the muscle tension from my MS. And they don't cost $60 an hour ;-) Back when I was rich (ha!) from working two jobs, I would try and go to a massage therapist every two weeks or so, but I'm one of those people that is so tight that it never really did a lot of good. But I'm having a lot of fun and getting good results from rolling, and who wouldn't like an exercise you do primarily laying down.

What else... got semi caught up on meds and groceries today, at least the refrigerator is full and Sparky has lunchmeat, bread, Diet Mountain Dew and bottled water, so he's happy. Sam's Club had more of my favorite Tropical Chicken Salad, they haven't discontinued it yet as I feared, awesome stuff to snack on! Plus an easy dinner for tonight, cold shrimp and potato salad, an all-time favorite with both of us. And a case of canned green beans, which should hold us for awhile (I'm a lazy cook, BTW).

Also ran into Old Navy today to try and find a belt for my poor jeans that won't stay up (maybe I really am losing weight, but I think it's more of a Lycra issue), and ended up also buying half a dozen of their Perfect Fit tees (two for $15!) which are actually sized big enough that adults can wear them and they are thick enough that they don't look like underwear. I even got some that weren't black. I wanted some Navy ones but they were sold out of anything above Medium, just looked online and they're out too, dammit. With the weather so hot I'm already tired of walking around in long oversized tees. I also got a couple more pair of their Just Lounge Capris (only the long ones are on their website but these look like just like the Capris), which hit me at the ankle and are great around the house (also on sale, yippee!). I used to buy their Yoga Capris but they're making them shorter now. They're really comfy for around the house, but they wear out pretty quickly, but for $15 what the heck. Did get belt, I wanted a leather one, but found a black and white brocade fabric belt that is very adjustable, plus comfy and attractive and got it.

And I paid Sparky back for the last few weeks of utility bills, and bought more mailing supplies. And... I bought a new curling iron (see next entry for info!).

Why is my current mood displayed as "pained" you might ask? Well, Sunday when I was over visiting my mom the right side of my lower back kept giving me those little weird twinges that hint that something's about to go terribly wrong and last night it did. Out of nowhere the entire right side of my body from the waist down just sort of gave out. I could barely sit up in a chair, I couldn't walk at all, and even laying down to sleep hurt. I don't know if it has to do with my MS, the fact that I'm double jointed and my hip does go out from time to time (but usually doesn't hurt like this), or a number of stupid things I've done lately. Carrying laundry on my hip, reaching up in the closet to get a box down. And, oh yes, jumping up and down at the grocery store Saturday trying to knock things off the top shelf so I could actually purchase them. (I'm 5'1") I don't know who the tall, sadistic bastard is that designed my grocery store, but he made the three foot deep shelves over 6' high, and he always puts the last couple of bottles of Evian at the very back of the shelf. If I ever meet him I'm going to kick him in the shins...

So I'm suffering like hell now. Could be totally unrelated to my high jumping attempts, but that couldn't have helped. I need to buy one of those little reacher thingies to take grocery shopping. Or just a long stick. And to add insult to injury, I had to go in for my mammogram today and it rained the entire day, actually even flooded. I was a few miles away, on a road that parallels a huge bayou and the rain started sheeting. So when I got to the clinic I got drenched and stepped in about four inches of water in my good shoes. And then got to sit around with a hospital gown that wouldn't stay closed in wet jeans. Oh, and then got my boobs put in a cold metal clamp while I tried to keep standing in one place with throbbing back for way too long while the technician reset the machine because the power had gone out just before I arrived. The only good thing that happened was because the power had blinked the clinic's computers were offline so they're going to have to bill us for the test. We just got the bills in the mail for the labwork from our physicals in today, for a change his exam was more expensive, being an over 40 white male they seem to be taking his health and extra weight more seriously than they do mine.

Speaking of, Sparky's back went out this weekend and I gave him a couple of Soma and now he's fine. I hope I'm fine in two days. My Fiorinal is doing nothing for the pain and the Soma just made me kind of woozy but I may take one anyway before bed. The kitty came down with an upper respiratory infection last week (sneezing, sluggish cat!) and we've been squirting antibiotics in her mouth twice a day. She doesn't like it, but she's smart enough to get over it in a few minutes. And I've been hand feeding her turkey baby food afterwards which helps the proverbial medicine go down. She wasn't eating properly for about a week after her physical, but until she started sneezing we weren't quite sure what to make of her lethargy since she'd also received two shots at the same time. But she seems to have her appetite back now, and is murring and running though the house again.

Only I could pick up a piece of paper from my printer and slash myself across the face with it [sigh]. I've always been very talented at strange self-injuries. So now I have a cut on my upper lip that hopefully will not swell up and look nasty. On the good side, I didn't hit myself in the eye...

Sparky wanted spaghetti for dinner. I'm allergic to tomatoes and really dislike spaghetti as a pasta so I decided to make him happy and I would have a "low carb" day. I was thinking of just drinking several Atkins shakes all day, but I ended up drinking two and making myself two sandwiches with my tropical chicken salad, which I'm starting to get a little tired of now. Too much celery. Now my stomach is rebelling and gurgling and I've had to take a Prilosec. We're supposed to go out with friends and have Mexican food tomorrow night, coincidentally on Cinco de Mayo (ya think we'll have to stand in line???), so I figure between the two they'll average out. I just have to watch the chips and tortillas.

I've managed to lose about 7 pounds so far doing the low carb thing (again) and cut my snacking down to next to nothing. I've been living on a diet of salads, liquid yoghurt, chicken salad, Slimfast low carb bars and Atkins canned shakes. Stay tuned to see if I develop an eating disorder in my quest to lose weight and get my cholesterol below 300...

Stumbled across a neat low carb information site today, the whole world has gone low carb now, it's funny. I've been doing it on and off for about 6 years, lost 10 pounds the first time I did it and got my cholesterol below 200 for the first time in my adult life. They're coming out with a low carb Coke, cool! I wish they'd make more things with Splenda, it's the only artificial sweetener I can tolerate.

Busy week, too much drama, but I'll not go into that... We took Phoebe in for her annual physical this week and because she was so itchy. The vet didn't find anything wrong with her skin, decided it was probably food allergies and switched her to an allergen free diet, IV Green Peas and Duck, which is what she was on when we got her. But she doesn't really like it, though, so I'm still mixing the old food in with it. And the bag of Hill's Sensitive Skin food that I'd ordered a week ago still hadn't arrived so I emailed them to see if I could return it and they hadn't even sent it out yet (!). Geez, they charged my card the day I ordered it, but now they're supposed to be crediting me for the whole order, which included some feather toys too.

I'm afraid I've been giving her too much people food lately, letting her lick the bottle of my yoghurt, etc., which is like her favorite thing to do. And I give her too many treats. The vet gave her a steroid shot for the allergies, he had suggested we give her oral steroids for a week instead and now I kind of wish we'd taken done that instead of the shot. She's been so mellow and calm all week, poor thing, not herself at all. She's hardly played at all and has mostly been sitting on the floor watching us and purring quietly. She seems to slowly be getting some of her energy back, we played a little tonight. But she's not itching and her skin is healing nicely.

And the last couple of days I've been feeling really uncomfortable in my skin for some unknown reason. Wednesday night we went out and I ate pasta for the first time in like a month, maybe it's some side effect of that. I just feel really jumpy and sort of PMSy, though I shouldn't be yet. I read an article saying that the low carb diet worked better if you took a day off once or twice a month and ate semi-normal so I rationalized it that way. I also had a migraine coming on Wednesday morning and took a Maxalt, which for some reason made me really druggy feeling all day to the point where I couldn't even drive. I don't know if it's the change in diet, birth control pills, or Prozac but medicines seem to be affecting me really adversely lately. I've just been a lump. I hate this feeling and I not knowing what's causing it pisses me off. Part of it is my mitral valve prolapse, which causes my heart to beat irregularly sometimes out of nowhere, which it's doing now, but I still have that creepy crawly feeling. And I dreamed about being invaded by bugs last night, which doesn't help at all.

My attempt at running errands Friday was just an exercise in aggravation. I made it through the post office quickly, but then needed to make a deposit at my bank with a real person instead of the ATM and had to wait like 15 minutes just to get through the line of cars. Then I stupidly went out on Braeswood, enroute to Sam's Club by the Dome, straight shot, eh? Made it through Hillcroft, no problem, than bam, all the traffic stops about a block before Chimney Rock. And goes nowhere... OK, I know afternoon traffic is bad but something was definitely wrong here. Is a car broken down, what?

Oh! I get close enough to the light that I can see through the SUV in front of me's window, and the light seems to be cycling funny. Oh crap, not funny at all, the two lights that are like 100 feet apart are out of sync. First light turns green just as the second light is turning red. So three cars get to scoot up each time, hanging out into the intersection, aaagghh! Luckily I was in the first slot when it was my turn and I shot all the way through. In any kind of race I've always been able to get the "out the gate" advantage, I have to make myself stop and wait until I'm sure no one is running a light coming at me because I have had the front end of my car knocked off by an idiot doing just that. But after that it was easy, even the loop didn't back up until I got off just after Fannin. Then I got to stand in line to get my prescription at Sam's, by that time I was pretty much a zombie.

And I was starting to get really hungry, it was dinner time. A lady was giving out samples of something that smelled really good and turned out to be a chimichanga. "It's very hot", she warned, "hold it a little while". It was hot, but after about four minutes of trying to steer a giant shopping cart with one hand while my stomach grumbled out loud, I succumbed. And burnt the crap out of the roof of my mouth. I have an overbite so I'm used to having injured gums, but burned and injured, oww... But it was tasty.

I was going to put "fishy" as my current mood for tonight, but it wasn't an option. I went out and bought stuff for dinner this weekend that's not pasta, and succumbed to the pre-cooked cold boiled shrimp at Kroger's. It was really good, and easy, I just bought some potato salad and bread for Sparky to go with it, but I've had that fishy feel on my hands all night and in my mouth. I love seafood, but I don't like fish. (Huh?) Really, I like shellfish but not fish-fish, too bland and fishy tasting.

I've really got to look at some cookbooks and magazines and figure out more interesting stuff to eat than chicken breast and steak. Our nearby grocery stores are really uninspiring, I'd give anything to have a Whole Foods or Central Market nearby, just to be able to buy pre-made, healthy food that's semi-interesting. I get bored really easily with food, though I can eat the same thing over and over till I get burned out on it. I've been checking out a healthy food delivery place for my parents to possibly use while my mom heals. if I had more money I'd love to use a service like that. It would make it really easy to lose weight also. I've lost about 5 pounds so far (in about 3 weeks?), and I do feel better and am not craving sweets and carbs like I was. I've been taking two 600mg calcium supplements a day also, which is supposed to help burn fat and cut cravings, and seems to be working. If nothing else, I'll have healthy bones :-)

Mad Mad House tonight was dramatic, it's down to the point where I don't really like any of the contestants, but I'm kind of leaning toward Nichole. Eric is so manipulative, as was Leona, whose kharmic energy came back and bit her on the ass tonight. She was such a princess, even though she won some trials, she was too unwilling to try new things. Jamie seems like such a blank slate, and she was a stripper so she's not easily embarrassed, but she doesn't even seem to be trying, I kind of thought she'd be the one to go next. I think she has that "deer in the headlights" look that the producers must like. I hated Eric the first time I saw him, he seemed like such a smart ass and a player, but I have more respect for him now. My favorite was Bonnie, but she was too openminded for her own good to win. Next week is the two hour finale, I wonder how they're going to cut it down to one when there are three people left? Looks like the eliminated guests will be making an appearance, including my least two favorites, Tim and Kelly, the loudmouthed drama queens of the group. I kind of wish I'd been taping these, but I'm sure they'll come out in a nice little DVD box set after season one is over. Glad to know they're already working on season two but I'm going to miss the current Alts.

Finally made it to Sam's Club to pick up my $100+ worth of prescriptions that I dropped off earlier this week. I had told my doctor I wanted to up my Prozac from 30 mg a day (3x10) for 40mg (2x20) and she wrote the prescription out for one 40mg pill a day, yikes... I thought the pharmacy had shorted me when I checked the receipt because it was only $11 and for 30 pills, but no, apparently 30 40mg pills are less than half the price of 90 10mg pills, huh?? Well, OK, I figured they would cost more but who's complaining?

Got a new birth control pill too, decided to switch to LoEstrin from LoOvral (which I've been on for like 15 years) after seeing the following on the Family Practice Notebook's website (which is fabulous, BTW):

Indications to switch to Loestrin 1.5/30

1. Breast Tenderness (lower Estrogen)
2. Headaches (lower Estrogen)
3. Moodiness (less Estrogen or more Progestin)
4. Weight gain (less Estrogen or more Progestin)
5. Libido decreased (more androgen)

OK... I can do without all of the above and it said LoEstrin is better for women over 40 so I'll let you know how it works out, I'm starting it up tomorrow night and am going to try skipping my period for the three months on/one week off deal since I'm not having a period anyway, just lots of migraines in my week off.

We went out to eat tonight and I blew my high protein diet at IHOP with french toast, but at least I had eggs and bacon with it. I couldn't finish the french toast, though, which is a good sign. I was going to have an omelette but my eyes were itching already (I'm allergic to eggs) and I want to see Kill Bill Vol. 2 tonight so I figured I'd better not chance more than one scrambled egg. I've lost about four pounds so far since I've dropped my carbs again, though, so I'm trying to behave.

My mom made it back to the doctor for another x-ray and apparently her hip is not fractured just bruised badly, thank goodness. We went to Luby's last night and got take out and brought it to them so she could have something other than Chinese delivery food, my dad's not the greatest cook and he can't stand for very long and now she can't either. I feel like I'm not doing enough for them, but I couldn't think of anything else to do, if I was a good cook I would have brought her a casserole... She says it feels a little better so maybe it's starting to heal.

Annoying item for tonight... I was watching Oprah today and saw Chris Rock and Jon Stewart and they also had SNL's Maya Rudolph on, who is Minnie Riperton's daughter, which would explain why she's so good at playing black ladies. So after the show, Sparky whips out one of his 70's Number One Hits albums and starts playing "Lovin' You" over and over. Sort of a frightening thing to have stuck in your head, especially at bedtime. Oprah mentioned that she was "the late" Minnie Riperton, which makes the song both annoying and sad at the same time if you know the lyrics, which, unfortunately, I do. Her fansite said she died of breast cancer in 1979, at 32 years old, even sadder, I did not know that. Apparently she was a pioneer in breast cancer awareness, damn, where was I in 1979? Oh, yeah, in high school, unaware and self-absorbed. I probably heard about it at the time but my memory is shot now. But Maya does look like her and certainly has her pipes ;-) The site says "Lovin' You" started out as a lullaby for Maya, I was thinking earlier today, weirdly enough, that perhaps it devoted to her husband or children, but that chorus might be a little alarming. [She says as the piercing sound echoes through her brain, over and over...]

Well, as usual we didn't do anything of significance over the weekend, we're not church goers and don't have kids. It rained from Saturday afternoon on through Sunday and actually got pretty chilly. so I didn't even want to get out of bed today when I woke up.

My dad called last night to let me know they had spent five hours in the emergency room because my mother had fallen the day before and they wanted to make sure her hip wasn't broken. I wish they'd let me know when things happen instead of after, we only live like a mile away. Her stupid doctor changed her blood pressure medicine (again) and she said when she woke up in the middle of the night to go the bathroom she blacked out when she sent to stand up and fell. Which is exactly what my dad was going through about a month ago and the reason was exactly the same. I hate doctors. But she was smart enough to switch back to her old medicine right after that happened and is, at least, not feeling faint anymore.

Her x-ray didn't show anything and they wanted her to wait around another few hours for an MRI, but after five hours in an ER full of screaming children she decided to just go to her regular doctor to get one done later this week. I hope she hasn't damaged anything, she bruises really easily, I told her that Sunday would be the worse day, being three days after, and she called me today to tell my I was right. Luckily, my parents are like me and stockpile pharmaceuticals for emergencies, so they already had some Vicodin for her to take.

Being flat footed, hyperactive and then having coordination problems due to MS, I've injured myself so many times it's not funny. I also worked under hazardous conditions working security for most of my twenties, it's amazing I never broke anything (knock on wood). Just last night I had to go out to run an errand in the rain and a huge wind came up out of nowhere and slammed my umbrella into my forehead, but things like that happen to me. I was at a Pagan fest with some friends a few years ago and had opened a bottle of essential oil to smell it and when I put the stopper back on a drop of it flew up and hit me right in the eyeball. I seriously think I'm cursed sometimes, I used to blame it on my ex-husband (who really was cursed with having serious freak accidents) but I think it's probably just me, because I've been tripping and falling since I was a kid.

I did well yesterday with my eating, but dinner tonight was ravioli, which we'd already bought and is one of my favorites. I looked at the back of the package and almost fainted myself when I saw how many servings there were in each package (we buy it at Sam's Club). I had four Pepperidge Farm cookies left that I'd bought, I made Sparky split them with me to get rid of them. I've been trying to ignore two packages of the "two bite scones" that I've been addicted to for about six months now, hoping they'll just go bad on their own. I've been trying to add some yoghurt into my diet the past few months, I like the little tiny Dannon Light & Fit Smoothies the best, they're just the right size but I had a coupon for the bigger Yoplait Nouriche smoothies and bought three last time I went shopping. I started off Saturday by drinking one for breakfast and then ended up burping up iron all day, it had added vitamins, which sounds like a good thing, but doesn't taste good (bleecch). And I have two more in different flavors, I think I'll stick with the Dannon from now on, coupon or not.

I felt all shaky after eating the pasta tonight, even though I only ate half of what I usually eat. I've noticed carbs tend to make me either nervous & irritable or sleepy. We're trying to figure out what to eat nightly that's not made of pasta, if I had a chef or we could eat out every night it would be easier, I don't mind eating meat every night, I just don't like having to cook it. We have a George Foreman grill, but there's only so many ways to make chicken and steak before I get really bored. And most of the vegetables I like I'm either allergic to or they have lots of carbs. Sam's Club has some wonderful tropical chicken salad right now that I've been buying, it tastes good and seems healthy, if I could figure out a way to freeze it I'd stock up on it because I know they won't have it too long (sigh). I like meat with fruit, which completely grosses Sparky out.

2 am, I've spent the entire night listing eBay stuff (you want a tan? check my auctions!), hope it sells well. I think I'm going to take the rest of the night off to work on my website and then pack everything to mail tomorrow, I'm pooped! I'm in between novels, just finshed Charlaine Harris's Living Dead in Dallas (fun Southern vampire romance mystery) and haven't gotten the third novel in the series Club Dead yet, so I'm still debating between vampires and werewolves to start as my next before bed book. I've pulled Dr. Phil's weight loss book out (that I bought like six months ago, also at Sam's), I probably ought to start on it too ;-)

On a more serious note, I'm afraid I've gotten a real wake-up call medically. I've always had bad health. so I'm sort of just used to it and accept it, but after my physical last week I discovered:

I now have some uterine fibroids for the first time (ultrasound next week) I've gained weight since last year's physical :-( And my cholesterol has exceeded 300 (gulp)

I've had a tendency to have high cholesterol for about 15 years now, but it usually never goes over about 260 and my HDL (good) is usually pretty high. I'm adopted so new health problems are always a surprise to me, my mom has been battling high cholesterol and hypertension for most of her adult life and I don't want to have to do the same thing. The only time I've ever been able to get my number below 200 was when I had been seriously following the Atkins diet for several months. I'm supposed to still be on it, but I've fallen way off the wagon the last six months or so, eating way too much bread and sugar. I was on a low fat diet for years and my cholesterol kept going up, so I'm going to have to try the low carb route again. Apparently I'm insulin resistant. My husband is proportionately as or more overweight than I am, and his reading is 169. He's lucky to have great genetics. At least my blood pressure is still lower than normal.

Having MS, it's hard for me to exercise regularly, actually it was hard before also, I've never had any aerobic endurance at all. The only thing I've found I'm good at, like and work well for me is anaerobic exercise, i.e. weightlifting. I've always wanted my own big multi-station home gym, and would have one right now if it were up to me, but Sparky is maniacally opposed to it. When I got my results in the mail today, though, I told him I've got to do something and soon. So he at least agreed to bring my weight bench back in from the nasty outside storage room he stashed it in against my will, and to let me bring some of my free weights back into the house. Now all I have to do is actually use them.

I've been promising myself I'm going to make a serious try at doing yoga regularly also, I've got enough videos to open my own studio. We have a 24 hour gym a few miles away from us, but the damned thing is booked solid every time I've ever driven by it, even in the middle of the night. Years ago we hopefully bought a Health Rider, which I think I used a dozen times and it sits in our garage taking up space and reminding me daily what a failure I am and Sparky of the $700 bucks he spent on it. Hmm, I wonder if he'd let me bring it back in the house...

The fibroids are sort of scary, I had a lot of female problems in my 20's and have always been much more worried about getting cancer down there than up top. I did a lot of research on the internet and found some great sites that made me feel a little better about having them. But now whenever my abdomen hurts, I know why and it really bugs me. When the doctor was examining me I felt them, they hurt like hell! Fortunately I'm not planning on having children, but I still don't want to start having problems. I've been on birth control pills for 21 years now, and just had her change me to new ones (Loestrin, which I start next week) that are supposed to be better for 40+ year olds, because I seriously believe I'm well into perimenopause now, I feel like crap when I'm off my BC pills. But I don't smoke so I'm going to keep taking them as long as I can. When I'm on them I have hardly any period to speak of, and the last few months I haven't had any at all, which is fine with me.

For info on uterine fibroids check out:
Sex, Lies and Uterine Fibroids (awesome site!)
National Uterine Fibroids Foundation
Medline's Page on Uterine Fibroids

More peeves, I'm in a peevy mood today...

I've been trying to move a bunch of my auction images to the new storage site and eBay has been driving me fricking insane all night. They have a bug, which is only getting worse, where they make you login over and over again instead of once as it's supposed to be, and I'd get halfway through updating an auction and it would tell me I'm not the seller and make me login again. Eventually it just completely stalled out and I gave up. I don't even think I'm halfway through one store (with 200+ images) and I still have my main store to work on. I was trying to get them all done before the end of the month so I could get accurate traffic stats for March without the eBay hits.

Even though I've stopped eating/taking everything I can think of that would make me break out in hives I'm still getting the damned things. I look like I had a fight with a rose bush, and my eyes are itching and tearing. Plus the mosquitoes seem to have awoken from their hibernation and I'm one of those people they seek out. They never bite Sparky, they've been after me my whole life, maybe it's my blood type, I dunno.

Never did start my period (sometimes I don't, I'd much rather it be that way than the problems most women my age have, of too much), restarted by BC pills and some of the hot flashes have abated, though I spent the whole morning tossing and turning.

My glasses are REALLY bothering me big time. I actually shilled out big bucks to get some prescription reading and distance ones made, and the optometrist made the reading ones way too strong and put an astigmatism correction on the left eye on both pairs and it makes me dizzy to wear the damned things. He said give it a month and try it, but I don't think I'm going to be able to get used to either pair, and am going to have to have the left lenses remade. My non-prescription reading glasses are getting old and seem to constantly be dirty, which is giving me little panic attacks. I was born with rotten vision, but when I was like 18 I got contact lenses and wore them for about 8 years or so until I got RK. Then everything (except my night vision) was great until a few years ago when basically a combination of the RK, my MS, and age started making my vision just go to hell. And I'm told I can't wear soft contacts again, perhaps special (expensive) hard ones. but anyway, I hate wearing glasses again, even though they're not half an inch thick anymore. It appears like I'm looking through a tunnel and it makes me feel very vulnerable and helpless, which is not a feeling I'm used to...

And don't even get me started on Ralph Nader. The Democratic debates were fun tonight, I noticed Kerry and Edwards were making nice references to each other and kind of shying away from Al and Dennis, who, having nothing to lose, were going all out. I'm still getting Dean emails, I still have a Dean sticker in my car window, his camp is working on some sort of continuing project, but I'm not really sure what.

Damn the heater came on again, got to go turn the temperature down to 69, I'm not looking forward to sweating in the shower before bed (yuck). I'm actually looking forward to being able to have the AC on again.

What's bugging me right now...

Broke my right thumbnail by smacking it into the towel rack earlier this week, I'm really freaky about fingernail stuff. It's amazing what you CAN'T do with no right thumbnail to speak of...

Phoebe threw up in my desk chair the other day so like an idiot I sprayed Febreze in it to get the smell out. My question now is, how do I get the Febreze smell out? I'm really sensitive to smells and it smells like a fabric softener sheet and is really making me queasy. Plus it gets on my clothes since I'm sitting on it. Bleccchh...

As previously mentioned, I've had the same dull headache (only interrupted by a few short piercing migraines) for several weeks straight now. I was blaming it on the weather, but it hasn't rained much this week, so I dunno. I'm afraid I'm getting addicted to codeine because of it. My new pharmacist filled my normal prescription with 100 pills instead of 30 because the resident who wrote my prescription out as "enough for 30 days", which I'm not complaining about, but it's a little too tempting.

Been literally working my ass off on eBay with lots of sales with what seem to be proportionately little profits for the amount of labor involved. Aso eBay raised their listing fees this month which doesn't help, and I've been using gallery pics on almost every auction which adds up quickly. It's nearly impossible to sell things without it now, though.

I've been trying to cut back on my cat figurine collecting, I'm running out of shelf space and I'm getting too picky now for my pocketbook. Got a great collection, though. Had to put them out of the way of Phoebe, though, she thinks they're toys to be batted to the floor.

Food hasn't been particularly appealing lately and I haven't felt much like cooking it, much to Sparky's dismay. Had lots of salads and pasta, easy stuff. It sucks when you walk into a grocery store and nothing looks appetizing especially when you really are hungry. Been buying too much sweet stuff to compensate, but I don't feel like eating it. I raised my caffeine level to the point where my left eye was twitching, it took me like a week to figure out that was what was causing it, because it didn't take much. I need to get off carbs again, I feel so much better when I am, but I'm not a big veggie person and you can only eat so much meat. I ate junk food all night at the party, someone brought Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies, yikes, another hurdle to dodge when I go out for the next month or so. I used to have to sell the damn things so I'm especially vulnerable.

And I'm in that "any second now" period for my PMS (the "come on, get it over with damn it" feeling), and after eating chips and cookies all night I feel like I'm going to explode, gag. Too much salt probably.

Lots of Mac struggles lately, that's an entry by itself, though. And don't get me started on the Democratic primaries... I'm glad we have some hope to save the world from imminent destruction, but I don't like the way we're picking candidates out of desperation and the lovely media polls. I think at this point they could compare a tree stump and Dubya and the tree stum would be ten points ahead (sigh). I hate polls, and the babbling hypothesizing media in general.

Lots of skin allergies the last few weeks, been itching my hands and legs raw. I've been doing pretty good except for this new flareup, but it still annoys me. I never had hives in my life until about 8 years ago when two medicines my doctor gave me collided in my system and I've been fighting them ever since, even Tylenol gives me hives now.

On the plus side, though, I actually had a good hair day today, and two people said I looked like I've lost weight :-)

Well, today was a whirlwind, I'm still hyper, so what am I listening to? Jane's Addiction, sort of matching my heartbeat and typing rate which is interesting... Got to get their new album, saw them on TV last night, they still sound great. Convinced my husband to get rid of his 10 year old recliner, I know it's killing his back and neck, I looked up one on LaZBoy's website, we went in and bought the thing outright tonight, very cool, easy commission for the salesgirl. I called in advance to see if they had any in stock in the showroom, we bought some furniture from them about 5 years ago and it had to be special ordered and took like a month, and they had the chair he wanted and in the maroon color he wanted (no more beige, yea!). He got the only red one in stock in the city, it will be delivered next week (we don't own a gas guzzler big enough to tote furniture). AND it was on sale with a trade-in discount, so he'll get something for his old chair when the Salvation Army comes to retrieve it.

I can't believe how easy it all went, and that we're not stuck with another piece of earth toned furniture (one sofa and chair still to ge replaced). His favorite color is red, the chair fit him perfect (it's their Atlas chair, it's the biggest, comfiest one they make, too big for me). I love LaZBoy's stuff, we bought a dual recliner couch and a big overstuffed non-rocking chair for me (I'm not a rocker) when we moved and they're so well made and comfy, well worth the investment. Got one of those pop-up coffee tables too, eat dinner on it every night. Their stuff is so gorgeous, I could wander around in their showroom sitting on furniture for hours [sigh]. They have a cool website, you can test out colors, test decorate rooms, etc. I've always wanted a chaise for myself, for the bedroom, probably end up with a smaller recliner eventually, though. We have an old semi-broken chair in there now to basically hold pillows and provide a kitty window perch, but it would be nice to have a real reading chair in there also.

I whimped out on taking my last steroid today, slept really heavy and fitful and couldn't face another 24 hours of steroid withdrawal. Restarted on my bc pills tonight, too, they don't play well together and I don't feel well when I'm off them, too many hot flashes and such. We went to the Adobe Cafe in Sugarland after we bought the chair, dinner was great but I have had a metallic taste in my mouth all night and now I'm getting a swollen lip on one side, more withdrawal I'm assuming. Took some Lysine, hope that stops the swelling. Went to Half Price Books after that, I bought four cat books (Cats in the Sun, Asleep in the Sun, The Mediterranean Cat and The Silent Miaow) and a new werewolf romance that I didn't even know was out (read the prequel as part of a supernatural trilogy). Couldn't really afford it all, but the photo books were like 75% off retail so I couldn't pass them up.

My nose has been cold for two days, very annoying since it's like 100 degrees outside. Been super dehydrated today, I expected that on the steroids, not afterwards. Uggh, my head's pounding, here we go kids... I've got my music stepped down to Bowie's Heathen now, finishing with Tori Amos Scarlet's Walk, which even relaxes the cat. Yep, she's jumped up in my lap and is grooming the both of us now...

Hey, I'm actually getting an entry in before Friday! One more day of the dreaded steroids, I have no sense of taste left, I can't wait to eat food and appreciate it again... Still much too wired, got lots done this week, though. Just answered almost every message that was hanging around in my mail box, so I can go to bed with a somewhat cleaner conscience.

I flipped out yesterday and chunked down $40 for an anti-spam program, I just coudln't stand it anymore. I'd downloaded this last month but it was quirky with system 9, but so far so good on OSX. I killed almost 100 spams so far today alone, poor Entourage just can't handle the strain of trying to filter out all the Viagra ads...

I can't believe how happy I've been with OSX so far! It's so fast and it's really starting to click in my head, I feel so dumb for not upgrading earlier.

Oww.. I've been grinding my teeth and have chewed on the inside of my mouth, that's annoying... got to get to a dentist soon. I packed like 40 packages for Ebay the last two days, talked my poor husband into bringing most of them in, my back went out last night and I didn't think I'd be able to stand in line for the 30-40 minutes it requires. I need to get one of those stamping programs, they don't really make any for Macs, though, and I honestly don't want to have to pay yet another monthly fee for anything.

Got to go find kitty, much too quiet in here. Still have one package waiting to be wrapped and mailed staring at me but it's so quiet in here I hate to make that much noise, got to be done, though.

Rambling, steroid induced update... I got in to see my neurologist last Friday and he agreed to let me pass on the $3000 MRI and instead of intravenous steroids (5 days of a catheter and lots of possible side effects, yuck!) he gave me an enormous 10 day run of oral steroids to take. 2 days each of 20 mg pills starting at six a day and tapering down to one. Scared the crap out of me, usually steroids and I don't get along, but so far just some minor heart palpitations, too much sweating, some itching and my food tasting funny. And, of course, the bizarre spurt of fake energy and overactive brain waves. I figured "no sleep this week" because so far I've been taking 40 mg at bedtime, but I've been taking my Ambien and Klonapin all together and so far not too bad.

I figured perhaps at least I'd get some things done this week with the extra nervous energy, going to work on my new Ebay store, Enigma Arts, where I'm transferring all my postcard auctions to try and keep my listings on MorticiasMorgue a bit less jumbled. I've got the artwork almost finished, I can't do anything halfway, then I just need to transfer a bunch of my PC's over there. I still need to get GothicKitty up, I've been having too much fun playing with Phoebe and snapping endless photos so far, though. She's getting so big, in a few weeks she'll be a year old!

For some reason, even before the steroid regimen began, I decided one night that I just needed to completely upgrade my Mac to OSX. After downloading yet another program that told me "use the OSX version, it's better, OS9 is dead" I just got really pissed and decided to try it. It had been so long since I installed OSX originally that I had to pretty much reinstall it to get it to start up correctly. A lot of the programs I already had (Photoshop, GoLive, Toast, Suitcase...) were already OSX compatible, so it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I'm still using my old ClarisWorks, I need to get AppleWorks, I've got MS Word but it annoys the crap out of me for some reason. The thing that disturbed me the most about OSX when I first tried to play with it was the lack of the Apple Menu, and all of my beautiful hierarchal menus, desktop folders, labels, scrapbook and little things like that, but I'm getting somewhat used to it. After like 13 years of using the same basic system, it's rather disorienting. I like to put my files in my own folders, dammit, so they make sense to me, and I'm the only one who uses the computer... I switched over to a much more high tech version of Scrapbook, though, which I already had for OS9 called iData Pro. The company that was distributing it wen out of business, but the program creator is keeping it going and giving away free trials on his website, so check it out now, awesome program!

It's nice to have a version of AfterDark back, though I miss Boris ;-) I'm beginning to make peace with the Dock, though it still gets in my way. The font anti-aliasing is rather annoying too, I'm having enough trouble reading right now without making my fonts fuzzier and slightly smaller . On the good side, my auction listing program isn't corrupting my finder every time I use it, though I'm having some printer problems even though I updated the driver for my Epson. It's like it gets tired after awhile and gives me an error, which I'm having to work around by stopping the print queue, hitting retry, and then starting it again (to print one page).

The system does seem to be more stable, though, less crashes. It also restarts a hell of a lot faster than OS9 did. When I added an external hard drive to the old system it doubled my startup time, but OSX just bounces right back. It's a bit quirky, sometimes clicking on the weird little transparent menus doesn't work (I have to click on the desktop then back again). I like the updated iTunes and the new version of Fetch is fancy.

Oh well, more later, I need to try and wind down a bit before bed, still have two more steroids to take. I just went in and created the new Ebay store so I guess I'd better go make my About Me page and add my pretty little graphic to the store listing. Those little 310x90 logos are so easy to make, I don't know why more people don't at least make the effort. I get lots of compliments on my Morticia's Morgue store logo, I think it makes you look more professional (and more memorable to people).

Haven't been writing much lately, been having some weird vision problems that are making my computer work (and reading, watching TV, driving...) a pain in the butt. About a week ago I had a flashing begin in my left eye late one night. Last time that happened, it was just a migraine halo. So I took a Maxalt and went to bed. But the next day the light was still there, and a few days later a shadowy area appeared in that eye, not good. So, having had retinal surgery before, in the same eye, I'm thinking, great, I've torn a retina... again. I've been sneezing hysterically for the last month or so with allergies, so I thought with my luck the strain pulled it loose. It took a while to realize that it was just one eye doing it, so it definately wasn't a migraine, I could see the flashing and the cloud even when I closed my eye, which is really annoying.

So I got up early enough to call the doctor's office today, not wanting a detached retina, and called and got an emergency appointment. After a visual field test and exam her best guess was it's an optic neuritis attack from my MS. I haven't seen my neurologist in like a year, there's not much he can do except give me antidepressants and the really painful self-inflicted shots in the leg that I took for a few months and felt worse. Plus I haven't had proper insurance the last year since I've been officially self-employed. So the optomotrist leaves the room to call my neurologist (same clinic) and comes back in and says "he wants you to have an MRI tomorrow and see him on next week". Only problem is, I don't have insurance to cover a $1000+ MRI. And he told her he won't treat me without having it done. She said the treatment is steroids, no problem, I have an extra Medrol Dosepack from another problem, but after reading up on it, it looks like the steroids are to be given intravenously. Crap...

So the nurse is checking to see how much the MRI is for grins, and trying to make an appointment with the neurologist for Monday anyway. I got triple charged for my visit today because it was an office visit, a visual field, and she wrote me a prescription for reading glasses (which she told me she didn't have time to check me for since this was an emergency visit). And actually that wasn't that bad, because it turned out they had been undercharging me for our appointments with our medical discount plan. They'd been charging me 20%, which was working out well, and then the nurse found out when she called them about the MRI that we should be paying 80%... oops. Needless to say, I made a hasty exit after that. I hope they don't send us another bill, we're still trying to settle up with them on our physicals from last year with a "real" insurance company (who wouldn't pay for anything!).

So my vision seems to be steadily decreasing, my RK has worn off and I still have the side effects (haloes, etc.), plus the 40+ inability to read closeup has kicked in, and now my optic nerve is freaking out. And my eyes, head and back are aching from all the tests today. And all I want to do suddenly is read and make pretty websites. I'm still working on my kitty's site, let you know when there's more than a home page there.

Quick note before I go collapse into bed... I've been packing stuff to mail for EBay all night, finally had to stop cause I ran out of packing tape! (Errands for tomorrow - go to Sam's, get tape!) On the Dr. Phil show today he's having a follow-up to the episode he did on OCD awhile back, I'll have to have Sparky tape it for me, I got way too much to do today...

Speaking of, I looked in the mirror the other day and I suddenly have lots of little silver hairs mixed in with the brown and black ones, yikes! Is it stress or age creeping up on me? I've been meaning to color my hair again, now I really need to. I look more less like my normal scary Goth girl self and more like scary old hippie chick.

Speaking of, I've been listening to Neil Young and CSNY tonight and flashing back to the days of bell bottoms, moccasins and fringed suede jackets {sigh}. Turquoise jewelry and puka beads... I saw a teenager wearing a puka shell choker the other day, he checked me out at Old Navy. I mentioned I had some of those a long time ago and he said "Yeah, I've got like 3 of these, they keep breaking". I guess some things never change ;-)

I've had a weird last few weeks or so. Besides the rampaging allergies that is just part of the joy of living in Texas, we've had the added pollution of the smoke drifting up from Mexico. So I've been tired, listless and sneezing my head off. I swear I've done my best to spend as much time in bed the last few weeks...

I went to the opthalmologist's earlier this week to see why vision has gone to hell the last year or so. I'm only 41, it shouldn't be deteriorating as fast as it is. I'd thought perhaps I'd had an optic neuritis attack because I've been having a ton of floaters, plus double vision and dimness in my good eye, but she didn't see any swelling of the optic nerve. (I'm guessing I probably did have an attack and it's healing now) So I went back the next day to have a visual field test, which came back with the same blind spots I've been having so nothing there either.

She did tell me I need glasses for distance now again. At least I got a little over 10 years of 20/20 with my RK surgery, but she told me because of the surgery I couldn't really go back to wearing contacts again. Drats, I hate wearing glasses all the time.

Anyway, all the eyestrain took it's toll. The night after the visual field I was getting ready to take a shower and go to bed when I noticed some flashing in the corner of my vision. The first thing I thought was "that's a bad floater, why hadn't I noticed it before?". Then after a few minutes of it getting larger and brighter, I realized it was visible through both eyes, and was actually a migraine halo. I don't get haloes very often, usually just the throbbing pain, but I ran and gulped a Maxalt and the flashing was almost gone by the time I got out of the shower. Just this evening I'm finally getting some pain, so perhaps the medicine stalled it for a few days.

I have been really food obsessed lately but I've been in a mood where nothing really seems to taste good. So whenever I've been hungry lately, I've been snacking on those Mini Stoned Wheat Thin crackers that you get in the fancy foods aisle of the store (near the shortbread). They're bland and salty and make me feel like I'm actually eating something. I've been eating these on and off for years, I'm sure I'll burn out again soon but for now it's green tea and crackers. And an occasional real Coke, which I rarely drink but have been craving lately.

I've also had some really major lower back pain, but I'm beginning to think that it's being aggravated by all the extra activity of hunting and throwing catnip mice that I've been engaged in lately ;-)

Onto a serious subject now... Iíve spent most of this evening making a dent in a book I bought a month or so ago, Too Loud Too Bright Too Fast Too Tight - What to do if you are sensory defensive in an overstimulating world by Sharon Heller. I got a little over a 100 pages into it so far and am very impressed. Several years ago I discovered a similar book, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You by Elaine N. Aron which basically explained how some people (such as myself) are just more sensitive to their environments than other people, often to the point of interfering with their lives. This book was a breakthrough for me, I always knew I was different, sometimes in good ways, often in annoying ways, but just knowing that there are other people like me made me feel better. In ìToo Loudî Dr. Heller goes more in depth as to why some of us are ìtoo awareî as opposed to the 93% of people who barely seem to even notice things that drive the other 7% of us bonkers. It seems most of the books and studies on this disorder are mainly aimed at treating children, but this book also addresses adults.

Iíve always been fascinated by psychology, and this is a fairly scholarly book, but a very interesting read so far. Iím really looking forward to rest of the book, which is supposed to go into treatments and therapies to help deal with oversensitivity. So far sheís gone all the way back to birth, dealing with the different theories and possible causes why some children with this psychological characteristic do better than others and how itís often an inherited tendency. Apparently a lot of it has to do with their interaction with their mothers. I was adopted as a baby, and my parents always told me I was a happy baby, but they also said the same about my little brother, who was also adopted (from different birth mothers) and was diagnosed years later with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. He always had difficulty in school and was taken out of public school in the 2nd grade. I always did well in school, but I remember it was always an uphill battle and I only made it through about a year or so of college and dropped out. In retrospect, I realize that the entire experience of college overwhelmed me. Iíve never been good at listening to people giving lectures and speeches, though I can read for hours. I drove across town each day to school, scrambled to make it from one class to another on time, and nothing ever really seemed to click with me. I know Iím not attention deficit, though I often have a great deal of difficulty concentrating and staying focused on detail oriented tasks. Iím actually over attentive, and everything from noises to smells to the temperature in the room distract me...

Iíve always thought of myself as an empath, because it seems I can physically feel other peopleís discomforts and moods. I canít tune out noisy or angry people. Iím constantly scanning my environment for possible dangers. It made me a really good security officer, I noticed things way before anyone else. It makes me a super defensive driver, I anticipate other peopleís moves three steps in advance. Iím a terrible passenger, though. Iím also a terrible traveler. I overplan, overpack, panic if I forget something. I carry a huge purse all the time with a minimum of - a phone, sunglasses, reading glasses, eyedrops, spare car keys, several chapsticks, hand cream, steroid cream, bandaids, emergency medicines, a nail clipper and file, a little day planner, a hairbrush, several barrettes, lots of kleenex, handi-wipes, a gun... The thought of going out in the world unprepared (or without kleenex) freaks me out. I need to find a photo a friend took of me and my dumped out purse in high school, even then I had way too much stuff with me all the time.

Because of all of my brotherís problems, not a lot of attention was paid to me when I had difficulty with things. I was the ìexample childî and just sort of always expected to be able to cope with things and make straight Aís. As long as I can remember, though, I was always a picky child. There were a lot of foods I couldnít bring myself to eat, excessive heat or cold paralyzed me, I wore my socks indoors all my life, even to bed, and never went outside barefoot. The ticking of watches and clocks drove me nuts. When I was a kid I had an early digital clock where the numbers would flip mechanically every minute, I would lay awake for hours anticipating each 60 second interval. My scalp is overly sensitive, my teeth are painfully sensitive to everything from temperature to cheap silverware. I had to wear my motherís giant green sunglasses outside when I was a kid, they didnít really make sunglasses for children in the 60ís. Just the thought of spending a day outside would send me into a panic... the grass, the bugs, my allergies, the sun. I was could swim well, but always had to wear a mask, I couldnít stand to get water in my eyes. When I was about 12 I just stopped swimming altogether. Having to go see Santa or a birthday party traumatized me, though my parents swear I was a well-adjusted child who adapted to things well. I think I just got to the point where I stopped reacting externally to things that bothered me and withdrew, which I still do today (when Iím not consciously avoiding potential irritants).

The worse week of my youth was spent at a summer camp that a friend talked me into attending with her. It was just north of Houston in an area fondly referred to as the ìBig Thicketî, which is a nice word for a swamp. They had horses, which is what convinced me to go, but as soon as we got there I realized what a huge mistake Iíd made. It was August and our cabin had no air conditioning, the community bathroom stunk of Lysol, there was a hornetís nest in our cabin (no sleep for me!), and both me and my friend received about 200 mosquito bites each. The water was murky with strange plants growing on the bottom, the horses were insane ex-racehorses who didnít respond to anything less than the counselor smacking them in the head with a Dr. Schollís clog... and I got my period when I was there. At least it gave me an excuse to stay out of the nasty water.

It was sort of scary taking the quiz in the book, because I literally checked off yes to every question. ëWhich stimuli seem to bother you more than they bother other people - Smells, Sounds, Lights, Tags and labels in your clothes, the feeling of jewelry, creams or lotions on your skin, baths or showers, heights and things like escalators, someone standing too close, crowded areas, vibrations from vehicles or machinery... Do you/are you - get car sick, get dizzy very easily, feel hot or cold easily, have trouble unwinding, have sleep problems, a perfectionist, impulsive...í and so forth. It would be easy to dismiss a child or adult who reacted this way as Obsessive Compulsive, Paranoid, depressed, suffering from Generalized Anxiety Disorder or as just a hypochondriac. Iíve spent my entire life coping with all of these weird problems and have been diagnosed as depressed, labeled a hypochondriac, told I was overreacting, and told I was too picky. Iíve agonized over picking out clothing that bothers me as little as possible (socks with seams that donít rub, the most comfortable pants I can find, nightgowns without buttons or scratchy lace). I buy multiples of any clothing I find I can tolerate including underwear, socks, tee shirts. I found the softest sheets without any texture to bother my skin. I have two pairs of shoes I wear constantly because they donít chafe my heels or pinch my toes. I rarely use any products with fragrance on my body, I detest bar soap and only use liquid soaps. I own about a dozen different types of chapstick but only use one or two of them. I have taken Prozac (and just about every other SSRI), Xanax, Klonapin and Ambien to try and relax and sleep at night. When I was working two jobs, I could afford to go to a massage therapist every week or two for about a year. It was wonderful, but I really donít think Iíve ever really felt completely relaxed in my entire life. The closest thing I can think of was when my dentist gave me nitrous oxide or when I was slipping off into sedation prior to one of several surgeries Iíve had. I drive my husband insane, because he doesnít smell the things I smell, hear the noises I hear, have the constant ups and downs of temperatures. He plays one to two TVís every second heís awake, I have to nag him to turn one down when he leaves the room. My office area has no doors to shut out the sound and I often have to play my own music to distract myself and be able to concentrate on my work. Right now my cable modem, hard drive, monitor and external modem are humming so loud I could scream. Itís after three am, though, so out of consideration for my sleeping husband, Iím not playing any music. Iíve had tinnitus my entire life, TMJ, suffered migraines and am now told I have Multiple Sclerosis. Besides having intolerances to many smells, many foods, etc. I also have very real allergies to most common allergans which have gotten worse as Iíve gotten older. So needless to say, Iím really hoping this book will provide some sort of relief.

TO BE CONTINUED...
To Come - Favorite products and more info

Some links to start off -
Sensory Integration Network
Sensory Comfort Products
Sensory Integration International

Been overwhelmed with life and bills lately, I feel like a hamster on a wheel many days... I run and run but never get ahead. And if I slow down for just a minute, everything catches back up to me *sigh*. Unfortunately, often when I do get overwhelmed, my reaction is just to stop. I don't know if it's the depression, the MS or a combination, but after a burst of energy last week I hit the wall this weekend. Inertia is a terrible thing, I've barely been able to crawl out of bed the last few days, let alone get anything productive done. I've managed to get some auctions up on eBay so I don't go completely broke.

I had to go out Monday to get my mammogram, which my crappy insurance wouldn't pay for a month or so ago, so my husband said he'd pay for it and I had to reschedule. It was pouring rain all day, I couldn't use any deodorant or baby powder before I went in, and then when I got there a couple of paramedics were aimlessly wheeling a dead guy around the lobby of the clinic on a gurney, sort of felt like a flashback to my twenties when I was working hospital security and dating EMT's and that sort of thing was an everyday occurrence...

During my stupor today I watched an Oprah about Social Anxiety Disorder, I've had that all my life. Sparky's much more gregarious than I am, but luckily he's content to stay home most of the time too. He says I'm anti-social, but I like to think of myself as a hermit. If I'd never met him, though, I kind of hate to think what I'd be like... Just going grocery shopping, to the movies or to the mall is a major event it seems. I think if I could just deal with my life through the internet, I'd be happy. My best friend and her husband have been going to Mardi Gras balls and parades for the last month or so, even when I was younger I never had the energy to do that. Socializing exhausts me, I've never been good at it. The biggest breakthrough I've had in dealing with the anxiety is realizing that no one is really that concerned with what I'm doing, they're not that observant and are too self-absorbed. I suffer from allergies that often cause my eyes and face to swell, and often had to go to work felling horribly disfigured only to find out my co-workers hadn't even noticed it until I brought it up myself. Also after years of trying to get descriptions of people for crime reports working security, half the time the "witnesses" couldn't give me enough details about a shoplifter, etc. to tell me even one color that they were wearing. Once they couldn't even tell me what race a guy was who came in and broke out a big glass jewelry display with a hammer in front of like a half dozen people.

Speaking of groceries, we're running out of food again, got to find some money and go shopping. Sparky's out of soda, snacks and bottled water. I did manage to make a decent dinner tonight out of some chicken I'd frozen, some canned veggies, a nice loaf of bread I got at Whole Foods yesterday when I was out at the doctor's in the same neighborhood and also a nice bottle of Merlot. So we sat on the couch and watched The Ring during dinner. Scary movie, but neither of us really got it. It was based on a Japanese horror movie, though, which makes sense because I've seen quite a few foreign horror movies and a lot of time the atmosphere is more important than the actual story.

My little bit of energy is running out again, I need to shower and go to bed. This is sort of the same feeling I had when I got Mono when I was about 22 (from working 80 hours a week, not from anything interesting), you're too tired to get out of bed, but you can't sleep worth a damn either and you're even too brain dead to lay in bed and read or watch TV. And when I am asleep, I've been having the "being chased" dreams again, which is exhausting. I think I'm going to up my daily Prozac intake to 30 mg, if it doesn't send me into a panic attack it might help a bit.

More Anxiety & Mental Health Links:
Social Anxiety.org
The Social Anxiety Network
The Social Anxiety Institute
Anxiety Disorders Association of America
National Institute of Mental Health - Depression

OK, I've got to get this entry in before midnight, it's just too weird. I started off today feeling really bad and seem to be ending on a high note. When I got up I felt a little rough, I woke up about every hour and a half for some reason all night. We were planning on going out to eat and then I was going to run some errands and go on to grocery shop, we're out of everything, but towards the end of watching a really interesting Oprah on some of the current scams making the rounds, my stomach just freaked out and I spent the next hour and a half in and out of the bathroom. We had junk food last night for dinner, hamburgers and onion rings, so that must have set me off somehow. So the trip to get groceries was off but we did go out in the rain to IHOP and I managed to down some blueberry pancakes. Feeling a bit perkier, we stopped at Borders across the street on the way home so I could pick up the latest issue of Real Simple that I'd seen when we were out this weekend but couldn't remember if I had or not, and I ended up getting it and a copy of Yoga Journal, which I often look at but rarely buy. But the cover article this month is "Ruled by Perfectionism?" so it called to me.

When we got home I tried sitting on the couch relaxing and watching TV with Sparky, but I've been feeling really tense and my muscles have been even tighter than normal, which is pretty bad. I think part of it's the non-stop cold weather. So I wallowed around on the floor trying to stretch the best I could for about half an hour, then my brain clicked. This would be a great time to actually work through one of my ever-growing collection of Yoga videos! I've had the props for ages and never used them, I'd never actually made it through an entire video and that's one of my resolutions this year. So in hopes of working some of the kinks out, I retreated to the bedroom and forbade Sparky to come in.

I started with Yoga Journalís Yoga for Relaxation, which I did the first session about all the way through, mostly laying on the floor poses, nice and easy. But I still felt like I needed to do more so I whipped out Yoga for Beginners. I watched Patricia go through what I vaguely remember from watching Lilias years ago as the Salute to the Sun routine, cringing at her back bends. But most of the video really was pretty much beginner's material. I'm double jointed and have always had difficulty with any exercise resembling lunges, but I managed to do all but one set of poses, I had to rest a minute when she repeated the Proud Warrior pose. My feet kept slipping on my "non-skid mat" for some weird reason, we have wooden floors in the bedroom instead of carpet so I had to put my Dearfoams back on to get some traction. I also had to modify the whole jumping into position thing and just stepped into position (she said it was OK!) because I get heel pain really easily because my feet are flat. I do feel better now, if I can keep up the inspiration to keep practicing regularly I'm going to have to get them on DVD, video's sort of awkward and it would be nice to flip from pose to pose. I just looked at Amazon and found several more that look really promising including Yoga Basics, which promises more seated poses which I would love, I remember really liking a lot of the seated twists and simple backbend poses when I was younger. I used to be pretty good at poses like the Cobra, the Camel pose and I still do at least a modified version of the Bridge pose almost every day. It's a great stretch to do before you get out of bed in the morning. Amazon also has another DVD which looks really interesting called Yoga for Inflexible People with modified routines for beginners using yoga props. With the MS I can get pretty stiff sometimes :-(

OK, so what is so weird and what is the "no coincidence" reference all about... Well, my husband was teasing me asking me how long ago I'd bought Yoga for Beginners because it was the first one I ever bought. When I was putting the video back in the box the original receipt fell out, it was from 1997, and the date was February 19th.

I wish I could just kick the crap out of something... Sparky's been feeling sorry for himself all evening and hiding in his room like a jerk. Poor baby, he got his cable TV upgraded to all new lines and digital service today, so now he has 200+ channels to mindlessly flip through, but for some reason he's in a nasty mood and isn't even watching the damn thing. I pay for all of the cable modem and half of his damn TV though I watch less than a dozen shows a week, and he's added HBO so he can watch one show on it for an extra $8 a month. He had just bot the basic digital lineup, though, so I insisted we at least get the next tier so I could get the extra Home & Garden channels. And he gets another 8 or 10 Encore movie channels, but he's still not happy, he's so easily offended it's near impossible to even know exactly why he's being so pissy. It could be something I said, something Dubya said, the crappy economy, who knows. So I don't try...

On top of everything, I've been feeling like hell the last few days and it seems to be getting worse. I don't know if it's my Mitral Valve problem, my MS, the return of the ear infection or a combination, but I've been dizzy and shaky and very weak. Last night I noticed I had no strength in my lower right leg, and today I'm weak and my heart's beating irregularly. And my right hand is really weak today which makes life difficult. I've had enough of a fever also to just feel gross and uncomfortable, also my tinnitus has been almost unbearable. I was in the mind set to do something productive even though I didn't feel good, so last night I turned the computer off and flipped through a ton of old, unread magazines and filled up a grocery sack for recycling. I think the oldest one was a Health from July of last year (they changed their layout last fall, seems too superficial now. I've still got about another dozen or so to go through... I've stopped most of my subscriptions because I never have time to read the damned things anymore. I also threw an entire garbage can full of expired & questionable stuff from the refrigerator away.

Then, I went into my closet and dug through all my clothes to find more to toss out or put in storage. Now I have a tower of clothes leaning on the chair in the bedroom, I'm sure I'll catch hell for that too. I'm determined to actually know what I own and wear some of my nicer pieces occasionally. I went halfway through this winter bemoaning the fact I didn't have a comfy jacket only to remember I had a nice black boiled wool coat I had forgotten I owned. I have big plastic storage boxes in my closet for off-season stuff, so I put some of the things I never seem to wear in it, and yanked some things out of it to add to the stack. Someday, I'll actually manage to transport all of them to one of the charity boxes in our neighborhood. I used to be terrified to throw things away, I'm a lifelong packrat, but now I have to be careful not to throw too much out, it's almost a manic thing when I get started. I need to make another run through and get rid of some more of my former work wardrobe to sell on eBay. I don't need half a dozen short sleeved black knit blouses anymore.

Our weather has been so weird this year, it's been steadily cold and damp, I only own about six nice comfy long-sleeved tees, which I've been wearing in heavy rotation. Speaking of which, I need to check the laundry, I'm doing that tonight also, and I've finished packing all of my boxes to ship for eBay. I don't want to be sitting here tonight at 3am and still have work to do. Geez, I hope I feel better tomorrow. I doubt we'll do anything for Valentine's, Sparky's not the romantic type. Neither of us like to fight the crowds, either, though, so it's no big deal.

Sparky just came out of his cave, I think his bad mood is mostly because he got a DVD from a friend today and was recording it and it froze up in his machine about 3/4 of the way through. Homemade DVD's suck, this is the second version of the same movie he's gotten and he has one DVD player that wouldn't play either and the other is acting finicky. I thought he might be depressed over that, helplessness & frustration are valid reasons to be upset, I just wish he wouldn't take it out on me *sigh*. I never wanted children, now I've got a 46 year old baby, too much drama... we've got to get a cat so at least I have someone calm to talk to.

Multiple entries today, too many different subjects to cover. I now and the proud owner of both Lottie and Tragedy Living Dead Dolls. I bought them both on eBay, but later found out that Hot Topic still carries the second issue �exclusive� Tragedy Goth girl doll for less than I paid for it (of course). Apparently the first issue had red tissue paper in her coffin, and the second has purple, which is what I bought because I thought the purple looks better. Lottie is from a discontinued series, though, so I think I got a good deal on her. Both dolls are still shrink wrapped, I�m hoping I can remove the shrink wrap and still be able to display them in their coffins. I wouldn�t mind having Lottie keeping me company at my desk for awhile :-) I already have a menagerie of little critters surrounding me, including two bats, a Halloween kitty, Xena, a big and small Batgirl, the Barbie on her Harley Davidson ornament, a gold Lucky Cat and assorted pagan deities. And a Lily Munster and Samantha doll, and two Wonder Womans. That�s not even counting everyone staring at me from my surrounding bookshelves and the life masks across the room (those are my husband�s). More stuff to dust...

�I bought some Emily the Strange stuff the other day. I searched on eBay and found a bunch of stuff I hadn�t seen before that I had to have. Then, I actually checked around to the outlets that carry her stuff to see everything available and compare prices and ended up getting a journal from eBay, the hardcover book and the lunch box with the Emily and her kitties on it from the Emily/Cosmic Debris site, and a cell phone cover and a little key chain from Hot Topic. I was really tempted by an Escher cat shower curtain and bathroom rug with her spooky kitties on it, but I managed to pass. There are two cell phone covers, one with Emily big and her cat small, but I opted for the reverse version, I�ve been in a kitty mood lately. There�s also another lunch box available, but the top of my shelves are full so I decided to pick the first version. They have some darling tee shirts, but most of them are in junior sizes and styles and I need a full-sized tee. I don�t look good in little baby doll tees with cap sleeves :-( Be sure to click on the site map and freebies link to download the spooky desktop pics while you�re there.

Yea! My doctor finally renewed my Ambien prescription, I�ve been completely out the last two nights and my alternative solutions to help me sleep have been causing strange side effects & bizarre dreams. I took Klonopin the first night, and was ultra groggy all day afterwards. I used to take that every night, no wonder I used to sleep to late every day. Last night I took a whole Xanax instead of the half I normally take, and slept till about 10:30, then woke up and fell back asleep to have the exhausting dream described below. I like having vivid dreams, but not every night.

The cold rain has begun, it's supposed be cold, wet and windy the rest of the week. I just drove to the grocery store and sat in their drive-thru pharmacy line for 15 minutes waiting to get my meds. Too cold and wet to actually get out of the car and go inside. I sat in the car and sang along to Avril Lavigne while I waited. I�m sure the people in the car behind me wondered about my sanity, but I�m at that weird �don�t care what other people think about me� point. I guess that�s why I ramble on to you good people about my psychotic dreams ;-)

Been mindlessly surfing under the influence of PMS all day, absorbing ideas and killing pop-up ads. I had selfishly (actually desperately) added some affiliate and a couple of strategically placed pop-under ads to my overloaded main website back in October, which is my big season (I always go over my traffic limits at Halloween) hoping to make a tiny bit of revenue. Gotta tell you, though, the only affiliate that has ever sent me any money was Amazon.com, and that wasn't for too much. After hundreds of thousands of hits the last few months I got nada from the three groups I signed up with, so screw them, I'm taking all their crap back off my site, no more free advertising.

I need to upgrade my weblog to the new version of Movable Type, but I have too many hormones running rampant right now and it will be my first upgrade, so I think I'll wait a bit and just work on my main site. I hit SOOO many dead links surfing around tonight, it inspired me to update my own site. I have a cable modem, a G4 power Mac and an updated browser with lots of memory so if I can't get sites to work, I pity the dialup folks. I hit lots of non-navigable sites which really pisses me off to no end also. I'm all for artsy and minimalism, but sometimes people go too far. I've been working on a major overhaul anyway, I just need to get in gear. I'm such a damned perfectionist, if I don't just jump in and do something it will never get done. My site's been an ongoing project for over five years now, I wish I could just play with it full-time :-)

Anyone have any ideas how to lessen the hum from cable modems and external hard drives? I have tinnitus and when I'm bitchy the humming from my own desk can drive me nuts. I have hearing like a dog, I also have a dog's sense of smell. Believe me, I want neither. I think my senses are unbalanced because I was born with 20/400 vision. I corrected it in my twenties with old fashioned RK surgery, worked great, but now that I'm past 40 I'm getting far-sighted and have to wear reading glasses. I also think staring at a 19" computer screen all day is screwing up my night vision. The RK made it fuzzy to start with, I used to see like a cat (lots of animal analogies tonight, I miss my pets...), but it's been declining the last few years. I've been taking betacarotene to try and counteract it, seems to be helping a bit.

Fun stuff I found tonight:

The coolest 404 screen I've seen!
A hall of shame for ugly bridesmaid dresses
Bad advertising pics from around the world
And one of the whores on Joe Millionaire is a bondage actress

Well, that pisses me off... I've been typing for like half an hour, listening to music trying to cover the din of fake applause for Wubya's recital (my husband's watching it in his room, he's not a fan, I think it's more morbid fascination), and had a really nice post going and Explorer crashed... grrrr... Gone, all gone. There's no "save" button on Movable Type till you're ready to publish it, unfortunately. Curses...

Where was I? Oh yes, I'm now on my second White Russian, I went and bought a little bottle of Absolut so I could make a proper one. I use more Kahlua and cream and a little less vodka, though. I made a Bacardi version at New Year's and it's just not the same. Much better with good vodka. I even managed to float the cream on this one. I think I used half and half before, it doesn't float worth a damn. Any excuse to have Kahlua, though, it's always been one of my faves. And I'm using one of my Waterford Roly Polies that I got on sale years ago, which is nice.

I needed a higher octane drink tonight than my usual Port, it's been a helluva day. Way too much drama, I hate drama. Less than three hours after I fell asleep the phone rang, they hung up and called right back and my husband answered it. Then he came storming into the bedroom because it was a bill collector... for me... oops. It's January, I've been doing the best I can, but not good enough for those guys. Actually they were bought out by someone else so they wanted to make a "new deal" with me. Thanks. Eight in the bloody morning. Set my husband off in a rage all day, he freaks out about money even though it's my account, etc. (I'm only late on one, dammit) I took a Xanax and half an Ambien to knock me back out so I wouldn't have to listen to him slamming doors and deliberately cranking the TV up all morning. (I'm really not a junkie, I have MS and I don't sleep much on a good day) I like to calmly reason with people when they're freaking out, but it doesn't work with him for some reason, he has to wind down by himself... He had to go visit with his poor mom at lunchtime, her husband's in the hospital (not my husband's dad, he passed on before we met). He was still pissy when he got back in the afternoon, so I went and happily ran my little errands till dinner time when he had cooled down a bit.

I went to the post office, long lines, computers down, stuffy and hot because the weather has swung back to the warm side since yesterday. A young woman behind me was mumbling about the lack of clerks and the long lines and trying to make small talk over the screaming out of control kids running amuck and I didn't really understand what she said the first time (I don't hear well in crowds). I try not to engage in conversations in line at the post office, either my husband or myself go from 3-5 times a week, so we're used to waiting in line and really don't want to join in the gripe sessions with the people who come once a year. When the kids finally left with their dad, the woman started talking to me again, and this time I could hear her. She said she was almost finished with her radiation treatment for skin cancer, and she showed me a bandage on her shoulder beneath her nicely tailored business suit. Dark-skinned young black woman, younger than me. Poor thing, I'm sure the heat in the place was making her uncomfortable. I politely consoled her and made small talk till I was finally called for my turn.

I'm unfortunately an empath by nature, people and their emotions tend to gravitate towards me unless I really put the auric force fields up. Then I tend to scare the crap out of the general public. Which is fine with me, I've found that predators don't tend to normally attack people who look like they could be insane in a dangerous way. When I used to have to walk around downtown during my lunch breaks, I'd just raise the "don't mess with me" shields and they usually wouldn't approach me. I've taken a few online quizzes for grins lately, I won't bore you with the graphics but the results were kind of fun. I took the Goth test and it said I was "46% Goth, Goth by night, normal by day. Deep in my heart I know I am evil, but not on the company's time. I do need to eat." I'm not sure that's really true, I used to unnerve a lot of the people I worked with ;-) I think I would have scored higher it I'd answered as if I was still in my 20's. I did have black satin sheets, I painted the walls of my first apartment black and grey. I also own my own fangs, custom made by Maven of Dark Awakenings. He was in town at Numbers a few years ago and I went and hung out with all the baby Goths till he showed up. I have the "Canines" set, they're snap-on caps, which works well for me, I have an overbite. I broke my first set because they had a bridge and my bottom teeth hit it. The caps are much more comfortable and don't require any adhesive, he molds and shapes them right in your mouth.

Out of idle curiousity I took the What Self Mutilation Are You quiz and it came back with a nice little pic of a razor blade and "You are cutting. You can be moody as hell, and probably don't know how you're feeling half the time. Despite this, you pull yourself together with a lot of strength and aren't to be messed with." OK, I kind of like that one. I like to think that people take me seriously and are never quite sure what to expect. I'm petite, but I'm brunette and have never been labeled conventionally "cute", which is fine with me. I don't like sharp things, but I do admit to picking at things till they bleed. I'm OCD, sorry, one of many outlets. Per Jack Off Jill, "she wears black so her arms can bleed". You've got to admit, black is more practical and stain resistant...

I think I'm back where I was when the crash occurred. The vodka is seeping in nicely, I think I'll go lay in bed and read till I fall asleep. I stayed up way too late last night. I got approved for all my new webrings, thanks to all! I love finding really relevant sites to link up with. I also added a lot of fem-centric links under my "Blogs of Style" column, I was up till almost 6am last night.

Third Explorer crash in one session... that's got to be a sign, off to hide under the sheets till this hellish day has passed...

It's been one of those strange evenings where time has moved very slowly. I slept way too late, but I still seem to have gotten tons of things done. And it's barely 2am and I'm done with work for the evening. I wish I could figure out why time moves as it does, my assumption is it's mostly a state of mind thing, I haven't been feeling as hectic as usual this week despite PMS, plumbing problems and my hiatal hernia acting up. Had a really nasty bout of acid reflux a few days ago and still haven't really gotten over that yucky feeling in my throat. I haven't been taking my daily Calcium-Magnesium supplement to ward off my PMS the last few days for fear of upsetting my stomach, I need to try and get back on it tonight. It really does help as a preventative, also the magnesium helps me sleep, and I'm lactose intolerant so the calcium can't hurt.

Speaking of time, I joined The Ageless Project this weekend, I've been meaning to do it for awhile, I love their site, you can search people's websites by their age and the decade they were born. (I'm in the 1960's, FYI :-) It's really a fascinating thing, I've always been proud of my age, to misquote Oprah, "I own those years". Both Oprah and Dr. Phil have had shows this month about women denying their real age or afraid to age. Wearing their teenagers clothing and way too much makeup. I don't know if it's vanity or lack of, but I've always owned up to my actual age. I also hardly ever wear makeup and just wear whatever is comfortable (lots of black and grey, can't really go wrong). The only place I really look my age is in my eyes, which are far too serious and usually have dark circles from allergies and other health problems. No real wrinkles to speak of yet, though. I've stayed out of the sun since I was about 12 years old, my mother set the example for me (she still has lovely skin in her 70's), have never smoked and take really good care of my skin. As you can probably tell from my main website, I enjoy being pale ;-) I have to be especially careful the last ten years or so because my skin has gotten ultra-sensitive and I've developed chronic Rosacea, "the curse of the Irish". Sunscreen irritates my skin, so I just stay inside as much as possible. I can't tolerate excessive hear anyway because of some other health problems so it's no loss to me, it's too hot down South to hang around outdoors. A bonus for living in Houston is the humidity, though. I rarely ever have a good hair day, but it's better for my skin. I lived in the more arid Texas hill country for several years and my allergies and my skin rebelled (though I did have better hair ;-) As lousy as the summer weather can be here, I'd still rather live on the humid Gulf Coast. I think the only place more humid is New Orleans, which is my favorite city in the US. So now you know the secret of Southern women's "peaches and cream" skin, no sun and lots of humidity. I gave up on my hair years ago, it's going to be frizzy and wavy no matter what I do (though I do own a few straightening irons for special occasions ;-)

I've always heard that Capricorns age backwards. I started off as a very grim, serious little girl, and I think I have probably gotten more carefree as I've gotten older. I wouldn't want to go back and have to relive my teens or even twenties, I like being older. My last job involved working around a lot of 20-somethings and recent college graduates and I always enjoyed lording my age and experience over them. All the little crises they went through seemed so trivial, though I did act as sort of an older sister and sometimes therapist. Most of my friends growing up were older than me, though my best friend is 9 years younger than me. She grew up with three older brothers, though and is much more mature and older culturally than most people her age. She's also an Earth sign, so that's probably one of the reasons we think alike.

Oops, it's after three in the morning now, time is moving forward again. I'm getting chilly sitting still at my desk, time to dive under my stack of blankets and read for awhile.
Oh, and if you were wondering, I just turned 41 this month ;-)

I was flipping the channels and happened upon Dr. Phil today, I don't usually watch him because most of his shows seemed to be aimed at resolving relationship problems, which can get kind of boring after awhile (and because he looks way too much like my ex-husband), but today he was doing a show on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I missed the first 15 minutes and could have kicked myself because I really enjoy psychology, I've often thought I should have been a psychologist, it's one of those things that comes fairly naturally to me, it helped a lot in my private security career. And also because I have always had OCD. I think most people have it to a degree, they just don't recognize it. I've often thought that mental health problems like OCD and depression are actually a sign of intelligence and creativity in many people. I think the psychological meter has depression and similar mental health disorders on one end, and complete sociopaths on the other end. The societal "norm" is to be somewhere in between. Frankly I'd rather be on the depressive end myself. One of the problems today is there are too many sociopaths who could frankly care less whether their neighbors lived or died, as long as it didn't affect them personally. Not that they're particularly cruel individuals, they're just oblivious to anything outside their own little self-centered lives.

To be able to succumb to depression or actually be obsessed about something indicates an awareness that the world is not such a cheery, perfect place. It has a lot of problems and there are a lot of unhappy, unhealthy people out there. Because of the high-end sociopaths (greedy CEO's, Republicans and other emotionless criminals, which are nothing new, they've just become more prolific and public in recent years) the quality of life has steadily declined for many people. The people who care are few and far between it seems, and the ones who do try and change the world around them often seem to barely impact the situation. Homelessness, joblessness, avoidable health problems, poor education, etc. are put on the back burner while grand idealogical plans receive an illogical amount of attention and funding in this bizarre alternate universe we exist in. That's my coping mechanism for getting through the current Republican regime, is that we are in a strange alternate universe and eventually the collective consciousness of America will see the truth of what's going on and eventually regain it's sense. We can only hope...

But this wasn't meant to be a political essay, I wanted to discuss OCD. The women featured on the show had fairly serious cases of it, one was a clean freak who was driving her family insane, and the other was both a germ freak and a compulsive hoarder (of toilet paper, used plastic bags, you name it). You'd think that if someone was obsessed with germs they wouldn't allow huge mounds of junk to accumulate in their house but this poor woman did. I realized years ago that I had to be really careful not to let this disorder overrun my life. I was raised by a mother who refused to sit on public toilets because of the germs, but I've also always had huge piles of assorted clutter that follow me around. My husband says I can make more trash than any woman he's ever known. I used to save everything, "just in case". I became overly organized out of necessity, keeping file boxes of receipts for way too long, too much mail, too many magazines, books, clothes. Then one day I learned the joy of throwing things away. It's also easy to get too carried away by doing that. I broke my shredder destroying years of unneeded documents. But getting rid of excess, unused stuff is very enlightening. I'm also very much a germ freak, BTW, mostly out of necessity to maintain my fragile health. I'm very aware of where my hands have been, and try and keep them away from my face when I'm out in public because I'm bad about touching my eyes and nose, and I'm a compulsive hand washer (I go through a lot of liquid soap and hand cream). I carry little handi-wipes around with me, put paper on public toilet seats, never touch doors and water faucets without a paper towel. Over the years I have found that just realizing what is causing my irrational behavior, mentally telling myself it's just my OCD talking, or depression, or PMS, etc. helps me to cope. Also SSRI's like Prozac and Paxil don't hurt.

But, of course, it all tends to creep back. I can clean my desk, file all the important stuff, throw the junk away, and within a week I'll have new piles of stuff everywhere. I try to go through the piles and either file or toss them at least once a week. I've tried to teach myself over the years to organize efficiently, to ruthlessly discard things that have no use, and to try and develop regular habits to try and automatically maintain things in some semblance of order. I put things in the same place when I've finished using them, purse, keys, pens, pencils, glasses, jewelry, clothing, remote controls, etc. I get really frustrated and feel very helpless when I can't find something. So I consciously make sure everything on my desk is in it's logical place before I turn the computer off for the day. I have a folder full of programs I back up each day also, before I shut the computer off, my email files, bookmarks, my eBay records, things I've lost to crashes before and can't do without...

I've spent a lot of money over the years on organization "stuff", and have taught myself to actually use it. It also helps to cut down on my dusting and cleaning. I have plastic drawers to keep my shoes clean, clear plastic shoulder protectors to keep my nice blouses and coats from getting dusty, big zip up clear garment bags for coats and things I don't wear much, large sealed plastic boxes in my closet and under my bed for off season clothes, dividers for my clothing, kitchen, bathroom, office. I favor clear plastic and acrylic storage items just so I can actually see what I own, I have so much stuff I tend to forget what I have. I have 11 bookcases just in my home office (aka our living/dining room) alone. All books are grouped by type and the ones I use most are close to my desk. I have two file cabinets and 4 or 5 portable file boxes for overflow. I even organize my assorted piles of stuff. I've taught myself not to leave things like receipts lying around to catch dust on my bedroom nightstand, they all go in either a big envelope to be filed or in one specific file on my desk for current things like bills. When I'm out and in a hurry, I try and stick any receipts I accumulate through the day in the same pocket in my purse or wallet so I can pull them all out when I'm done and file them or record them in my checkbook. I bought a nice desk planner and use it and the calendar on my email progam (Entourage) to remind me when things are due. I couldn't exist without post-it notes, I stick them in my Dayrunner, on my computer where I have to notice them, in my wallet where I can see them... I have a little mini Dayrunner in my purse, very small, with a phone directory, places for notes and blank pages to put random notes on. If you're on a budget, your local office supply store has generic binders (and loose leaf paper) in the same sizes as many of the expensive planners, so you can just buy the inserts like calendars and phone directories and assemble the rest yourself. I've also found some fabulous deals at Dayrunner's clearance site, I get the loose leaf planners so I can add my own refills. I keep a phone book directory with my computer passwords, etc. in them alphabetically so I can actually find them when I want to buy something online, etc. If you don't want to put things like that in a binder, a Rolodex file works really well for random information, if you're on the computer all day a simple searchable data file is also great (check out iData Pro). Just doing little things like tossing junk mail as I open it helps. Experts say you should never deal with incoming items more than once, either resolve/answer it, toss it, file it, or pass it onto the person who sould be dealing with it (at work or home). That's a good theory with emails also if you get tons of it, delete it, answer it or file it, don't let it back up on you.

I know all of this organizing and sorting sounds complicated, but it actually helps me to simplify my life. I know I'll always have too much stuff, both my husband and I are born collectors, I have thousands of books, he has thousands of videos and DVD's, we both have tons of music also. He collects movie paper, I collect postcards, we both collected toys for awhile but we've gotten really selective now because our house is way past full. Our attic and closets are packed with toys in unopened packages, but at least they're all nicely packed in big boxes. I deliberately stayed away from eBay when it first began because I knew when I started looking at things I'd never be able to stop. Luckily my husband is not proficient with the computer, but he has learned how to search for things on eBay, and we both have spent way too much money. It's much too easy. I sell mostly now, but I'm trying really hard to restrain my buying habits both out of lack of places to put things and lack of money to spend, it adds up frighteningly fast.

Right now our house is actually fairly clean, semi-dusted and picked up after the holiday chaos. Because of my allergies I try and do an entire room at once to just get the dust and sneezing over with. I'm trying to keep everything from piling back up again. Deep inside me I long to have one of those sparse minimalist mid-century modern homes like the ones I ogle in magazines, but I know it will never happen. My parents claim they have too much stuff, but their home has always been very sleek and uncluttered.

Suggested activity, to save you some money go to the library (or even a bookstore where you can sit and drink capuccino while you read) and pick up a stack of books on home organization, closets, etc., and flip through them to get ideas before you go and spend a fortune at the Container Store or Office Depot. Try and get an idea of what would would actually be useful to you, also make sure to measure and write down specs. Get catalogues for organization stores or flip through their websites before you buy, get an idea of what's out there and who has the best prices (more links below for ideas). Places like Walmart and Target also offer low-cost storage, as well as office gadgets. A good book that is actually worth buying is Organizing From the Inside Out� by Julie Morgenstern. An excellent book with lots of specific diagrams and photos is Closets - Designing and Organizing the Personalized Closet by Patricia Coen and Bryan Milford.

More OCD links:
Obsessive Compulsive Foundation
Obsessive Compulsive Information Center
OCD Newsgroup
National Institute of Mental Health's OCD Page
Take an OCD screening test

More organization links:
Clutterbug.net
Get Organized Now
Organized Home.com
Get Organized Online
Organize Everything
So You Wanna Organize Your Closet?
Daytimer.com

Addition 1/16 - I found myself wandering around Lowe's tonight (we just got one in our neighborhood) and they have an AMAZING selection of affordable home organization and closet stuff.

I don't make New Year's resolutions, but I do have ongoing mental "to do" lists that I would like to be able to eventually accomplish. My life, interests and energy flow in cycles, which I rarely seem to be able to predict or control. But I owe it to myself and those around me to try and work with my own internal cycles to create a more productive, healthier and less stressful me. It's odd how the older you get, the more you are really attuned to your body and mind. Now that I'm firmly entrenched in my early 40's, my soul seems to be calmer, what would have caused panic attacks and ulcers ten years ago are merely dull aches in the back of my head now. I'm not sure the problems have actually changed, merely my perspective of their actual importance in life, which is the real trick to handling stress.

I noticed about four years ago, when I was still at my last job, that I was beginning to have a different attitude towards people and things. I've always been overly conscientious, to the point of self-injury, and I slowly began letting go of some of my perfectionism and responsibilty for the well-being of the entire planet. I think it seemed to some people, including my husband who has called me a "cold Capricorn", that I became more distant and callous, and also much more cavalier, but I could tell that if I didn't put some distance between myself and harmful people and emotions that I would probably have a nervous breakdown. Reading Richard Carlson's Don't Sweat the Small Stuff helped immensely. Don't laugh, if you actually take the lessons in it to heart, it will help put your life and your problems in perspective. I wish I could get my husband to accept some of the points he makes, the most important being 'Will this matter a day from now? A month? A year?". Also, as frustrating as it is, there are just some things in life that we have no control over. Period. Worrying and obsessing over them just makes us ill.

For most of my life I worked in a high pressure job where every day was a new emergency and the more I really thought about it, the more I realized that all of the drama around me was unwarranted and did not help, it only made people more nervous and stressed out. So I began asking "why?", and speaking my mind more often. At the time I thought I was losing it, and had reached the "I really just don't give a shit" point, which perhaps I had, but being able to say what I normally kept locked up inside actually made me feel better. I've never been a rude person, I've always been the polite doormat that went out of her way to do everything for everyone but me. I have always felt guilty if I didn't give 110%, but I've learned to curb those feelings of guilt over the last few years.

Learning to say no to people is very enlightening. Everyone I worked with was climbing the corporate ladder, busy networking and ass kissing, but my job was as an "hourly" employee surrounded by executives and I realized that all I needed to do was my job, not everyone else's. I was always the model employee who remained after everyone else I worked with had been downsized, thus I ended up doing several people's job without the benefit of extra pay. I remember one of the big managers in my division was going to have a pool party and we had all been invited. Several of the young execs I worked with moaned about going, and one of them asked me if I was going to go. I told him no. He asked if I had other plans and I said "No, I just don't want to go". He was shocked. Saying no had never even occurred to him even though he actually did have other plans already that weekend. I used to worry that I needed to stay later at work to "get everything done", but I finally realized I could never get everything done, life is an undending "to do" list. I've also learned that I don't have to put up with inept and uncaring people when dealing with the public. Never be afraid to ask to speak with someone's manager if they're not doing all they can do (or not trying at all). My husband says I've become a "retail nightmare", but what I've actually done is learn over the years how things actually work in retail and other parts of the real world, and I've learned not to waste my time dealing with people who don't give a crap. Life's too damn short to spend it being pissed off and frustrated. I also try not to put myself into situations where I know I'm going to be put through unnecessary hell whenever I can help it.

So my promises to myself for 2003 are normal mundane things, but they're important to my well-being.

1. I need to be more conscious of what, when and why I eat. I also would like to improve my cooking skills so I'll appreciate the act of preparing and eating food. I know it's not that hard to make good simple food on a regular basis.

2. I need to start doing something, anything as a regular exercise. I've been using my poor health as an excuse for too many years. I have a stack of Living Yoga videos I've collected over the last few years and never even watched. I know I'll never be a jogger or aerobics queen but if I could do yoga a couple of times a week it might get me off on the right foot. The only exercise I've ever enjoyed and been good at was strength training and though I don't have the time, money or energy to go to a gym regularly, but I have a stack of dusty free weights in the garage that I should be able to put to some use.

3. Even though I work at home now, I rarely find time to do things that are really relaxing. I'm going to spend more time reading for pleasure (not just HTML and Photoshop manuals), make an attempt to meditate occasionally, and try and set actual limits on when I work. I have a tendency to work from the time I get up till when I go to bed, answering emails all bloody day, but I've found that's not only stressful, it's inefficient. I need to focus my energy on really paying attention to my work so I can get it done and over with so I don't feel resentful every time I turn my computer on. I've forgotten all of the fun things I can do with the thing ;-)

4. Speaking of, I'd like to spend some time writing. That's one reason I began this weblog, to give me an outlet to put all of the excess words that won't remain in my head, so I can get them out and actually sleep more at night. I have a hyperactive brain, always have had, and physically writing things on paper is torture for me, I have illegible handwriting and I can't write fast enough to keep up with my mind. But I've become a fairly proficient typist. So now I have no excuse not to attempt one of my huge lifelong goals, to actually write a novel. Even if I can't ever get the thing published, just completing it will give me a great sense of accomplishment.

5. I'm going to try and maintain healthier sleeping hours. I had gotten into quite a depressive mood this winter where I was staying up until dawn, working the whole time, and sleeping the day away. So I could never get much done. I've always been a night person, but I think I had developed an honest to goodness case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Good clue, my light powered watch stopped working three times and had to be recharged with a lightbulb. I know a dumb thing for a Goth girl to buy, but it's so pretty and I've never had a really classy watch before. I rationalized my strange schedule by telling myself that I really was getting things done when my husband was asleep, my office is in an open room so I don't have the privacy I really need, but the last three weeks or so I've made a conscious effort to go to bed earlier and actually get out of bed earlier and I've found I almost have time to spare.

6. I'm going to try and get some sort of hold over my personal finances. Out of all the facets of my life, this has always been my biggest downfall. I call it "my only vice", and it is indeed a serious hazard to my health and mental well-being. Things have been very hard financially since I left my job, but my health was rapidly declining because of the atmosphere and physical demands of my job, so I decided I'd rather work for myself. But my poor little brain still wants to spend money like I did when I worked 40 hours a week. Actually, I think writing my novel pales with this problem, if I could overcome my financial instability, I'd be much better off mentally and physically. I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and go through Consumer Credit Counseling (again).

7. What else... I want to try and live more consciously and "in the moment" instead of always thinking three steps ahead. I bought Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now� and have kept it in view on my desk to make me sit down and read it, we'll see if it really helps, I'll let you know. I need to continue to quell my need for perfection in everything I do, I've found if I don't I never get anything finished, or often even started. I need to keep my perspective on what's really important in life, and I need to just take better care of myself.

Speaking of which, it's past my bedtime...

I'm two-thirds of the way through the holiday celebrations and I need a nap. I've been feeling so run down this year and my health has been suffering as a result. One more family get-together to go and that's it for awhile.

I had always thought I was overly talkative most of my life, but in recent years I find myself becoming almost too quiet. I think it's for several reasons, partly because of my increasingly severe tinnitus (my ears hum and buzz with little provocation, the sound of my own voice is often painful to me), partly because my voice seems to give out after too much talking (too many allergies and a persistant dry cough), and partly because my husband and his family are too hard to keep up with in conversation. They are louder and much more animated than I am, and talk endlessly about subjects I can just smile and nod at, relatives and places I don't know, movies I haven't seen... Not that there's anything wrong with that. My family does talk, but we're a much quieter, more soft-spoken lot, except my brother, who is fairly animated and can match my husband in volume. I'm also a classic example of a highly sensitive person, I like to describe myself as an empath of sorts, and can sometimes just be overwhelmed by parties in general. (My husband does not understand this, he just thinks I'm weird or anti-social)

This weekend my husband's sister and her family are in town, which means more smiling and nodding for me. Which is fine, they are a fun group of very enthusiastic and talkative females. We're doing the in-law family Christmas with them, and then we should be pretty much done for awhile with the exception of a few birthdays in January and February.

The trashy vampire romance has turned out to be much better than it started, I think I'll read the second in the series next. Once you get past all the gratuitous sex and heaving bosoms, there's actually a fairly interesting, original vampire story going on. Yea, a new vampire series to follow!

I successfully managed to keep my finger out of danger most of today. Washed my hair, showered, ate two meals. Then I had to run an errand after dinner and ended up banging it around about 3 or 4 times before I got out of the garage... Never drive under the influence of pain. Damn thing started throbbing again like crazy after the abuse, so I took another Vicodin when I got home.

I'm getting sleepy now, I think I'm going to go to bed and read some more of my trashy vampire romance I started last night (I wanted something easy to read, I only read romance novels if they have vampires in them). My hubbie has agreed to go the grocery store with me tomorrow, usually I go alone but he feels sorry for me. I'd blow it off, but we're all out of food in the house, we had a Burger King lunch and ordered Chinese food in for dinner. I hardly ever eat burgers, so I asked for a "hot apple pie" with mine, still need to eat the thing but I'm stuffed from dinner still.

It's not been a bad day, really, though. I got up much earlier than normal because I went to bed early, our doggie's been doing pretty well today, mostly sleeping. After dinner I actually watched The Osbournes� for the first time, much better than the frightening Anna Nicole Show. She's on the cover of the new issue of Texas Monthly magazine� we got in the mail today, she won their "Bum Steer of the Year" award.

What else... oh yes, a local politician wants to turn the Astrodome into a huge gambling casino�. Since they opened the new baseball (formely Enron field) and football stadiums, there's not much going on in the Dome. I'd hate to see it torn down, it's just a few miles down the freeway from where we live.

I don't feel quite as sorry for myself after seeing a story on TV about a poor teenage boy who "accidentally" cut both of his hands off with a power saw. Now he's back playing football, defense I think. Don't remember what show it was on, I just tried doing a websearch on the subject, lots of weird things come up.

Well my hands are getting tired, think I'll got to bed before the painkiller wears off. My nose is whistling, I hate it when that happens...

The evening started out really well, only to come to a horrifying crash. Technically, it's still a full moon, and this week has been a helluva a rollercoaster ride, so I'm blaming it on that. (And I hate rollercoasters, so that's not a good thing). I'm not as wordy as usual tonight because I'm only typing with 7 fingers. And I'm fairly sedated and still in shock from the pain, but I'll tell you about that in a moment.

After my last entry, at which time I was in a really great mood, my husband and I went out and had a very pleasant dinner at our neighborhood Mexican restaurant, it was packed full of lots of older folks and some families, including a table full of screaming kids next to us which set off my tinnitis and my left ear is still ringing. But the food was tasty, the service excellent. Then we drove to a neighborhood liqor store to finish up shopping for my parents, inlaws and I purchased an excellent bottle of 10 year old tawny Port for myself, which turned out to be much needed. We were going to go to the big store downtown, but didn't want to be gone that long.

Our errands were completed quickly and we were congratulating ourselves on not being gone too long because our 16 year old Lab can't be left alone too long and then the horrific chain of events unfolded...

Whenever we get home from being gone together, my husband opens the garage door for me (I drive usually, and his side of the garage has the only automatic opener), then he runs right into the house to check on the dog. At her age, it's amazing she can still walk, though she has very weak back legs. She's not in pain, just very numb. I pulled into the garage, trying to align the car where it wasn't too far forward and instead ended up parking where I just cleared the garage door. As soon as I got out of the car I called out to him to inquire if the dog was OK, and he said in an emotional voice "No!". Not knowing what horros I would find I rushed in and saw the poor dog sprawled in the living room, she had made it a few feet from her bed, crapped all over the carpet, and then fallen down in it. Not to sound unkind, but occasionally we have to leave her alone, and most of the time when we return, she's still asleep on her bed, and sometimes has gotten up and walked around the house. But we have come home to similar problems before. Huge nasty mess...

My husband is the official dog poop picker-upper, so I offered to close the garage door, which I rarely do because I'm only 5'1". We have two metal garage doors on tracks. Like an idiot I tried to hurry, and reached up for the door awkwardly because my damn car was too far back, and I grabbed it in the wrong place. The door is heavy and started coming down as soon as I touched it, and about 2 seconds later and a third of the way down, I realized my left hand was caught in it.

After the intitial stab of blinding pain, some logical part of my brain told me "Push the door back up in the oppsite direction, now!!", which I did and yanked my hand out, then the screaming began. My poor husband came running into the garage just as the door crashed down only to see me doubled over, clutching my hand and repeating "Oh, my god..." hysterically. I was afraid to look at it, and afraid to let go. I have a mortal fear of crushing parts of my body in doors or other moving objects. He knew what I was going through, because earlier this year (while transporting the dog to the vet), I shut one of his hands in the door of his car. (He had his hand wrapped around the area between the back and driver's door)

It seems that neither of us have managed to break anything in either accident, but my middle finger of my (fortunately) left hand is now hideously swollen and throbbing despite two Vicodin and several glasses of the Port. Now my biggest wish is that I don't lose my damn fingernail. I've never lost one in my life, and I'll completely freak out if I do. I can live with the pain, but the swelling and purple color are scaring me. Even my husband's hand didn't look this bad. I also seemed to have nicked the two adjoining fingers because they are sore and periodically throbbing, though right now it's hard to tell exactly where the throbbing is coming from.

So the remainder of the evening has been fairly non-productive on my part. The carpet was cleaned, all I did was run paper towels back and forth to the sink...

Whoa... headrush... I had to go lay on the floor for a few minutes with my feet on the couch, I felt really faint. I was going to try and shower and wash my hair before bed, but I think I'll skip it, don't want to fall and break my neck in the damn bathtub. The dog has been doing amazingly well, BTW, she's walked around some tonight, had some water and food. I think I'm going to try and go to sleep before my last painkiller wears off. More later...

Miracle of all miracles, I actually finished all of my Ebay� work before midnight and got to spend the evening surfing the web. I began in search of meaningful and unique webrings, wasted hours on Ringsurf's� slow as molasses server, but found one� that was actually what I was looking for. Then I went through my bookmarks of political and activist sites of interest and added a whole slew of those (see Left Field links below). I've been making new pretty little banners & buttons for my main website� also, playing with Photoshop and preparing for my eventual site re-design.

I've been suffering from the sinus infection that won't go away since sometime in October (or perhaps September, I've lost track). After two doctor's visits (actually my annual physical in two parts because my new insurance company won't pay for "preventative care"... huh?), the only useful things I've found are that my cholesterol has reached an all-time high and that Xanax isn't as great as it used to be...

Or perhaps I've become acclimated to Benzodiazepenes after years of taking Klonopin to sleep. I'm actually not an addict, I suffer from a neurological disorder that creates lots of side effects, including insomnia and horrendous muscle cramps. And I'll lie in bed wide awake for hours if I don't take something to knock me out. Lately, though, not much of anything seems to help. I've also developed an allergy to any form of antihistamine (yes, really), and suffer from year-round allergies, even food allergies and can't take anything really useful (my doctor gave me a steroid dosepack last time I went in, that's what I need, something to make it even harder for me to sleep).

All of my life, on top of my normal daily allergies, I always get an actual sinus infection about this time of year. Usually antibiotics will clear it up, but they're not working this time. It started with a general sense of dizziness in my inner ear, then developed into the stabbing pain in my sinuses (where the entire left side of my head was unbearably painful), and now I've settled into alternating between the earache and dizziness and a really annoying drip in my nose. I've found saline usually keeps these infections at bay, but this one latched onto me before I could stop it.

The weather in Houston has not been helping either. We've gone through periods of non-stop biblical rains and flooding, then after almost two weeks of warm and rainy, it's suddenly cold and windy. Then back again. With each weather change it feels like someone is trying to suck my brains out through my ear. So I've been spending even more time than usual in bed, though when the dizziness hits even laying in bed is uncomfortable.

I've been on the Atkin's diet� since summer, and was doing really well for about a month or two, but my cholesterol rating is evidence that I've been sneaking too many carbs. I was on Atkins several years ago and my cholesterol went to it's lowest level ever, and I even lost some weight, but I haven't looked at the scale in the last month or so (gulp). My husband lost 20 pounds without even trying just by the modified diet I've been serving him, but I think I stopped at about 8 pounds and have been holding since. Oh well, I need to start weightlifting again, or yoga, or something I can do at home that I'll enjoy. And drop the carbs again... and the holidays are almost upon us!

Oh well, almost 6am, off to bed for another day of tossing and turning and way too vivid dreams (not that there's anything wrong with that...).

FYI ladies, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month (see the link on the right sidebar and ones below). Sort of a busy time to get a physical, but a good time to make an appointment if you haven't been to the doctor in awhile. Once a year, whether you need it or not... Ironically, mine and my husband's annual physicals were scheduled for September but the doctor couldn't make it so now we're at the end of October.

To all the young people (and too busy people) out there, if you've got insurance take advantage of it and get all of your annual checkups. Being self-employed now, I no longer have nice, affordable company insurance and have to pay for my own now, so use it while you've got it. I've lost too many relatives and friends too young to diseases that could have been prevented.

The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation�

National Breast Cancer Awareness Month�

Help fund mammograms with just a click�