Things I think are funny on Christmas

• Spelling Jesus "Jeezus" and Jeebus" and wishing everyone a Merry Baby Jeezus Day a lot
• The phrase "tree-worshiping pagan infidel"
  
• When collecting torn wrapping paper, refusing to put it in the garbage bag, saying quite deadpan, "I want to put it in the middle of the floor of my living room."
• The dead silence and glares that followed
• My Jew family going to the movies, because that's what Jews do on Christmas
  
• My Jew family ordering Chinese food for dinner tonight, because that's what Jews do on Christmas

You, Topia

I just cleaned the living bajeezus out of my kitchen. My fingers are all pruney. I still need to mop the floors and finally put away all the dishes and shit thats been living in boxes in the dining room since I moved in (AKA stuff I won't need unless I throw a dinner party), but then I can put up a large "Suck It" sign when my parents pick me up tomorrow.

I have a new guess at a possible migraine trigger: the turtle. It seems totally random, but it showed up right when this batch of migraines did, and it's right by my computer, so maybe something in the woodchips? And thinking back to when I had the really awful bout in Oberlin and Cleveland, that's when I had my turtle. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's worth taking the turtle back to my parents' house at least and seeing if the head gets better. How weird would that be?

Ever step back and wonder why basic food, shelter, and medical coverage aren't provided by the State? Of course upgrades should be available for purchase, but why the hell don't we make sure our most basic needs are met? We're just so primative in certain ways, it's amazing.

Happy thoughts for tonight

Standard overwhelming fears:

• Our parents don't love us*
• We will never live up to our parents' expectations
• We are doomed to turn into our parents
• We have already turned into our parents
• We are undeserving of our parents' love
• No one is deserving of our love
• We will never be capable of love
• We are unloved
• We are unlovable
• We will die alone

*For me, I've never been so concerned about if my parents love me or not. It's much more an issue of their disappointment. But that's just me...

"sick"

When people ask about this period in my life, I'm going to say I was "sick" in a vague finger-quotey way so they think I was dealing with an unwanted pregnancy or had a nervous breakdown or was otherwise put in some sort of mental facility or had some other medical problem so traumatic I don't care to be reminded of the specifics. I just feel like for all my pain and inconvenience, there's very little drama and story. Just pills and dog and no end to my whining.

pain knit pain pain pain

Stupid fucking inescapable pain! I just can't distract myself from it or do anything else or make any decisions right now. I want to do something else. I want to knit. Let's knit. But I finished the Priority #1 project (my cousin's Chranukah present fingerless mittens) and now I wanted to work on a dog sweater but I don't see my dog sweater book and I looked for it and I can't find it and it hurts to think any harder about where I last had the book and I just want to do something to distract myself from the pain and decision-making is not helping and it hurts a lot in my head so book must magically appear or I will have to just start making another pair of fingerless mittens for no one in particular because they are easy and I don't have to think and think=hurt and hurt=bad and I was supposed to call my neurologist again today but I was asleep and I don't know when he'll be open next week thanks to stupid Jesus (never too dead to insult religion) and I really want to drill a hole in my skull right now except it would have to be a quiet drill because loud drill would be bad.

in dreams

More sleep, more dreams, including:

• tracking down my redneck fugitive biological father, then being torn between working with the authorities to pass along his address and information or just leave him alone, which is all he wanted
• being part of a military tactical team that trapped a pedophile in action in a New York City park, but then something went wrong and someone set off an atomic bomb that split up and bounced a several times, creating four or five mushroom clouds around Manhattan and contaminating everything from the air to the water to the soil to the pizza. Places that claimed to decontaminate pregnant women and sell clean pizza were big deals.

tally marks

Last night I went to bed at 1 AM. Not that late for me. Then the dog woke me up at 3 AM. I thought he wanted to go out. He didn't. I fell back asleep before too long. The next time I woke up, UPS was at the door with a package for me. It was 4 PM. Holy fuck. I had all these phone calls to make today, and I sold another item on Etsy that I wanted to mail immediately. I took a lot of Vicodin yesterday, so today I'm avoiding the stuff in case that's what zonked me, but I'm on enough pills now that it could be anything. Pills pills pills. Also, Aunt Flow is in for her monthly visit, which makes everything so much better.
The worst part? I'm exhausted and my vision's totally fucked up and the pain is "around a 6" and I just want to crawl back into bed.
Drill hole in head now, please.

the coldness that is my life/tea

Last night I had a strange dream (so what's new?). My name was Coleen and I was at a hospital getting all these tests done and I tried to joke, "It's not like I have cancer," and the nurse wouldn't say anything. And I kept saying "At least I don't have cancer!" but no one would respond. Somehow, I figured out they thought I might have blood cancer, but they didn't want to tell me.

The passage of time is a strange thing when you're dead. Sunday is only different because there is no mail and I can't make phone calls to business establishments. Some days, all I have to show for myself are three more punched out pills from my Effexor packs.

I shouldn't be such a fucking fatalist. Yesterday I was in a GREAT mood. I was on two Vicodin and my dad came out and took me to get my new double-dose of Topamax at Costco and we picked up his iPod car adapter thing I pre-purchased online from Best Buy and I gave him his back his now LibriVox-filled iPod (both Jewnukah presents) and we listened in the car on the way to and from truly fabulous Indian food at Tiffin. I'm in Daddy's Girl mode these days, and it helps that he seems to know how to handle me in Migraine Mode, so we had a lovely evening while my mom was off visiting my sister and grandmother and aunt and other such relatives in California. It was blizzarding and cold and lovely. But because at this particular moment I am not on Vicodin and I am cold and in pain and fussy, you get the Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow version of my life. Lucky you!

Also, I am PMSed. That helps. A lot. Nine times.

Oh, crap. I put Chai in the microwave and forgot about it. Now it may be strong and cold. My life is ruined. Living with constant pain is one thing, cold tea is quite another.

I like writing. It makes me happy. It is cathartic. Particularly writing about myself. Narcissism is cathartic, too. Me me me mine mine mine write write write.

And this is without the Vicodin.

Now where's that effing tea.

Death and Marriage

This week has been pretty lousy and boring again on account of the migraines. That plot line is just so old I've stopped writing about it. I try not to tell my parents unless they call in the middle of it, and even then I find myself lying to my mother so she'll leave me alone.

New things within Migraine World: I saw a new internist on Tuesday who was great (even though her office sucked and made me wait an hour with no explanation or communication and saw people with appointments after mine before me) and she gave me an entire months worth of drug company samples of my Effexor and told me to come back every month to save myself the $300+. Awesome. I talked to the new neurologist again today and he's doubling my dose of Topamax and gave his blessing to my Vicodin popping and said call again in a week or so. He's very involved. I wonder how much medication he'll give me before he lets me drill a hole in my head.

As for the marriage portion of my post title, I have found my future husband. So I don't know how old he is or what he looks like or if he's a child molester or ax murderer, but those are all minor details. This is his site on Etsy. If you read his descriptions, you too will want to marry him, but I'm terribly sorry, he's mine.

bid-ness, yo

Why is it any of my mother's business if and when I call insurance people and doctors go to the DMV? And why is it her job to tell me if and when I should have done these things? And why, at age 25, do I find myself having to explain my perfectly valid reasons for rearranging the dates, times, and priorities of my errands to my mother? This is stupid. I know it's her weird neurotic thing, not mine, but it is unbelievably unnerving and annoying and I just have to avoid talking to her whenever possible until she gets over whatever is making her get all up in my bid-ness.

crafts and crap and life and strife and monkey and chunky

Saturday, I was a real person again! On my way out the door I ran into my cousin-in-law, who was rehearsing for a play in the lobby of my building. I then ran errands and met with a friend at the Handmade Market, a craft fair at a bar, coincidentally located around the corner from where my cousins live. It was pretty entertaining and I managed to buy only a $2.50 home-made lipgloss that is really quite lovely, though I was smitten with a series of bracelets made from old watch faces and subway tokens, but I don't wear bracelets and didn't know for whom to buy one. As we were heading towards the door to look for food, I was thinking I should call my cousins and ask where Bite, a restaurant I'd been to a few times with them that I liked very much, was located. Then I noticed that one of the exits for the bar actually led into Bite. So we ate at Bite and the food took forever and I was very hungry but it was good and the conversation was good and I was out and social and human, even if we were surrounded by hipsters. On my way home I stopped at Joann Crafts and spent too much money, came home and immediately made a completely lovely set of cards and one of my weirdest cards ever. I listed them on Etsy before going to bed, and the really weird one sold Sunday morning! I win.

Sunday morning, NBF and I drove my old car to my family-friends' house and signed papers and picked up my new car! I have a new car! 2003 Saab 9-5! It is GORGEOUS! It is all silver and sleek and pretty and leather and has seat warmers and I have to be nice to it and not mess it up because it is too nice to mess up. I even put a towel down on the front seat because my dog was getting snowy salty paw prints on it when we drove to my parents' house and I didn't want it to have snowy salty paw prints. It's too pretty to have snowy salty paw prints. Pretty pretty princess car.

Last night I went to my parents' for dinner. Brisket and latkes and menorah lighting. Jewish much? I'd mentioned that I had to leave first thing this morning because I had a lot to do today, with going to the DMV and errands and phone calls and whatnot now that I'm functional again and it would be a weekday. My mom was asking about all the specifics of my phone calls and such, as though it were interesting conversation. I hate talking about that crap. It's lame and annoying enough to have to do it without it becoming the topic of polite conversation. Plus as soon as my mom knows I have to do something, she takes it as something she has to remind me to do. So I kept being vague despite her odd prodding and changed the subject.

I frequently dream about being walked in on when I'm changing or going to the bathroom, or that strange uninvited people keep getting into my house or apartment even after I thought I locked all the doors. My subconscious isn't always subtle.

I drove home from my parents' this morning feeling that thick heavy pre-migraine tired, but I didn't sleep well last night, so I figured I'd pop pills and crash for an hour before getting started on my errands. Woke up with my alarm and MIGRAINE. Again. Fuck. More pills, more sleep. Still migraine. Basically slept all day and it's still here. I have another doctor's appointment in the morning, this time with a new internist, and since it's right next door to NBF's school I was driving him down there anyway, so maybe he'll get to do the driving and we'll see what New Doc can do for me if the headache doesn't die overnight. Fuckfuckfuck.

At least I'm getting several real days of real functioning between my migraine days now. Even if this is the new pattern, it's a better pattern. Let's go, optimism!

Burning stove experiment: Trial #3453462352

Maybe I do stupid shit/put myself in bad situations because I have no great global wars to fight or worlds to save, so instead I must rescue myself from the Perils of the Unpaid Bill or the Overdue Homework Assignment.

Maybe I am looking to be rescued by someone else. Oh no! Look at me, precariously placed on the edge of procrastination! Whatever can be done! And then my stupid parents keep being the ones to rescue me, and they are not the ones I want to have doing the rescuing. I want some sort of proof that the world is big-hearted and good and that someone else will catch me, like a fireman or an insurance agent, and set it all right again. But no matter how many times I keep falling on my head, I climb back up again to once more plunge over the side with the hope that this time will be different.

How many times in a row can a child touch a burning stove before she is labeled retarded?

Monday Revisited

I have to backtrack a touch, since the fire distracted me from other important Monday events.

Monday morning I called my "health insurance company." From the beginning, they made it impossible to get anything concrete with my name, dates, and benefits on it, constantly referring me to their general brochure. Had they not been the insurance through my school, I would have assumed they didn't actually exist and were some sort of scam or money laundering outfit. Well, I should have gotten something writing, because now they say my benefits expired back in July. What? I still can't get a frigging clear answer (customer service keeps feeding me lines from their general BS list and I'm beginning to think they don't actually have access to their own records) , but I have a guess as to what happened and it is partly my fault for not figuring it out sooner (even though they didn't mention my lack of being insured the several times I contacted customer service since July).
So I was extremely frustrated and a little freaked out because a lapse in my insurance means my next provider can consider my migraines a "pre-existing condition" and refuse to pay for their treatment for a year, and that is bad. But it isn't "killed a puppy" bad, as NBF put it, and my parents seemed to think it was "killed a puppy" bad, and I took it as "killed a puppy" bad, and it was all very tragic and "a clear indicator of my problems with basic organization and executive functioning skills that I have to do everything within my power to fix as soon as possible before I ruin my own life." My parents and I feed off of each other when it comes to this sort of intense demanding perfectionism, and it's not healthy. This is why I need to live in another state, some time before the invention of the telephone.

That was the morning. In the afternoon, I saw a neurologist. I printed out an amended version of the Things I Have Tried list for him and we spoke for less than 20 minutes, but still managed to get through the following:

• I have done a shitton in my pursuit of migraine panaceas
• Either my last doctor or my understanding of my last doctor was incorrect, because while Depakote and Topamax are both epilepsy drugs, they are very different and Topamax is absolutely worth trying, even after Depakote failed
• It is strange I have never been given a steroid in injection or "pill pack" form to break my cycle of headaches.

So I started Topamax, which builds up in my system and I take daily forever, and some generic steroid pill pack, which I take less and less of every day for a week until I take none at all.
Monday night was terrible. I was back to my worst level of pain and I gobbled down the Vicodin in desperation at 3 AM.
But since then, things have been much better. I went out for coffee (well, chai lattes) with NBF this evening and even in bright lights and loud music and talking, my head only poked at me a little. Maybe this will finally do it for real and I can get out of this piece of shit mother fucking 5+ week cycle of hell. That would be delightful

NYT on perfectionism

NOW where's the fire?

This is getting silly. It's 2 AM and I couldn't sleep and there was noise in the halls of my apartment and there's never noise in the halls of my apartment. I got up and saw three firetrucks parked outside through the window, so I decided to put on a bathrobe and shoes and investigate. My lobby had six of seven firemen standing around (I so should have gone down in a negligee and stilettos), and the one who spoke to me was all grumpy and old and had a mustache and said someone was cooking upstairs and burnt something. Where were they earlier when I was busy setting my apartment on fire? And why don't I own a negligee? I need to work on that.

FIRE

I just came remarkably close to setting my apartment on fire.

It's the first night of Chanukah and I couldn't find my menorah, so I grabbed an empty styrofoam egg carton, flipped it upsidedown, and stabbed the candles into it. I thought this was brilliant. I put it in the window and decided I'd stay in the room while it was going just in case, but I was pretty sure I'd seen this done before.
I opened up one of my Chanukah presents: my new exciting digital camera! So immediately I grabbed this purse I made and listed on Etsy and started to take better pictures of it. With no great background in the living room, I went wandering around my apartment looking for a good spot to photograph it. I ended up in my front hall, right outside my living room, playing with the camera settings as I took multiple pictures of the purse hanging from the very attractive doorknob of my big-ass closet. Then I headed back into the living room.
FIRE!
On the window sill! Where the egg carton had been! Now it was just fire! I ran over and managed to blow it out (it was still small enough that a few good blows did it). The room had filled with smoke. I opened all three windows. In the far corner from the window, the smoke was particularly black and vile-looking. The whole room has been covered in a speckling of ash (clearest on the white paper in my printer and on my white couch, which just looks dirty in a strange speckled way). There is a puddle of black bubbly evil melted to my window sill. The whole room smells toxic. It is very cold, but I don't want to close the windows until I'm sure the Evil is gone. I locked my dog in the bedroom and moved the turtle to the bathroom.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.