None of the Above

[ good ] 2002-10-29
Heh, cool: I found a couple of things worth blogging. First, via the incomparable Plurp, a page about St. Dymphna, patron saint of insanity and mental disorders, among other things. Neato! Maybe I'll have to get a little icon card of her at some point. Man, the Catholic church's card collection has got Pokemon beat - let's see those little monsters intercede for the oppressed, eh? I didn't think so!

(As a side note, Plurp is just about the last place I would have expected to find such a thing - a reference to any saint, much less one that I would find personally so applicable. Just goes to show, the forces of chaos are hard at work, putting the most unlikely things in the most unlikely places.)

Also, via my Girl Genius list that I'm on, someone posted this advice column from Dr. Hell. It's rather amusing, with every answer somehow involving huge destructive robots. I like it very much.

The fact that the sun finally came out today after umpteen days of rain and dreariness may have something to do with a slight brightening of my mood and actual posting of links to other sites, instead of my usual droning whine. So thank that big yellow thing in the sky, dear readers.

[ random thoughts ] 2002-10-29
Oof: I've been coding for hours today... I'm very tired, and I feel lonely and sad on top of it. I don't think it's the fault of the programming, though. It actually gave me something to do today to take my mind off the loneliness.

I went through the code I hadn't really touched in eighteen months (it's lots of php and mysql, if you're curious). I did manage to get a few things working, which I'm proud of. I set up the tables (a bit more sanely than I did last year, I think.... maybe), initialized a few things, and even managed to get creation of users to work, as well as logging in, logging out, and changing of passwords. Yeeha.

So then I got all ambitious and started on the actual *content* stuff, which is hairy and messy and required lots of Deep Thinking about my tables and how I would structure them. Finally I figured out how I wanted to do it, and I think it will actually work and not be too ugly and cumbersome. I hope.

So I've set up some of that part, but it's not ready for testing yet. Ah, well. This effort will take awhile. For now maybe I'll read some. I don't really feel like watching tv.

I hate being this lonely. I wish I had a dog. I wish I had a *job*, as long as I'm wishing. And a nice house where my daughter could come visit me... damn, I miss her.

Today is one of those days where I sort of feel like a prisoner.

I know it'll get better. Some days are just to be endured, that's all. I'm proud of myself for getting a bit accomplished today, coding-wise, something I haven't managed to do anything with for such a long time. But economic panic is part of what's motivating me (I'm hoping I can make a little money off my website at some point - I'm sure not there yet.)

My knees hurt. I'm whiny. And there's no one here to whine to. I had potato chips for dinner. I didn't go through any boxes or bins today. Bleagh.

My weblog sucks. But you already know that. You must be a glutton for punishment...

[ mental random thoughts ] 2002-10-28
Whee, roller coaster: Okay, not whee.. Whoa. Ugh. Up & down, and a whole lotta down lately. It's not too bad, I'm just sorta blue. It's hard to get my butt moving, but I manage at least a little.

Today I'm working on applying for jobs and such, though I am not in the mood to leave the house. Therefore, I'll do stuff in the house. I'm filling out the State of Texas application (again - I lost my old ones. Gah!), and cruising online for job openings, of which there are very, very few. It's really brutal out there, especially in this town.

Somehow, I will survive. Some days are just harder than others, though, and the crushing weight of failure and terror of how on earth am I going to survive another week just weighs me down.

I hate being this poor, this powerless, and relying on the handouts of my friends and relatives. This is no way to live. I'm doing what I can, but job searches are very rough for me, even during the best of times.

At this point, I'll take just about anything - office flunkie work, washing dishes, whatever. When even the fast food places reject you, you start to get sort of desperate. It's not pretty.

I'm doing okay, though. My head is sad but coherent and functioning rather well, considering. I haven't needed to take any pills lately. Thursday I have my appointment with the psychiatrist with the county mental health agency, so that should be good. I hope.

So in dealing with what I euphemistically call my Stuff Problem, I have decided that I need to go through a minimum of four boxes or bins per day. Books will be put on my shelves (and as large a fraction as I can handle without weeping will be put in the "sell" pile), items will be sorted, bins will be labeled with their contents, crap will be thrown away, boxes will be flattened for storage, and so on.

Someday, I will get down the bare bones of the stuff I really need or which is really useful and would be a shame to throw away. And it will be in labeled, cataloged bins, and I'll know where every darn thing is. Hopefully, this day will occur a significant length of time before I die.

Oh. I got a cell phone. My wonderful mom sent it to me (thanks, Mom!), and I activated it, and lo, behold, for I am one of the Connected again. Now if my car breaks down, I can at least call someone and start crying because I can't afford to get it towed much less fixed. Without the phone, I'd just have to cry to myself, you see.

I had good dreams last night and this morning. It was one of those fitful sleeps where you keep waking up, but you don't mind because every time you do you remember a good dream. And after I woke up I thought a lot about my big Dream, the kind of dream that a person longs to make real. And it felt possible. Not just possible, but inevitable. Someday I'll write about it, and snarky people can ridicule it, and I can fantasize about kicking them in the shins.

But for now, I gotta look for a job. Sigh.

[ humor ] 2002-10-26
Addendum to the Fed thing: You'll love this. Despite all the rampant security and so on, no one checked that anyone's ID matched their face and the name they put down on the test. I would have thought this was a rather elementary thing to check, but oh no, I'm not a security expert, so I must be clueless or something.

I thought it was amusing how utterly trivial it would be to send someone to take the test for you. Probably some kind of massive federal offense, of course, and not the sort of thing I would ever dream of doing myself, but still.

The only person who even glanced at ID's was the security dude who manned the x-ray machine and metal detector. Heh.

[ random thoughts work ] 2002-10-26
I wanna be a Fed: Well, that is, I would like to work for a federal agency, specifically the IRS. Why, do you ask? Because they're hiring right now, and I gotta take what I can get. Sheesh. As Richard says, if they hire me I'll be an IRS Stormtrooper. I kinda like the sound of that, actually...

And as I put it to him and his family as we were discussing this: would you rather have Joe Blow Clueless looking over your tax return, or would you rather have *me*, a person who is rather clueful and quite dedicated to fairness?

So the other night I waltzed my butt over there to take the exam. Whoooooo-boy, they have some security. I had to go through a metal detector and they x-rayed my bag, just like at the airport. There were security guards everywhere we went, to make sure we didn't wander on the way to the cafeteria.

The actual test didn't take very long. Some of the sections only had ten questions. Heh. But the filling out of paperwork took awhile, as did the fingerprinting of everyone there (a couple hundred people, I would guess).

And oh, this is lovely -- they reassured us that if we were not selected for employment, our fingerprint card would be destroyed. Uh, that's supposed to be comforting, in an age where everything is scanned and computerized? Puh-lease, the government is NOT about to let go of a single set of fingerprints once it gathers them.

So now I'm officially a Fingerprinted Person. If I ever plan on doing any crimes, I'll have to wear gloves. Good thing I'm not planning on committing any crimes. What with the hassle of a trial (and possible imprisonment, and/or fines), and all the angst about getting caught, it's just really not my bag.

Anyhoo, in two weeks they'll be sending me the results of my test. I think I did pretty well. It wasn't that tough. At least, I don't *think* so. Some of the questions were more to get a psychological profile - ones asking what you would do if you were assigned a task you didn't know how to do and didn't feel qualified doing, that kind of thing.

So I guess I'll see. Until then, I gotta keep pounding the pavement. I keep running out of money. Amazing how that happens when you haven't got a job, heh. Hopefully my family will be sending me a little bit to survive on soon. I surely need it - I went to check my bank balance the other day and found that I was overdrawn. That always leaves a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach. And it brings up a rant...

Why oh why do they even bother with the whole authorization of payments on your atm / debit card if they're going to let you get in the hole anyway? I mean, I would have foregone purchases if I had known it would send me below zero. Is this just a big scam so they can collect extra fees every time you get overdrawn? I'm starting to wonder. All I want is a little feedback so I know when I'm out of money. Sigh. I guess you can't trust 'em.

So I suppose I'll have to be one of those people who keeps track of everything themselves from now on. How aggravating. I mean, we have the technology so that we shouldn't have to do that... argh. Whatever. In *my* world, it wouldn't be so darned annoying.

Vote for me, next time Empress of the Universe comes up for election, won't you? :)

[ body mental ] 2002-10-26
Oy. Sorry so quiet: I've just been busy & stuff. Yesterday wasn't too great of a day, I must say. I woke up feeling this horrible sense of foreboding and dread, for no particular reason.

Thinking it would help, I took a couple of my pills. Well, that ended up making me feel sluggish and out of it for the entire rest of the day. GAH! I can hardly believe people abuse Xanax - who would *want* to feel that way!?

Anyhoo, right after I took the pills, I went for a nice long 4.5-mile walk, which was Very Good For Me. The only part that really sucked was that the blister on the back of my left achilles tendon bled all over my sock. Sigh. I was even wearing high tops so that the darn thing wouldn't be stressed so badly.

Let me back up a bit - the reason why I have a blister there is that I went for a walk in the rain this past week wearing my rubber penny loafers, which rubbed both achilles tendons, creating blisters. For the last three quarters of a mile of that walk, I went barefoot because the left blister popped and it was hurting like hell. So now you know. Sorry, I never promised it would be an *exciting* story.

[ movies ] 2002-10-20
Not quite what was advertised: I saw the movie Riding in Cars with Boys last night, and I was utterly shocked at the way the movie turned out. But actually, what's more shocking is that I wasn't disappointed.

From the ads I had seen, I had expected the movie to be a rather ho-hum heartwarming piece about a girl who gets pregnant too young and struggles to make her way in the world saddled with a baby and a lout of a husband, where everything comes out rosy at the end.

Whoa. Not quite... there are layers of depth and pain and complexity in this movie that I hadn't suspected at all. And Drew Barrymore, who normally irks me, did an absolutely amazing job with her role.

Anyway, I liken this movie to a swimming pool that looks about three feet deep but is really about sixteen feet deep. I kept waiting for the simple happy ending around every corner, and it kept not coming.

What I really liked was how it portrayed all of the main characters as being imperfect, and locked into painful struggles both with and against each other. Teenage motherhood is not a simple thing, and I think they showed a remarkable level of truth about how it really puts the mother through the wringer.

The ending did eventually turn out to be happy, more or less. Kind of like real life. Not perfect, but the damaged souls manage to continue somehow. And there's a sense of healing there, too, which is what keeps it from being terribly depressing. (Though some people would argue it's still terribly depressing).

Overall I'd rate it as definitely worth seeing, and much richer than the advertising made it out to be. I notice that Penny Marshall is the director -- way to go, Laverne!

There. A movie review. A post not about me and my wacked-out brain, for once. :) See, I told you things were looking up...

[ good mental ] 2002-10-20
The morning twilight greets me: and I rejoice that I have made it through the night.

It's darn early - 7:18am, and I still have 42 minutes until it's time to leave for Mass.

Last night, I slept from 1:something am til 3:something am. And I considered it a victory. :)

It's a strange, sad thing when the respite of sleep becomes something to be terrified of. Really, I wouldn't wish this on anyone. It's highly unpleasant, to say the least.

I managed to doze off, finally, and had some strange but not unpleasant dreams which immediately fled my head when I woke up. I also noticed I drooled rather excessively on my pillow, which is a side effect of my medication, I'm sure. (I've had that side effect with other meds that I've been on).

You know what really helped me last night? I said a rosary before I went to sleep. Go ahead and laugh if you think I'm a dork, but what would that say about the kind of person *you* are?

Anyhow, it helped me feel at peace and not alone. I set my little Virgin Mary rosary card next to my lamp (which stays on all night when I'm alone), and asked her to please watch over me as I slept. And by golly, she sure did. :)

I hope to get more sleep tonight. I think it will take a little while to get used to the medication. I'll be talking with the mental health people when I go in tomorrow, so if I need more fine-tuning, we can get it taken care of then.

I can't describe to you the anticipation with which I await the sunrise. It feels like getting out of prison, when I see the sun come up. I think to myself, "Ahhh, reprieved yet another day. I am so fortunate."

Someday I hope to look back on this time and be able to say that it was the toughest spot. I really hope things get better from here on out. Don't get me wrong - I don't expect a total cure or anything. I'm going to have to work hard at pestering my doctors to take the best care of me possible - it will be a strange dance with the medication, tuning my mind like the massively complex machine it is.

I mean, I know that sometimes a given medication doesn't work forever, and you have to be willing to try new things. I am willing, and I am so incredibly thankful for every day that I can get through without abject terror, or feeling as though I'd rather be dead.

It's a long, hard road, but damn it feels so good to be moving forward along it, know what I mean?

Peace be with you.

[ mental my site ] 2002-10-19
Yes, I'm back: Well, for varying definitions of the word "back". Okay, so my meatspace life is rather busy lately. I've been trying to put things in order, because I was a bit wayward, to say the least. Okay, I'm not being specific because some of what's been going on has been unpleasant and somewhat my fault.

But the point is, I'm doing better every day. I think I kinda hit bottom, mental-health wise, and I'm working at making sure things get better. I hope the creeps who were so keen on making snotty comments on my weblog go stuff themselves. With what, I dunno. Something that'll make 'em shut up, I suppose.

I really don't get why people are so mean. Maybe they ran out of puppies to kick and decided to go after me.

Really, I would *love* to be here prattling on and on about things which entertain people and not be depressing and realistic about the difficulties I've been facing, and yadda yadda yadda, but guess what? I come here and start typing and stuff comes out and I don't really censor it. This is me, this is my log, it's about what's going on in my head, and if people don't like it, they can click another link. No one's forcing them to read what I write here (at least, I hope not).

But here's what's shaking, mentally, lately: I've been having trouble sleeping, and having some really highly unpleasant hallucinations as I'm drifting off to sleep. The past two nights were horrid. Just really creepy bodily sensations of being... not right, and unable to ask for help. Ugh. You want details? Oh, okay.

So the first night (two nights ago), as I'm drifting off to sleep I get this freakish sensation that I would liken to the following: imagine that you have been buried in the ground under about 18 inches of dirt. Then imagine someone releases about half a dozen dogs to walk over your grave. That's what it felt like. It was this weird phantom sensation that went away quickly, but really left some mental scars. Trust me.

Luckily, that night, Richard was right beside me when I croaked out a weak "help", and he helped me calm down and feel that I was safe.

Unfortunately, last night was worse, much worse. I took one of my pills (geodon) to help my thoughts calm down a few hours before bedtime, and then another one about an hour before bedtime. As soon as the sun started going down, I was getting creeped out with anticipation of another unpleasant bedtime experience. I was unfortunately not off the mark...

I managed to doze off, even before my roommate got home. But then I woke up, three separate times with the sensation that something... some spirit, if you will, was *inhabiting* my body. It felt like it overlapped with my body but not entirely, as though on some ethereal plane this ... creature, entity, what-have-you were putting me on like a suit that it was going to wear. But the body parts didn't line up properly, especially the arms, and I had this weird sense that my arms weren't in the right place - they were touching somewhere that they couldn't possibly have been.

So that happened like three times. The third time, the... inhabitation feeling was even more horrid - I felt like it had gripped me totally, I couldn't move, tried to yell out but no sound would come from me. In my panic, I could feel my heart pounding like crazy and my pulse pounding in my neck veins. I thought I was going to die or something.

Also, oddly, I had a brief dream that I heard the tv on and went out into the living room to talk to my roommate and be reassured, but that he was nowhere to be found.

Finally, I did get up and looked around and he wasn't there. I called him and he was just a few minutes from coming home. When he arrived, I asked him if I could sleep in his room, so that if I called out in the night he might hear me and be able to help. Because Chris is a hugely gracious and kind fellow, he obliged. I did manage to sleep, but not before having a huge shuddering fit where my muscles just kept tightening uncontrollably. It was like shaking with terror...

Ugh. I finally made it through. When I woke up, it seemed to be around dawn, but I was *so* glad that the sun was up, that I had somehow made it through the night. Yes, I recognize that what I had been feeling was some kind of weird hallucinatory thing that my mind concocted because it's Just Not Quite Normal (to put it mildly).

Anyway, I called the county mental health crisis line when I got up, and since their office is closed on the weekends, they told me to head to the emergency room if I really needed help before Monday.

So that's exactly what I did. I headed up to Round Rock Hospital, through the pouring dreary rain, and didn't have to wait in line at all. I was amazed at how efficient everything was at the emergency room. They got me in to see a doctor quickly, who gave me a prescription for a bit of xanax and sonata to calm down my anxiety and help me sleep, respectively. I couldn't really have imagined a better emergency room experience, to tell the truth.

After that, I filled my rxen, went to Fry's and got a printer and a new network card for my laptop (and I confess, a Dr. Seuss ABC cd-rom thingie for Elena). Then I went to the little Catholic stuff shop and got myself a little booklet on the rosary, another one on the order of Mass, and a really beautiful poster of the liturgical calendar.

Go ahead and laugh. I dare you.

The thing is, I'm converting to Catholicism. There, I said it. I went last week after a particularly bad day, and it helped me quite a bit. I feel good there, like it's where I want to be. I'm re-joining the RCIA, which stands for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, and is the way you get into the church as an adult. We go to early mass (at 8:30am), then have classes afterwards in the library.

The point is I think it's good for me on lots of levels. The structure is something that really benefits me, and plus I must say I've become a true believer. You may not realize that this is a rare thing for someone coming from my background, raised all her life as a Unitarian Universalist. The usual direction for people to go between the two churches is from Catholicism to UUism.

So I'm a wacky data point going the other direction. :) But it doesn't matter how rare it is, only whether it's sincere and a good thing, and I feel very strongly that both are true for me.

This entry is way too long. Sorry. Anyway, I should be surfing the net more these days, especially since I finally got a working network card for my laptop, so I can look for spiffy websites to point out while I'm watching movies.

Someday I'll come up with a filter thingie for my weblog (probably as part of rolling my own) so that people can see the webloggish entries without having to slog through the journal-esque ones. For those of you who feel agonizing pain when you read a long rambling entry here like this one, you're just going to have to learn to scroll past them for the time being. I would say I'm sorry but I'm not - you won't see me criticizing anyone else for the content of their personal, private weblog.

I mean, that's the beauty of it - there's plenty of bandwidth for even the worst rambling spewers like myself. If you really hate it, then it's very simple - don't come back here.

Do I sound defensive? I suppose I am, but I think I have good reason to be. I've endured some rotten attacks on my weblog, bad enough that it hurt me enough to have me just yank it for awhile.

But not for long. Because when it comes down to it, they (the rude jerks) can't stop me. And what's more, they shouldn't. There's the whole moral aspect of it, which is quite clear enough on its own, and then there's the whole practical aspect of it - do you REALLY want to antagonize, attack, and piss off someone who is admittedly mentally unstable? Someone who wears the badge "Not Quite Sane" with pride?

I mean, really. What kind of idiot pokes a rabid tiger with a stick?

Okay, I'll shut up now. Gotta find something good on tv... :)

[ mental ] 2002-10-14
Things are much MUCH better: I think I'm going to be okay after all. Actually, I know I am. I think. Anyway, gotta hit the job search and exercise and stuff today. I'm watching Joe Dirt on the TV, and I'm going to break out my power gym machine thingie slider whatchamajigger. Oh yeah, I watched Jane Eyre this morning and I *loved* it. I imagine I'll enjoy the book, too. It was totally cool.

[ my site ] 2002-10-13
None of the Above is temporarily closed: It will be back shortly, once I get my house in order and stuff. Not to worry, I just had to take a bit of a mental vacation for awhile, but things will be back in tip-top shape before too long. Today (Sunday, October 13th) I am going to church (Mass, actually), then we'll see what the rest of the day brings me. I think it's going to be a good one.

[ rants ] 2002-10-08
Okay, they asked: Someone asked what happened with David, since he and I dated for quite awhile and I thought things were going so well and so on.

Well, at some point after the nagging to do housework increased dramatically and the affection decreased dramatically I got the hint that he was more looking for a housekeeper than a mate. Okay, so I'm stupid - it took me awhile to figure this out. Keep in mind he didn't bother *telling* me that he wanted me gone, it was all done non-verbally until the clue-bomb finally penetrated my skull.

There was a lot more to it, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Now he's all pissed at me because suddenly he wants all the rest of my stuff gone from his house, like yesterday. I'm doing what I can to get it out of there as quickly as possible. I didn't realize until yesterday that it was upsetting him so much, but now that I know I will take care of it.

Also there's some business about the cell phone he got for me and which he signed a two-year contract for (his idea), and now is annoyed with me that AT&T wants to charge an arm and a leg ($174 as I recall) to cancel the contract. I can understand being annoyed about that, but AT&T is the proper object of that annoyance, not me.

So now I'm getting nasty emails from multiple directions and nasty comments on my website from multiple directions as well. Oh, joy.

Plus, I don't feel real well lately. This morning was particularly rough. Not that any of the people who are out to pester me care or anything. I suppose they're salivating at my misery. Creeps.

Anyhoo, I hadn't been real specific about the breakup because I was trying to exercise my weak, spindly little tact muscle (it's certainly not strong). But since somebody asked, and since David himself is leaving unkind comments here, I thought I'd mention it directly.

I dunno how else to try to combat such things, except by facing them as directly as I can, trying not to be too horrid in return, and letting people's words speak for themselves. I try to inject a little humor into my responses sometimes, too.

But when it comes down to it, I'm leaving the comments there - when you're "differently sane" as I am, evidence that at least *some* people really *are* "out to get you" is a valuable thing.

Look, I'm not a perfect person, but I don't kick people when they're down, as these jerks are. This is my refuge, where I go to express my thoughts in a way that helps me cope. It's very personal, and most people don't have the courage to be as up front about private, painful stuff as I am.

Frankly, it's easy for me. It's hard to hold it in, in fact. But that's beside the point.

I make mistakes. Sometimes I do stupid things. But I don't go around someone's personal website where they bare their soul and put sniping cruel comments there. Because I think that's a wrong thing to do.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable. Sometimes my grip on reality is a bit tenuous, but I'm confident that my values are in the right place, when it really comes down to it.

They must feel good by doing it, that's the only thing I can figure. And if someone has to get their jollies that way, then I suppose I can only pity them, because I don't know how they'll ever learn compassion.

I don't expect everyone to like what I write here. I certainly don't expect them to care. But I really didn't expect the nastiness of a lot of the comments lately. And I just want to say, I won't let them get the best of me.

You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go out and get myself some yummy vanilla ice cream. Because I deserve it. :)

[ mental ] 2002-10-08
Bah! Crappy morning. Shitstorms all around me. Whole bunch of rough and stressful stuff all happening at once.

It should calm down by Friday, though.

Today's mission: be kind to myself, and try to end up in a better mood by the time for Elena's visit.

Do you ever feel like a snake, pinned to the ground with a forked stick right behind its head? That's kinda how I feel right now.

I'll be okay. Just gotta grit my teeth, go buy some chocolate, and grab some kleenex and my journal.

[ random thoughts ] 2002-10-07
Who writes this script, anyway? That is, the one we live out. Because I have a few bones to pick with whoever it is. But don't get me wrong, I'm not in a pissed-off mood right now or anything.

In fact, I feel quite good. I just got back into town and was going through my email and found a very nice note from my ex-husband. How totally cool. So I just sent him a reply, and with any luck we can renew our friendship or something. At least, that's what I'm hoping. That would be cool, methinks.

But before I saw that email, I got two nasty ones, one from a friend of my most recent ex-boyfriend, and the other one from the ex-boyfriend himself. Apparently the stuff I have still over at his house is displeasing him greatly. Okay. Well, I didn't realize this but now that I do I'll get it out of there with great haste. Hopefully this will not be a big huge deal. Frankly, I miss my stuff and want it here anyway, and I've only delayed getting it because I didn't think it was bothering him and I've been busy, mostly hanging out down in Blanco.

But anyway.... so this script-writer has a very highly developed sense of irony, a wicked twisted sense of humor, and... well more about the Author I guess I'll have to figure out as time goes on. And it's a game.

Yes, I'm starting to sound weird again. I think I've earned my weird stripes by this point, don't you agree?

But fear not, because I'm essentially mostly harmless. ;)

[ random thoughts ] 2002-10-03
Yes I am still alive: Just hitting a lull, is all. Just hanging around, breathing in, breathing out, etcetera. Blah blah blah. Went to my appointment with the Texas Rehabilitation Commission and found out that it will take them sixty days to determine whether or not I'm even eligible for their services, such as they are. Gah. Doncha just love it?

In other news, I need to get a job. This is a familiar refrain around here. And so I say it again: I need to get a job. I also need to exercise more, which I haven't been doing while I've been hanging out in Blanco. Anyhoo...

I think I'll go look for something happy to cheer me up. :)