None of the Above

[ mammalog random thoughts ] 2001-07-31
Trying to find a job:  and I finally printed out more resumes today, along with a bunch of State of Texas application forms. Now I've got to mail them.

I got out of the habit of posting here much. Oh well. :/. There just hasn't been much to say, I guess. I haven't felt very talkative. Maybe it's a medication thing. If so, I hope I snap out of it soon.

Oh, I gotta upload a couple pix of Elena. I don't feel like doing thumbnails, so I'll just do the full-sized ones.

• Elena as the child raised by wolves
• Elena balancing between couch and table
• Elena after her bath, looking cute

Maybe I'll write more when it's not so damn *hot* out all the time. Everything sort of slows down, including my thoughts.

[ mental random thoughts ] 2001-07-26
Okay, so I haven't been writing much.  I've been busy sitting around on my rear end & stuff. And now I'm going to be going to visit my sister in two weeks, which should be a lot of fun. I'll get to meet my new niece!

I had an appointment with my psych nurse today, and we're going to be switching me from prozac to effexor because I am "flat". I feel flat. Blah.

So I fixed an omission in my resume today, and will head to kinko's to print it out at some point. Plus I have a guitar lesson today.

I feel like taking a nap, but I probably won't.

How terribly boring this all sounds.

There have been some fun recent visits with Elena, and I have some pix to upload to show off, when I get around to it. She came home looking like she had been raised by wild dogs earlier this week - her hair was sort of matted into dreadlocks sticking out from her head. It was wild. Thank goodness it calmed down after I gave her a bath.

I guess that's enough for now... I'll probably feel more talkative soon. Maybe. I dunno.

[ beauty music ] 2001-07-21
Strange connections sometimes appear:  when you aren't expecting them, but if you pay attention, you can catch when they're happening.

One I experienced recently was this: I heard a song I'd never heard before on the radio, and I kind of liked it, and as the song went on it sounded relentlessly familiar, in a way.

As it played, different instruments were emphasized in turn, and I realized that the sounds were all from the music program Noodle, which I had played with a few times (and thought was really cool/funky).

"Whoa", says I, "that's cool that a song made with a program like that made it on the radio". Well, I paid attention when they said what group did the song - it's the Afro Celt Sound System. Their song "When I'm Falling" is big right now (Peter Gabriel sings on it).

So anyway, I looked it up and of course on the Noodle page it lays everything all out - they created Noodle and included it on their second cd. The song I heard on the radio is #2 on their first cd.

So, it's all linked, and if I hadn't recognized the song on the radio, I wouldn't have known at all. I remember how the smile slowly spread across my face as recognition of each sound pattern sunk in. It was just a very cool experience.

So I suggest: play with the Noodle program, then listen to the sample of the song. If that sort of thing sounds interesting to you...

[ mental my site ] 2001-07-21
Happy birthday to my weblog!  Well okay, it was actually a couple o days ago. So sue me. I'm pretty proud of myself for keeping this going so long. I like it a lot.

[gee, that sounds profound]

Seriously, I think it's been good for me to keep a bit of a record of things. If anyone else likes reading it, that's a bonus. I like that my family reads it, because it becomes a bit of a way for us to keep in touch - it contains a lot of the casual stuff I'd say to them if we were able to spend more time together in person.

I dunno what else to say. Guess I'll keep doing this as long as it seems worthwhile, which I think it will. Things have really changed character since I had my mental health escapade (during the last four months or so). Maybe it'll eventually settle back more towards the way it was, as I get ever closer to whatever passes for "normal" for me.

Seriously, you should be glad I didn't write about all the odd ideas I've had along this strange journey. I certainly am glad I didn't write about all of them in my weblog. I do feel, however, that I have a lot of material to write about in the coming years. I feel as though I've had twenty years' worth of perspective poured into my head in the span of a few months. But there's no need to rush it, of course. :)

[ rants ] 2001-07-21
What if they held a job fair...  and nobody showed up? Grrr, that's what happened today. I showed up at the Frank Erwin Center (a huge arena-type place) for the UT job fair, all dressed up and with copies of my resume in tow, and...

all the freaking doors were *locked*.

There was nobody inside that I could see, except for two guys mopping the floor.

I went around the building twice, just to make sure that all the doors really were locked. I was not confused about the time or date or location - quite the contrary, there were a few other folks there wandering around like I was.

I walked around a bit with a guy who had been laid off from Dell. He had a flier about the job fair, with a number to call for details. I called and it was just a machine at the employment office.

Stupid, stupid job fair.

I can't believe they mismanaged it so horribly. I mean... what the heck? There was no sign, no nothing. After I finally gave up (I was starting to get really hot), I saw other people, nicely dressed, making their way to the building with folders in their hands. I wondered whether I should warn them that the darn thing wasn't happening.

But then, as I left, I wondered if I had given up too easily. Maybe there was some secret way to get in that other people would find. Nah, that's ridiculous. But I thought it anyway.

I'm so peeved. I was really looking forward to this, as a big concrete step on the way towards my getting a job. Pfft. Total waste of time.

And since I'm ranting... those chicken salad pita things at Wendy's are totally yummy, but they make a HUGE mess when you eat them. But I'll still eat 'em. :)

[ mammalog mental ] 2001-07-17
Today was good:  I went to group, which was helpful as usual, and I made a new friend. :) Well, it's someone I knew just a bit already and the friend-quotient increased greatly as we got to talk about some of our shared experiences.

During the visit with Elena, we went to Toys R Us to get her a tricycle. It was a bit stressful with her running around the store (she was more or less glued to the area with the play houses and slides). I had to pick her up with her kicking against me to take her over to the rideable vehicle section, whereupon she immediately jumped up on a powered Harley motorcycle. We agreed she was *not* getting one of those.

She test rode a couple trikes, and we avoided the Barbie-themed one (I know there will likely come a day when I have to give in to that eventually). The one she got is bright pink & purple.

We went to Hillbert's for the usual tacos, burgers & fries, but this time it was the other Hillbert's, and we got Elena the "Spwite" she was whining for. Dang it, I love all those cute little pronunciations she does, even though it bugs the crap out of me when people admire them in their own children. Or used to, anyway. Heh.

I ate with her while Spencer went into work (his pager went off with *one minute left* of pager duty!), and then gave her a shower. Friday and today she wanted a shower instead of a bath, go figure. As long as she ends up clean, it makes no difference to me, really.

Then Spencer got back and put together her tricycle. I filmed her a bit while he did that, and Luba was over and we tried to get her to do Wee Willy Winky and Little Miss Muffet, so these are now preserved for posterity. The trouble is that whenever she sees the video camera, she gets obsessed with seeing her own image, demanding that I turn the little screen so she can see herself.

Finally, she tried out the tricycle in the living room, and picked up how to maneuver it quite quickly. She's really very physically adept - it's astonishing (at least to me). Okay, I'm her mother, it's my job to basically worship her, so you can take my words with a grain of salt if you wish.

She took a spill at one point, but it wasn't too bad. Got it on video, though! :)

Oh, I forgot to mention that the living room doesn't have much of anything in it anymore, so it's her official place for riding her tricycle. There's not a good suitable place outside, really. The front sidewalk is quite sloped, and the street is too dangerous. There's no sidewalk that goes along the street.

Spencer finally turned the air conditioning back on (thank God) after he realized that maybe it wasn't working well because of a yucky filter. I'm sorry, but a zillion fans just *cannot* substitute for genuinely chilled air.

He made a huge cave of wind for Elena using some of the new fans he bought and a big sheet. Oh, she squealed with glee to enter at one end, prance and dance inside, crawl out the other end, then over the bed to go back in again. Plus, he let her sleep in it, I think. She's lucky to have such a cool dad. :)

Anyway, I ended up staying over there late, and so I'm really quite tired now. I thanked Spencer for letting me stay so late, and said that I hoped I hadn't overstayed my welcome. He said it was cool, so I shall assume that it was.

Oh, I might as well mention that on Sunday I had a nice time at church and afterwards at lunch with the lunch bunch. It was pretty cool. People are starting to remember me and come up and say hi and ask how I'm doing. I'm starting to feel just a little bit more like part of the community. I think it's good for me. I also volunteered to bring some cookies next week, because I just have this overwhelming feeling that there *should* be cookies along with the coffee & refreshments after the service, since that's the way it was in the church where I grew up in Denver! I also agreed to be responsible for turning up the thermostats and locking up in the Religious Education area next week. This is also a good thing, methinks - taking on a bit of responsibility.

I was going to make this a short entry, but somehow it didn't turn out that way. This happens to me a lot. Heh. Oh well. Bandwidth is cheap, I type quickly, so I might as well.

Which reminds me, I'm glad that I've been able to manage to keep up this weblog so long - no other journal-oid type thing that I've ever done has lasted for more than a few days or weeks. This puppy will have its one year anniversary this week, which shall surely be a festive occasion. :)

I think it's done me a lot of good to just write stuff out. Often I feel that what I write is more or less worthless just as I'm typing it out, but later on I look back and it seems coherent and thoughtful and dare I say, even occasionally witty.

I like the idea of having a chronicle of what I've found worth noting, both on the web and in the real world. Plus my whole progression through the whole manic episode and ensuing chaos... I mean, my weblog is basically the only record of how I've felt these past four months. I've only been able to ... hint at the massive changes that have torn through my mind, let me tell you. Maybe one percent. I'm not claiming that it's necessarily important for anyone else to know about, just that *I'm* glad I recorded as much as I managed to, at least for my own sake. It might be important to me someday; it might help me through a tough spot or something.

The itching problem is particularly bad lately. My hands hurt a lot from all the little owies I have on them. This is truly a torment I wouldn't wish on anyone. Most of the time it is only itchy on my hands & elbows & occasionally a bit on the legs, but in the past ... 4-5 days it's been brutal, just about everywhere. I've scratched so much that the edges of my fingernails have been buffed to a lustrous shine. I didn't know that could even happen, but lo and behold, it certainly has. I guess I'd better take my anti-itch stuff even though it makes me sleepy. Damn, it's that ever-changing cost-benefit analysis thing again. Life's like that, I find.

Speaking of which, since I can't think of anything worth adding at the moment, the benefit of writing more is outweighed by the cost of trying to string words together... so I'm off to bed.

[ mental movies ] 2001-07-14
Today's a mixed day:  but then again, most of them are these days. I had somewhat of a downer early in the day, but managed to put it out of my mind mostly when I went canoeing and then out to go see A.I.

The movie was good, and I was proud of myself for eating relatively healthy food before the movie, and not too much of it.

Of the movie, I would say that it kinda not quite achieved what it set out to do. I think I could tell where they were trying to be allegorical and so forth, but there comes a time when you weave so many threads together that what you end up with is a tangle.

I dunno, that's just my impression.

Feeling rather lonely at the moment. I thought earlier about doing some sewing or something, but my heart's just not in it right now. I feel like watching some tv maybe, or playing my guitar a little.

I wish I could go to bed early and know that I'd actually be able to fall asleep. I'll have to see how early I can pull my bedtime tonight. I think last night was around 1:30am. Sigh.

I should record some of the philosophy that's going through my head these days, Eternal Questions & Problems that ricochet (perhaps from the increased prozac). At least take notes, I mean...

In that spirit, I will say: we never know what a situation is like until we're in it. We judge it ahead of time based on extremely limited information, and we think to one degree or another that our judgment is correct, but in reality we're never really prepared. We just have to wing it when we get there. Parenthood is a good example of a situation that follows this pattern. But of course, there are many others.

Enough for now, I'm zoning in front of the monitor. That's not good.

[ canoe ] 2001-07-14
Long time no canoe:  but today I finally went again, for the first time in a couple of months. Gah, I'm ashamed that it's been so long.

My boat was absolutely filthy! I used my handy dandy sponges[1] to clean it off before getting in. It's kind of fun when people come by and ask questions about it - I like telling them about it.

Getting down the ama[2] with the iakos[3] attached was a pain in the ass, though. Normally I keep the iakos in my car, with the paddle, so this was unusual. They were attached because the last time I paddled I had to walk over a mile down to the Four Seasons where my car was parked after I put it away. Anyway, I tried to get it down carefully, but the iakos were swinging hither and thither and made it impossible to control properly, but at least I didn't break anything.

I heeded the signs warning of the hazardous upstream sandbar caused by low water levels, so I headed downstream for just a bit before going back up to the dock. It wasn't a hard workout, just getting back in the groove a little bit.

I notice that I'm still wary of flipping over, so I'll have to relax on that more. Also, my changes[4] aren't doing too well, so I'll need to focus on that in the near future.

I decided that I should just force myself to go out there on a regular basis, and that it doesn't matter how hard I work out, it matters *that* I work out. It should be pleasant to go out in the early mornings, before it gets too hot (and even if I only do it on the weekends, once I get a job).

[1] I keep a sponge in each footwell to handle any excess water. They definitely came in handy today.

[2] hollow outrigger that stabilizes the canoe

[3] crossbars that hold the ama and canoe together

[4] act of switching off paddling from one side to the other. This can be tricky to do without losing your grip on the paddle. The ideal is to make it automatic and smooth every time. I'm not quite there yet - I pause and re-grip a little.

[ design ] 2001-07-13
What's with the wipes?  Everything's a fricking wipe these days. It used to be there were two kinds of wipes: baby wipes, and general hand-cleaning wipes (like Wet Ones[tm]).

Now, there has recently been an explosion of wipes, a veritable cornucopia. Here's what I've seen recently:

• Clorox disinfecting wipes
• Wipes that fight stains on fabric
• Armor All wipes
• Old(e?) English dusting wipes
• Makeup removal wipes
• Wrinkle-prevention wipes
• Give yourself a "shower" all over your body wipes

...and I'm sure there are many more that I've missed. It's just darn odd seeing all these things come out recently.

It's a spiffy idea, don't get me wrong, but it just makes me wonder: who comes up with this stuff? Will this change the way people use these products forever?

I'm wondering if paper towels will hardly be used at all someday because we'll have specialized wipes for every conceivable cleaning need.

Is it really more efficient to have the wipe impregnated with the cleaner? Personally, I sometimes like to do a dry final swipe with paper towel when I'm cleaning something, so I know my needs will not be met with wet wipes alone.

Hey, somebody's gotta worry about this stuff, it may as well be me.

[ mental ] 2001-07-13
I had a guitar lesson yesterday:  but it was mostly just catch-up time with my teacher, Scott. It was good. Put 124 miles on my car going there and back, however. This is part of why sometimes it's so hard for me to get off my ass and go down there - I wuss out quite often.

One of the ... major mental aspects that has been in flux a lot lately is the overhead cost analysis for how much of a pain in the ass it is to do something. For awhile, while I was still manic, I would gather my stuff together and get out of the house and go exercise or something, with scarcely a thought about how long the drive would be, how hard it would be to find parking, etc.

But now that I'm back closer to normal, I find that I keep ducking out on things, putting off tasks as simple as going to the grocery store for a few items. I want to be able to blast through this, to hypnotize myself into thinking that it only costs me a penny worth of effort to do such things, instead of the big huge deal I build them up to be in my mind.

That's at the crux of many of the battles I've fought in my life - worrying or assuming that something was going to be not worth the bother in the long run. I can't even count how many things I passed on because of one irrational worry or another... :(

On the other hand, how possible is it to fool yourself? If you decide to brave the traffic, but find that it aggravates the hell out of you, then it really *did* cost you a lot of mental ... energy/health/whatever to go through it.

Which brings me to yet another interesting point. Through the various brain-states I've been in the past four months (it's almost the anniversary of my psychosis!), I've felt as though various ... slide-controls in my mind have been shifted to positions they hadn't usually been in. This has been due to coming down off of the mania, dipping into depression, getting (back) on medication, and altering the amounts of the various medications.

Anyway, the point I'm going after is this: there was a period of time a couple/few weeks ago, when driving around the town *didn't bother me at all*. It was eerie. It was just as easy as breathing - no aggravation, no worries, I just existed in my own happy little mental bubble, safe from the worries of the world as I drove. I remember as well that I had to exert a little bit of effort to pay attention to the road, though, which usually is so automatic I don't even have to think about it. Odd. Anyway...

Driving back from Wimberley last night, I noticed some silly person in an average-sized vehicle tailgating some huge truck. I thought it was funny - what, do they think they're going to intimidate the truck into going faster? Sheesh! The truck driver can't even see the car behind 'em anyway.

Group today went reasonably well I suppose. I'm still having a hell of a time getting out of bed. Argh! Time to bring in the big guns. This morning I had a dream that there was a guy laying on the floor next to me speaking *into my radio* to produce some of the voices on the NPR I was listening to.

It's quiet and lonely here. I don't have the tv on at the moment. I've decided to give up A Pet Story and stick to just Emergency Vets. I'll have to slowly wean myself off even that, or I'll never find a job.

Thoughts are a little more bouncy, reacting to the increased prozac (we're on day 3 of the increased dose, in case you were keeping track). I don't feel the floaty-happy everything's-right-with-the-world thing right now, though. Maybe I won't get it this time. :( It's nice, when it comes along.

I need a job. I need to have something to actually make me tired enough to get to sleep at night! And to make my free time feel free instead of ... well, like solitary confinement in prison or something.

Which brings to mind the fact that UT is having a job fair next Saturday, so I'll go to that and fling out as many resumes and applications as I can. I can do a bunch all at once, and even get some interviews in. Yeeha!

I need to exercise more. I have an impetus problem. Sometimes, inside my head, I can be *such* a whiner. I need to develop an internal drill sergeant-like persona, to rely on when I need extra motivation. How does one do such a thing, though? A complicated task, to be sure.

One thing I've learned through this wacky mental journey is that you can't really out-think your own brain. Your subconscious gets there *way* faster than you do. Harrumph!

I think my weblog has crossed the line into becoming a journal recently. Damn. I didn't really want it to. So I'll try to shove it back the other way a little bit. Try, anyway.

[ mental ] 2001-07-11
Doin' slow time:  it's weird, each day seems to take a long time, but they whiz by together at great speed. How does that work? Go figure.

I went to my group therapy thing today, where there were like *twelve* people. Oh, my. It was determined through discussion with my psych nurse that I'm tending towards depressive again (not getting out of bed, not doing much, etc) so I should go up on the prozac again, at least for awhile.

This time, I'll be a little more prepared for a certain hyper-ness of thought that may come my way when it hits my bloodstream (and I'll have extra risperdal to help tone it down).

Sigh.

The psych benefits from my HMO are changing as of August 1st, and I'm not sure whether my current provider will be available with the new network. I guess I'll find out more on Friday, when I go to the next group. I sure hope I can stick with my psych nurse - she's _very_ good. She was the one who correctly diagnosed me, *finally*. The hospital didn't figure out my diagnosis, and neither did the psychiatrist that I saw afterwards. Heh!

My nails are long, I need to clip them.

I stay up too late every night.

My writing has lost a lot of its verve and vitality. Oh well.

I have an addiction to the Animal Planet. I watched two episodes of A Pet Story, then two of Emergency Vets (I *must* have my Emergency Vets fix!), then the first part of Wild Rescues. I couldn't resist Wild Rescues because they showed a teaser of a horse that fell onto its back in a narrow ravine, on top of its rider. They all ended up okay of course, but it was rather an amazing effort by the rescuers to get them both out of there.

On Emergency Vets, they mentioned Utah Park, near where I grew up, and I was a little bit wistful. I also noticed that certain quality of the light in Denver at certain times of the year. A little thin, really, the way the sunlight washes over things. I remember... winter playground months spent under that light.

I wonder just how much I'm calibrated to the way the seasons go in Colorado. Or not. I mean... I've had the seasonal bipolar weirdness as far back as I can reasonably keep track of it. I dunno. Maybe I'd flourish in some mystical perfect environment I've never been in. Or not.

I think that I was destined to have this curse, if you will. That no force of will or effort on anyone's part could have kept me from developing it. It was always there, lurking underneath whatever was going on at the surface.

I feel really inane in my writing right now, just thought I'd mention it. And that talking about myself like this has just got to be really boring. But so it is.

I'm just trying to come to terms with this, is all. Get to a point where I can accept it as part of me, the good and the bad, and try to turn it to my advantage as much as possible and not let it defeat me. Blah blah blah.

It's pretty boring around here lately. I don't even get to see Chris for the customary 1-5 minutes per day, since he's out of town.

I saw a cricket walking around the living room yesterday, and I carefully escorted it outside.

My plumeria has plenty of green leaves, but it fails to infloresce (make flowers). Which reminds me, when I was in the hospital, I thought the little bottles of lotion we were given were plumeria-scented. It was truly incredible how vividly I perceived the scent. Of course, as my mind returned to normal (as opposed to working in hallucinatory mode), the plumeria scent vanished. I was quite sad when it happened. :(

It's almost time to go down and see Elena. Poor kid got a bruise on her face on Monday at school, then fell down (in the midst of a 90-degree turn) in a furious tantrum in the living room, splitting her lip and causing her nose to bleed. As Spencer said, she looked like she'd gone a few rounds with Mike Tyson, poor thing.

There's scarcely anything I hate to see more than my daughter's blood. Really. There's this glaring sense of *wrongness* that her blood is anywhere that I can see it. It should be all neatly wrapped up inside of her, doing its job transporting oxygen (& stuff) around her body.

[ mental random thoughts ] 2001-07-08
Quiet.  Just don't feel like writing much here lately. Sorry. Uneventful, mostly. I think I will go to my group therapy thing tomorrow, to check in again.

I went to church today and went out to lunch afterwards with some people from church, and it was great. A lady I've talked to quite a bit (and who's been kind enough to introduce me around to other people) got to talking and we realized that we're both bipolar/manic-depressive, so there's another thing we can share experiences of. Cool!

It's always nice to meet someone (else) who seems together and well-grounded and will freely admit to having a psychotic episode. After having gone through one, it's easy to feel marked as a nutso for life, let me tell ya. I'm glad we live in the times we do where we can talk about such things openly.

One other lady at the table told me about a support group for depressives and manic depressives, and she'll send me more info about it through email, so that's another thing to look into.

I've been eating far too much lately. And not exercising. Harrumph, I've got to cut that shit out.

I feel very focused right now - ready to set tasks for myself. I wish I could force myself to follow through, though. Instead I end up sleeping too much and not getting anything done. Here's hoping this week goes better than last week. I really must get off my ass and do more on my job searching.

Mentally I am feeling relatively stable. I foolishly tried to take a smaller dose of risperdal the other night, and I stayed up too late, then had racing thoughts the next day. So I took more, took a nap, and went to bed early to sort of reset to the schedule I've been keeping. If I can get up early in the morning and exercise, maybe I can beat this thing. Hmmmm. It's only 10pm, so if I can get to bed by 11 and up by 7am, that would work out, in theory. Hmmmm.

p.s. I am thinking of going back to school. Again. Now. Sort of. We'll see if this idea sticks around or gets washed away...

[ random thoughts ] 2001-07-05
The 4th of July was quite fun:  but leaving my purse at the house of the friends we visited was... uncool! What sucks most is that my cellphone is in there. I hadn't realized how dependent I've become on being reachable with it until I stupidly left it behind.

Ah well, it was quite late, I was exhausted, and now, this morning, I've got swollen glands so I know I'm fighting off some kind of microbial nastiness.

I'm also tired out of proportion to how long I slept. Harrumph.

My brother was going to come up and visit me today, since he's not too far away in Texas visiting his in-laws, but a little while ago he called to tell me that the truck he's borrowing has an overheating and/or thermostat problem, so it looks like we won't be able to meet up. Bummer. :(

I think I'll do some reading and napping. Perhaps my body is trying to tell me something with this exhaustion - it needs to rest to fight off whatever it's fighting.

Elena really liked the fireworks, though she got scared at times. We went to a park near the friends' house, where tons of Texan suburbanites were setting off massive quantities of fireworks.

Earlier, though, we had gone to the park to go swimming, and Elena had a great time playing with the new swim ring I got her ($1.29 at the grocery store, woo woo!). She's really figuring out this swimming thing. It's also a little... oddly alarming how unfazed she is when she occasionally dips her head under the water. I don't want her to get foolishly overconfident.

It's so much fun to see how much she loves the water. There were many giddy squeals of delight yesterday, which is music to my ears. :)

[ mental random thoughts ] 2001-07-04
A little better:  Okay, so I got out of bed late, but I *did* actually get some ironing done. And then I fixed the ironing board cover, which kept slipping and aggravating me. I ironed three skirts, and skirt #3's hem wouldn't stay down, so I decided to sew some trim along its edge. I'm halfway through that, will finish the other part tomorrow, though I'm worried that the trim will bunch & stuff and look all lame. (It's a sewing thing - the hem is curved at the bottom, and the trim is straight, so for it to look okay the trim has to bubble out just a teensy weensy bit on every stitch all along the bottom - but it never really works out that way, it seems)

I am *really* getting sick of my fine motor jiggling. Just thought I'd mention that. My psych nurse told me that that side effect is supposed to go away after awhile. Well, I'm waiting! Argh!

I picked up my prescriptions. I also managed to avoid stuffing my face *too* much in the first part of the day, anyway. I actually waited until I felt hungry before eating. Hooray for small victories!

I made cream cheese & chive dip for tomorrow (hoping/planning to go with Spencer & Elena to the house of some friends for Fourth of July picnic-like celebrations), and got the beans, garlic, and sun-dried tomatoes all ready for me to make my increasingly famous green beans tomorrow as well.

It made me feel good to get the dishes taken care of and do a little cooking. It's odd that my roomie, Chris, basically *never* cooks. Rarely I'll notice something has been loaded into the dishwasher, but that's the exception.

I remember when I lived here before (four years ago), we cooked turkey together once and I made the best gravy I've ever tasted in my life (also the first gravy I ever made, with guidance over the phone from my mom, relaying my family's time-honored gravy-making traditions). Chris and I also once made this really incredible lasagna in vast quantities. We oughtta do that again sometime here, it would be fun.

I watched a lot of good tv today - new episodes of Animal Precinct and Emergency Vets were on Animal Planet. Animal Precinct is a great new show, featuring the ASPCA officers in New York City who deal with animal cruelty cases. It's riveting! Of course it doesn't hurt that one of the featured agents is an attractive blonde who's particularly well-spoken (imho). What a great show concept - COPS for the pet-obsessed. It's great to get to see them rescue animals who aren't being treated well, and arrest and handcuff the scumbags who are responsible.

On Emergency Vets, which is filmed near where I grew up, they showed the new surgeon taking his little boys to their basketball games on a weekend morning. The school where the games were held is a middle school in the district I attended school in (K-12). So, I've been to that school (Laredo Middle School). I've played basketball there, too, even. Odd to realize that.

It's kind of fun to recognize something that bridges the world of "what's on the tv" and "the world I touch/feel/experience directly". I think I wrote before about how shocked I was when I realized that the chief resident on one episode of Trauma: Life in the E.R. was a girl I went to school with. Heh.

More tv I watched tonight: Sex and the City on HBO, which made me laugh out loud at least once, and Six Feet Under, which also had another good new episode. It's interesting to see some of the fertile directions the plot is going - you can see tension building up ahead, but I'm betting it's not going to be quite the cliche expected endings one expects from "regular" tv. The characters are interesting and deep, and I enjoy learning more about them as the story unfolds.

I have high hopes for how it'll play out as time goes on, based on what I've seen so far. It's written/created by the same guy who wrote American Beauty (which is one of my all-time favorite movies), so there's a big vein o quality there to be tapped, methinks.

I am *so* behind on email, it's a wonder people aren't pissed off at me. Well, maybe they are, I dunno. :/ I wouldn't blame 'em, I've become such a slacker. I barely check it once a day, lately. I've gotta work on that, I don't want to be one of those aggravating people who never write back. I'll try to do at least three replies before I go to bed...

[ mental ] 2001-07-03
Weather report:  I'm so tired, I'll just give small snippets of what went on today.

Dentist appointment: good. No new cavities, no fillings needing replacement. Teeth feel nice & clean after uncomfortable expert scraping & polishing by the dentist himself (I'm used to having a hygienist do it and the dentist just comes in to check over afterwards). Bonus: not even a copay with the insurance - I just told 'em what my ssn was and what my insurance company was, and that was it.

UT temps: good. Went and had my interview, all ready to get started. The guy said he might have an editing assignment available but he wasn't sure, will know more tomorrow. That would be cool, I think.

Other job front(s): good. Picked up an application from Wendy's so I can start getting some income somewhere.

Visit with Elena: good. Arrived perfectly on time (3 minutes before Spencer), went to Central Market, where there was *much* whining. I think Elena was mostly just hungry, actually. She got into a better mood when I gave her some bread from the sample baskets. Hmm. She had insisted on wearing her snow boots to the store, and then demanded to have them taken off in the car on the way over, so she was barefoot in the store, so we wouldn't let her out of the cart (hardly). Eventually, she got out in the end of course.

I gave her a bath and read to her. She can be real obnoxious kicking and hitting and stuff sometimes, so I'm having to be Mean Mommy a bit more. She now gets timeouts when she's really naughty (such as when she throws stuff).

Exercise: bad. Didn't do any. Yet again. Hope for tomorrow, though.

Body image: bad. Feel like I'm getting chubby again. Don't want that.

TV: bad. Watched a lot today, not as much as is typical though. I can't help it, I get enthralled with Emergency Vets and Wild Rescues and A Pet Story and then it's been three and four hours in front of the boob tube. Oh well.

Sleep: okay. I got out of bed plenty early for my appointment this morning, then I was sort of tired later on. I was going to take a nap, but there was too much good tv to watch.

Psych/medical care: mixed. Didn't get my prescriptions filled, so I do not have the full dose of depakote tonight (doh! my fault), but I'll fix this tomorrow. I have about three outstanding bills that my insurance won't cover that I have to call and straighten out - one they claimed my coverage was terminated, which is crap, but I still have to chase it down and try to get the doctor to resubmit it. The most recent one is from the hospital where I stayed for six days in the psych ward. They say my insurance company isn't paying, and they want *me* to prod them or cough up the cash. To the tune of five grand and change. *cough* *cough* Nope. Ain't got it, sorry, get in line. All this, and they supposedly pre-approved my stay there, too. What a bunch o creeps.

Self: mixed. Sort of accomplished a lot early on today which made me feel good, then my momentum petered out and I squandered the rest of the day. I haven't been responding to email as I should be (haven't been doing a *lot* of things I should be), or even logging much. I don't feel as bad as yesterday, and I *am* feeling a little more realistic I guess. But then... sometimes another front blows in, and you knew it was just a matter of time before the cold wind would blow... I'm getting all oddly metaphorical, and I don't even have the energy to maintain the analogy, I'm so tired.

I had a point, I set it down here somewhere if I can just find it again.... oh yes, it's one of those what-goes-up-must-come-down kind of things, it's just a matter of *when*, so you know it's coming, and then it does, and it's not a *wham* really, it doesn't surprise you, in fact, you hardly feel it at all because you already kind of felt it earlier. And it's stupid for me to keep saying "you" because the odds that the average reader has been in (or could be in) the situation I'm talking about are pretty slim and I'm getting more incomprehensible by the minute.

Okay, so imagine that there's a ... loss of something, or at least the hope of something that you really wanted (or at least *thought* you wanted), and it finally sorta slams home, but by that time you've seen it coming and you've done some grieving already, and also at that moment you're kind of numbed up on prozac anyway.

That's how I feel. Sort of like reading the ending to a sad book, only with each page you turn the characters tend to get less and less interesting and engaging.

What had started out with the promise of being an Epic Love Story turns out to be just another couple of dorks doing the same things people always do to each other - miscommunicating, making assumptions, acting on a whim, misunderstanding. The only difference from the usual is the interesting way in which the heroine goes insane for a little while (well, interesting only if you're into that kind of thing).

Perhaps I'm being melodramatic. Probably.

[ mental ] 2001-07-02
Not a good day:  I'm afraid that today didn't go so well. Berated self for not getting up in time for church, then decided that I didn't care much. I managed to take a shower, though, which for me is something that often requires more effort than for the average person.

Before that, though... I cried. A lot. Big, wracking sobs just poured out of me as I bemoaned my fate, my loneliness, and the horrors I've perpetrated.

It was cathartic, in a way, but very sad. I felt like I just wanted a place to belong, to be part of a family again. I started re-thinking everything with those goals in mind, and I am skeptical of how realistic my thinking was, along these lines.

Of course, it's now later in the day and I'm already questioning what I thought earlier. I am eternally trapped by my tendency to re-frame everything according to how I feel at the moment. I cannot anchor myself within a larger viewpoint, within a greater span of time.

At least, I can't right now. I could be different next week, heh. But seriously, this absolute myopia has crippled me for so many years - how many more will it plague me? Is there any hope that I can ever really be rid of it or correct for it?

What is it like to be a "normal" person, compared to what I am? I mean, what's it like to be able to set a goal and stick to it? I look at my life, and I see that every damn time I'm given a choice, I have to hit bottom and choose wrong and fuck things up. The only times I do well are when I have *no* choices, really.

Enough tears for one day. At least I got a hug, because Chris came back from his trip tonight.

Tomorrow: my first dental appointment in two years. Yipes.