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 |  "Clean cup! Move down!" ~~the Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland, Walt Disney cartoon |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Sometimes in life, you have to pick up and move down the table. A regroup, a fresh start. A clean slate. |
Health Update: I passed my kidney stone last weekend. (Not Fourth of July Weekend......the one before that.) But not really. It just ground down into sediment and felt like I was peeing 220 grit sandpaper.  While it was grinding down in my urinary tract it really sucked. A lot. And I'm super thankful for Oxy. 'Cause counting to ten is no substitute for high grade narcotics.  In other health news, I had an endoscopy on July 3rd so that they could maybe see what the hell is up with my liver pain and some of my digestive issues. I have a hiatal hernia.  So that's awesome. But, good news, my Barrett's esophagus is gone. So....yay?Apparently for most cases of hiatal hernias, you just change your diet and eat smaller more frequent meals. Tomorrow I go in for a nuclear digestion test something or other. I can't eat or drink after midnight tonight and then when I get there tomorrow they will feed me a breakfast laced with nuclear markers. Every 15 minutes after I eat, they will take pictures of my digestive system to see how well or if I am digesting the food. I'll tell you how I'm digesting food. I'm down to a diet of pretty much milk products. Frozen lattes, iced coffees, real ice cream shakes, puddings, yogurt. I can also do plain chicken broth. These are the only things I can eat and not have severe liver pain or later throw up. Saturday night I had grilled chicken and rice at about 7pm. At 4 am after a brutal night of stomach pain accompanied by a migraine all night long, I finally threw up completely undigested rice. I don't know if the chicken was part of what was going on, but this was the second time in three weeks I've tossed up completely undigested rice several hours after eating it. I've done the same with quinoa and corn. I sense a theme of whole grains. Tomorrow morning I have a choice of foods for breakfast: eggs--which have made me sick since I was a child; or oatmeal--a whole grain. Woo hoo.  It's like choosing to throw up immediately or later after tons of pain. Let me think. Can I get a yogurt? The doctor, in the meantime, keeps telling me it ISN'T my liver that hurts. I told her ok. Then I said let me borrow your pen. She said what for? I said so that I can draw exactly where my pain is, front and back, and you explain to me what is there if it isn't my liver. She said, that the liver has no pain nerves except in the sack-thing that holds it. She said the only way it would hurt is if it was swollen. I said, AND? Your point? Under my ribcage feels like an overstuffed suitcase. Too much stuff, not enough room. It hurts to sit upright. Only laying down with an icepack helps the pain. How does that not sound swollen?! I don't know. I'm giving her one more chance to actually hear me and then I"m asking for a second opinion. I don't like that she doesn't listen to me. She also keeps trying to kill me with new drugs. I'm like, please don't just prescribe new drugs hoping for a solution. I need you to have a plan. I have too many drug allergies to play hit and miss with drug solutions. You'll kill me or hospitalize me playing "Try this drug, try this drug, try this drug!" Also, found a large lump just below my rib cage on my right side about the size of my thumb. I showed it to her and she didn't say, Yikes, let's run a test or look at that or anything. She said, Oh, it's probably a fatty deposit, you'll be fine.  Ok, didn't see your X-Ray glasses there, Doc. It's a REALLY big lump. I think it's a swollen lymph node. But no....she thinks it's fine. I'm going to show it to my regular doc and see what she has to say about it. |
| I read between 250 and 350 books a year. About two thirds of those books are re-reads or new books by authors I have already read. When I find an author I like, I will fall down the rabbit hole of that author and read every book they have ever written. I'll look up old obscure short stories in out of print anthologies. I'll devour that author and then stay on top of all new works they have coming out and then if it is a series when the new book comes out, I will re-read the entire series before reading the new book. Sometimes finding new authors is a mixed blessing for me. Most of what I read is genre. I like genre books. Mysteries with varying turns down the sub-genres of Cozy Mysteries, Horror Mysteries, Romance Mysteries, etc. I like Steampunk, although I have trouble finding good quality Steampunk. I read some Historical Fiction with stopovers in Historical Romance and even Historical Time Travel Romance (which is a larger field than you would suspect). I like YA, especially dystopian YA. I even like some very select plain old Romance. My favorite genre is Paranormal Urban Romance. The bulk of my (large) personal library fits under this genre's umbrella with parts that jut out into Mystery, Horror and Sci/Fi. It's more or less the genre I write in. When I'm reading in public and people ask me what I'm reading, if I'm reading this, I always laughingly answer, "A trashy vampire romance novel." Because that best describes most of this genre. I've never read Joyce Carol Oates. I don't read a lot of what you might call classic or modern American Literature. OK, I'll be honest, I don't read it at all unless it is for a book club like this or I've been assigned it for some other reason. I don't read it on my own. It doesn't interest me. I guess I don't have highbrow reading tastes. You might call me bourgeois in my reading because I'm not a fan of crap like Fifty Shades of Gray not just for content, but because the prose is wretched. But I'm not a fan of Moby Dick either. I like what I like. I tried to go into Foxfire with an open mind, though, because that is what this book club is about. Having an open mind. I read the first page and knew I wasn't a fan of this book and probably this author, though. The subject, I think, done differently, could have interested me. But several things about the book are very off putting to me. The mechanics: The run on sentences and cavalier approach to punctuation and capitalization are maddening to me. Reading the first chapter alone made me exhausted mentally. I felt as though I had been wrestling with the story not reading it. The voice: I kept getting lost in who was telling the story. Is it a memoir by one of the girls? Is it her voice? Is it first person singular? Is it omniscient? It seems to move back and forth and it is distracting trying to figure out who is telling the story. It gets in the way of the storytelling. It keeps taking me out of the tale as I try to puzzle it out. The timeline: The story jumps around in time. It isn't linear. Each chapter starts in a different place and time. In a different place in the story. Again, I'm so distracted by trying to figure out what is going on, I can't follow what it is that is going on with all the run on sentences. Reading this book is a huge uphill battle. The biggest turn off for me, though, is the subject matter. I am a survivor of much personal tragedy. I read for three reasons: to be entertained, to be educated, or to be uplifted. I don't read about (or watch television or movies about) horrific or tragic things. It triggers me. I don't read about rape, child molestation or domestic violence. I have memories of my own in living color I have to deal with, I don't need to add to any of that. Chapter four did me in. After that I began skipping around the book instead of reading it. I began skipping because I could no longer trust the book to not introduce horrible things to me. What is the book about? From what I gather it is about girlfriends who form a club to help one another deal with life's crap. I don't know. It is probably a really nice book. But, one thing I have learned from all the books I read every year? Although you would think I would be less picky with what I read, after all I read so quickly, then a bad book occasionally wouldn't be so bad, right? No. If I don't love a book, absolutely love a book, by page 25 or so? I just don't make myself finish it. And if a book simply upsets me emotionally? I don't even worry about not finishing it. Not even for something like this. So, Foxfire is probably a very meaningful book and Joyce Carol Oates is, I'm sure, an important modern author, but, I'm going to give it a pass, thanks all the same. |
| I left work early today. Only 15 mins early, but I just couldn't sit there anymore. I needed to take another pain pill and I couldn't take it and still drive home. :/ I huuuuurrrrttt. In that grinding, awful, is-this-ever-going-to-stop?! kind of way. And I feel stupid saying it, but when the nurse asked me today where I hurt, I didn't have a better answer than, "My liver hurts." I was talking to CJ about it earlier and she said, "Just count to ten. And if it still hurts when you get to ten, start over. You can stand anything for ten seconds." I told her I had shit to do, I couldn't sit around all afternoon counting like an idiot.  She asked me was I getting anything done anyway? Well...........no. Not really.  But that doesn't change the fact that I have shit that needs doing! The nurse told me the doctor just got all my test information and will review it tomorrow so to expect a call tomorrow afternoon. If the pain gets too bad or I start running a fever, go to the emergency room. Great. Thanks. In the meantime, I'll count it out. |
| Got to go for my CT this morning. And in a surprising twist *insert sarcasm*, I had a reaction to the contrast dye they gave me. It made me have stroke level blood pressure. So they made me lay quietly on the little CT table/platform thingy until it dropped back down into normal levels 30 minutes later. They made the next poor bastard just wait. Then they had me sit in one of those little recline-y chairs in the waiting area outside the room for another 30 minutes with my IV portal still in me..."Just in case." They wheeled this poor 80ish year old man in a wheel chair past me while I sat there. He was the next appointment who had been sitting and waiting for me to not stroke out from the stupid dye. So that was a fantastic start to my day. I hurt all. day. long. So I finally got a call from my Dr when I was on my way home. She used the tone that made me know immediately that she was giving me not so great news. She said, "First....." I said, "Wait. First? There's more than one thing wrong?" Yes. But, good news first! It's not diverticulitis. Woo! *more sarcasm* No. I have all the right makings for that, diverticulosis, but no infection. Yay? So what is it? Well, three things. That's right. Three things are wrong with me. I have a 4 mm kidney stone in my left kidney. So that's just gonna keep on hurting til I pass it. My liver (which.....I kept TELLING everyone, something is wrong with my liver!!! And no one ever fucking listens to me!!), so my liver has odd fatty deposits in it, which she has no idea why it would have those but whatever the reason, it is causing my hepatic vein to be swollen. Which that in turn is causing my spleen to be enlarged. All of those things are causing tons of pain all across my abdomen. She said, "Do you think you have enough Oxy to get you through the weekend?" *facepalm* You fucking know it's bad when your doctor is worried you don't have enough Oxy. So I gotta go get a screen thingy and a jar to screen my urine until I pass my stone and then put it in a jar like some weird side show act so that they can run tests on it to find out WHY I've got a kidney stone. ~sigh~ And on Monday I go see her again when she will hopefully have some sort of game plan to deal with the rest of this shit because everything I've read about the swollen hepatic vein ends with "often leading to a need for liver transplant." Nope. I'm done reading about this shit on the interwebs. I can't take that kind of information right now. I'm going to go read trashy vampire romance novels and check out on Oxy for a while. I'm done with reality for the day. |
| I'm sitting here in quite a bit of pain again. I'm drinking broth for dinner because that's what the Doctor told me to do tonight. At bedtime I get to drink vanilla flavored dye crap and then tomorrow morning I get to wake up at six to drink more of it so that I can do a CAT scan at eight. Cause..........that's awesome. Monday I had a migraine that lasted til mid Tuesday. But the migraine was kind of a red herring. Background pain that interfered with the stomach pain I've been having for a while. When I was 29, I got a complete hysterectomy because I'd had several years.....y.e.a.r.s......of massive abdominal pain caused by endometriosis. I had a standing prescription for Vicodin I had so much pain with that. I've also had a C-Section and my gallbladder removed. So, I'm kind of a connoisseur of abdominal pain. This one is right the fuck up there. Sharp and stabbing. Constant and relentless. Today she gave me an Oxy prescription. Oxy is great. I'm high as a fucking kite right now. Like most narcotics it doesn't really take the pain away, it mostly numbs you out and makes you not give a shit. Tomorrow's scan is supposed to tell me if I have diverticulitis. Like my mom. I'm really hoping it's something else. I was hoping to make it through the rest of my life without another disease that has a name.  I'm all diseased out. I'm done being diseased. I'm done being in pain. I'm done being high so I'm not in pain. Mostly I'm just done. |
| I live in a small bedroom community subdivision just outside Bozeman, MT. It is like thousands of other subdivisions built in the 80s and 90s. The houses sit on 1/4 acre to 1/2 acre lots. Because of the moderately strict covenants here (and because for the most part the same contractors built all the houses), there is a certain cookie cutter sameness to them. They are variations on a theme: ranch houses, split level houses, where terrain permits-basement walkouts. There are some houses that break the mold, but those are like raisins sprinkled into the porridge--the exceptions, not the norm. These were mostly spec houses. They are almost all done in varying shades of earth tone vinyl siding with coordinating trim and coordinating asphalt shingled roofs. For some reason, the contractor had a penchant for faux shutters because about 1/3 of the houses in the neighborhood have them. Happily, we don't, because I can't stand the things. I think they are uglier than sin. All of the houses are set back (and house placement is clearly outlined in the covenants) on their property so each has a clear front yard and back yard. About 1/2 the backyards are fenced, but privacy fences are outlawed (as are chain link), so most of the fences are nice split rail fences with wire so that you can see people's elaborate landscaping. Because, suburbia is the land of elaborate landscaping. When I was a kid in Texas, the whole family would take yearly summer vacations to Colorado to the mountains. Every year, I remember standing in the national forest, breathing deeply and thinking, "This is what Colorado smells like." When I moved to Colorado as an adult, I was enthralled with that scent all over again. The pine, fir and spruce of the forest, the damp scent of a babbling river, the quaking aspen, the wildflowers just out of sight, but not out of smell. All of it combines to create the most intoxicating primeval scent in the world. Imagine my delight when I moved to Montana and discovered that Montana smells like Colorado!  Sofie and I have been walking every morning now that the rains have stopped. We wake up early and go, sometimes as early as 5:30 and the elaborate landscaping of our neighbors combined with the early morning automatic sprinklers mixes to create that same primeval scent. We listen to the mourning doves cooing to one another, the robins piping warnings of our approach, the starlings' grating calls. And I feel transported. I've never really said in here because I find religion a super personal thing, but I did promise to be more open. I'm pagan. I consider myself a Druid. So going on the morning walks and experiencing all of this is very spiritual for me. I often find myself praying as I walk. And I feel very blessed. --------- Jenn  and I (along with CJ when her work schedule permits) have been doing writing sprints in the afternoon each day. OMG is it helpful. I promised myself that I can only work on my novel-nothing else-during the sprint time. Wow, does it help focus me. We check in with each other via Facebook messenger and then write 30 minutes or an hour depending upon our individual schedule and then check out the same way. It has really helped me work through some rough patches in my writing. Now, is everything I have written top shelf material? No. In fact, most of it stinks. But! But, it is nice first draft, bare bones, holy crap, I finally have a damn direction, kind of stuff. I'm in the swampy middle of my novel. Where it is easy to get lost. I know where I'm heading, but I'm lost in the swampy middle on the way there. I feel I just need to write through it and it will be ok and it will get all cleaned up in the edits. It will be ok, I just have to keep telling myself that. I just know that I can't stay stuck in the swamp. Thanks, Jenn !!!! |
I am participating in "Invalid Item"  . This is my entry for the book in my title.First let me say that I was really looking forward to reading this book. My degree is in the field of geography and this material is super fascinating to me. Now, let me say, that although I agree with this author's main premise, i.e. The Columbus expedition was not the first to the New World, this author and this book did nothing to convince me of that fact. Why? Let me enumerate the ways. Chapter One: "The more I thought about the Bering Strait theory of populating the Americas, the more ridiculous it became....I concluded only armchair academics could believe in { it }. In my view, it never happened--another fairy story to boost the myth that transAtlantic journeys were impossible before Columbus." This was the first of oh so many condescending and rude things said in this book. Many, nay, most serious scholars, contrary to what is being taught in public elementary schools, no longer believe that Columbus was the first to the New World. Scholars have known for years that Vikings visited these shores years before Columbus. They were not mentioned at all in this book. Also not mentioned AT ALL in this book was Thor Heyerdahl who had this exact same theory and made the Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947 to prove that ancient man could have made long journeys across the Pacific outfitted in only small canoes and dugouts. Again...not mentioned, AT ALL. The author's assertion that because HE could not cross the Bering Strait that it could not be done was one of the most arrogant things I've ever seen printed in my life. Chapter Three: "In my opinion, anyone who had read Johannessen's and Sorenson's books yet still believes Columbus discovered America, is in need of psychiatric help." More utter rudeness. Equally offputting about the book is the fact that while you are reading it, it is difficult to decide, "Is it a travelogue? Is it scholarly research? What is going on with this book?" This is prompted by the braggadocio accounts of all the places the author has been and the things he has seen in his lifetime. As if somehow this experiential traveler's approach can and should replace serious academic research and legitimate degrees in these fields. "I've been to these places and seen them with my own eyes, so therefore I am naturally an expert on these matters," seems to be the conveyed attitude throughout the book. He is well traveled, but all that does is give him anecdotal evidence, not serious research. While I will grant that he has made an extensive study of much of this material and has written books on the subject, the fact that I have written on a subject does not make me a master of said subject, it merely makes me published. Like a good scholar, he presents other works to support his position. But unlike an actual scientist, he presents no opposing viewpoints or theories except to scoff at or ridicule them. In no way is this the scientific method. He never actually cites opposing viewpoints, either, he simply backhandedly refers to them or uses them as strawman arguments to better highlight how valid his viewpoints are. All of which is bad science. Again, I agree with his basic premise. His ideas may be correct. But I find myself opposing his ideas simply because of the way in which they have been presented. For instance, the lists of archeological finds at various Bronze Age sites that are similar are puzzling to me from a scholarly standpoint. There are other, much simpler, explanations for their being similar besides cross cultural sharing. Most of the items he lists are ordinary everyday items. The design for these items even today is based on simple function and utility. A cup is a cup is a cup. Give 1000 men from around the globe the same basic tools, materials and inspiration from the natural world around them and have them construct you a cup and 990 of them will look virtually the same. The same can be said for the dagger and spear, both of which were constructed from watching animals hunt with claws, teeth and beaks. The entire book of his "proofs" is like this. The similar pyramids? Pour sand in a pile. It makes a pyramid. It is the simplest and sturdiest of architectural designs. The similar calendars? They were looking at the same stars and made the same correct calculations. What would have been an actual smoking gun would have been if they both had the exact same MIS-calculations built into their calendars. I could go on, but I won't. I really wanted to like this book. I find the subject matter fascinating. But this author and this book were awful, offputting and poorly executed. I'm embarrassed for my field of study that it was published and that people are reading it as fact on the subject. |
| I said I'd keep up with this and tell about my regular stuff but here I am slacking. The Outlaws went home Monday late. As much as I bitch about things, it really was a good trip. There was no shouting match between FIL and I and MIL did pretty well this trip memory-wise. She is absolutely going downhill, but....she seems happy about it. I don't know. That's probably a bad way to say that. She's not disturbed by the idea of it. She bumps along ok. Tuesday night I had a migraine so I took my migraine pills. Wednesday morning, I got up and it was back. So I took my migraine pills. (Which is totally allowed according to the directions. I can take them every 4 to 6 hours as needed. This was more like...........12 or 14 hours.) So then at work I started feeling dizzy and just...sick. Like pukey sick. And my migraine was back big time. Ok, time to pull out the big guns. I go to Urgent Care and get a shot. The shot is a different med than the pills but it is just a bigger, badder version of what I take orally. I take Tramadol. I get shots of Toradol. Both are non-narcotic pain relievers. And apparently both LOWER MY FREAKING BLOOD PRESSURE. That is why I felt so sick and dizzy. I normally have perfect blood pressure. Like spot freaking on textbook perfect blood pressure. 120/80....always. She took it at Urgent Care when I got there and she took it like three times. I asked, "What's the problem here?" She said, "Your pressure has been 108/68 three times. Can you stand up, please?" She made me stand so she could get a higher reading. 115/70 I was like.........I don't think that's the way it's supposed to work, lady. I think you should, I don't know........TELL THE DOCTOR?! No. They sent me home. After giving me a shot of medication which...........by the way.......LOWERS MY FREAKING BLOOD PRESSURE!!! Awesome sauce. By the time I got back to work I was so dizzy I could barely stand. I was like, "I need to go home." My coworkers said I was pale as a bedsheet. I got myself home and slept all day and all night. I was so whacked out. I told Hubby I'm done going there. I suck at being a good advocate for myself normally but when I'm sick, I really suck at it. I shouldn't have been driving or let them give me the shot. I just...I wanted them to make me feel better. That didn't happen. I need a better protocol for when I have a migraine. I need previously set up steps in place so that I can get the help I need without being a danger to myself or letting others endanger me because of all my allergies and health problems. I should get on that. But not today. Today I still feel like crap. |
| Sprint wrote with Jenn today. It. Was. Awesome. OMG. I have been struggling with that scene for a month. I've been just ignoring it and writing around it. And dicking around with world building. And Character building and stupid shit. All of which needs doing, but none of which was getting me through this stupid scene. Is it the best scene I've ever written? No. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It will need to be extensively edited and rewritten. BUT. But, the barebones of a freaking scene are finally on paper. Er...screen. So, YAY! ----------- So I know you are all dying to find out more about the Outlaws visit. I will not keep you in suspense any longer. (They are still here, by the way. They fly out at 8:40 or some stupid ass late time tonight.) We DID get to go to Yellowstone yesterday, but we left super late. The deal with Yellowstone is it is big. Like, really, really big. You can easily do 150-200+ miles of driving just inside the park. Then it is 90 miles there and 90 miles back from our house. So we are talking 350-400 miles of driving. That's just driving. Then if you want to do any stopping and walking and looking and seeing, you have to set aside time for that. And inside the park, you don't drive 55 or 75 miles an hour. You drive 35 or 45 miles an hour for that 150+ miles. So going to the park is a freaking daylong undertaking. We drove through the west entrance at noon. NOON. So, naturally my FIL starts naming all the things he wants to see. (The four of us have all been there multiple times.) I immediately put the kiabosh on 2/3rds of it. No. No we don't have time to do all of that. You know the scene from National Lampoon's Vacation where Chevy Chase drags them to the Grand Canyon for like, 5 seconds of viewing and then hustles them off? That is what doing things with my FIL is like. He's 69 and he all but RAN at every stop. My MIL, who is 67 and has hip problems and had major abdominal surgery in February, can't keep up that pace, although she tries. I was an ass about it. I would ask, loudly, "Is there a fire I don't know about that we need to get to?" Hubby would laugh. Of course, you have to say everything loudly around him because he is deaf as a fucking post. He has a super nice $5000 set of hearing aids, but he won't wear them because, "They make things too loud."  Then turn the fuckers down, you deaf asshole!!But, of course, by the end of the day, he was complaining about the stairs and such, "It's just too much to expect people to do. They should make it easier to access." Well, ok, we'll be sure to write the good people of Yellowstone and tell them to make their natural wonders more fucking accessible to assholes who won't just slow the fuck down and take their time. Riding in the car with him is also awesome. He is an authority on absolutely every subject in the world. He holds long soliloquies on every possible topic. He has opinions about everything and he knows to the decimal the statistics on the most obscure bullshit. Much of what he drones on about is retread material that I could recite from memory: Battles from WWII, family history, jobs he has worked on, real and imagined slights to him from people in the past. We all have well established roles to play in these situations. MIL is the gullible and easily impressed ingenue. Everything he says is gospel and super interesting to her. Her lines are all things like: "Oh! I didn't know that!" "You always do the right thing." "They shouldn't treat you that way." and the laughable, "That's so interesting!" Hubby plays fact checker. When the bullshit gets too deep or the straight facts are simply too wrong, he pulls out Google and calls a halt to whatever current diatribe is being pushed. No, Gordon Lightfoot is actually NOT dead. When that happens, he barely misses a beat before he abandons that line and goes off on another tangent.My role? My role varies. It depends on my mood. Sometimes I just disengage and stop listening. Sometimes I interject when the bullshit gets too deep. My interjections can trigger a "fact check." Sometimes, though, we venture into territory where I don't need a fact check. It happens a lot in the park. I hold a degree in this shit. I have done extensive field work in the park. I KNOW my shit when it comes to the geology of YNP. I just....I just do. So when he gets off on a tangent about something stupid in the park, I'll call him on it. But, since I'm a woman and he's a misogynist bastard, I'm not believed. His usual reply? "I don't that's right. I think you are mistaken." That is when Hubby says, "I don't think she is, Dad. Or if she is, we wasted a lot of fucking money on her college degree." I love when my husband goes to bat for me.  |
| When CJ and I met Hubby and, later, his parents she was 2 1/2. They chose what she called them, Grandma and Grandpa, but she struggled with saying those for some reason. So she would say......GranMAAA and GranPAAA. Like she really had to emphasize in her little brain which was which because they sounded so alike. It stuck, as things little kids say do, and over the last twenty years we continued to call them that. GranMAAA and GranPAAA are visiting right now. The Outlaws. Some visits with them go better than others. This is a pretty good one. I think because after 20 years, I have developed coping strategies to minimize unpleasantness and channel my bipolar FIL's less pleasant tendencies and energy into more acceptable behaviors. They got here last night around 8:30 and we went and ate dinner immediately. Like, on the way home from the airport. Then this morning, GranMAAA and I got up, set GranPAAA up in front of the NetFlix watching Blue Bloods and then she and I ditched him for a day of shopping and fun. Coping strategy #1....he's easier to deal with if you just aren't around him. Hubby had to go in to work for a few hours this morning. But I knew he'd be home in time to deal with FIL before too long. So GranMAAA and I set off in search of lattes. Then we hit up the mall. She bought me a pair of super cute, pink, low cut Chuck Taylor's and I bought myself a really cute blue and green top with a mirrored neckline, tank sleeves and a gauzy handkerchief hemline. We also went and got our nails done. I was so proud of her. Apparently over the years I've been a bad (good?) influence on her and she went two weeks ago and got her toes done all on her own! Until I started taking her to get manis and pedis, she had never and would never have thought to have done such a thing on her own. Then we went to lunch at the Olive Garden. Because we ALWAYS go to lunch at the Olive Garden when we are together. She loves Italian food, but my FIL hates it, so they never get to go eat it. At Christmas when they were here she and I ate lunch there three days running. Tonight we will go eat at the Land of Magic. It is their favorite steakhouse up here. (And ours!) Steak and crab and lobster and twice baked potatoes! Mmmmmm. I think tomorrow we are going to Yellowstone. Then possibly stop at the Chico Hot Springs on the way home. They like all the hot springs around here. Mom is doing pretty good. She seems to do better earlier in the day. The later the day gets, the more confusion creeps in. She starts to second guess and question herself and re-ask you everything that you previously discussed. By the end of the day, you have to be super patient with her. Hubby isn't so great about the patience part. For 42 years this woman has been the bedrock of his life. A huge constant. And now......well, now....she struggles to remember sometimes what she had or didn't have for breakfast. Alzheimer's is such an ugly disease. --------- Now we may not go to dinner because my FIL can't crap. We are sitting here waiting for the Metamucil to work. Coping strategy #2.......be ready to roll with the punches and change plans on the fly with these people. Coping strategy #3.......keep Metamucil on hand, just in case. I can hear your jealousy of my life in this moment. |
| I don't blog. Like, daily, I don't blog. I write other-private-places, but I don't blog here. I tell myself that y'all aren't interested in reading my daily happenings and nonsense, but then I show up every single day hoping to read about y'all's day to day lives. So...I'm essentially a voyeur into y'all's lives, but I'm, I guess, embarrassed by my own. I only write here when I feel like I have something......I don't know........important to say. But, when I read back, I only write here when I want to complain or bitch. I should change that. I should write about good stuff and blah stuff and dorky stuff and just.....life stuff, too. Otherwise, I only remember the bad stuff, not the good stuff. Thus.......... I still got it. At least that's what I told myself in a very cocky fashion this morning. I don't know if y'all know this or not, but Montana, NOT Seattle is the coffee capitol of this country. (It's true, you can look it up.) There is one of those coffee kiosks on every other freaking corner. We LOVE coffee up here. I have a handful of those punch cards in both my car and my Expedition where when you buy so many coffees you get one free or what not. I have several I frequent depending on where I am in town. But I have one I like to stop at on the way to work. I like the owner, she is more or less a one woman operation. And when I pull up she says, "Your usual?" and smiles really big. It's two sided, with drive up windows on both sides, and this morning when I pulled up there was a super cute cowboy in a decked out spanking new white GMC truck getting his morning latte in the opposite window. He smiled at me and nodded and I smiled at him and nodded. Like pleasant people do on a rainy morning. He got his coffee and pulled away and she finished my order and said, "No charge, he paid for yours." Well, I knew right then.........I still got it. *shrug* Or maybe he was just a nice guy who is into pay it forward. So I paid for the next lady's coffee. She wasn't super cute, but she smiled and nodded at me, too, and I to her. You know, like pleasant people do on a rainy morning. Who knows? Maybe she is writing right now about how she's still got it. |
| Ok...........so in the various blogs I've been reading there has been a lot of talk lately about books. We had a nice book club we did for a while. I enjoyed the hell out of it. I feel like we need to regroup on that sucker. We took turns choosing books last time if I recall. Any one else in for this thing? Book a month was how we did it last time. Write a blog entry with your take on the book. Any takers? |
| Migraine this morning. Raked my shit in a pile and went to work. Cause that's what grown ass adults do. An hour in, I couldn't take it so I called my chiropractor's office to see if they could get me in. They could. Right then. So I went. Got cracked. Yay team. For about 10 minutes. Then my migraine was back. While I was at the light by the train tracks. With no where to pull over or do anything. Stuck in a left turn lane with a red light. No way out of line. Then the light went green. And I'm sweating. And swallowing. And praying. To any deity that will hear me. And we go through the light and over the train tracks. Still no where to pull over and now a train is coming. I have to go go go for safety. And I puke. All over myself and my steering wheel and the drivers side of the car. There was just nothing I could do. I had to decide. Puke on myself or get hit by a train. So I finally find a place to pull over and lean my head out and puke for five minutes. Awesome. I drove home and showered and changed. Regrouped. Tried to clean up the car. Put baking soda on what I couldn't clean immediately. Went back to work. Cause it's what adults do. Woo hoo. Look at me adulting. An hour and two trips to the bathroom to vomit later, I cried uncle and went to urgent care for a shot. Got to urgent care. By this time all I can do is dry heave. It's awesome with my head pounding in time to my heartbeat. The doc on duty is one I don't like. He's decent, but he doesn't listen to me. He wouldn't let me leave til I could quit dry heaving. He insisted I try an anti-nausea med. I told him my worst allergy is to an anti-nausea med. Puts me in a coma. He pooh poohs this. No prob. I try his med after insisting on the smallest dose they can give me. He gives me 1/2 of the smallest dose. They watch me. The drug is great. Takes the nausea right away. Also makes me lightheaded and gives me sharp pain in my left arm and left jaw. Followed by pins and needles and tingling. So that was magical. Possible heart problems from this med. People stared at me. And poked and prodded me. And now I have a new drug, that I didn't want to try in the first place, in my all star drug allergy line up. Some days it doesn't pay to get the hell out of bed. |
| Today Jenn wrote "Invalid Entry" . It spoke to me. I grew up in a very Southern Baptist home and town. I learned at an early age that the very last thing you wanted was to be disapproved of. So.....I learned to hide. I learned to hide myself tiny bits at a time. Piece by piece I hid all the parts of myself that would be disapproved of by my family. By a small town full of equally small minded people. I hid. And I rebelled in strange tiny ways. I wrote. And I hid what I wrote. And I wrote more. I poured my heart into what I wrote. And I died a million tiny little deaths every day. And I hid. And I found men who hurt me because I expected to hurt. After all, what was physical hurt compare to the mental and emotional hurt of never being my true self? Of always, always hiding? Because I couldn't share my real self. I was constantly self censoring. What I should say. What I should do. What would a normal person do/say/be in this and such instance? And I did that. I lived my life like I was constantly on stage. Saying the right lines. Making all the right motions. Judging myself. Hiding my true self. Not even really writing my real self down on paper. Dying a million tiny little deaths every day. And then one day............................I stopped. Not all at once. Like slowing down on a bike. You stop pedaling and you sort of just coast to a stop. Even now, I catch myself coasting. I guess I quit pedaling some time ago, but I had been pedaling so fucking hard for so many years, I am only really now coming to a stop. I self edit in here quite a bit. I guess I'm afraid to quit coasting in here because I'm worried about what y'all will think about me. But this is supposed to be a safe place. I should be safe in my own closed blog, right? One thing I never ever let myself do, though, is delete what I write. Once I write it, no matter what, I keep it. I may change the access to only myself. But I keep it. Because I make myself be honest with myself at least. I need to work on being more honest in here. Quit self editing. Y'all have never judged me. This is my blog. My writing. I can be honest in here. It's time to come to a full stop. |
| Or.........There and back again. The trip is done, we made it home in one piece. The drive was actually not that bad. We talked quite a bit. After we picked up my Sister in Law we had lots of fun visiting with her. We listened to two books--one coming and one going. Both were great and a nice way to pass the time driving through Wyoming. Our new son in law is a shy, funny, sweet guy. We really like him. He is really quiet but he has a really perverse and wicked sense of humor. We played Cards Against Humanity on the way to Carlsbad Caverns in the car. And it takes a special kind of super funny person with a giant set of balls to play the "A bigger, blacker penis" card when your new mother in law is judging and your new father in law is watching. He won that round. I'm not sure who laughed harder, me or Hubby.CJ's new in laws, though...........yeesh. Nice enough. But, well. He is a Baptist preacher. She is an elementary school teacher in a private Christian school. Their daughter teaches in the same school. The only real time we spent with them was at the rehearsal dinner. But it was a long, long evening. Sofie was excellent the whole trip. She was just a little doll. She is a great little travel dog. The wedding was lovely. We only had one incident with CJ's biological father. And it was more with his girlfriend. I was walking Sofie before the wedding started (it was in a really pretty park) and the girlfriend and his brother approached Hubby at the girlfriend's behest. She stuck out her hand and informed Hubby, "Hi, I'm CJ's stepmother!" He said he really contemplated several responses. His gut response was, "I know who you are, Bitch, you accused me of sexually molesting CJ. Now get the fuck away from me." His diplomatic response, though, was, "Hello." Now.........prior to the wedding these people were informed not to have any contact with us whatsoever. Period. None. At all. They agreed to it as a condition to coming to the wedding. CJ's uncle then says to Hubby, "So, uh, how about.......?" and he points to me off walking the dog, intimating that he bring her over to introduce her to me and have some big chat. Hubby, not even missing a beat says, "Absolutely not." And then he walks off leaving them standing there stupidly. It came time for the wedding and they were all seated in the front row. I sailed up the aisle, parked my happy ass in the end chair and started waving mine and Hubby's family in to follow me into the already occupied seats. Not a word was said, but they all popped up like daisies and got the hell out of the way. In fact, the uncle even went and got another chair so there were enough seats for my mom and her boyfriend. We took up the whole row and I have no fucking idea where they all went. Didn't see, didn't look, didn't care. Hey.....if I pay for a fucking wedding, lock fucking stock and barrel, I expect good seats to the damn thing. Sperm donors can sit elsewhere, out of my line of sight. When it was time for pictures, the photographer did the wedding party then the groom's family. Then Hubby and I were called over. Then Hubby's parents and sister. Then she said, "Now let's do one with the Bride's whole family!" CJ said, "Nope! We're done with y'all. Y'all go eat." And she waved Hubby and I away so she could do pics with him and his family. We did Easter at my in laws. It broke my heart. Hubby woke me up at the butt crack Easter morning to ask me to get on the computer and Google how long to cook a ham. I was like, "Whaa? It's 20 minutes for every pound." And went back to sleep. My mother in law, who has cooked probably 400 hams in her life, couldn't remember how to cook the ham. I woke up a little later and got dressed to go help out with dinner. I saw a piece of paper where she and Hubby had worked out how long to cook the ham. It kind of broke my heart. He had made her do the math long hand. He helped her, but he made her do it. I quizzed her out as to the rest of the menu. I could probably make my mother in law's standard holiday menu in my sleep. Up until Easter Sunday, I would have sworn so could she. She told me (in a scandalized voice) that she only makes instant potatoes anymore. I told her that's fine. We like them just fine. But then she couldn't work out how many of them to make. "Six servings, Mom. There will be six of us." "But there are only 4, 8, and 12 servings." "Well, we can do the eight servings and have some left overs or we can do some math." "What do you think we should do?" "Let's do the eight servings, Mom." "OK, now..........how much of all of this do I need for that?" At that point I turned the potatoes over to sister in law. I was on the corn on the cob. Which Mom tried to start cooking about an hour before we were going to eat. I was like, um......no. Mostly it broke my heart. I struggle with why she is still doing the daily deposit at her work. I feel like they maybe need to take that away from her. And maybe she doesn't need to be doing sales on the computer. I don't know. It's a mess. |
| This week hasn't gotten much better than last week, but my attitude about it all has. On Monday, I got up with a screaming sick migraine. At four I got up and the vomiting began. I headed in to Urgent Care as soon as it opened and I pulled it together enough to drive myself. That was at roughly what passes for rush hour in Belgrade, Montana. (That means it takes 7 minutes instead of 3 to get across town.) On the way into town, I had to stop twice to vomit. Once in my bank parking lot. Once in the parking lot of a local deli/charcuterie. It. Was. Awesome. People were driving past. Watching me toss my cookies. Gawking. I love a small town. *headdesk* I got my shot at Urgent Care but was still nauseated until Tuesday. So I went and got my neck adjusted at the chiropractor. Instant relief. I have no idea why I wait for this crap to get so bad. I know it is the stress of the wedding. We leave Saturday. It's a two day, 19 hour drive, one way. 1320 miles there and 1320 miles back. Woot. For my non-US readers.......the trip is 2124 kilometers and the rough equivalent of driving one way from London, UK, to Naples, Italy and overnighting near Lausanne (minus all the international borders). I love Google Maps. I start to get overwhelmed if I think about it, in toto. The drive, the visit with CJ, actually meeting my prospective son in law, meeting his parents and family, the wedding, the rash of MY relatives I don't particularly want to see-especially my mother, CJ's biological father, dealing with my in laws both for the wedding and for Easter Sunday on the way down.............it's just.............~sigh~. However, I recently read an article on Lifehacker about an interview given by a Navy SEAL. In it he talked about how SEALs get through Hell week. By segmenting. You stop looking at the big picture. Instead you break down your life into small manageable segments. I tell myself, to hell with the wedding and all of it, I just need to make it to lunch today. Lunch is totally doable. (He recommends meals as being your checkpoints. But you can make it whatever you want.) I've been moving from task to task. I just have to take care of the next task on my list and then move on to the next one. So far it has been really, really helpful dealing with this whole thing this week. Hubby has been helping me by when he sees me getting overwhelmed asking me, "What's your current task?" or "What are you focusing on RIGHT NOW?" That's keeping me on track. |
| I just found out that one of my professors from college committed suicide on Sunday. He was a really nice guy. And a really good professor. I learned a lot from him. He was a funny man with a biting sense of humor. Dr. Todd Feeley, you will be missed. Just fucking fuck this week. |
| Seven years ago, our daughter was date raped by a boy (he was 17 and she was 15 so he was technically a man) she was dating. She was a sophomore. And we didn't find out about the rape until much, much later. Until everything came to a head. When Hubby found out about the rape, almost 18 months after the fact, he drove over to the shithead's house (he lives about a block from us with his parents) and confronted him and his parents. I didn't go, but apparently it was an ugly, ugly scene. Her rape brought about most of our problems at home, or at least magnified them to a point where she began failing school and got into drugs. Until finally, the last semester of her senior year, I called a halt to it all because, she was slated to not graduate from high school and I couldn't take the crazy "friends" any more nor could I take the constant fights at home about it. So, we sent CJ to Texas to live with my mom so that she could start over. Regroup. I have seen my daughter in person 3 times since she left in January 2011. Basically, as far as I'm concerned, this little shithead cost us our daughter. She's twenty two and she has moved on with her life, but he cost us our daughter. From 2008 until now.....my happy, funny loving daughter has been gone from my day to day life. Bozeman, MT, is basically a large-ish small town. Today the shithead's father walked into our work. He owns a concrete finishing company. We work for one of the three concrete ready mix companies in the valley. Hubby is essentially the man who runs it. There is our boss, who owns it, and there is Hubby who runs it. Period. There is no one else. He stood across the counter from me and asked for our Boss three different ways. Looked me in the eye and tried every way in the world to get me to call up ANY ONE but Hubby to come talk to him. Because he had the balls to come in there KNOWING Hubby is the man to talk to at our company. But the part that really stuck in my craw? He had no idea who I was. None. If I had had 40 other people to call, I'd have still called Hubby. When Hubby walked in the door, this jackhole stuck his hand out to try to get Hubby to shake it. Hubby just stared at it. He immediately got belligerent. "Oh, so it is still that way between us." Hubby just stared at him, then said, "What are you here for?" "You know that was seven years ago and besides it was consensual." Loudly he said this. In an open office setting. Hubby opened the door and said, "Outside. Now." Then they stood out on the porch and had a very loud conversation for about 30 minutes. While Hubby read him the riot act and explained in careful detail what a piece of shit his son was. And what a piece of shit he was for coming into our work and shouting personal details about our daughter in a public setting. And by the way, the jackwagon had just been talking to his wife. So he was an even bigger piece of shit. So I had to explain to my coworkers today what the fuck was going on with this dude. Awesome day at work. Simply awesome. And because Hubby and I are professionals, we had to act professional at work. And not punch people. Or cry (me). Or scream. Or leap across counters and stab people with our scissors (again me). Or have an emotional breakdown. Or basically any of that shit. Because as a bipolar, it behooves me to act even more level head than regular people and not show my emotions because when I'm emotional, then people chalk it up to my bipolar even when I'm having normal emotions, so I tend to just look.....wooden....when I'm in the grips of huge emotions because I'm trying really, really hard to keep my shit together and A the office manager knows this, but the new dispatcher K doesn't know I'm bipolar so she just kept pressing me on the matter. And sorry that last paragraph was a little rambly. Anyway. It's time for us to leave this valley. Too many ghosts. And next week we go down to NM to see our daughter for the fourth time since she left in 2011. And awesomely enough her biological father MY rapist and abuser will be there. I'm not sure where this entry was going when I started. But I feel like I'm there. |
| Where do I go from here? I've spent the month mulling this over. And I realized that I'm an idiot. For two reasons. One: Hubby and I have discussed all along that once I graduate and we knock out the larger portion of our debt, we will leave Bozeman. So, worrying about having a job in my field in the Bozeman area is pointless. We are leaving here soon anyway. Probably within the next year, year and a half. Two: I have time finally to do the things I want to do and enjoy doing. Like......cooking, crochet, and I don't know............how about freaking writing?! Sometimes I'm a complete eedjit. So.....I am working on my novel. Again. I am putting it here on WdC for beta readers. I will post links here in my blog when I add chapters. If you are worried you'll get a chapter or two and that's that, I'm actually fairly far into the book, but I'll only be adding a few chapters at a time, something like a serial. I'm also planning on doing April's Camp NaNo to work on it, even though I'll be traveling the first week of the month down to CJ's wedding. If anyone wants me to reciprocate on the beta reading for any of their works, please msg me or link your work here in the comments or just tell me here in the comments. I'm happy to do so, now that I have time.  What is my story about? Oh, so many things. It is sci/fi, fantasy, mystery and romance. Please be warned that it contains adult language and possibly adult content. For any and all members of The Circle of Trust, I give you:
|
| Jenn's entry today messed me up. "Invalid Entry" Not because it was a bad entry....(It's not a bad entry, Jenn).......It just made me have an existential crisis. Who am I? I think I finally have a handle on the whole college degree thing finally. Mother fracking finally. So, in May, I will get my diploma. But for these last few months, I've kind of been skating. Just existing. Just dicking around at life. I'm rudderless. School kept me grounded, you know? I had assignments and deadlines. I had goals. I had small daily and weekly goals and a great big goal at the end. Finish school. And now I'm finally about to cross the finish line and I'm sitting around going............what now? What did I spend $45,000 on this for again? That's the price of a new luxury car. I have determined I can't get a job in my field here in Bozeman. So..........what did I just spend all that time and money on? I have the same job. Making the same exact money. In a totally unrelated field. Don't get me wrong, I'm good at my job. I just don't need a luxury car priced education to do my job. Hell, I spend half my day surfing on Facebook and IMing with my daughter. It's not a demanding job (especially this time of year). ~sigh~ Where was I going with this? Oh yeah.......Jenn and my existential crisis. So..........I guess my question is, who am I now? Who do I want to be? I can check mark "student." Been there......done that. Now I need to pay the piper. And now I need new goals. I need new direction in my life. I need to figure out who I want to be. I need a new finish line. I've crossed this one and I don't understand what to do with the rest of my life. |
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