Through the Looking Glass: Prompt 25 #reverb10

Dec. 25.   Photo.  A present to yourself. Sift through all the photos of you from the past year. Choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. Find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. Share the image, who shot it, where, and what it best reveals about you.

"Curiouser and Curiouser."  Alice, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass

Self Portrait.  Taken Saturday, July 10, 2010, through the looking glass, at the Oregon Country Fair.

The summation of a year in one picture:  Which way is up?

Sight Seeing: Prompts 22, 23, 24 #reverb10

Hi all!  I have been sick a lot this month, so I am crazy busy trying to get these prompts done.  Sorry if parts of the next few blog posts are garbled.   We're in the stretch!

Dec.  22:  Travel.  How did you travel in 2010?  How and/or where would you like to travel this year?  -Tara Hunt   

In 2010, I travelled almost exclusively by Prius, with the exception of about 200 miles.  There was a cab ride back from the airport in January.  My friend gave me a lift to my first post-op appointment for my foot.  A few van rides and cab rides back and forth between my car dealership and my home.  A bike ride to go pick up the Prius from the dealership.  And finally, a tow truck, that carried my dead Prius to a Eugene Toyota Dealership (yes, another dealership).

I only travelled a little this year.  In January, I made a brief trip back to my hometown, Pittsburgh, to spend time with my parents, sisters, and niece.   The next travel of any sort was the Oregon Country Fair, in July.  I drove myself up and back in two day increments, spending the night in Yreka on the northern drive, and Corning on the southern one.

In August, after my husband was offered a great job after almost 11 months of unemployment, we took a short trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park.  While we had to cut our visit short, the reason for this is going to make me jump to the prompt after the next one.  Don't worry, I'll get back to the one I skipped over.

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Dec. 24:  Everything's OK.  What was the best moment that could? serve as proof that everything is going to be alright [sic]?  And how will you incorporate the discovery into the year ahead?  -Kate Inglis


If "Fraught" was the word to describe 2010, August could be considered its zenith.  We were really starting to stretch our finances to the limit.  We were discussing our options:  I had a small IRA I could sell, and DH had stocks.

Meanwhile, DH's seizures were becoming stronger, and more frequent.  His new medication, one that has been on the market for less than a year, gave him such bad side effects that sometimes he had to crawl to get around the house.

DH and his neurosurgeon, thinking that there were no more job opportunities out there for the moment, set a date for surgery.  Brain surgery that is.  Surgery that involves cutting a door in his skull, wrapping his brain with a sheet of electrodes, and then purposefully stimulating those electrodes to cause him to have seizures, in the hope of pinpointing the part of his brain where the wiring went wrong, the "focus."  At the end of the week, they would remove the sheet, and any brain they felt might be the problem (which they warned us might be golf-ball sized), and of course, put his skull back together.  Recovery is 4-6 weeks.

While DH and his neurosurgeon seemed to be handling events with aplomb, I was falling apart.  Looking at my mood chart shows I was pretty freaked out.  The chances of death were as good as nil, but I still dreaded life without him.  I also feared he would come home with a new personality, not the man I married.  I still do fear that a bit, and it turns out, he worries about it too.

The surgery date was set late in August.  I was buying pajamas, and teaching myself cribbage so we could play it in the hospital during his week stay.  About two weeks before the date, DH got a call from a financial services company:  They were interested in his experience in UI (User Interface).  Suddenly, it became a race.  Could DH get an offer before he was admitted to the hospital?

8 days before his scheduled surgery, DH received his offer.   He was so excited, he forgot to sign and fax in his contract, he just read it.  When we were on our celebratory trip to Lassen, just as we were about to head out for the day, DH got a call from his new job.  Where was his contract?   We made a dash to Redding, the nearest town of any size, and waited for a fax of another copy of his contract, had him sign it, fax it back in, then wait for confirmation of his new workplace's receipt of the document.  It took 3 tries, but at last we did it!

It had seemed like a horrible last minute nightmare when we first realized we had to get the contract in, or he wouldn't be able to start for another few weeks.  But when we knew that contract was in their hands, suddenly, DH was officially employed.   The contract was signed, the "i"s dotted, and the "t"s crossed.  We had made it.  We had lived on umemployment that lasted 6 months, and then on our savings alone for another 4 months. We are playing catch up a little with our debt, but as of January 6, all of our credit cards will be back to zero.  We have another round of surgeries and health problems to look forward to in 2011, but the outlook is so much rosier, with DH working, my foot nearly healed (meaning I can get back to my work), and really great health insurance.  

We are back.

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Dec. 23:  New name. Let's meet again, for the first time.  [Cassandra]If you could introduce yourself to strangers by another name for just one day, what would it be, and why?  -Becca Wilcott


Hello, my name is Cassandra.  I am the archetype of the truth teller who is ignored.  For predicting the truth time and time again, in other people's minds, I am a foreteller of doom, rather than a seer of the inevitable consequences of their own actions. I am falsely labeled "mad" when I speak truths they do not want to hear.  But when I am truly waxing crazy, my truths become harsher, and bitter.  They are just as often true.  But it is when I predict bad outcomes that come true that people are the most scared of me.

I'm not psychic.  I am a "student" of behavior.  I am a studier, a watcher, drawn to details, a collector of patterns.  It is true, everyone is different.  But what makes them different is just the differing weights of the ingredients  they share with Everyone else.  There are only so many ingredients out of which to make people, although there are always one or two without raisins, and others with nuts.  

I learned about human behavior from an expert, a psychopharmacologist who studied biologically based mental illnesses, AKA, my father.  He taught me what was normal, what was not.  He showed me the rigid patterns in which people think, the way the very words they use to conceal give them away.  I learned there were a limited array of behaviours. Some are so dreadful that it is best not to think about them.  But for all of them, it is as the old saw goes, there is nothing new on this Earth.

Sometimes, I scare and anger people with my assessments of their friends and what I foresee as the outcome of their actions.  The more often I am correct, the harder they push me away.

My plan for now is to lie low, I refuse to fall victim to any scheming Clytemnestra.  Another meaning for the name Cassandra is "defender,"  and I have always been someone who tries to defend the rights of the most marginalized members of society.   Sometimes defending is altruistic, such as helping prisoners make legal appeals,.  Other times it just means protecting myself from the consequences of mishaps created by my own peculiar recipe of perspicacity and crazy.

The Helpful Crone: Prompts 19, 20 & 21 #reverb10

Dec. 19  Healing. What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011? -Leonie Allan

Dec. 20  Beyond avoidance. What should you have done this year but didn't because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?) -Jake Nickell

Dec. 21  Future self. Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (Bonus: Write a note to yourself 10 years ago. What would you tell your younger self?) -Jenny Blake


Dear 47 year-old me:

If 2010 was the most chaotic year of your marriage, 2011 was still a doozy.  But as usual, the two of you pulled through.  The lesson of 2010 was that in order to heal, you must learn to endure the pain with patience, because things may get much worse before they get better. The bottom may have been a lot further down than you initially realized, but there was a bottom.  And once you hit it, you found it was something to push off of, to stabilize you during your climb back up.  It was a good lesson to have under your belt for 2011, with both of your continued health challenges.

First and foremost, were all of the surgeries.  First the foot surgery, to remove the metal you had developed an allergy to.  After what you endured after the foot surgery in 2010, this turned out to be a breeze, and you were back on your feet within a month. Then DH's brain surgery, both planned, yet scheduled abruptly, when his epilepsy and seizures took a turn for the worse.  As scared as you were for your husband, and as concerned as you were about your finances, both survived.   Not without a little too much angst on your part, crtclms.  But the fact that you both had endured so much in 2010 made your bond and your faith in yourselves stronger.

The outcome of the brain surgery wasn't the miracle you had hoped for, but it did help with DH's seizures.  He became much more responsive to anti-epileptics.  He even got his driver's license back.

Then your right eye, the one that was practically blind, and which worsened considerably in 2010, was finally treated.   You had been so frightened of the idea of eye surgery, or worse, of losing sight in that eye altogether, that you had totally ignored the problem from that day in October, 2009 that you were told your eye was beyond regular opthalmological care.  Then suddenly, the scare in December of 2010, when your sight got abruptly worse.  That was scary.  And the fact is that it was an unusual and uncomfortable treatment.  But the results were worth it:  No more night-blindness, no more cars and street lamps throwing halos of light, rather than beams, no more holding books inches from your nose to read regular-sized print, no more hitting the apple key and + over and over again to make sites legible, if distorted.

And on top of that, you worked hard at pulling your financial picture together again, at the same time that you planned a somewhat extravagant 10th wedding anniversary.  10 years of physical disaster after physical disaster, 10 years of joy in and with each other.  Years of penny-pinching as you got your marriage started, then years of largess.  Followed by 2010, when you became two of millions of victims of the Great Recession.

But while 2010 proved your marriage, 2011 celebrated it.  All your life, you had resisted being so reliant on one other person, fearing the idea of merging with them.  You feared loss of identity.  But in 2010, you realized the strength of two individuals, joined like a mortise and tenon at Stonehenge, create a simple but strong and durable bond, that is stronger than either person alone.  The quotation from your wedding ceremony by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry  seems to have proved an important tenet in your marriage:  

"Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction."   

While you lived your marriage day by day, you both were committed to keeping your marriage moving in concert with both of your future dreams.


In 2013, you finally made the big trip to Australia, so that DH could see the country you love so much.  It was odd to have a sister living permanently abroad, and you will always feel a little sad that you never had the chance to live overseas.  But you made different choices than your sister, and have a happy life.


That was for your 50th birthday, and now your 60th is much closer than I would like to admit.  But if I could offer advice to the 47 year-old me/you, here are some of the tidbits I have to share, in my extreme decrepitude:

• Everything is going to be okay.  Yes, the unknown is scary, and makes you anxious.  Yes, the path may be difficult.  But your failures have often been more rewarding than your successes.  
• Stop feeling guilty for not living a life you are not suited for, even if it is what was expected of you.  I can't believe this still bothers you, frankly.  You know better, and have given this exact advice to dozens of friends.  Now take it yourself.
• You still do not owe your mother any more of your life.   Be polite.  Accept that you will be devastated by her death, but will have a hard time feeling anything positive about her until then
• You are very much like your father.  His life did not end happily.  Learn from his example.
• Live in the now, stop trying to get a jump on the future.  It isn't possible in the current space-time continuum.
• This is very hard, but try not to live in fear of your illnesses:  Don't let fear of the next episode invade your periods of good health, and enjoy your wellness.
• Your psychiatrist has prescribed you Xanax because you need it.  Now listen to his advice, and stop being afraid of it.  It will improve your quality of life.  Needing a medication is not the same thing as being addicted to it.

Yes, you are still working on those same old problems.  You will be for the rest of your life.  And every time you think you have met a challenge, it will create another, bigger problem.   Such is life.  But with DH holding your hand, facing forward, you can best any hardship it presents, and bring joy to its labors.


And of course, you took the time yearly to renew yourself at the Oregon Country Fair, with Nakedjen and friends.

You still miss Bess and Violet.  You always will.  Your current dog is as lovable as they come, but different.  Sometimes you still cry from missing both of them.

Bess

Violet

DH and I are about to celebrate your 20th wedding anniversary.  Congratulations to us all!  May we share many more years.


Love,


57 year-old me    


P.S.  And after all these years, I still can't get the fonts to work properly on Blogger!

Dec. 18 Try: Cleaning House #reverb 10

Dec. 18  Try. What do you want to try next year? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did / didn't go for it?   -Kaileen Elise

This is a mundane answer on one level, but a more serious one on another.  I want to try to organize my house.   This year, it was a real struggle for me, especially because I was off my feet for 4 months.  Right before my foot surgery, I had had a hypo manic episode, and one of the characteristic behaviors of hypo mania is frenzied cleaning.  This is not universal, but is so common as to be considered a warning sign to see your doctor.  It is also a source of jokes among those of us who find cleaning very difficult, except for these outbursts.

I was never really taught how to clean.  My mother had a cleaning lady for as long as I can remember, and she felt that teaching us housework was sexist.   Of course what was sexist was that they weren't expecting boys to do housework, not that girls had to do it.  But at any rate, it means the few cleaning skills I have are self-taught.

In addition, because bipolar illness causes brain damage to certain parts of the brain, I suffer cognitive defects in my Executive Function, which is sort of the overarching cognitive meta-structure that allows one to live an orderly and organized day to day life.  I flat out can't do this.  I also have bad impulse control.  It is connected to damage done to the frontal lobe, Phineas Gage via neurotransmitters.  Well okay, not as bad as Phineas Gage.

Anyway, I went into my foot surgery with the house cleaner than it had been in some time.  Which meant it was clean, but crammed with "stuff."  And things have deteriorated from that point.

So I have made a couple of decisions about how to approach this in the coming year:  I am going to throw being Green to the winds for a little bit, and use all the "magic sponges" and "swiffers," and wasteful but convenient things:  The easier the better.  And then, we are going to invest in some storage.  I am already measuring spaces for shelves and storage units.  We are buying shoe racks, and hangers.  We are going to make a real go of it this year.  We kind of landed in this duplex in June of 2006, when DH lost his license due to a seizure:  Where he was working at the time was a mile from this house.  Now he actually commutes to an office two blocks away from where we lived before we landed here.  But we never sat down and "organized" the place, the furniture is pretty much where we dumped it upon arrival.  And while this is technically not the smallest place we have ever lived, the smaller place was designed to maximize use of space.  And we owned less 11 years ago, of course.

So we have never really pulled this place together.  We are always soooo proud of ourselves when we do even the tiniest amount of decorating.  For instance, At Goodwill last week  I found a matching trio of colorful but muted cushions that look great against our beige-y sectional.  Oh yes, I am still "thrifting"; I am taking a break from the daily photographs of outfits while I work on this #reverb10 challenge.  

Anyway, not my most riveting entry, but I needed to start catching up!  Part of the reason I am behind is this has been a very challenging week, for all the reasons I have been discussing this month, and I now need to sleep.  So this is a bit rough, sorry for any garbled sentences.

Love and Spontaneity #reverb10

Dec. 16 Prompt: Friendship. How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst? -Martha Mihalik

Dec. 17 Prompt: Lesson learned. What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward? -Tara Weaver

Perfect.  Just as I sit down to write this, another headache is coming slamming in.  The barometer is changing, and like many migraneurs, barometer changes can give me headaches.  More often than not they do.  But I had gotten away with the first 24 hours of this storm, so I had hoped maybe I would be spared.  Sigh.

I couldn't decide how to approach the friendship prompt.  I feel like I have endured a lot this year, but most of it was spent in our duplex, just my husband and myself.   It was much more a year of physical and emotional stress than it was of perspective change.  I know that stress and mayhem are supposed to build character, but my character can only be built up so much before it topples me with its weightiness.  I know how to get through shitty times, because so much of my life has been shitty.  That sounds awful, and I should make it clear I am very happy.   But that is almost entirely because of my marriage.  This is not to disparage my friends.   And perhaps it is just a way of pointing out how dear of a friend my husband is to me.  But he was the person's whose shoulder I sobbed when it all became too much.   And vice versa, frankly.  

We have become better friends this year.  We both talk about it a lot:  It is as if we have just met each other again, 10 years later.  Again, a horrible year in terms of events, a fantastic year in terms of my marriage.  Our family is mostly on the East Coast.  I have a sister in Dallas, and a sister in Australia.  We are a pretty self-contained unit, and both being shy introverts, we aren't the most social people, so we really rely on each other.  I actually am more of a social person than he, which is almost scary.  

Although I do think my sociability would be enhanced if I felt I could confidently accept invitations in advance.  But I always risk being sick the day of.  Which cleverly segues into my lesson learned in 2010.  Heh.

It is hard to get me to do things at the spur of the moment.  Yet I have more "memorable" moments when I say "Fuck it, let's do it," than when I try to plan ahead.   I mentioned in an earlier post that I plan compulsively, and while I do not have OCD, it is considered something I need to pay attention to as part of my overall mental health.  Of course, keeping an eye on over-planning is kind of a Catch-22 for me, but I do as best I can.

Whenever I say, "Okay, let's do it," I have fun.  Always.  Whether it is to run to a restaurant at the last minute, or catch a movie, stuff that may not seem very bold to you.   But I can't even be sure I will be functional the next day, so planning for things is no good.   In fact, I know I use the obsessive planning as a defense mechanism for my lack of control over my health.  

And I also have a tendency to "hoard" the hours I am not in pain.  Sometimes I just enjoy hanging out doing not much, when I am feeling all right.  Add that time to the times I am down with headaches, and that leaves not many opportunities for spontaneity.  

Spontaneity for me could mean deciding on the spur of the moment to order a fun dinner from Whole Foods for New Year's Eve.  Then ordering it two weeks ahead of time.  But hey, I ordered it as soon as I thought of it!  And some of the joy I do find in planning comes from exactly this type of anticipation, so I actually was not being as much of a freak as usual.

But it can also mean moments of truly plunging in, and challenging myself, such as sharing the communal showers at the Oregon Country Fair, and overcoming just a little bit of my body-hatred.  It also meant I decided to go to a class on the Medical Cannabis Industry.  And at the moment, I am annoyed, because I had another great example of when taking a chance did something positive, and the migraine has knocked it out of my head.  Grrr.  Planning does have its place, I guess.

I will never be able to stop planning entirely.  I see the same behavior in other family members!  But I am trying to take risks, however tame they may seem to others.  

In fact, I just decided to let my hair grow out its natural color (with plenty of gray), and made the hair appointment for early next week!   And earlier that same day, I am going to stop off at my favorite tattoo shop to discuss my next tattoo.  Wheeee!

Baby steps, people.

5 Minutes of Appreciation #reverb10

December 14 prompt:  Appreciate.  What is the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do express gratitude for it? -Victoria Klein

December 15 prompt:  5 minutes. Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in 5 minutes.  Set the alarm for 5 minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010? -Patti Digh


I once again have been having health problems, so I am combining some prompts, and may do so in a couple of days again.

I received the Dec. 14 prompt, and I was beginning to feel like I was being asked essentially the same thing over and over.  What did you like best about X?  What was the best thing you did?  Where did you have the most fun?  I know it isn't quite that simplistic, or overly gooey sweet.  I understand it must be hard to come up with prompts.  But I wonder if the authors aren't becoming too engrossed in making their prompt as "deep" as possible.  I can keep only mining that single, "deep" vein for so long.  I thought about skipping the prompt outright.

But then I received the December 15 prompt.  These kind of timed exercises have always helped me; as I have said, I do best with a line in the sand.  Plus, I felt like if I just started spewing memories, the things I appreciate might naturally rise to the surface.    So I set my smart phone's timer for 5 minutes, and these are the memories that "pushed through"
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Oregon Country Fair-Avocado Dream Boats-The Ritz-spinach and cheese turnovers-glitter-Mount Shasta, the halfway point to Veneta-Driving near Corning for olives-Trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park-Mud Pots-Almost brain surgery-More and more seizures-More and more migraines-Violet and the root canal-mixed episode-hypo manic episode-Foot Surgery-Life on a scooter-DH gets new job-Quitting daycare-S, J and H-Emptying our savings-We end the year in the black-Making it through the tough times-growing closer-planning for our 10th anniversary-Job interview at a dispensary-coloring books-shopping for jewelry-Eni-thing-It's a Girl Thing-thrift shop hunting-starting to read again-learning cribbage-Happy 9th Anniversary-DH turns 40-Niece turns 3-"Sister3" turned 40-Oaksterdam University-Medical Cannabis-activism-Violet in the yard-riding a bike-car breakdowns-Crazyboards, and blogging-Blogger, and blogging-Told my mother to back off-My mother aged significantly-My father is sick
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Now, I did corrects some spelling, and re-organize the list so it was a little more coherent to me.  Out of the 49 I quickly counted (which means the actual count could be anywhere between 47 and 51), 16 (about a third) of the memories I came up with had to do with my husband's and my health and finances.

You can see by the things I italicized what was going on in our personal lives:  Fears about health and money, surgeries, disappointment, and just overall stress.  I know a lot of marriages are pulled apart by money and health problems.  I have watched it happen to friends and enemies alike.  Maybe it is because we have both spent our lives since puberty struggling with illness.   Maybe it is because we both know what it is like to have negative worth, and that it is survivable:  At one point right before I met DH, my finances were so bad, the FDIC wouldn't allow me to have a bank account.  He had almost as bad a history.  We have worked hard to build up our savings in our marriage, because we are both late to the land of "financially responsible adulthood."

For 11 months, we watched our savings dwindle.  We actually were starting to think of selling parts of our 401k.  I hate money. Hate. it.

So when my husband was suddenly hired at the end of August, literally days before he was scheduled to have brain surgery, it blew a hole in our plans, and I hate when there is a change of plan.  Suddenly, there was not going to be brain surgery, but there was going to be income.

Much to my shock, I was torn.  I had spent the entire month of August being tended to my psychiatrist, preparing myself for my husband's surgery.  I wasn't intentionally trying to make it "all about me," but I just fell apart at the idea of something going wrong.

Yet when the surgery was postponed so he could take the job, I was angry at him for not doing the surgery instead.    Since then, the threat of surgery has reappeared, but I have come to accept I cannot make this decision for DH.  He will have it within the next year, it is just a matter of whether it is sooner or later.

So all of this depressing stuff has ironically made me appreciate my husband and my marriage more than ever.  I am bad at expressing gooey emotions towards my husband.   But we have had so much time together in 2010, that we were able to talk about our relationship and our marriage a lot, and no matter how difficult or thorny the topic.  It never seemed to take a negative turn.

So this is not exactly riveting, but I show my appreciation for my husband and my marriage by keeping the lines of communication open, and trying to be brave enough to say things I am nervous about saying.  So far, it is working.

Action: Walkabout #reverb10

December 13 prompt: Action. When it comes to aspirations, it's not about ideas.  It's about making ideas happen.  What's your next step?  -Scott Belsky


"A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step." -Laozi

I don't have an extensive bucket list.  While some things on it are not unusual, other things  are going to be a little more difficult to accomplish, especially now that I have a husband to consider.  Some things on my bucket list that I have already crossed off are: Going "behind the ropes," and touching Stonehenge; driving across the United States on both the Northern and Southern routes; having sex on a train in Europe (no more detail than that, sorry); and going to Australia, not once, but three times.

Australia is featured in several further wishes on my bucket list.  One item is to travel to Australia with DH to show him a place I have come to really love.  A really fantastic trip, at least 3 weeks, and a month would be even better.  I have been to most of the major cities, except Perth and Hobart.  I have seen, felt, touched, smelled, and tasted so many amazing and beautiful things in Australia, to describe it all would require innumerable posts.

Another item I have yet to cross off is living in a foreign country for two years, minimum.  But truly, I want to emigrate to a foreign company permanently.  And while I do have a back up country (New Zealand), when I say I want to emigrate to another country, what I really mean is I want to settle in Australia, Melbourne ideally.

We started the process for applying for my husband's work visa, once.  He had plenty of points.  But when we checked out the health requirements, his epilepsy clearly was an insurmountable obstacle to a visa, at least while his seizures are so poorly controlled.  They don't want to put the burden of assured multiple hospitalizations onto their health care system.

But if DH's neurosurgery in 2011 were to either stop his seizures entirely, or allow them to be controlled with medication, that obstacle would be gone.  And while we pretty much emptied our savings during DH's recent period of unemployment, we agreed to create a special account, and to put a minimum amount into it every month, for the dreamed of fantastic trip to Australia.  Our goal is to make it a trip for my 50th birthday, which is just under 3 years away.

But my (not very) secret agenda doesn't stop there.  Unless DH were to have a job already lined up, with an offer letter from the company in hand, he has only 5 more years before he is too old to get a visa (45 is the cut-off.  Yes I robbed the cradle). As an accompanying spouse my age wouldn't matter.   If this trip is as fantabulous as all my other trips to Australia have been, DH will see why I love that country so much, and why I want to live there, and I hope be equally excited at the prospect.  It would be a tight schedule, but I have it all planned out.  Heh.

To fulfill this fantasy, we would have to start the application process as soon as we got back from our vacation. I know, I know, "unlikely" is probably an optimistic assessment of our going forward with an application.  But you never know.

But first, the great vacation. We plan to open an Australia-dedicated savings account in January.  DH will have his surgery in 2011, and that will answer the question of whether or not we can ever permanently settle in another country.  And even if the surgery isn't as successful as we hope, we will be going to Australia in late 2013, or early 2014.  I know it seems far away.  Hence my opening quotation by the Chinese philosopher, Laozi (Lao tsu).  I am already excited.

So both my medium and long term goals involve Australia.  And whatever the end result, the first step to pursuing those items on my bucket list, will be the first deposit into our Australia savings account.

Body Integration: Where I end, is where I begin. #reverb10

December 12 prompt:  Body integration.  This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body?  Did you have a moment that wasn't mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?  -Patrick Reynolds


I thought long and hard about this prompt.  I was beginning to feel as if I was going to have to talk about the same thing I talked about for "Moment," which I had already cited again in my post for yet another prompt.  Next I tried to think of one of my rare athletic moments.  The few times I exerted myself, there was not any particular moment I got into some kind of zone, where mind and body melded.

Suddenly the phrase "mind and body" leapt out at me.   How could I have missed that?

One of the dilemmas of being bipolar is determining the point at which one's personality ends, and the influence of the illness begins.  Mental illness is a biological illness, but it manifests in our behavior and mood.  Are our "real" personalities and our bipolar symptoms, which are, after all, largely behavioral, too intertwined to be teased apart?  It certainly can feel that way, especially when you are in the midst of an episode.  The fact that sometimes a particular mood will really bring out a troubling personality trait fills me with trepidation that I am directed more by my illness, than my own volition.

One of the things I have found on Crazyboards (which I mentioned in the "Community" prompt blog post) by listening to other bipolar patients' experiences, from childhood to the present day, so much of my life is an echo of theirs.  From similar yet unusual childhood mishaps, to relations with our parents, to our delusions and/or hallucinations,  and how they spill over into our day to day lives, no matter how rational and responsible we try to be.

So is the startling similarity of so many bipolar people's lives just a correlation, or do precursors of our first "official" mood episode start appearing way earlier in our lives than one would think?  The traditional age of onset for bipolar illness is late teens, or early 20s.    But while we may not have an acute episode until after our childhood, sometimes it seems as if our early behavior and personalities are strikingly similar.

And because bipolar illness is a genetic one, our parents offer suffer from mental illness of one type or another.  So many if not most of us had unstable and chaotic childhoods.  If anyone needs structure, it is bipolar people, and that kind of tumultuous upbringing often causes us to find ways of sabotaging and undermining ourselves.  Crazy parents are often unable to provide the support and nurturing we need, through no fault of their own. The more regular our lives,  the better we fare from day to day (although I will admit that I am very unlikely to impose structure on myself).  I don't really know how a "normal" family interacts, but our family gatherings are almost always tense affairs, involving a great deal of teetering on egg shells.

Unfortunately, the mood episodes that make me feel most alive are mixed episodes, which are widely accepted to be the worst and most dangerous episodes in terms of the risk of a patient harming themselves or others.  Rages, sobbing, over-sensitivity, self-loathing, sensory overload; the sensation of my body trying to crawl out of its own skin, the pacing, the inability to sleep.  Things taste awful, so I stop eating.  My frustration threshold is non-existent, and I can feel anger coursing through my body.

Mixed states are the most visceral and terrifying periods of my life.  I hope that no one ever judges my overall personality based on my behavior during such an episode.  But I would be disingenuous to tell people that mood episodes are somehow not a genuine part of me.

Just because I haven't added any media for a few days, and this is supposed to be a post of the uniting of body and mind, here is a picture I took of myself during my last mixed episode, in the early summer of 2010.  Most of you of course have no idea how I normally look, but here I am drained of color, my face is set and furrowed with anxiety, and I look exhausted because I had probably gotten about 12 hours sleep in the last 4 days.

Nasty Little Things #reverb10

December 11 prompt:  11 Things.  What are 11 things your life doesn't need in 2011.  How will you go about eliminating them.  How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?  -Sam Davidson


1.  Migraines.  I will probably not ever be able to totally eradicate migraines from my life.  But I am trying a class of medication I have never tried before for migraine, SSRIs.  SSRIs are anti-depressants, but are used off label to control migraine. Cymbalta seems to be the SSRI I hear about most often in relation to migraine.  If the Cymbalta doesn't work,   I am finally going to risk hurting my neurologist's feelings, and ask for a referral to the Headache Clinic at UCSF Mount Zion.  35 years is enough with generalists, I need a specialist.  Any lessening of the numbers or severity of migraines is quite frankly a quality of life issue.

2.  Seizures.  My husband's that is.  2011 will be the year DH has surgery to see if they can lessen the number or severity, or maybe even stop altogether, his roughly weekly seizures.  This would be a wonderful change for both of us.  He would be able to drive again, which would make him so happy.  I would be so happy with any improvement.  My life with DH will be wonderful no matter the number of seizures, but of course I want him to stop having them altogether.

3.  The metal in my foot.  In January of 2010, I had my left foot entirely reconstructed:  My heel bone was severed, and pulled over; a ligament was pulled and pinned to help create an arch for my foot; metatarsal bones were moved, and either screwed into a new place, or were fused together. An X-ray of my foot reveals one HUGE bolt on the outer side of my foot, and a cornucopia of small screws holding my foot together, in an entirely different shape than it had been before the surgery.  It looks like there is a porcupine in my foot.

My foot is much, much, better.  But it turned out I am actually allergic to the metal in the bolts they used.  I have had a peeling rash all over my foot since the surgical wounds healed.  It looks like athlete's foot, too, which is embarrassing.  The only solution is to go back in, and take all the metal out, so I am having another surgery in January or February.  Getting rid of the metal will mean I won't have horrible itching and peeling anymore.  

4.  Mixed episodes.  Mixed episodes (sometimes called agitated depression) are generally considered the worst kind of episode by bipolar patients. One has all the sadness and self-hate of depression, and all the energy and irritability of mania.  It feels like you want to crawl out of your skin, like energy is pouring out of every pore of your body, but it is all energy directed into self-loathing and anger.  My psychiatrist and I are trying to stop these by adjusting my medication.  Not a very dramatic solution, but unfortunately, the only thing dramatic about treating mental illness is when the treatments don't work.

I only started having mixed episodes consistently 5 years ago, although my first one was over 10 years ago.  I was diagnosed with bipolar illness when I was 24, and it is accepted that I experienced my first depressive episode when I was 18.  Depression and hypomania are bad, and I don't like to experience them.  But I am the most likely to harm myself or others while I am in a mixed state.  The closest I have come to being hospitalized was during a mixed state, and in retrospect, it was agreed if I got that bad again, I would be admitted.  Not having to experience horrible periods of disordered thoughts is once again a quality of life issue, for the very rudimentary reason that it would mean that I would be less likely to harm myself or others.

5.  My current state of unemployment.  Can't really do anything about this until the headaches stop, but I plan to find employment by volunteering with a couple of different Cannabis oriented non-profit organizations, in the hope of making the type of connections I need to find a good job in the Medical Cannabis industry.  Working in that field would mean I was involved in a cause I feel strongly about.  And I feel happiest about myself when I feel like I am doing something to change the world, however small the piece of it over which I have influence.

6.  Clutter.  Who's the world's worst housekeeper?  I am.  Add to that our place is cute, but tiny, about 700 square feet. DH and I are on a campaign to both get rid of stuff, and to find ways of organizing things so that there is at least a place to put everything:  I can't tidy up  if there isn't even a place for everything to go.  Clutter depresses my husband more than it does me, so an attempt on my part would make him happy.  But I am full of guilt about my lack of housekeeping skills, and finding a compromise would mean I spend less time ruminating about what a bad person and wife I am.

7.  Compulsive planning.  One of the things about being bipolar is I don't handle stress or change well.   One way I try to compensate for this is by planning for every. possible. contingency.  Ever.  For anything.  Work, trips, what to make for dinner, phone calls, when I will switch into the exit lane as I approach my exit.  Everything.  It might sound like that would be a good thing, but when I can't stop, and my mind is always racing through "what ifs," and "just in cases," all day long, it is enervating and exhausting.  At the suggestion of my psychiatrist, I am addressing it by using the technique of Mindfulness.  Just to free up the part of my brain that is constantly at work, vamping and revamping imaginary schedules, to feel quiet, and be able to accept things as they come, sounds wonderful.

8.  Friends of friends.  One of my tendencies is to try to expand my circle of friends to include the friends of my friends.  But just because someone is a friend of my friend doesn't mean I have anything else in common with them, will like them, or be able to trust them.  And eventually, if I don't like someone, I am going to say something nasty, although it is usually in response to his or her nastiness to me.  I have to realize I do not have an obligation to make nice to people I am not interested in knowing, and who usually are flummoxed, or even intimidated by me.  That sounds very, very snotty.  And I am not as impressed with my accomplishments as others might be.  But on paper, I am formidable.  It's in person that I am a sickly, whiny, lazy hermit.

9.  Compulsive shopping.  This one is going to be interesting, because I think I may have already created a work-around for this problem.  But it is equally possible I am fooling myself.

When I have mood swings, I spend.  It might be on things I need, but it usually is not.  I buy kitchen gadgets, and books, and Cd's, and DVDs, and clothes, and purses, and shoes, and gifts for my friends and family, and costume jewelry (an area of particular weakness, organic brain syndromes = love of SHIINEEE).  It is easy when my mood is stable to pretend I have a plan for dealing with and preventing it next time, but to say that is to imply I can be rational when I am crazy.  And mental illness doesn't work like that.  If it did, I could just tell myself to "cut it out," as my psychiatrist will say when he is teasing me: He knows it isn't as easy as that.

Rather than a solution, I found a work-around:  Thrift shops.   I am in a thrift shop at least once a week, and when I am feeling well, more often.  Sometimes I hit 3 or 4 in one day. But I can buy lots of items, and not spend much.  And realistically, I do need clothes, as my work clothes used to be for working with dogs, and are basically stained jeans and t-shirts.   But this way, I can spend very little, yet sate my compulsion.

I do realize this is at odds with my desire to cut back on clutter.  I'm human, so sue me.

10.  Dog nails that are too long.  I'd like to take a quarter inch off the nails of the right paw of Violet, my French Bulldog.   I use a dremel with a sandpaper bit to grind back her nails:  She has black nails, and guessing where to press down with a blade is too risky.  With a dremel, one grinds the nail back millimeter by millimeter, so one can see the approaching quick before hitting it.  And if there is a small nick, the speed of the rotation of the dremel bit cauterizes it.

But as much as I like the dremel, it took me several years to realize that the way I hold Violet when I use the dremel (football hold, if you care) meant that her right front paw was at an angle that was extremely difficult for me to reach.  Bit by bit, the two center nails of the four that hit the ground began to grow longer and longer.  Now Violet has the equivalent of coke nails.  This can be remedied by diligently trimming that paw weekly, while staying on my regular monthly schedule with her other paws.

This will make my life better because when Violet stands on my stomach, she will no longer stab me with her ridiculously long nails.

11.  Obeisance  to my mother.  My mother and I have a very difficult relationship.  We always have.  I have 3 sisters who do not have the problems with my mother that I do, but see what goes on.  They often run interference for me.

My mother has a diagnosed personality disorder, but only receives treatment for the depression that often accompanies the disorder.  It took me years (and a few shoves by some therapists and psychiatrists) to realize that my mother treated me the way she did because while she loves me instinctively, she doesn't really like who I am, and isn't really capable of loving me unconditionally.  That is heart-crushing.  

All my life, I have tried desperately to win her favor.  I wore the clothes she picked out.  I took the courses she wanted me to.  I went to the college she picked out for me, even though it was not my first choice.  I went to law school because she told me it was the only possible next step after I got laid off from a teaching position. But it was never enough.  And being the type of person who is almost never ill, she tends to think my chronic conditions are more gambits for attention that anything legitimate.

My craven attempts to placate her will be the hardest thing to give up, because her anger scares me.  But my husband has urged me to stop deferring even the smallest of life decisions to my mother.  I have begun to stand up for myself in little ways, and while my mother doesn't like it, all of my positions have been so clearly reasonable, she had no choice but to accept it.  I know from experience there will be a face to face confrontation at some point; DH will have my back in the resulting shit storm.  

Finally feeling like an adult member of the family, and not a cowed child, is a change I look forward to n 2011.

Out of Wisdom Comes Pain and Lust #reverb10

Dec 10 prompt:

Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?  -Susannah Conway

The wisest decision I made this year has lead to literally days of pain.  But it was still the right choice for my marriage, and I am glad I made it.

As a chronic migraneur, I am always on multiple medications.  This is in addition to my psychiatric treatments, although the medications for mental illness and neurological disorders share a huge overlap.  Sometimes, I find meds that work to lower the frequency of my headaches.  Unfortunately, once a headache arrives, treatments, even opiates, are hit and miss.

I am not going to go into a long discussion about all my treatments, but one in particular has worked for me on a number of occasions for a few years at a time before pooping out on me:  the anti-convulsant, Depakote.  After several year long "vacations" from Depakote on other medications, I would repeatedly find myself saying to my neurologist that I wanted to try it again. It would always improve the frequency of headaches for a while, then once again poop out.  But when it worked, it was the best medication I had tried.  

Besides the issue of repeatedly pooping out on me, Depakote can cause severe side effects. Excessive weight gain is the most infamous one.   My experience has been a little less straight-forward, but ultimately ended with impressive weight gain.    Depakote can suddenly, after working well for years, destroy one's pancreas, and make one a Type I diabetic.   It can cause severe liver damage.

But the side effect that became the most instrusive and upsetting was that Depakote totally killed my libido stone dead.  I didn't like to even be touched, although of course I was more tolerant of DH's touch than anyone else's.   Still, "wrapped in cotton wool" and "bound in plastic wrap" are the phrases he has used over and over to describe what I was like on Depakote.

People may realize that headaches are incapacitating, but they often do not realize how incapacitating drug side effects can be.  The side effects of the medication become just one more aspect of being chronically ill.  Deciding what side effects you can tolerate, or are willing to put up with, always requires a risk/benefit analaysis.

By February of 2010, given my headaches, medication side-effects, and foot surgery, sex was almost non-existant in our marriage.  Like many people, early in our relationship, sex had been a constant.  But over 10+ years, my headaches have gotten more frequent and harder to treat.  So not tonight, dear.  And then the medication I took destroyed any interest I had at all.  I felt obliged to be active as much as I could, but it was so hard.  I knew DH was torn, he didn't want me to be in pain.  But man, did he hate Depakote.

After watching my husband's misery, I decided that for the sake of our marriage, I would never again take Depakote, even though it still is the medication that has worked best for me in terms of my headaches.  I had begun to feel like I wasn't upholding my end of the marriage.  I am not saying that there is a quid pro quo for sex, but sex is a very important part of a marriage, there is no denying it.  People who know me know that I do not generally talk about my sex life with anyone, but this is not about sex as an explicit act, but instead as a component of married life.  It is upsetting and humiliating to not be as sexually available to your partner as you would like, and feel s/he deserves.

Since we were together 24/7 throughout most of 2010, we were able to delve into this issue in detail, and re-evaluate what our expectations were for each other in this marriage, and check to see that we were still on the same page.  I knew intellectually I wanted to be on the same emotional page as DH, but I just couldn't do it with the chemical chastity belt that Depakote had become.  Most Drs. consider this a completely valid reason for discontinuing a medication, so I knew my neurologist would accept it.  My neurologist is as desperate and clueless about what to do next as I am, and allows me to largely direct my own treatment.  The fact that Depakote is also used for psychiatric treatment of bipolar illness means that my psychiatrist must also be kept on top of what is going on, but Depakote has never had a psychiatric effect for me, and he allows me to raise it and lower it without consulting him first.

Plus I was beginning to wonder whether or not it wasn't already pooping out, anyway.  My headaches were definitely becoming more frequent.

So in June, with the Dr.'s blessing, I began to titrate (that is, change the dosage little by little, to allow my body time to adjust) off the Depakote, and titrate onto blood pressure medication, propranolol, that is also widely used as migraine prophylaxis.  You must always titrate off of anti-seizure medications, or you risk having severe seizures, even if you weren't taking them for seizures in the first place.

I immediately made the rather depressing discovery that yes, in fact, the Depakote was helping.  My headaches increased in frequency and severity the lower my dosage went.  I was prepared for a bad period, there is often a short period where everything gets much much worse when you are titrating onto a medication, even if it ultimately proves successful.  But the bad period didn't end.

And now, I am Depakote free.  I am having headaches more days than not, and this has been the case since July.  At first, while almost daily, they often were not severe, or only lasted a few hours.  The further in time I moved forward from my last dose of Depakote, the more severe the headaches have become.  And they continue to be present more days than not.  The propranolol has been a bust.  In January I will be trying another medication for the first time, the SSRI Cymbalta.  When used for migraines, the dose is so comparatively tiny, there is no real concern of its cross-reacting with my psychiatric medications.

But even with the failure of the propranolol, it has been totally worth it.  I knew that even as I huddled over a waste-basket, heaving for hours on end on Wednesday night, head pounding, eyes streaming with tears.  

Of course, when I am curled up in pain, I am not exactly the most sexual creature.  But when I am pain free these days, I now realize it was if my entire sense of touch had been severely dampened.  The fact that I can tolerate DH's arms around me while I am sick, and enjoy them when I am not, is a shockingly huge and happy change for both of us.  While I am sick too often these days to speak honestly about second honeymoons, we are definitely both feeling a renewed sense of enjoyment and emotional intimacy.  And when I am feeling well, well, I'll be gross, and admit sex is so much better!  Sex actually felt like a chore on Depakote.

So those are my early unexpected gifts for our 10th wedding anniversary this July:  Accepting pain, and regaining intimacy.

Headaches and Hippies, #reverb10

December 8, and 9 Prompts:

Beautifully different.  Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up.  Reflect on all the things that make you different- you'll find they're what make you beautiful. -Karen Walrand

Party.  What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010?  Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, and shenanigans. -Shauna Reid

Sorry to have been MIA.  The reason for my absence is essentially what makes me different:  I have been a chronic migraineur since I was 13.  This has really thrown some huge curve-balls at me during my life, but I rarely am able to increase my slugging percentage.

The last two days I had a full blown migraine, with aura, photo phobia, vomiting, osmophobia, dizziness, and agonizing pain. Having suffered from such a bad headache, ending only a few hours ago, it is hard for me to find anything positive and beautiful in my experiences.  In fact, they have been depressing and isolating.   One of the quandaries of migraine (or in this case, migraine co morbid with bipolar disorder), is that it is a chronic, painful, but invisible and non-lethal.   People think that I exaggerate how often and how severely I suffer from headaches.

Unhappy things that having 2-30 migraines a month for the last 34 years has taught me:
*Life isn't fair
*Pain is incapacitating, yet invisible, putting your claim of genuine disability into question.
*People are very willing to tell you what you are doing wrong when they have no idea what you are going through

But there are useful things I have learned as a result of my condition, too:
*Living a "conventional" 9-5 life life is not the only way to lead a happy life.
*Joy can be found in things as simple as an absence of pain
*Life isn't as linear as the average high school counselor would like you to believe.

In addition, using medical Cannabis to treat pain has exposed me to a new activist community, and a new cause for my lifelong civil rights activism

Overall, being a migraineur has had positive impact on my world view and approach to my life.  I am intimately acquainted with the pit falls of having an invisible disability, and have used that knowledge in my activism, especially for IV drug users, and HIV patients.  I have developed a hobby interest in neurobiology.  DH's seizures provide more fodder for that interest, and the fact that my dad was a widely read psycho-pharmacologist, who did research in neuropsychiatry meant that I was taught about how our brains work by a world-renowned clinical scientist.

The amount of pain I experience for no valid reason, with no end in sight, makes me very empathetic to people who are struggling with their health, regardless of what condition they suffer, or what caused it.  I have more insight into chronic illness than the average person, and unfortunately, learned about it at a much younger age than the average person who will develop a chronic disorder.  This understanding of the bone-sucking weariness that chronic illness creates in its victims is what lead to my extensive HIV prevention activism, and support of people with HIV.  Migraines are not fatal, but I can easily relate to those who feel poorly more often than feeling well.

Another thing I have learned is nothing is more important than keeping myself healthy.   The rest of my life will go careening off the rails if I am not careful enough about looking after myself.  I have the deeply held belief that if I had not come from a well-off family, and then met DH, who loves me with all my failings and lack of earning power, I would be homeless.  So I tend to keep change in my pocket for the mentally ill and homeless people in the City.

One unusual fact about myself is my ability to interact with anyone, from the crack addict sitting on the stoop of my apartment building, to the members of the royal families I went to college with.  When I lived in the San Francisco Tenderloin, which is a red light district, I had first name basis relationships with a lot of the homeless people that lived in the UN Plaza.

Being incapacitated by illness most of my adult life taught me the very important fact that life is a crap shoot, shit happen, and to remember other people in my world may also be ducking invisible curve balls.

****

Now I almost skipped the next prompt, because it is becoming a bit repetitive to say that the Oregon Country Fair was the social highlight of my year.  But it was a very bad year, with a few peaks, and the OCF was my major excitement for 2010, but for a two day driving trip with DH in August.   Those of you who are here for the first time, my December 3rd prompt: Moment blog post was about happenings at the Fair.

I basically describe the Fair to people who want to know as a convergence of dirty hippies, faeries, rainbow people, burning man aficionados, and the like, creating a Counter Culture space-time singularity each July.  Music Bands from the well known, to the virtually anonymous play on various stages throughout the  weekend, so there is music coming from one or many directions at any time.  There is a non-stop drum circle, which was joined briefly by Bob Weir last summer (I realize now by looking at the Wikipedia picture that I actually saw him: I hadn't aged him in my mind since 1990, so I was looking for a much younger man).  Puppet shows, acrobats, magic, mehndi booths, hair braiding booths, face painting, ice cream, and children with dread locks.  All sorts of delicious food, caters to everyone from the omnivore to the vegan.  Even though I fall into the first category, my favorite food item at the Fair is vegan, Blazing Salad's Avocado Dream Boats. I already know what I am having for breakfast on July 8, 2011.  I wish I could tell you what is in it, so far I have figured out avocado, hummus, garlic, and hot sauce.

I discovered if you mash those ingredients together, you will have a filling, yummy sandwich spread.  Eat it the day you make it, avocados don't keep!

And I haven't even talked about all the cool items sold there.  There are great artisans and artists selling a variety of wares.

But there is far more to the fair than what I can list in one post.  As I have said, the ambiance is a large percentage of what makes the fair great.  Some concrete examples (if you will) of created ambiance: Parades with brass instruments and costumed marchers;  the big juggling pavilion in Chela Mela; the singing around the sauna at the Ritz; the Women's lodge in the Community Village, an homage to estrogen; speeches on topics controversial and not; women rolling out rugs and dancing like dervishes to their favorite music, or the drumming circles' rhythms.

I hate to end this post this way, it seems unfinished.  But I am hoping to get my Dec 10 prompt done before I go to bed tonight, so I am going to leave this topic for now.

Community: Mentally Interesting #reverb10

Prompt #7 Community.  Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010?  What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011? -Cali Harris

Even I am getting tired of hearing myself say that 2010 was a difficult year for me.  Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that it was.

Along with my DH's unemployment, and my long term immobilization by surgery, I started to have mood swings, and was frankly mildly depressed through the part of the of the year when I was most immobile.

And like some other people with bipolar, with the changes in the season and the changes of light, come more mood swings.   In the spring, I become hypomanic.  In the summer, I tend to have a mixed episode.  Then hypomania returns sometime around Xmas (yes, I'm keeping an eye on it, but it can still creep up on you).  Solstices, in particular, do not tend to be happy times for me.

I began to worry that discussing every troubling thought that crossed my mind with my DH was not healthy for either our marriage or us.  But even if I wanted to go to therapy, which I did not, I was trapped in the house by my foot. I needed someone who could listen to some of my more crazy thoughts without freaking out.

So I turned to an online bulletin board on which I had lurked now and then, CrazyBoards.org. (CB) For the first time, I stopped lurking, and began to venture forth into the discussions, commenting, comparing, sharing my experience.  There are people with all types of illness, and all levels of suffering.  People living with anything from ADHD to psychoses (although I don't want to imply there is a hierarchy of mental illnesses).  I have mentioned I am bipolar, and have migraine.  My official diagnosis is Bipolar NOS, which is when the illness doesn't quite fit into either the Bipolar I or II compartments.

One of the great things about CB is that we don't have to play nice.  It is accepted that sometimes people are crazy, and other times, someone might need a stern talking to, to get help.  People don't hesitate to say what they think, however unpleasant.  The oft repeated mantra is "we don't have to walk on eggshells here."  That is in contrast to most of the other mental illness support boards.  Those boards will ban people for confrontation or being negative.  The average board for the mentally ill is a much more strictly moderated, polite, non-confrontational, warm and fuzzy place.

One of the first rules of CB's user agreement stipulates, "You won't find that your every post is responded to with feigned warm fuzziness and cyberhugs.  Frankly, we think cyberhugs suck."  Definitely the place for a mentally-ill cynic, who has dealt with too much shit in her life. 

For that reason the CB boards are considerably more real, helpful, genuine, and brutal than the average milquetoast site.  To be honest, it is a fascinating place.  The population is generally very bright, and the more idiotic people tend to get run off rather quickly.  The focus is on mental illness, and the forums are divided and sub-divided into conditions, or medications, but threads can and do take sharp detours.  We discuss our relationships.  We discuss our hobbies.  We fight, we form cliques.  And we confide and admit to each other our hallucinations and delusions.

My favorite feature of Crazyboards.org is the community blog.  One of the really bad, crazy things I do when I am hypo-manic, manic, or having a mixed-episode, is I post information that is very revealing about myself, but also about other people interacting with me during these frenzies.  I embarrass some people, and piss other people off to the point they break off friendships.  Sadly, this is often to my benefit, even when I handled the situations anywhere from poorly to thoughtlessly.  But until accidentally freeing myself from some of my relationships, I never realized how much I had been tamping down my personality, not to mention opinions, around people I considered friends.  It is only in retrospect that I see that those friendships were already fraying at the edges, and the biggest red flag should have been that I no longer felt like I could be myself around them.

CBs provides a safe place to blog.  One can control who can and cannot see with much more precision that one can on Blogger.  I feel like if I am indiscreet there, it is a little safer.  It is definitely a form of self-therapy.

Next year, I hope to dip my toes into the Medical Marijuana activist community.  I know from prior activism that that is going to mean inserting myself into the community of activists working on that problem.  My fellow dirty hippies.  2011 is definitely the year of Cannabis.

Make: Terror Wears Diapers #reverb10

Prompt # 5:  Make.  What was the last thing you made?  What materials did you use?  Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?  -Gretchen Rubin

I am not a crafty person.  I do not knit.  I do not paint.  I do not decoupage, or felt, or sew.  Not being able to walk for a third of the year even put a real damper on my not that fabulous, but somewhat adventurous cooking.  Now it seems as if I am out of practice, and my cooking is even worse than usual.  Today's dinner, baked potatoes, hardly counts as cooking.

I am very interested in politics, and have been active in civil rights activism in the past, although not in 2010.  I could have made some clever feint saying my political activism in the medical marijuana and decriminalization movements "makes" change, but I found that kind of trick a little too precious.

Finally I remembered something I had at least designed.  I kind of have a thing for bumper stickers, but I only like the magnetic kind: I want to be able to stay "current."  If the bumper sticker is glued to the trunk, it ain't coming off, and I can't change it.  

Plus, I have to have what I consider an original slogan.  I was very tickled to see a great bumper sticker in Sunnyvale, "My Tibetan Terrier Is Smarter Than Your Pitbull with Lipstick."  At the same time, I was SO annoyed I hadn't thought of it myself.  So I really began to look around for something to sloganeer about.

This year, I was very disturbed at what I consider racist attacks against immigrants.  I find the whole "anchor baby" scare particularly ludicrous.  Then one day, US Representative Gohmert, (R), TX, appeared on the Sunday political news shows to warn about what he considered an imminent threat:  Muslims having "anchor babies" in the US, moving back to their sordid little Muslim countries, and then raising tiny jihadists, since all Muslims are terrorists. [I am speaking from his perspective here, I hope I am clear about that; I do not agree with him one tiny bit]  BUT!  Then we have terrorist Muslim toddlers with US citizenship!  S/he can enter and leave the country just like a real person! Horrors. Scream. Faint.  

That Sunday, I made up the above bumper sticker slogan.  I had it printed on a magnetized strip, in the same colors as the silly "Baby On Board" signs.  I still have it on my Prius today.

It is probably time to think about a new slogan.

One thing I do enjoy doing with my hands is restoring furniture.  But so far, I have only restored two pieces.  I have had a piece disassembled and ready to strip for two years.   I am hoping that 2011 is the Year of Refinishing the Small Mission Stand.

Letting Go: Leaving the Dog House #reverb10

This is going to be short.  I have a migraine again.  As I said, they are pretty much a constant for me.

This year, it looks like I am forced to give up something I really love:  Caring for dogs.  The 7 years prior to this one, I had worked with dogs in some capacity.  First I worked at a boarding kennel and daycare.  It was working there, that a dog broke my hip in a freak accident.  It took me about 4 months to get back to the kennel.

I left there in 2004 to work at a high end pet retail store, ostensibly as a dog walker.  That ended up being a bit of a clash of personalities:  I am still friends with my old boss, but we agreed we were not suited for working together.  The pet store is now defunct, although she still offers a dog walking and training service.

I briefly ran my own pet care and dog walking service, Violet and Friends.  But one day, while walking a pair of Wire Hair Fox Terriers, my knee suddenly wouldn't straighten.  It was a 25 year-old knee injury that had had enough.

I had to have my knee entirely reconstructed.  While I was still in rehab for the knee, my DH had a seizure at Fry's Electronics, so we suddenly had to move close enough to his job that he could ride his bike.  Our new place was in a different county than I than I had my business license.  And it took much, much longer to recover from the knee surgery than the hip surgery.  So the business was dead.  But finally, in November of 2006, I was ready to head back to work.

The next job was the most fun job I have ever had.  I worked at a doggie daycare.  It used to be a great place, lots of room indoors and out for play, lots of beds for dogs who wanted to snooze, innumerable toys.  Just after I was hired, the daycare was purchased by a man who already had another doggie daycare in another location.

There, we were trained extensively in canine behavior, and how to read dogs, and their body language.  I was promoted to a "senior playgroup leader," which meant I was qualified to run shifts.  I was fascinated with dog behavior, and studied it on my own.

But slowly, my left foot, the foot on the leg with the bolted hip, and remade knee, began to ache and throb.  I always worked half time.  But I had to cut back from 5 days to 4.  I saw an orthopedist, and he looked at my foot, and said, "You don't want the surgery you need to fix that."  So we agreed to try conservative approaches first.  But he was already warning me, they were not going to work.  We had to go through the routine to convince the insurance company I needed surgery.

So I took 4 months off work while I wore a prosthesis in a walking boot, that was supposed to reshape the bone structure of my foot.  Of course, it didn't work.  The next step was to get a brace to fit into my shoes, and turn my foot to the right angle.  Again, ridiculously ineffective.  I went back to work, but now I could only work 3 days a week.    I finally went back to the orthopedist again.

This time, I had to have my foot entirely reconstructed.

I had the surgery in January.  I wasn't allowed to bear any wait on my foot until April.  I got out of the walking boot in June.

My foot still doesn't feel normal.  My Dr. warned me I probably would never work with dogs again.   I still don't like to admit it to myself.  But realistically, my leg is too damaged to balance on, and I need balance to be able to handle large dogs.

So this year, I had to let go of one of my favorite things:  A room full of dogs.

Some of the dogs I miss:

Kaiser Sose

Chloe and Ballou

Lolli

Otis