Pain and Purchases

First, DH's grandmother died yesterday.  He is flying back East for the funeral on Saturday, and will be back Tuesday.  He is not freaking out, but he is more upset than he is letting on.  His dad didn't think we should go, so he decided he is going alone; tickets are so expensive, PLUS all the fees they now have.  He wants to go is to see his grandfather, who is 95.  I never really knew his grandmother, because she already had Alzheimer's when I met her.  So her funeral would be more dutiful than cathartic for me.  

And having been raised Jewish, open caskets freak me out.  Just not a Jewish thing.

In migraine news, I GOT A REFERRAL TO UCSF'S HEADACHE CLINIC!  I had to stop the nortriptyline because of side effects.  They included mental confusion, urinary tract issues, lethargy, poor balance.  And when I went up to a higher dose, my mood was definitely acting up.  I was afraid I was teetering on the edge of a mixed episode.

There may have been just a bit less intensity to the headaches I am getting, but not enough to make the potentially worsening side effects worth it.  After 7 weeks, the side-effects are probably going to last as long as I take it.  I thought I was getting depressed, but now I think it was all Nortriptyline side effects.  

So finally it has come to this:  My neurologist said, "We have a lot of options!"  and immediately suggested Botox  Um, no.  Not under his supervision.  Maybe if UCSF suggests it.  Maybe.  It creeps me out.  Although, the one person I actually have "talked" to about it has loved it, and said it changed her life.  Hmmm.  Blech.

"Well, I've heard fever few an butterbar might help."   Yes, my neurologist thinks I should try herbs.  I asked about acupuncture, and his attitude was, "Sure, try whatever you want, but good luck getting your insurance to pay for it."  We shall see.  I think I am going to go see Angie at Lohaki Acupuncture, even if my insurance won't pay for it; I can start doing that about twice a month.

He also said becoming vegetarian might be a good idea.  I keep saying I want to do that, even if it is just at home.  But it boils down to my being lazy: it seems like all the recipes for main dishes are complex.  And I have trouble gauging how many fruit and vegetables we will eat before they spoil.  Part of the reason for this is that Nortriptyline lethargy has meant I haven't been cooking. At all. We have been grazing, eating cheese, cereal, canned soup, fruit, and too much candy. I keep meaning to learn how to really use beans.  I mean, I use them now and then, but I should soak and freeze batches, or something, they really are so versatile.  And I have a rice cooker, and I love oatmeal.  I guess the first step would be to take stock of which appliances I need, and which I don't, I have way too many cooking appliances.

So anyway, gah.  Oh, and after promising me he would fax the referral to UCSF on  Monday, Dr. Shithead told me it would be out by Friday.  UGH.  I already faxed stuff yesterday (Tuesday), because he TOLD me he was definitely faxing it Monday!  And he had to throw in that he couldn't see what UCSF could do that HE wouldn't already have thought of.  This is the man who does research on Google right in front of me.  I am always far more up to date on migraine treatments than he.  Whatever.  Passive aggressive shmuck.   Seriously, a passive aggressive Dr?  Could there be a worse type of MD to try to develop a relationship with?  And why wouldn't he want me to see a headache specialist after I have been having migraines for over 35 years?  Pussy.

I am his SUPAH DUPAH  NUMBAH ONE migraine patient.  Awesome for a teaching hospital, I am his walking, talking "refractory" specimen.  But he no longer has any idea what to do with me.  And I guess what this is really going to boil down to is poly-pharmacy for my migraines, as well as the BP.  He wouldn't be able to handle a poly-pharmacy approach.

I just have been out of it.  Almost 100% because of the nortriptyline, I am pretty sure.  It takes two weeks for it to be totally out of my system.  

 This is the worst period of migraines I have ever experienced, bar none.  Since last I filled you in, I also tried an stopped using propranolol, because it was clearly working as well as a sugar pill for me.  Next, I tried atenolol, which is in the same class of meds as propranolol (beta blockers), but it gave me a rare side effect: bruxism.  Because of my response to the nortriptyline, other tricyclics are also out of the question.

ANYWAY. I wanted to get back into posting items I bought.  It is an enjoyable pastime for the acquisitive Bipolar part of me, even though this time, it was all full price.  And it gives me something to riff off of, if I am desperate.

First, I was recently pointed towards a website I really like: Dog is Good.  First, I tried their t shirt grab bag: pay $25, and get three random ts. I get a tank top with bling, a light weight logo tshirt, and a tshirt with a logo that actually won a national pet product design contest: KNOW DOG, KNOW JOY, KNOW LOVE.  All very cute, and fun because of the surprise aspect.

Then on FacebookPJs, with a Frenchie on the top, "Le Chien Est Bon."  Very cute.  There is a Frenchie on the top:

There are nice details on it, like ribbon piping around the ankle, from which the hem falls away into a serge stitch hem, so a little ruffling.  And the same with the top.

Now, I really only have a bunch of new costume jewelry to show, but I am a real sucker for costume jewelry.  Unfortunately, one of my favorite necklaces' coating has rubbed off, and now the nickel is exposed to my nickel-allergic skin.

I have a pair of earrings and a necklace that are made by Kerfufle Jewelry, which I bought from one of my favorite little boutiques, Eni-thing, which supports local handmade products.  I bought the earrings first:

It's kind of hard to see, but they are small coin-like hammered metal.  I bought this necklace later:

To be honest, I go back an forth about this pendant.  Sometimes I think it is really cool, other times too garish.  Each strand that goes up to the fastener is different strand one side made of those coin-like beads, as well as a crystal strand.  But it holds up pretty well with a very simple top, because it would be too much for a pattern, imo.

On another visit at Eni-thing, I got a very inexpensive blingy elasticized bracelet.  Very simple but it goes with a lot of things:

Another fun set I collected was the Betsey Johnson French Puppy series.  I got the pendant, both pair of earrings, and best of all, the almost impossible to find charm bracelet:

There are these cute asymmetric dangle earrings, plus there is post version with the same charm: 

I also got a pendant from the same series, but it basically the same Frenchie charm as the earrings, just larger.

I also got some cool t shirts besides those from Dog is Good.  One was from Imogen Heap's Ellipse tour.  Mine actually has a white tree on a white background which is cool up close, but un-photographable, so this is just to give you an idea of the pattern: 

I also bought a cute Honest Kitchen t-shirt.  The Honest Kitchen is the freeze-dried food I feed my Frenchie, Violet.  This one says "Raw + Love = THK:

Wow. Quite a post.  

And none of it that interesting.

Sinking feelings

"I was more at the point where I felt like I wanted to be dead, but wasn't thinking about acting on it. I didn't have any plans or desire to do it myself. I just wanted to stop existing."  -Me, February 13, 2011

So I off-handedly shared a major crisis in my life on a thread at Crazyboards Sunday.  It didn't even bother me when I wrote it.  Later, when I went back to the thread, and saw it, it made me do a double take.  So blase, this has happened so many times, I think I know just what to expect.

My stomach dropped at rereading this hubris, this nonchalant dismissal of a time when I longed for death, as just "one of those things."  To be clear, I am NOT longing for death at the moment, exactly the opposite.  I would hardly use a forum to announce my impending suicide where people know me in person, and how to find me,   I may be crazy, but I'm relatively intelligent.

It isn't that I am depressed at this moment.  It is more that I am afraid.  I feel like something may be stirring in Crazyland, but I can't tell for sure.  Is it a bad mood? Might it be a side effect of medication?  Or am I just due for a visit from the Mood Fairy?

Or perhaps my DH deserved to have his head bitten off this afternoon.  Yes, I have snapped at him for the exact behavior before.  But this afternoon I was very assertive about explaining what about a particular behavior bothered me so much.  On the one hand, I interpreted in the most negative way possible.  On the other, he admitted given the language he uses, he can understand how I might come to make that interpretation.

But irritability could be a sign of a mood swing in any direction, regardless of our eventually coming to an understanding.  It's the fact that I initiated the discussion with anger that is different and troubling.

I will never entirely know what to expect.  Bipolar is a difficult disease to treat.  Its patterns change over time, confounding previously accepted truths.  Drugs that work for years poop out, and drugs that don't work can make one even crazier than before taking the medicaton.  I blandly assume that I have learned how to recognize a pattern or rhythm to help me anticipate episodes, to cut them off at the pass, so to speak, before they become too bad.

Then, suddenly, my brain decides it is time to clean house, and throw out all the knowledge, patterns, and tips I have accumulated over time, and make a fresh start.  New types of episodes.  More instability.

I can remember the year to which I so indifferently referred yesterday so distinctly.  I had been laid off, yet was still teaching another semester at that school before I left, so that wasn't fun.  The day I was laid off was also the day I had evacuated a busload of teenagers from the school campus, as wildfires raced towards it.  The next day, I heard about the murder of my friend.  Then came the week+ hospitalization for my kidneys.  Followed by very, very severe depression.    I ended up calling a crisis line for the first time in my life.

The first few psychiatrists gave me medications that either sent me into a manic frenzy, or were toxic to me.  I ran out of money. Next stop, a crash landing in my parents' basement.  I was so ashamed, and my mother made sure I knew she was ashamed of me, too.  Her verbal brutality was just one more thing to hasten my downward spiral.  And the headaches.  Never forget the headaches.

Awful.  I remember thoughts: "It would just be so much easier if I died.  If I just went to sleep and never woke up."  I never acted on it.  I think there was only one time I was ever truly serious about taking action to bring about my own death, and that was a depressive episode that turned into a mixed episode.  But that was several years in the future.  This episode's theme was inertia.  Hunger and inertia.  I ate at night, to avoid my mother.  I lived at night, to avoid my family.  My dog, Bess, would lie next to me on the bed all day as I slept and hid, if I needed her to.  She was my best friend.  I never want to be without a dog if I am depressed again, even with my husband around.  No person near me can understand the place I am living when I am so depressed.  I need a dog to just shower me with love and affection when I am wanting to die, because it is such a simple straight-forward love, it is easy to return.  No baggage.

And there's more.  I have been on a new medication, a type of anti-depressant, a tricyclic. I actually am not taking it for depression, but to treat my intractable migraines.  I was quite excited to try it, it was the first drug of this "class" of medications I had ever tried.  I have basically tried multiple versions of all the other classes that my body will tolerate.   Ironically, I seem to have magically stopped my standard rhythm of migraines 2 out of 3 days as soon as I started the new medication.  Sheer coincidence, it actually still needs time before it will start working.  But it has coincided with a 13 day period when I have only had two bad headaches and a three or four of mild ones.  The first 5 days, I didn't have *any* type of migraine (migraine is a disease, the headache is just the worset symptom of it).  I am still suffering from too many headaches.  But less pain is less pain.

But with this exciting new (to me) class of medication, comes a caveat: While the amount of tricyclic used to prevent migraine is quite small compared to the therapeutic dose necessary to treat depression, as a rule of thumb, anti-depressants + bipolar =  not a good thing.  This is one of those rare instances where I have run out of other options to try to stop headaches that are ruining my quality of life.  We are trying to delicately balance contraindicated treatments, hoping we can find the magic amalgam that will help with my head, but not hurt my mental stability.

So while we wait to see if the tricyclic helps, we also are watching closely for signs that it might be activating my bipolar illness:  That is, triggering a mood swing.  My doctors biggest concerns are that I have any lability of mood at all.  My biggest concern is having a mixed episode:  Mixed episodes are kind of like having a pocket-Hell that you are forced to carry around, and you have to negotiate life and cope with the havoc Hell is creating at the same time.  No one else can see Hell in your pocket, you just seem flat out insane.  Which I am.  And part of that insanity is believing that others intentionally try to do everything they can to provoke Hell into bursting out of my pocket, and breaking things, forcing words that I know are dangerous even as they fly out of my mouth to come pourng out, throwing things, berating myself and my loved ones.  Of course, I understand intellectually I am the one doing those things.  But my intellect is being over-ridden by sick brain.

As a reasult every time I feel a petty thought, or am irritated, or tear up, or get overly excited about things, I begin to worry.

Usually, when I talk about depression, it is something in my past.  My last one was a brief one in 2001.  I almost had forgotten what it felt like. But re-reading the sentence I quoted above makes my stomach clench, makes me hyperventilate, makes me want to cover my head with a pillow.  It made me remember a tiny inkling of what it was like, and now I am scared that the reason I can suddenly so closely identify with that feeling is that I am headed in a bad direction.

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.

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.

Writing and Mindfulness, #reverb10

I forgot to include December 1st's prompt for my first blog post of #reverb10.   But here is the prompt for Day 2/December 2nd:


"What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing -and can you eliminate it?" (Author: Leo Babauta)

As I suspect it will be for many people, this was a really hard question for me to answer.  Damn you, #reverb10, for throwing a curve ball so early!  As punishment, this is going to be more of a process post, and less reflective.

When I began to ruminate on this question, I realized it was very difficult for me to come up with something I did daily that interfered with my writing.  But I had absolutely no problem thinking of all the things I don't do every day, all the mind loops and stall tactics that I use to excuse the quality of my writing, or not writing at all.  These are some of the things I thought of, when I tried to think of something I did daily:

• I don't focus enough on my formal, non-blog writing, which harms my development as a writer, and therefore the quality of my blog.  
• I don't set aside a time, or set a timer at some point during the day, to just bang out whatever comes into my head.  I know this is a good exercise if I want to get serious about writing, but I never seem to just start doing it.
• I never write down ideas when they pop into my head, even just a few words on the back of an envelope. By the time I sit down later, the ideas are lost.  
• I haven't sought an outlet for my writing.  I am one of those people who needs a deadline to really get anything polished.  I can't bring myself to complete anything I start, without that line in the sand.  

I have so many half written short stories, articles, and yes, even ideas for a novel, all tucked away in a large wooden keepsake box.  It also holds reprints of the very few things I have actually published, as talismans.  As if the fact of their completion will magically rub off, or positively influence my enormous collection of half-thoughts, and stories ending mid-paragraph.

By the same token, I never pull anything out of the big wooden keepsake box to revise or rethink, or insert into other, longer, writings.  It is like that wooden box is a coffin for my writing.  A coffin stuffed with notebooks, half used; journals with bi-annual posts; copies of legal briefs; and the few articles I have published.  I should be pulling them out, dissecting them, and cannibalizing them for new, and hopefully better, pieces.  It is as if they were lost to the mists of time.

That my approach to this prompt was immediately negative is not surprising to me.  I have a very negative approach to my entire life, I am pensive, intense, and not a very sweet person.  This makes my writing seem very self-indulgent, and inward looking, or at least that is how it reads to me.   Part of what concerns me is that my writing is always memoir-ish, but makes no real attempt to make my experiences seem universal.

How do I turn myself around?  How do I start to feel positive about what I write, and have written?   How do I take my intensity and self-indulgence, and use it to write, instead of angrily ruminate?

One therapy to which I have been subjected is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).  I didn't really enjoy it, or the other people in my group. I was enrolled in the sessions as part of my course of treatment for bipolar illness, although it has since been found that CBT is of zero benefit to those who are bipolar.  Nonetheless, it was helpful for anxiety, and to some extent, compulsive behaviors.  But the most important thing I learned about was the quasi-Buddhist theory of mindfulness.

In my life, being mindful means living in the now, and listening to my thoughts, and what questions they raise.  It is about finding the patterns of flawed and negative thinking, and being able to say: "I see I am beginning to follow my old negative thought pattern.  I need to change my orientation."  It is hard to do at first.  No, I take that back, it is always hard to do.  Mindfulness requires a lot of work, and it forces self-knowledge, whether you want it or not.

I am hoping this year to begin to obliterate the negative thought loops that hold me back from writing.  My only weapon may be mindfulness.  But it is a strong one.

Crazy with a Conscious

Once, a little over 10 years ago, we received a catalog (we still shopped with catalogs in the 20th century). It was kind of a yuppy faux-eco clothing catalog.  This was just at the start of Green being equated with being "hip."

One of the items they sold was cashmere sweaters. But these sweaters were special:  The animals (and even the herd's people!) were treated extra super-duper carefully, and fed delicious things. We could feel good about wearing these cashmere sweaters, they were grown on such happy, healthy, ecologically sound goats. Scrawled across the page of the magazine, in huge, italic type, was "Sweaters with a conscious...." Once we picked ourselves up off the floor, we went around begging friends and neighbors for their copies of the catalogs, so we could each have a copy, and distribute them to a few key friends.

What led me to reminiscing about this story is a pretty good example of manic thought processes, so let's see if I can write my day out, so you can see what a disordered/disorganized thought process looks like.

Last night, I decided to record a three part series on a subject, that while often discussed on my blog and various places where I go by my real name, is still controversial.   I am sure you can guess what about.  I already recorded the three part series, a mini-course on medical cannabis for patients, and blue-toothed them over to my computer.  I spent all morning working on them, arranging materials, thinking through what I was going to say, running rough dress rehearsals.  I even changed my clothes, and made my hair look reasonably nice (one more day, tomorrow it needs to be washed).  I had also looked over the third segment, and decided it needed to be redone, and started pondering what I felt could be improved upon.  

I had awoken with a migraine, but that is almost par for the course these days, and this was SUCH A VERY GOOD IDEA!  It pushed the pain into the background.  In the first part, I discuss what medical cannabis is, why I use it, and how to go about getting a recommendation (nothing illegal).  I also go over civil rights, going over a few different scenarios where knowing your rights is important.  I even almost manage to hide my name while demonstrating what different documents looked like.  Almost.

Not that it is would be hard to trace it back to me, the real person:  Those of you coming from Facebook and Twitter either know me, or are following me because I use medical cannabis.  And anyone randomly coming across the blog wouldn't be able to identify me without at least affirmatively searching.  Plus, all my in laws are blocked on every social network to which  I belong (nice, I know.  I never said I was a sweet person).

Now, the second video goes over methods of ingestion.  Yes, with full on display of paraphernalia.  One accumulates a great deal of it when one has consumed cannabis for over two-thirds of her life (oh, yes).  I actually demonstrate one type.  Yes, with the real medication.

The third segment was showing different types of cannabis, some I have, some I have containers from when I had last had it, so I could explain types I didn't happen to have.  And of course, the real stuff.  Several strains, and some hash.   All on tape.

I was excited about it.  I planned to put it up right away, but decided to wait until tonight.  I'd wait until DH went to sleep.

Then the duvet from Nordstrom, the one about which I had been so excited, arrived.  I opened the first box, which was one of the shams.  It was so beautiful!  I excitedly opened the other box, but wait a second:  That wasn't the duvet I ordered, was it?  I hurried back to the bookmarked site.  SHIT!  What I had thought was the duvet was a coverlet, and I had assumed the actual duvet was a set of sheets; it was SO different than the shams and coverlet.  I didn't even really like this duvet.  Plus, it is ivory.  I have a stinky little dog, who has light brown hair.   We had already eliminated black as an option, just at the thought of her fur woven through each stitch of fabric.  This would show dirt as well.  I was back to square one, plus I was 100% in love with the shams. Shams!  Who would think?

Now I had to have something as close to what I had expected as possible.  Those shams, I wanted those shams.  I started doing frantic google searches. I got angry, then furious.  I was so angry at that stupid duvet, I felt personally affronted by it.  Now I was too upset to re-tape the third part of my series, and my head was killing me, all the "pain relief" of focusing on my narration was gone.   I had to go lie down, the continuity of the series was going to be totally fucked up.  Maybe I should start the whole thing over tomorrow?  I went to take a nap for a few hours.

DH called, and told me someone had been hit by a train, so he didn't know when he would be getting in.  As morbid as that is, it gave me time to calm down.  I woke up completely, and realized my head felt much better.  Maybe I could tape the last part over after DH went to bed.  I started to actually dress up, he had said at lunchtime that he would love to go out for dinner, if my head cleared up.

....DH wouldn't like that I was going to broadcast this at all, so better to tape it when he was out, or asleep, and post it, and never let him see it....

That was kind of weird.  I don't really keep things secret from DH.  Yes, I am hesitant about keeping him up to date about my spending, but frankly, he looks at our bank account every day, he sees what is going out (hence his recent expression of displeasure). I pushed my concern to the back of my mind, but it did niggle.

DH came home, and we spent about hour giggling and hanging out.  I was having "outbursts" of silly, but also weirdly hostile.  I genuinely thought I was joking as the words flew out of my mouth, but once they were out, I would think, "Geez, that was mean!" And  I would apologize.  But DH thought I was a laff-riot.  Still,  I felt uncomfortable, it was as if a filter were gone.   I might still have made those jokes if I weren't all at sixes and sevens emotionally, but I would have had the extra two seconds to think about what was about to come barreling out of my mouth, and stop it, if I thought it was unwise.

Those of you who know DH knows he has a very bizarre sense of humor.  I am lucky.

We went to dinner at an Italian restaurant as close to around the corner as you can get with a Jersey barrier down the center of our major thoroughfare.  We had never been before, but Yelp said really good things pretty consistently.  It was so close I couldn't believe we hadn't tried it, although I am picky about Italian.  Amilia's is a lovely mid-range Italian restaurant, that also sells a rather extensive list of more American-style sandwiches.

We wanted wine with dinner, so we shared a platter of bruschetta to start.  Now the reviews of their bruschetta had been raves, and I had thought, "Really?  Bruschetta?"  I mean, I have eaten a great deal of bruschetta in my day, inside Italy and out.  But holy shit, this may have been some of the best bruschetta I have ever eaten!  Nomnomnom.  Then I had a chicken penne dish with a cream sauce, spinach, mushrooms, fresh tomato, crisp pancetta, cubes of chicken breast, and perfect al dente pasta.  I was shocked at how good it was.  DH had Chicken Parm, and was also very pleased.  We each had a glass of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc, from New Zealand.  DH ate all his chicken, but couldn't eat the side of fettucine, or all his veggies.  I got through less than half of mine, but brought it home.  A yummy lunch (or more evilly, perhaps, a yummy midnight snack.  Hell, a midnight gorge, there is a lot).  


We came home, happy and full, and chattering away.  DH was happy, because he could tell he was going to get lucky.  I was happy because for once a migraine hadn't ruined a weekend evening out, for the first time in at least a month.  Thing went as DH hoped.  But I had a lot of trouble concentrating, and staying focused (you might not think that could even be an issue, but my mind is going a million miles an hour).  It was actually somewhere mid-fuck (sorry) that I began to really start to think about what I was planning on posting on the Internet.

But it was informative and instructive!  Everything I did was legal under California law, and de facto legal under Obama's administration!  I want to be a cannabis activist!  I have committed felonies on behalf of causes before (syringe exchange was a felony, can you believe it?)!

But this was all pre-Internet.  Not to mention pre-DH.  There is someone else to take into consideration.

No Fair.  Why do I have to change my approach?

Wait a second.   Haven't I been saying I am labile and manic?  I have been cleaning a lot, but today I was so busy taping, I didn't get any cleaning done.  In other words, I was still in a frenzy, it just didn't happen to involve cleaning.

And isn't one the classic symptoms of mania lack of self-awareness?  Maybe I am being a little hasty.  I can always post new, better, videos when I am feeling better, right?  I am too embarrassed now to even run the idea by DH.  I know it is the mania.  This is mania, not hypo-mania.  I don't know what to do.

So my conscious kicked in.   Cashmere goats may be raised so you can wear a sweater in good conscience, but what really matters is I got my self-consciousness back.

Even crazy people can be conscious.