tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634 janersm janersm 2012-10-04T10:48:36Z tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:6111954 2012-10-04T10:48:36Z 2012-10-04T10:48:36Z public 0 <p>I have no appointment today. My mom does, but, for the first time this week, I don&#8217;t. I would normally say that a lack of an appointment is worthy of a happy dance, but I&#8217;m a bit worried about my mom&#8217;s appointment.</p> <p>She has to have an ankle CT this afternoon to find out what the surgical approach will be to fix her left ankle. She&#8217;s got a dislocation, fracture/re-fracture, and bent hardware from a fall that she had at Nana&#8217;s house. It&#8217;s the first ankle that she had surgery on&#8211;the ankle that has already had two surgeries. And since she&#8217;s in constant pain since the fall, the orthopedist has already told her she will end up having surgery again. He had said, at first, that she might not have surgery again, but she explained that she&#8217;s in constant pain with it and he said that the fixes would, at least, be able to stop that&#8211;even if they make her ankle less flexible.</p> <p>So, I shall worry about my poppet.</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/10/04/no-appointment-today/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=6111954" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:6111400 2012-10-03T23:31:16Z 2012-10-03T23:31:16Z public 0 <p>My parents and I went to the dentist yesterday. We didn&#8217;t get our teeth cleaned, but we did get X-Rays. I&#8217;m proud to say that I don&#8217;t have any problems now that I didn&#8217;t (probably) have the last time I saw a dentist. That isn&#8217;t to say that I don&#8217;t have anything wrong.</p> <p>In 1993 or 1994, I got sealants put on all my 12-year molars. In 1997 or 1998, the 12-year molar on my upper left side broke while I was eating lunch at school. After that, I had a root canal started by a dentist and finished by an endodontist before I got a crown put on it. I had to go to the endodontist because the dentist couldn&#8217;t find the 3rd part of the nerve. (He also had to block off too much time to look because my mouth got numb in an odd way&#8211;the opposite side would numb first and then it would take two to three times how long it should have taken before the left side would get numb.) The endodontist couldn&#8217;t find that part of the nerve either and declared that it just wasn&#8217;t there.</p> <p>Yesterday, I found out that that tooth still had a cavity and the root has a lesion. I can either go through a new root canal, a new build-up, and a new crown OR I can have the tooth pulled. The latter is cheaper, so I may have to go with that. Either way, I have to have an <a href="http://www.dental.uab.edu/patients/become-a-patient/specialty/endodontics.html">endodontist consult</a>.</p> <p>The other problem is that the dental student who examined my teeth said that I need to have the braces done as soon as I can get them done. I told the student that I do have trouble chewing and she didn&#8217;t seem shocked that that was an issue after seeing my teeth. She was staring at my bite for a second during the exam, and, though I had something between my teeth, I told her that it was a crossbite and underbite, which means that my teeth don&#8217;t meet properly. My lower jaw is more prominent and my teeth cross in a funny way.</p> <p><img src="https://twitpic.com/show/iphone/b0qs9u" alt="my teeth" /></p> <p>My teeth also point in an odd way because they try to meet properly. The top ones point forward, though this isn&#8217;t visible when you look at them. The bottom ones point backward, which is very visible. The student thought that braces alone might fix the issue, but the orthodontists and oral surgeons who I&#8217;ve seen before have been pretty clear that <a href="http://www.aaoms.org/jaw_surgery.php">jaw surgery</a> will be required. My maxilla will have to be broken around the mid-line and rotated down, while my mandible will have to be shortened and pushed back. I also have an openbite, which will be fixed at the same time. The consensus has been, in the past, that it will be about 18 months after the first set of braces before I&#8217;ll get the surgery, then a new set will be put on and about 6-12 months later they will be taken off. They&#8217;ll be top and bottom braces because both jaws have to be worked on. I tried to tell the student some of this, but she said that things may have changed and surgery might not be necessary. I figure that if it is serious enough that braces are no longer truly optional, that the need for surgery is probably still there. So, I&#8217;ll have an <a href="http://www.dental.uab.edu/patients/become-a-patient/specialty/orthodontics.html">orthodontist consult</a> there and I may be able to get them a lot cheaper at their braces clinic.</p> <p>She wants me to get a new night guard, because sometimes, when I grind my teeth, my jaw hurts really bad. It has more to do with going to bed angry or in pain. I have to make sure to take Flexeril to relax my jaw enough so that I don&#8217;t grind them. I think she was so insistent on it because my jaw kept dislocating when she would have me open it. That seemed to weird her out a little.</p> <p>So, I have to go back to Birmingham and get my teeth cleaned and have all this stuff done/checked out.</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/10/03/a-bracing-problem/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=6111400" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:6110845 2012-10-01T04:26:37Z 2012-10-01T04:26:37Z public 0 <p>In about twelve hours, I get to go back to the <a href="http://clearviewcancer.com">hematologist&#8217;s office/building</a> for the 4-hour infusion. I always get a little nervous the day before infusions. I&#8217;m not too fond of being poked with needles to begin with, because of the hard stick thing. Infusions are a bit worse for a few reasons, but when it comes to the needle part, I dread it because not only do they have to find a vein, they have to find a vein that can hold the IV. (My veins, in addition to being hard to find, are small, move, blow easily, and are notoriously stubborn when it comes to working.)</p> <p>I also dread the infusion itself. <a href="http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Kidney-disease-chronic/Pages/MedicineSideEffects.aspx?condition=Iron%20deficiency&amp;medicine=Iron%20Sucrose&amp;preparation=">Iron infusions burn</a>. It isn&#8217;t a little sensation. It goes from the site on the arm of the IV down to the hand and around the IV.  It hurts and it is painful, and you have to suffer through the pain/burning because iron infusions (and blood transfusions) are a treatment of last resort. Since I can&#8217;t take the iron orally, the burning is something I will have to learn to tolerate.</p> <p>And finally, I dread the way I will feel from a few minutes into the IV until a few days later. I got really bad headaches after the 30 minute/1-hour treatments and my blood pressure shot up really high. So I will basically be overdoing it on my Flexeril for the next 48 hours or so. If my blood pressure didn&#8217;t get so high (<a href="http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/hbp/">140+/100+</a>) on infusions, I wouldn&#8217;t have to max out my dose of muscle relaxers, but I have to do something to get it under control. I may even have to pull out the Lisinopril that was given to me at one point.</p> <p>About the only thing that won&#8217;t completely suck is that if it&#8217;s an iron sucrose infusion like last time, it may have the taste of burnt sugar. That&#8217;s not so bad. (It&#8217;s<strong> a lot</strong> better than the saline flush that they use for IVs.)</p> <p>In an ideal world, Tuesday would be a day of rest for me so that I could recover from the infusion properly. Sadly, Tuesday is the day that I have to go to the dentist, so I won&#8217;t get to recover then. I also won&#8217;t get to recover Wednesday because I have a renal ultrasound scheduled for that day. So I&#8217;m claiming Thursday now as a day for me to sleep and do absolutely nothing&#8211;basically, I&#8217;m claiming it as a regular day for me.</p> <p>I hope this infusion helps more than the previous ones. I also hope that they figure where the iron is going after this. Maybe if they figure it out, it can be fixed. And if it is fixed, maybe I&#8217;ll finally be able to have a somewhat normal life. A girl can dream, right?</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/09/30/back-to-burnt-sugar/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=6110845" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:6106837 2012-09-09T02:33:37Z 2012-09-13T22:56:29Z public 0 <p>Dear Suncoast Basset Rescue,</p> <p>I’m one of <a href="http://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/24013413" target="_blank">Willow</a>’s former owners. She wasn’t crated the majority of her life. In fact, she was rarely put in her kennel. (The only times we really put her in there was when my mom, dad, and I would have to go somewhere together for a few hours or when paramedics would have to come to take my mom to the hospital—mom is very ill with kidney failure, diabetes, and high blood pressure.) She would protest going into the kennel and would run around the house trying to keep from going in one. She actually spent most of her days in a chair next to my mother’s couch. I’ve attached a picture of her in her chair, cuddled with one of her toys. She’s a very sweet girl and was actually housebroken when we got her. When my family’s health deteriorated dramatically in short time period, we were no longer able to take the dogs out enough to keep them housebroken. Willow has a few health problems, which you may or may not know about. (I hope that the shelter she came from told you about them.) She was diagnosed with an enlarged heart a few months after we first adopted her. She had to take Enalapril for that all year, and sometimes had to take theophylline to clear fluid out of her lungs. She was also diagnosed with an underactive thyroid, which caused her to lose hair in many spots. She was on a thyroid pill twice a day for that. And she had to have regular blood work done to make sure that her levels were maintained.</p> <p>We also were the family of Molly, who is on your website at number <a href="http://www.suncoastbassetrescue.org/available/girls_molly829.asp" target="_blank">829</a>. Molly was adopted in late 2003 or early 2004. She was born October 27, 2002 and her birth certificate is somewhere in our house, so she is quickly approaching her 10th birthday. Molly has cowered since we first got her. As one of our vets told us and as you noticed, she was abused. She was purchased from a breeder, left outside, given to someone else, and then she got pregnant. When that happened, her then owner took her to a shelter in Selma. She had her puppies, but the shelter there wasn’t feeding her enough to keep her at a healthy weight. When we adopted her, she was severely underweight. We had to feed her puppy chow to boost her weight, but she was always on the low end of normal. Before her second birthday, we found out that Molly had arthritis, which acts up when she is cold or when the weather is bad. Sometimes she gets angsty when that happens, but we would just rub her ears and try to keep her comfortable when that happened. Molly had breast tumors removed early on, and they were not cancerous. Earlier this year, though, she had a tumor removed from her left hip. She had some abscesses from the non-cancerous tumors. We kept them cleaned, which she didn’t usually mind, and had her checked by the doctor, which she didn’t like. (She has to be muzzled at the vet because she has a major fear of vets. She would growl anytime she would see or hear a vet or vet tech.) She loves to cuddle and she would lay in my lap whenever I would read. We joked that she read the entire Harry Potter series with me. She lost weight while she was in the shelter this year after she got sick and was depressed.</p> <p>My parents and I didn’t want to give her or Willow or our other 2 dogs up, but we were extremely sick, our house was a mess and condemned to boot, and we had no other choice. We miss them and love them everyday, but we know that they are probably doing better in other environments. We were very happy to see that they made it to a basset rescue because we had hoped that if we couldn’t get them back that they would go to a basset rescue.</p> <p>I wanted to send this to make sure that they’re taken care of and that your agency has a better understanding of these two girls.</p> <div class="gallery gallery1"> <dl class="gallery-item"> <dt class="gallery-icon"> <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/143-300x225.jpg" title="" rel="gallery1"><img src="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/143-150x150.jpg" width="150" height="150" alt="" /></a> </dt></dl><dl class="gallery-item"> <dt class="gallery-icon"> <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/082-300x225.jpg" title="" rel="gallery1"><img src="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/082-150x150.jpg" width="150" height="150" alt="" /></a> </dt></dl><br style="clear: both" /><dl class="gallery-item"> <dt class="gallery-icon"> <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/001-300x225.jpg" title="" rel="gallery1"><img src="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/001-150x150.jpg" width="150" height="150" alt="" /></a> </dt></dl><dl class="gallery-item"> <dt class="gallery-icon"> <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/154-300x225.jpg" title="" rel="gallery1"><img src="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/154-150x150.jpg" width="150" height="150" alt="" /></a> </dt></dl><br style="clear: both" /><br style="clear: both" /></div> <div class="crp_related"><h3>Related Posts:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/06/07/this-is-the-pack/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">This is the Pack</a></li><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/08/17/the-poor-basset-baby/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">The Poor Basset Baby</a></li><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/08/17/the-poor-basset-baby-2/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">The Poor Basset Baby</a></li><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/03/15/why-we-fight/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Why We Fight</a></li><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/03/15/why-we-fight-2/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Why We Fight</a></li></ul></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/09/08/dear-suncoast-basset-rescue/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=6106837" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:17314 2012-04-04T18:42:04Z 2012-09-20T03:16:14Z public 0 <p>I&#8217;m supposed to get my laptop fixed on Friday. For once in my life, I guess I&#8217;m going to have to treat Good Friday as if it actually is <em>good</em>. I hope that the technician is able to fix it, but I&#8217;m not going to assume that it will be that easy. Experience has taught me not to expect things to happen as quickly or easily as one would hope. That is especially true of repairs.</p> <p>In the meantime, my dad is being nice about letting me have time on his computer. I guess he&#8217;s become accustomed to my laptop deciding to take a sabbatical. I guess that that makes sense.</p> <p>My mom is being extremely difficult lately. I know that that has become the norm lately, but it seems like she is getting worse. And it seems like it is about the weirdest things.</p> <p>When my dad and I came home from the emergency room on Wednesday, she decided that because I wasn&#8217;t admitted to the hospital, told what was wrong with my digestive system, and wasn&#8217;t dead that I was feeling well enough to be bossed around. She felt that it was appropriate to start having me get her things within five minutes of coming in. If she hadn&#8217;t just heard that I was anemic and that my blood pressure was low, then I could probably give her a break on that, but she&#8217;d heard both things and she just <em>didn&#8217;t care</em>. Actually, she seemed a bit pissed that I went to the hospital instead of her.</p> <p>When my parents went to the grocery store last week, I had put chips and chocolate (in that order) on my list, which is normal. My dad understood that because the two things were on separate lines, I wanted chocolate and chips. My mother, on the other hand, decided that I wanted chocolate chips. When they got home and I asked why they had gotten 2 bags of chocolate chips, she told me that chocolate chips had been on my list. I knew that <strong>wasn&#8217;t possible</strong>. (I had written the list out twice because I felt the first time I was a bit too rude about what I didn&#8217;t want [i.e. food I can't eat] them to get for me.) My dad still had the list, so I got it from him and I showed it to my mom. I asked her where on the list had I asked for chocolate chips. She realized that she&#8217;d made a mistake. Of course, she had already taken the &#8220;fun&#8221; step of accusing me of trying to make her look bad. <em>That wasn&#8217;t the case. </em>She told me that I was lying and that I was definitely trying to make her look incompetent.  She says that anytime anyone calls her on being wrong.  She thinks that it is my mission in life (and my dad&#8217;s mission in life) to make her miserable and make her seem like she doesn&#8217;t have a clue about what is going on.  I guess she thinks we enjoy giving her a hard time.<em><br /> </em></p> <p>The next day, she asked if she was going to be getting my bank statements and bills and access to my accounts, so that she could get my finances &#8220;all straightened out&#8221;. She had decided that she was going to do this about a week before, after she&#8217;d told my dad that I had overdrawn my bank account again. (I hadn&#8217;t.) She&#8217;d come home from the grocery store that week to tell me that I was being irresponsible with the money in the account and that it was all due to being bipolar. She felt that, though she has a tendency to spend money as easy as (or easier than) me, she was the person who should be in charge of the accounts. At first, I had agreed, but that was only after she&#8217;d basically forced me to the brink of tears. By last Friday, though, I&#8217;d decided that I didn&#8217;t like that idea and I didn&#8217;t like how the &#8220;agreement&#8221; had been reached. When I told her, she said, &#8220;Your father told me that you would never let me do that.&#8221; I replied, &#8220;Well, I guess he knows me better than you do.&#8221; That pissed her off. She said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know how.&#8221; I told her that dad and I had gotten a bit closer lately. She pointed out all the things that she had done for me in my life, and that my dad was always too busy for me. Basically, she was trying to use my insecurities with my dad against me. When she realized that that wasn&#8217;t going to work, she told me that she expected them to get the $200 per month that I owed them, even if I couldn&#8217;t pay any other bill or became overdrawn. And she seemed to think that I would definitely become overdrawn without her.</p> <p>I realized about then that my mom has definitely been using me a lot more than I thought she did. I don&#8217;t know if she intentionally does it or if it&#8217;s just a &#8220;happy consequence&#8221; of the stuff I went through as a kid. I guess I&#8217;ve become so dependent on her for love and approval that I&#8217;ve given away my sense of personhood. The reason that I feel unappreciated and like a slave in my own house is probably that on some level, she doesn&#8217;t appreciate me and she does think of me more as a slave than as a daughter. And that&#8217;s depressing. I practically worshipped her for the majority of my life, and I feel like she never really valued me. Maybe I&#8217;ve let people step all over me my whole life because I just don&#8217;t feel like I deserve a real say in things.</p> <p>Oh, I&#8217;m considering moving the posts from <a href="http://hyperaware.net">Hyperaware</a> and <a href="http://blahblahbiddyblah.com">Blah Blah Biddy Blah</a> onto this domain. I&#8217;ve got a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/questions/10150724604433987/">poll</a> on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/fuzzypinkslippers">the Facebook page</a> for fuzzypinkslippers.com. If you could vote on it, I would appreciate it. I think it would be easier on and cheaper for me to combine them, but I want to know what other people think. Feel free to comment there or here about what you think about the possible combination.</p> <p>Now, I&#8217;m about to talk about some stuff that might be gross for some folks, so don&#8217;t look if you&#8217;re squeamish.</p> <div class="crp_related"><h3>Related Posts:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/12/19/lay-it-all-on-me/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Lay It All On Me</a></li><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/09/14/been-so-long/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Been So Long</a></li><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/06/cant-and-wont-are-different-things/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Can&#8217;t and Won&#8217;t Are Different Things</a></li><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/09/30/how-to-hold-my-heart/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">How to Hold My Heart</a></li><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/05/14/do-you-hate-me/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Do You Hate Me</a></li></ul></div><span class="cut-wrapper"><span style="display: none;" id="span-cuttag___1" class="cuttag"></span><b class="cut-open">(&nbsp;</b><b class="cut-text"><a href="https://janersm.dreamwidth.org/17314.html#cutid1">Read the rest of this entry &raquo;</a></b><b class="cut-close">&nbsp;)</b></span><div style="display: none;" id="div-cuttag___1" aria-live="assertive"></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/04/04/idle-hands/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=17314" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:17150 2012-04-03T20:34:12Z 2012-09-20T03:08:15Z public 0 <p>I&#8217;m having to have my laptop repaired <em><strong>again</strong></em>.  Guess what the repair is for?  If you guessed motherboard, then you obviously know my laptop better than the guy at tech support.  He told me that it had the motherboard replaced once and the only other repairs that were done were the palm rest and the LCD.  Um, no.  It has only been repaired onsite (meaning at my home or at Nana&#8217;s house) for those issues, but when it has gone to the depot, it has had all kinds of stuff replaced.  Honestly, it&#8217;s got more new parts than all of the plastic surgery addicts of Beverly Hills combined.  The constant repairing led to me submitting a question to <a title="WHNT - local CBS affiliate for Huntsville" href="http://whnt.com" target="_blank">WHNT</a> about my state&#8217;s lemon law.  I&#8217;m hoping it gets picked/answered.  This is what I submitted:</p> <blockquote><p>I purchased a computer about 3 years ago from Dell and almost a year after I purchased it, it had a motherboard failure. Since then, there have been about 4 more motherboard failures plus many other repairs. The laptop is being repaired about every 3-4 months. It&#8217;s become really frustrating and I feel like my laptop is a lemon. Would it be covered under the lemon law? Or does that only apply to certain products? If it is covered, what would I need to do? I would really like to be able to get my geek on without contacting tech support so much.</p></blockquote> <p>So, maybe they&#8217;ll pick it.  Keep your fingers crossed.</p> <p>In other lemon-related news, I went to the doctor yesterday afternoon.  Before I can get my GI referral, I have to jump through just a few more hoops.  Namely, I have to have my Amylase, CMP (which was done at the ER), Lipase, and Lipid levels checked, as well as an abdominal ultrasound, 2 urine tests, and 4 (this is gross) stool tests.  I have a feeling that insurance will kick the CMP when I go for it, because it was just checked less than a week ago.  The other stuff, they will probably allow.  The family doctor apologized to me yesterday when he was doing the exam.  I made sure to yelp, scream, and holler when he would hit certain spots&#8211;something I have finally learned to do.  I was surprised when he said he was sorry for hurting me.  His attending came in and repeated the exam.  She also was somewhat apologetic.  (Maybe because I had been mentioning the pain and the issues somewhat persistently since I started to go to that clinic.)</p> <p>When the nurse did my vitals, my blood pressure was doing its fun bottoming out thing.  The top number was either 122 or 127 (one was for BP and one was for pulse), but the lower number was 53.  It was kind of funny that it was so low because the nurse checking me in had just asked me if I was on blood pressure medicine about a second before the number popped up.  I think that, because of my weight, she was expecting it to be super-high.  She does not know how my body likes to operate.  She and the doctors also didn&#8217;t seem to realize that the constant up and down, including laying back and raising back up was making me nearly pass out.  I wanted to tell them, but when I would get so dizzy and light-headed, I couldn&#8217;t exactly think straight enough to get my point across.</p> <p>When the nurse checked my weight, it almost looked like she was going to go with 298, but she decided to go up to the 300 range and settled on 312.  The scale seemed like it &#8220;thought&#8221; I was closer to the 298, but she went with 312.  Don&#8217;t know why.   After she went with 312, she made sure to announce it vocally, which is something I hate.  I understand if she thinks that I need to know the number, but believe it or not, I can read a scale well enough to tell what my weight is.  I don&#8217;t like having the whole world hear it, though.  Anyway, if it is at 298, then it has hit a new low.  If it is at 312, it may be one of the lower numbers for their scales.</p> <p>I had to describe what was wrong to her, and, wouldn&#8217;t you know, she tried to convince me that I could be pregnant.  When I told her that it wasn&#8217;t possible, she gave me a look of disbelief.  Yeah, I know, I&#8217;m going in complaining of nausea and pain, among other things, and I&#8217;m 28 and on Medicaid, but I&#8217;m not an effing stereotype.  It is, as far as I know, impossible to get pregnant without having Miss Egg introduced to Mr. Sperm.  I&#8217;m pretty sure that I would know if I had had sex with someone.  I guess she thought I would be too ashamed to mention it, or something.  God, I hope that if I had sex and got pregnant or thought I was pregnant that I wouldn&#8217;t be too ashamed to tell a nurse about it.  I may be shy and hesitant about talking about certain things, but I hope <em>that</em> wouldn&#8217;t be one of them.</p> <div class="crp_related"><h3>Related Posts:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/15/motherboard-may-i/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Motherboard, May I?</a></li><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/15/motherboard-may-i-2/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Motherboard, May I?</a></li><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/03/28/the-beating-of-our-hearts-is-the-only-sound/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">The Beating of Our Hearts Is the Only Sound</a></li><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/11/30/bitch-didnt-even-suffer/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Bitch Didn&#8217;t Even Suffer</a></li><li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/06/11/when-the-girl-comes-down/" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">When the Girl Comes Down</a></li></ul></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/04/03/lets-make-some-lemonade-yo/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=17150" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:14902 2012-03-13T03:49:00Z 2012-03-13T03:49:00Z public 0 <p><iframe src="http://imgur.com/a/xeg7F/embed" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="550"></iframe></p> <p>Tomorrow is the primary in the state of Alabama. I hate not voting in any election, even runoffs, but I really don&#8217;t see the point of voting tomorrow. I can choose between voting in the Republican primary or the Democratic one, since people in the state aren&#8217;t forced to vote for a party that they&#8217;ve allied themselves with.</p> <p>I hate voting for Republicans, so voting in that primary does not really interest me. I don&#8217;t like any of the GOP Presidential candidates. I don&#8217;t like any of the GOP candidates for Congress. I don&#8217;t like any of the candidates for County Commission Chairperson.</p> <p>I would love to vote in the Democratic primary tomorrow, but there is absolutely no point. I can choose between voting for Obama and voting uncommitted. (I&#8217;d choose Obama.) Then, with the delegate selection, I don&#8217;t really know who to pick. And it doesn&#8217;t really matter who gets selected because they&#8217;re all delegates for the same candidate. And with no other position to vote for in the primary, it seems like a waste of time to go to the precinct tomorrow.</p> <p>So, tomorrow&#8217;s primary is just a big day of sucking in my opinion.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/03/12/the-big-day-of-sucking/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=14902" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:14846 2012-03-09T00:00:56Z 2012-03-09T00:00:56Z public 0 <p>Just 2 years ago, I had sinus surgery and a septoplasty done.  I had fun telling people I had a nose job after that.  Well, now I&#8217;ve had BOTOX injected (31 times) into my head, neck, and shoulders for my migraines.  It wasn&#8217;t too painful, for the most part.  There were some spots that hurt more than others.  The neurologist also managed to find blood vessels in places that he hadn&#8217;t found them on other folks before.  That didn&#8217;t really surprise me.  My body&#8217;s always a little different.</p> <p>Now, I&#8217;m a bit achy all over and feel sort of rundown, but I think that&#8217;s normal when you get this kind of shot. I&#8217;ve also coughed a little more, but that might just be because my mouth dried out during the wait to see the doctor.  It&#8217;s probably all nerves.</p> <p>I had another first this week.</p> <p>I had group therapy (it&#8217;s a specialty group for depression and anxiety) on Tuesday for the first time since I got out of the &#8220;nuthouse&#8221; in 2001.  I&#8217;ve been hesitant about it since then because of the bad experience I had at that hospital and my tendency to clam up around other people.  But I went.  I cried through the majority of the session, and I thought I was doing a good job hiding it until it began to shift into a major snot-crying session.  I couldn&#8217;t stop it on my own, but someone started talking about their pets and how they help them get through the day and that made my icky, annoying tearfest go away.  I was suddenly quite cheerful and I think I even laughed and smiled some.  It was weird.  If I had tried to think about my fur babies on my own, then I would be crying more.  Somehow, when all of these different people started talking about their pets that they loved so much, it eased the anxiety and sadness that I was feeling.  That was actually nice to feel.</p> <p>I may start to enjoy group therapy, which is really shocking. The BOTOX will not become a love of mine, though.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/03/08/ive-got-botox-in-my-head-neck-and-i-aint-afraid-to-show-itx-in-my-back-and-i-aint-afraid-to-show-it/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li 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class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/03/08/ive-got-botox-in-my-head-neck-and-i-aint-afraid-to-show-itx-in-my-back-and-i-aint-afraid-to-show-it/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=14846" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:14578 2012-02-28T19:20:49Z 2012-02-28T19:20:49Z public 0 <p>As a child, I had two sets of parents&#8211;the biological ones who provided me with food, shelter, and care and the musical ones who taught me the joy of music and dance.  As of February 11, the biological parents are the only parents I have left.  And though they are the only ones that I have ever personally known, I still feel a great loss after the deaths of my musical parents.</p> <p>Whitney Houston was my musical mother and Michael Jackson was my musical father.  As a child, the only two people who influenced me more than my parents, grandparents, aunts, and other relatives were Michael and Whitney.  I don&#8217;t remember a moment in my life where I wasn&#8217;t a fan of the two of them. Though some might not realize it, there are probably few people born in the eighties that weren&#8217;t, in some way, influenced by the music of these two icons.</p> <p>I would watch videos (back when VHS was in its heyday) of Whitney and Michael over and over; the obsession led to the tapes becoming completely worn out.  I would also listen to audio tapes and vinyl records in the same obsessive nature.  The <em>Whitney</em> album, containing &#8220;I Wanna Dance With Somebody&#8221;, can no longer be played because I&#8217;d listened to it so much that it became damaged.  I could recite the lyrics of the majority of their songs (that had been released at that time) and the dialogue from Michael Jackson&#8217;s <em>Moonwalker</em> before I started to elementary school. As I got older, I no longer watched or listened to the music with the same obsessive fury.  I would still get their albums.  I would watch their movies, though I still haven&#8217;t watched all of <em>Waiting to Exhale</em>.  I still adored these two people, even when the rest of the world turned their backs on them.</p> <p>I wanted to be them, as a small child, even though there was no physical way for me to become the embodiment of either Michael or Whitney.  They were more than just role models to me.  They were, essentially, non-custodial parents.  And when they died, I felt like I had lost an actual family member.  I went through the same shock, denial, anger, etc. routine that I had gone through with the deaths of my three deceased grandparents.  It took days for it to feel real and, even now, it still sometimes feels like some kind of cruel dream.</p> <p>And I have wondered, since the death of Whitney, if or how I should address her death.  I didn&#8217;t want it to seem like I was pretending to adore her, which is something many fans have been accused of since her death.  I wanted whatever I said to be how I actually felt, so I waited and waited and waited.  And what I&#8217;ve said still doesn&#8217;t seem like enough.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/28/the-orphaned-voice/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li class="share-print share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-print share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/28/the-orphaned-voice/#print" title="Click to print"></a></li><li class="share-facebook share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-facebook share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/28/the-orphaned-voice/?share=facebook" title="Share on Facebook"></a></li><li class="share-reddit share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-reddit share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/28/the-orphaned-voice/?share=reddit" title="Click to share on Reddit"></a></li><li class="share-digg share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-digg share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/28/the-orphaned-voice/?share=digg" title="Click to Digg this post"></a></li><li class="share-custom share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" style="background:url(http://www.dandyid.org/code/images/miscellaneous/favicons/tumblr.png) no-repeat center left;" class="share-custom share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/28/the-orphaned-voice/?share=custom-1303589712" title="Click to share"></a></li><li class="share-stumbleupon share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/28/the-orphaned-voice/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/28/the-orphaned-voice/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=14578" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:14150 2012-02-17T06:55:04Z 2012-02-17T06:55:40Z public 0 <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/HASQQD9ATP6V">Today is my 28th birthday</a>. I&#8217;ve received a few sweet birthday wishes from some of my friends.  I&#8217;ve also received a card and a check (for $20) from my grandmother.  I have a feeling that that will be it for the birthday celebration.  I&#8217;m very sure that my maternal aunt will not be sending any cards.  I think that she is still of the opinion that if I died, the world would be better off.  My paternal aunt might say happy birthday if she gets on Facebook sometime today.  My mom will probably forget that it is my birthday, and will thus expect me to run around doing things for her.  I don&#8217;t think my dad has even noticed that it is no longer the 16th, so he may not realize that it is my birthday. (Oh, there he just noticed.)</p> <p>So, my plans for the day are:</p> <ul> <li>Once my dad goes to bed, I shall watch the episodes of <em>Vampire Diaries</em>, <em>Gossip Girl</em>, and <em>Grey&#8217;s Anatomy</em> that I&#8217;ve had to DVR this week.</li> <li>If I still have energy after that, I&#8217;m going to finally watch<em> Breaking Dawn Pt. 1</em>.  (I still haven&#8217;t seen it.)</li> </ul> <p>That&#8217;s all.  No other plans.  No other plans to make plans.</p> <p>I told my parents a few hours ago that I was not going to do anything on my birthday, meaning I&#8217;m not cooking or doing stuff for them.  I doubt that they will remember that.</p> <p>I may see if I can go get Will (maternal aunt&#8217;s grandson) a birthday card so that I can celebrate his birthday, which is the 18th.  I have a feeling that a card from me would be unwanted by his parents and grandparents.  I don&#8217;t really care whether or not they want me to send him a card, though.  I have no problem with him.  He has no problem with me.  It would be nice to celebrate his birthday.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/17/how-old-would-you-be-if-you-didnt-know-how-old-you-are/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li class="share-print share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-print share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/17/how-old-would-you-be-if-you-didnt-know-how-old-you-are/#print" title="Click to print"></a></li><li class="share-facebook share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" 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href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/17/how-old-would-you-be-if-you-didnt-know-how-old-you-are/?share=custom-1303589712" title="Click to share"></a></li><li class="share-stumbleupon share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/17/how-old-would-you-be-if-you-didnt-know-how-old-you-are/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/17/how-old-would-you-be-if-you-didnt-know-how-old-you-are/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=14150" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:13637 2012-02-06T21:58:21Z 2012-02-06T21:58:21Z public 0 <p>I&#8217;m going to start this by saying that I love my mother and father dearly because I may say some things that indicate otherwise.</p> <p>I&#8217;m <del>tired</del> sleep deprived.  I don&#8217;t get to sleep well very often.  I&#8217;m always doing something for someone, whether it is waking up every two hours to get my mom food and water or waking up every morning to wake my dad up (even though he has an alarm clock) or waking up to cook dinner for them.  I&#8217;ve become a mother to my parents, and that might be okay, except I don&#8217;t want to be their mother and I don&#8217;t feel like I can keep doing these things for them.  I can&#8217;t quit, though, because it isn&#8217;t a job.  And I try not to complain because I know that they both don&#8217;t feel well and I know that my dad does some things around the house that I can&#8217;t do.</p> <p>Still, I want to quit.  I want to run away and hide somewhere where they can&#8217;t find me.  I want to leave and never come back.  And I know that that is selfish, but I just cannot deal with this any longer.  I feel like shit and I need to sleep, but I can&#8217;t because someone always needs me.  So, the more sleep I miss, the grumpier that I get and the worse I feel.  I try to point this out, and it is remembered for all of two seconds before I get my marching orders again.</p> <p>My mother fell last weekend and cracked her ribs.  She wouldn&#8217;t go to the doctor for the first few days after the fall, but just kept whimpering like a hurt animal.  She said she couldn&#8217;t go to the doctor because my dad wouldn&#8217;t take her.  She hadn&#8217;t told my dad she needed to go, and he can&#8217;t exactly force her to go.  (He knew she needed to, but I don&#8217;t think he wanted to try to convince her.)  So, I told him that she needed to go, and I told her that I told him that she needed to go.   She went to the ER last week and found out that her ribs were cracked.  The doctor at the ER couldn&#8217;t give her any extra pain medicine (because she&#8217;s on one with an opiate antagonist in it), so he gave her Flexeril.</p> <p>My mom doesn&#8217;t do so well on Flexeril.  Every time she takes one, she ends up sleeping through days and wondering around in a stupor.  She gets whiny and she gets more clumsy.  And this leads to her falling more often and to her making claims that we either don&#8217;t love her or don&#8217;t take care of her or don&#8217;t pay attention to her.</p> <p>Case in point, she fell last night.  She had already fallen about 12 hours earlier and managed, with some help, to get up on her own.  (Keep in mind, when she broke the ribs last week, she got herself off the floor with absolutely no help.)  Last night, though, she wasted her energy holding on to a door frame during the fall, so she was too tired to try to get up when she finally completed the fall.  We had to call the ambulance.  Even though she was fine, other than that she was in a drugged out state and a little sore, she decided she had to go to the emergency room.  There was nothing wrong, but she needed to have tests run to prove that to her.</p> <p>When my father and I were going to call the ambulance, she first accused us of not taking care of her and not loving her.  This was after I&#8217;d managed to hear her call (over Mims&#8217; &#8220;Like This&#8221;), run to her, then run to my dad&#8217;s room and gotten him up, and we&#8217;d both spent about 30-45 minutes trying to help her get up.  My dad had tried to basically pick her up, even though she weighs about 100 pounds or so more than him.  I&#8217;d moved pieces of furniture toward her that I thought would help her get up easier.  My father was out of breath and worn out.  I was about to pass out or vomit or both.  But because we headed toward the phone to call someone else to help her, which she had asked us to do a minute earlier, she determined that we didn&#8217;t care enough for her.</p> <p>When the paramedics got here, she enjoyed slinging some barbs at our expense.  My dad drove to the hospital at 3:30 or so in the morning, even though he has trouble seeing at night, so that he would be with her at the ER.  (I stayed here, as I usually do.)  When she got home, she had my dad fix her 2 breakfast burritos.  A couple of hours later, she woke me up with an order for a bagel and cream cheese.  And at about 1 pm, she asked me to fix her 2 small frozen chicken biscuits, her 32 oz. cup of water, and hot chocolate.  That wouldn&#8217;t be such a big deal if we had a decent microwave, but since the biscuits took about 5-6 minutes to cook, as did the hot chocolate, and I didn&#8217;t feel like I could waste the energy sitting down and standing up, I ended up standing up during the 12 minutes it took to do this.  A while after she had eaten that and had gotten up for a minute, I ended up having to move her back onto her couch.  And she was still in the &#8220;my family is awful to me&#8221; mood, which made it that much harder.  (Somehow, the moodier she is, the less cooperative she is.)  She even said it a few times, which I wanted to scream at her over.</p> <p>I get that she is in pain, but she is stuck in this bubble.  She thinks that no one takes care of her, which is ridiculous.  We do everything that she asks for and she still gets pissed off at us.  And she&#8217;s doing more of her &#8220;I&#8217;m worse than you are&#8221; comparisons again.  She&#8217;d stopped for a few days, but she&#8217;s back at it.  If I tell her that I&#8217;m going to faint, I don&#8217;t exactly want her to try to one-up my statement.  I want her to say that I should go sit down or take a break or something that I would think a mother would suggest to their daughter when their daughter said something like that.  And, this may sound petty, she always seems to fall more (and have to go to the ER) when I have an appointment with a doctor or someone that I <em>need</em> to see.  She may not plan it, but it almost always happens that way.</p> <p>So I&#8217;m frustrated.  And I&#8217;m sitting here with a splitting headache, and I know that I can&#8217;t take anything for it because my mom might need me and my dad is getting in his much-needed rest.  So I&#8217;m going to try to avoid talking to anyone on the internet until I get a little bit of sleep because, until then, I am going to be bitchy.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/06/cant-and-wont-are-different-things/?share=email" 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share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" style="background:url(http://www.dandyid.org/code/images/miscellaneous/favicons/tumblr.png) no-repeat center left;" class="share-custom share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/06/cant-and-wont-are-different-things/?share=custom-1303589712" title="Click to share"></a></li><li class="share-stumbleupon share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/06/cant-and-wont-are-different-things/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/02/06/cant-and-wont-are-different-things/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=13637" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:13376 2012-01-20T13:55:55Z 2012-01-20T13:55:55Z public 0 <p>On Wednesday, I went back to the neurologist, after the office called me Tuesday afternoon and told me to show up at 3:45 the next afternoon. I got there at about 3, since my dad had a physical therapy appointment an hour earlier at the building right across the street. Being there forty-five minutes early wouldn&#8217;t have been a problem if I had been called back to a room sometime before 4:15. Of course, since it was a doctor&#8217;s office, it wasn&#8217;t humanly possible to be seen on-time. No, I didn&#8217;t go back until about 4:45 or, maybe even, 5:00.</p> <p>After going to the exam room, I waited&#8230;and waited&#8230;and waited. Finally, the doctor came in. First, he apologized for having been too sick to see me before then. (I didn&#8217;t know he&#8217;d been sick.) Then, he went over the results.</p> <p>He said that the MRI had revealed 5 white spots (aka: white matter lesions) on my brain. He said the radiologist report said there were 10, but that he&#8217;d <em>only seen 5</em> legitimate ones. (The other five were apparently blood vessels and other anatomical parts.) He said that these were normal, especially for people with migraines. He told me, after that, that my EEG had some abnormal electrical activity, which seemed to be related to migraines. I asked him about my myoclonic jerks being worse lately&#8211;again, I was told it was the migraines. The dystonia is apparently due to the migraines as well. So, he basically told me that migraines are all powerful, evil problems that cause a hell of a lot of pain and torment for people.</p> <p>While he was telling me about the results, he told me that he would&#8217;ve had the MRI results sooner except that, according to him, his computer just <em>suddenly</em> started writing other files over the disc the hospital sent him. This resulted in him having to get another disc. I&#8217;m not exactly convinced, but&#8230;who knows?</p> <p>Anyway, I am now scheduled for a &#8220;BOTOX evaluation&#8221; because he said that he didn&#8217;t think that just treating me with pain medicine was going to cut it anymore. Apparently, I need something more permanent or long-lasting. (From what I&#8217;ve read, there is no conclusive data about the level of permanency of BOTOX injections when used to control neurological conditions.) I don&#8217;t know if my insurance will cover BOTOX. (I&#8217;m now on a Medicare Part C program.) So, I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;ll be able to have it done or not. If I do have it done, then I can tell people I&#8217;ve had a <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/02/24/nose-job-here-i-come/">nose job</a> and BOTOX. Fun, fun, fun.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/20/a-pain-in-the-head/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li class="share-print share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-print share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/20/a-pain-in-the-head/#print" title="Click to print"></a></li><li class="share-facebook share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-facebook share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/20/a-pain-in-the-head/?share=facebook" title="Share on Facebook"></a></li><li class="share-reddit share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-reddit share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/20/a-pain-in-the-head/?share=reddit" title="Click to share on Reddit"></a></li><li class="share-digg share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-digg share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/20/a-pain-in-the-head/?share=digg" title="Click to Digg this post"></a></li><li class="share-custom share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" style="background:url(http://www.dandyid.org/code/images/miscellaneous/favicons/tumblr.png) no-repeat center left;" class="share-custom share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/20/a-pain-in-the-head/?share=custom-1303589712" title="Click to share"></a></li><li class="share-stumbleupon share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/20/a-pain-in-the-head/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/20/a-pain-in-the-head/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=13376" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:13254 2012-01-14T23:19:31Z 2012-01-14T23:19:31Z public 0 <p>Even though people on &#8220;the interwebz&#8221; know some of the most personal things about me, most folks don&#8217;t know very much else about me. In fact, there are a lot of things that I do NOT talk about on here that people might like to know. So, I&#8217;m going to try to post more often and post about the different things that people probably don&#8217;t know about me.</p> <p>Let&#8217;s see&#8230;where to begin?</p> <p>I don&#8217;t know that my family remembers my first words. I know I don&#8217;t remember ever liking to talk. Talking for me was always something that was extremely difficult. I&#8217;m extremely quiet. If you don&#8217;t believe me, I recommend checking <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/JanersM">my youtube videos</a>. That voice you can barely hear is the voice that people in life have gotten extremely frustrated over. People have accused me, at times, of trying to be inaudible, but it generally isn&#8217;t something that I am trying to do. With the exception of whispering, I don&#8217;t generally try to go unheard&#8211;it just happens. Speaking is something that I don&#8217;t ever remember being good at. Singing, on the other hand, was always something that I felt more secure in.</p> <p>My mom taught me the first song that I ever sang, &#8220;Tomorrow&#8221; from <em>Annie</em>. I would eventually learn every song from the musical, which I obsessively watched a video of as a child because of my love for the music and my fascination with one of the few redheads I ever really saw on television or in movies. (When you grow up in a group that only makes up <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&amp;node=&amp;contentId=A47332-2002Mar18">1-2% of the <strong>entire</strong> global population</a>, you search for someone who looks like you that you can truly respect or admire.) I would move on from just singing along to <em>Annie</em> to learning all of the songs of Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Tracy Chapman, Janet Jackson, and Paula Abdul. I <em>accidentally</em> stumbled upon the &#8220;Like a Prayer&#8221; video on MTV, a channel which I wasn&#8217;t allowed to watch by myself until I was a teenager, and became fascinated by the song and the video. I remember watching that video before quickly flipping my television onto BET, which I was allowed to watch anytime and go to sleep to when I was small.</p> <p>I absorbed music like sponges absorb water. It was something I needed to survive. It was something that was necessary for me to understand humanity. It was never a thing where I just randomly listened to music that was popular or had a good beat or anything. It was something where I needed to find music that was interesting or inspiring or just left me feeling like I needed more of it. I listened to lyrics and tried to understand them, even if I didn&#8217;t completely understand some of the lyrics until I was much older. Music was communication for me.</p> <p>Even though it was communication, it wasn&#8217;t a very open form of communication for me. There were the occasional times when I would perform &#8220;I Wanna Dance With Somebody&#8221; for one of my preschool teachers, but usually the only people who heard me sing were my parents. I didn&#8217;t sing around most of my relatives. I didn&#8217;t usually sing at school in elementary school. Part of it was that I was extremely shy. The other part was my ever-present self-esteem issues crap. It didn&#8217;t help that when I sang for one of my friends in third grade that she told me that I had a &#8220;weak voice&#8221; and that I shouldn&#8217;t sing. It also didn&#8217;t help when I would volunteer to sing for assemblies and would get skipped in favor of some of my other friends. The answer was generally, &#8220;That&#8217;s okay, we already have [insert the name of one or two of my friends during that time] so you don&#8217;t have to.&#8221; It felt like a confirmation of that inner voice that said I was awful at everything. It made me feel like I was somehow &#8220;less than&#8221; other folks. Actually, it just reinforced that already-present feeling.</p> <p>When I was in middle school and high school, I was in choir. It surprised everyone but me. My parents figured I would pick band, since I&#8217;d done well on the band&#8217;s music aptitude test. I wasn&#8217;t interested in band as much I was interested in singing. I needed to sing. I needed to learn to feel good about singing.</p> <p>In sixth grade, the middle school choir had about 79 people total. Our director was on her first year at the school, and she just wasn&#8217;t going to have a choir that was so itty bitty. After the ensemble I was in got a Superior (a &#8220;1&#8243;) at State Competition and earned a medal, she used us a lot to recruit new members for the choir. We performed at the orientation for incoming sixth graders. We were also the group she used at a concert at a local health food store. When the 30 or so eighth graders moved on to high school, the choir didn&#8217;t lose any memebers. It didn&#8217;t stay at around the same number. It more than doubled. By eighth grade, around half of the school&#8217;s 650 students were in choir. (The other half were in band, with a few seventh and eighth graders participating in both.) Partly because of our excellence in recruiting, our teacher decided we needed to have special choir trip for the eighth grade (plus a few select seventh graders), so we ended up going to Chicago, instead of the normal trip to Atlanta. Actually, I ended up going on both trips that year. (My mom was the treasurer during the last 2 years, and had to do the trip planning, checking in of the choirs, and prep work, so I got to do all the activities.) So, choir in middle school was, for the most part, something I enjoyed.</p> <p>If I hadn&#8217;t been so competitive and wanted to earn every single medal possible, it would have probably been a lot more fun. I always wanted a medal. I think earning medals was a way for me to prove to myself (and other people) that I was more than just the girl who you could depend on for the answers in class. I felt validated when I would get medals. I felt validated when I got into choirs like <a href="http://blog.al.com/breaking/2010/10/more_than_600_students_to_be_i.html">All-City</a> choir. It felt like all those bad things that I had always heard from people or that I had thought about myself weren&#8217;t true. The only time that I ever really craved attention and real approval was when I was performing. I wanted to have something that people respected me for, because I always believed (and still do) that there was something fundamentally wrong or broken about me.</p> <p>The competitiveness continued into high school, but it wasn&#8217;t as easy to get medals or go on trips or do the stuff that was so überfun because the directors in high school weren&#8217;t apt to take hundreds of kids to competitions or trips. The only trip I remember was a trip to Decatur, where we (oddly) stayed the night between <a href="http://www.alavocal.org/events/honorchoir.htm">Alabama Honor Choir</a> rehearsals. (It was odd because Decatur is literally 40-50 minutes from my house. It was also odd because the trip was one I&#8217;d done in middle school and <em>not</em> had to stay the night.) The only competition I remember participating in during high school was District/State Solo/Ensemble Festival in tenth grade. It was memorable because I broke down after receiving news that I had gotten a 3 on my solo, while every other soloist from my school had gotten a 1. Even people (from other schools) who were utterly tone deaf were given at least a 2. I was given a 3 and one of the reasons listed was that I mispronounced 1 word (virgine) in the song &#8220;Ave Verum Corpus&#8221; and that mispronunciation was so horrible (a jih [like jib] instead of gee) that it knocked me down quite a bit. The two other people in the room with me, my voice teacher and my choir director, were floored by the other flaw he found in my performance: he said I was repeatedly off-key. According to them, I missed 1 note in the two songs I did. (The other song was &#8220;Art is Calling for Me&#8221; and he&#8217;d heard it the week before by a college student, who&#8217;d apparently done a magnificent job.) I was crying when I got the results, and was comforted by many of the choir students from my school, including one who I didn&#8217;t even think liked me. She said that she had been standing outside (they all had) and had heard me sing and that the judge was an idiot. This was something that people told me repeatedly that day, which (if I remember correctly) was the same day as my 16th birthday party. The next week other people, including ones who had never heard me sing, told me that the judge was an idiot. So, though I was utterly devastated by the result of that one competition, I did receive a little bit of a confidence boost from my friends. That made it easier on me when my tape failed to play Mariah Carey&#8217;s &#8220;Can&#8217;t Take That Away&#8221; in my eleventh grade English class and I ended up having to sing it a capella with no rehearsal. It is one of the only times I ever remember performing for an audience with my glasses on (I would always taken them off so that I didn&#8217;t get nervous) and being able to see the entire room. It was also one of the only times I ever felt completely safe performing.</p> <p>When I quit high school and started going into my deeply depressive spells on a more frequent basis, I pretty much quit singing. I didn&#8217;t have the spark that singing needed in me anymore. So, I quit. And when I tried to sing along to a song on the radio a few years later, it felt like my voice had shrivled up on me. It felt like a voice that I had been using for years decided to quit working after I quit using it. I started giving myself voice lessons again and trying to strengthen my voice. It isn&#8217;t as strong as it once was, but it is a lot stronger than it was between 2004 and 2007. I now know that I don&#8217;t ever want to lose it, so I always try to remember to sing when I can. Just a little singing seems to keep it strong enough to stick around.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/14/it-goes-all-around-my-throat/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li class="share-print share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-print share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/14/it-goes-all-around-my-throat/#print" title="Click to print"></a></li><li class="share-facebook share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-facebook share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/14/it-goes-all-around-my-throat/?share=facebook" title="Share on Facebook"></a></li><li class="share-reddit share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-reddit share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/14/it-goes-all-around-my-throat/?share=reddit" title="Click to share on Reddit"></a></li><li class="share-digg share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-digg share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/14/it-goes-all-around-my-throat/?share=digg" title="Click to Digg this post"></a></li><li class="share-custom share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" style="background:url(http://www.dandyid.org/code/images/miscellaneous/favicons/tumblr.png) no-repeat center left;" class="share-custom share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/14/it-goes-all-around-my-throat/?share=custom-1303589712" title="Click to share"></a></li><li class="share-stumbleupon share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/14/it-goes-all-around-my-throat/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/14/it-goes-all-around-my-throat/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=13254" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:12876 2012-01-13T11:15:03Z 2012-01-13T11:15:03Z public 0 <p>The neurologist never called back this week, so I&#8217;ve been sitting here with an ever-intensifying headache and no clue what the hell is going on.  And any time that I bring up that my head hurts or my neck hurts or that I&#8217;m worried about the results, I end up having my mom find some way to demonstrate that her pain is so much worse.  She sometimes gets into this tendency of making everything a competition.  If I talk about having some specific kind of pain, she can tell me about her experience with that particular pain (or a different type) and how it was so much harder on her.</p> <p>I told her that I&#8217;d been having more problems with getting fatigued by barely doing anything and I brought up that some of this muscle fatigue had been going on for years (because it has, but I&#8217;d never really told her about some of it), and do you know her responses?  First, there was the comment that somehow she was hurting really bad (not worse than usual, though), which was followed by the comment that some of the fatigue I had was a result of my not enjoying doing certain tasks and must be because she never pushed me hard enough to do those tasks.  She basically just took something that was about me and shifted it into something that was about her and about my being lazy.</p> <p>Speak of the devil! She just woke up.  And it wasn&#8217;t one of those June Cleaver-style good, sweet, wholesome greetings.  No, it was her typical greeting, which is her breakfast order.  I&#8217;m a damn waitress.   When I was a little bit snippy about getting it right away, because I was (1) I was in a lot of pain and (2) I was agitated (meaning, crying) after reading <a href="http://iconrants.livejournal.com/1327442.html">a post</a> on an LJ community about my icon promotion technique, she got more rude about it.  She insists that it was simply a request, but if I hadn&#8217;t agreed to do it, then I know that I would have been bitched out for hours on end and I would have had to go through the whole &#8220;no one loves me&#8221; whining spree that she loves to dole out whenever anyone doesn&#8217;t acquiesce to one of her demands.</p> <p>Can I please have one day in my life that doesn&#8217;t end up sucking?  Can I have a mother that actually takes into consideration that I&#8217;m tired?  Can I be able to do things that I like without having to feel bad or angry or sad or upset about it?  Because if I don&#8217;t have a good day (or even an okay one) soon, I worry that I&#8217;ll just completely give up on things.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/13/it-never-ends/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li class="share-print share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-print share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/13/it-never-ends/#print" title="Click to print"></a></li><li class="share-facebook share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-facebook share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/13/it-never-ends/?share=facebook" title="Share on Facebook"></a></li><li class="share-reddit share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-reddit share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/13/it-never-ends/?share=reddit" title="Click to share on Reddit"></a></li><li class="share-digg share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-digg share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/13/it-never-ends/?share=digg" title="Click to Digg this post"></a></li><li class="share-custom share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" style="background:url(http://www.dandyid.org/code/images/miscellaneous/favicons/tumblr.png) no-repeat center left;" class="share-custom share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/13/it-never-ends/?share=custom-1303589712" title="Click to share"></a></li><li class="share-stumbleupon share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/13/it-never-ends/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/13/it-never-ends/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=12876" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:12560 2012-01-07T07:21:15Z 2012-01-07T07:21:15Z public 0 <p>My head hurts. Actually, the back of my neck and the very top part of my back is the part of my body that really hurts. I was hoping that by now I might have a full-fledged answer for why I was hurting. I was hoping that maybe the test results would be in, and the neurologist would know for sure what the hell is going on with my head, neck, and back.</p> <p>I had the appointment last week to find out the results, which turned out to be a dud because the doctor had the hospital emergency that he had to deal with. He was supposed to call that evening. He didn&#8217;t. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and didn&#8217;t call the rest of last week. I even waited until halfway through this week, just in case he was out or backed up because of the holidays. But a couple of days ago, I got tired of waiting and made the call.</p> <p>I got a call back this afternoon. It was his nurse. Apparently, he was looking at my chart, but hadn&#8217;t gotten my EEG results back until late this week. I thought that was strange because of the appointment from last week being scheduled and me being told that my results were in that day. The nurse today couldn&#8217;t tell me what the results were, even though they <em>finally</em> had them. I wasn&#8217;t really worried about the results until I talked to my mom.</p> <p>My mom was able to trigger my inner health-related panic attack voice. She said that if the nurse couldn&#8217;t tell me the results, then she must not have been able to read the EEG. She then said that that would be due to the EEG being abnormal in some way, so I started getting nervous. I don&#8217;t think she meant to trigger that anxiety, but I have this tendency to think the worst when she makes that kind of suggestion (because she is generally right about it) and I was sitting at home by myself in a bit of a panic. (My parents left for the grocery store right after I got the call.)</p> <p>When they got back, I mentioned how nervous I was. At this time, my mom said it was probably no big deal and that she didn&#8217;t mean to scare me. I don&#8217;t know that my mom understands just how much this kind of thing worries me. I&#8217;ve talked about it in therapy multiple times before, and my therapist has told me to tell my mom not to make the comments because of the heightened anxiety it causes, but I don&#8217;t feel that it is fair to make my mom stop saying random things because I have an inability to deal with the comments rationally. It isn&#8217;t like my mom is trying to upset me or hurt me or anything. If anything, I think she may be trying to prepare me.</p> <p>So, now I am going to try to forget about the whole panic-related stuff and have a relatively relaxed weekend. I bet that won&#8217;t happen, though. The neurologist is supposed to definitely call by Tuesday, so I hope that that does happen. I&#8217;m not holding my breath on it, though.</p> <p>Oh, and, in a somewhat related note, my mom made a list on the first of all of the things that the neurologist (or, in one case, a different neurologist that used to treat my headaches) has diagnosed me with. I was kind of surprised at the length of the list. After she made the list, which is below, she told me why she made it. Apparently, the next time that my aunt starts in on how horrible of a person she thinks I am, my mom wants some sort of proof that my life is a bit more difficult than my aunt seems to realize. I mean, my mom and Nana have both tried to convey the physical and mental stuff I deal with, along with the stuff I have to do and (sometimes) choose to do, even though I have very little energy and always feel like crap or hurt. I think it&#8217;s basically her version of a wake up call.</p> <p><strong>The List</strong></p> <ul> <li>Migraines (actually, 3 neurologists dx&#8217;d this)</li> <li>Chronic Daily Headache (2 neurologists dx&#8217;d this, including 2 of the three that dx&#8217;d the migraines)</li> <li>Dystonia</li> <li>Essential Tremors</li> <li>Myoclonus</li> <li>Vertigo</li> <li>Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome</li> <li>Degenerative Arthritis of the Lower Spine</li> <li>Absent reflexes in parts of my legs</li> </ul> <p>I think that is everything, but I might have forgotten something. Anyway, my mom seemed shocked at the length of the list, even though I&#8217;d told her about each of the things when the doctors would tell me what I was &#8220;suffering&#8221; from. And some of the things, i.e. the tremors and the myoclonus, are things that I was told I had quite a while ago. I think the tremors were diagnosed in middle school; while the myoclonus was diagnosed a couple of years ago, even though it had been going on since I was a very, very small child.</p> <p>So, now I wait to find out if that list is going to be edited&#8230;</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/07/unintended-anxiety/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li class="share-print share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-print share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/07/unintended-anxiety/#print" title="Click to print"></a></li><li class="share-facebook share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-facebook share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/07/unintended-anxiety/?share=facebook" title="Share on Facebook"></a></li><li class="share-reddit share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-reddit share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/07/unintended-anxiety/?share=reddit" title="Click to share on Reddit"></a></li><li class="share-digg share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-digg share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/07/unintended-anxiety/?share=digg" title="Click to Digg this post"></a></li><li class="share-custom share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" style="background:url(http://www.dandyid.org/code/images/miscellaneous/favicons/tumblr.png) no-repeat center left;" class="share-custom share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/07/unintended-anxiety/?share=custom-1303589712" title="Click to share"></a></li><li class="share-stumbleupon share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/07/unintended-anxiety/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/07/unintended-anxiety/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=12560" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:12476 2012-01-03T13:12:40Z 2012-01-03T13:12:40Z public 0 <p>I am in an epic battle with my sinuses.  (10 points to Gryffindor for the <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/epic">proper use</a> of epic, please?)  They&#8217;re not only filled with gross mucus crap (sorry for the visual), but when I get that stuff out I start getting not only the dried blood, but lots of not-so-dried blood, too.  (Again, sorry.) I don&#8217;t know why they have suddenly decided to intensify the crappy feeling, but they have.  It may be that I&#8217;ve been without my Flonase for around a month now, which I could probably remedy by calling my family doctor (or my allergist or my ENT doctor), but I haven&#8217;t done that and I&#8217;m not sure if I want to do that.  Well, I would like to have my sinuses not feel like crap, but I&#8217;m not sure if fixing that feeling is worth the anxiety of calling any of the doctors.</p> <p>I still do not know the results from EEG and MRI.  I do need to make<em> that</em> call today.  I was going to call yesterday, but I am pretty sure that the neurologist wasn&#8217;t there yesterday and I was asleep for most of the last twenty-four hours.  (I took 2 Flexerils at 4 AM yesterday, then took 2 more at about noon yesterday, and doing that kept me asleep most of the day and night.)  I would probably be asleep right now, but my iPod had reached the red section of the charged bar, so I needed to recharge it so I could listen to music instead of having bad dreams.</p> <p>It&#8217;s pretty damn cold today, which shouldn&#8217;t be surprising since it is winter, but it is kind of shocking to the system since I was running around in shorts and short-sleeved shirts last week.  Right now it is 21°F (or -6.1°C) outside (unless you&#8217;re in some parts of Madison County where it is 9°F or -12.8°C), so I had to change from my warm weather clothes to my cold weather stuff. I wish that I wore socks right about now because that would keep my feet a bit warmer, but I don&#8217;t, so no socks for me.</p> <p>Oh, I had a weird dream yesterday. It was one of the few bad dreams that I think that I&#8217;ve gotten while doing the listening-to-music-the-whole-time-I&#8217;m-sleeping thing. I&#8217;m not exactly sure how it started, but apparently, different parts of my family actually had money in the dream. My parents and I were living in this huge house in an affluent neighborhood, and the house was right across the street from Deb, Nana&#8217;s first cousin who was raised by Mama and Papa (Nana&#8217;s parents) after her mom died. Apparently, in the dream, Deb&#8217;s husband was involved with an organized crime organization, which would never happen because he is way too nice and too good of a person to be involved in a crime enterprise. Deb had apparently found out and gotten him to turn someone in, and when the group found out, they made him choose between his life and hers, so he basically ordered a hit on her. She was killed in the house my family lived in, which I apparently witnessed, but couldn&#8217;t remember because I had some weird form of amnesia. Anytime anyone would bring up her name or what happened, I would start crying or saying that it didn&#8217;t happen. It was very, very, very strange.</p> <p>I had planned on making icons everyday during 2012 for my <a href="http://likesototallyme.livejournal.com">icon/graphic community</a>, but I haven&#8217;t made any so far.  So, I need to make some today.  I was planning on doing some Colin Morgan on the 1st, Kate Bosworth on the 2nd, but I don&#8217;t remember who I planned on featuring today.  I guess I could make the first two and do some others today, as well.</p> <p>Ugh, I need to not pay attention to Rand Paul making his dad sound like this über-cool guy.  I don&#8217;t like or trust either of them, don&#8217;t get the appeal of either of them, and don&#8217;t want either of them involved in decisions of the government.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/03/the-battle-has-begun/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li class="share-print share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-print share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/03/the-battle-has-begun/#print" title="Click to print"></a></li><li class="share-facebook share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-facebook share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/03/the-battle-has-begun/?share=facebook" title="Share on Facebook"></a></li><li class="share-reddit share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-reddit share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/03/the-battle-has-begun/?share=reddit" title="Click to share on Reddit"></a></li><li class="share-digg share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-digg share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/03/the-battle-has-begun/?share=digg" title="Click to Digg this post"></a></li><li class="share-custom share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" style="background:url(http://www.dandyid.org/code/images/miscellaneous/favicons/tumblr.png) no-repeat center left;" class="share-custom share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/03/the-battle-has-begun/?share=custom-1303589712" title="Click to share"></a></li><li class="share-stumbleupon share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/03/the-battle-has-begun/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2012/01/03/the-battle-has-begun/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=12476" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:12145 2011-12-31T01:11:52Z 2011-12-31T01:13:59Z public 0 <p><del>Over Christmas, I got some money and, with the money, I got an iTunes gift card for $25, along with other things.  So, I went on iTunes yesterday and decided to complete the Glee: Vol. 4 album, which was going to be the first album I completed in the transaction.  Over the past year and a half, I&#8217;d purchased 10 of the songs on the album at their full price of $1.29.  The total price of the album is $13.99 and I had already paid $12.90 for those 10 songs.  Admittedly, I&#8217;d gotten them as singles, but that hadn&#8217;t mattered on Volumes 3 and 6.  So, I pressed the &#8220;buy the album&#8221; button and expected it to have a pop-up saying that I had already purchased part of the album and asking if I wanted to complete the album.</del></p> <p><del>It never happened.</del></p> <p><del>I went through my invoices and reported this transaction, as well as one for a purchase of Volume 7 that had done the same thing, which I&#8217;d purchased the singles for the first 3 episodes of the third season through Apple.  In total, I&#8217;ve paid for 14 songs that were on the two albums, as well as the full album price for the albums.  Basically, I&#8217;ve paid $46.04 for 2 albums worth $27.98.  And, though their <a href="http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/terms.html">Terms and Conditions</a> page says that you can only complete albums within 180 days from the first purchase (which Volume 7 would be, but Volume 4 wouldn&#8217;t) , their <a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1849#faq2">FAQ</a> says:</del></p> <blockquote><p>When you buy individual songs from any qualifying album, you can complete the album at any time, as long as the album is available for sale on the iTunes Store.</p></blockquote> <p><del>So, instead of being a legal scholar-type and going by the Terms and Conditions, I went by the FAQ like a normal lazy person. I filed a complaint on all the previously purchased songs, and guess how much credit I received over the issue: 1 song credit. While I appreciate that I got $1.29 of a virtual refund, I would have preferred that Apple admit that there was something fluky going on with the store and done the 14 credits.</del></p> <p><del>And now I&#8217;m left with the feeling that I might not want to ever make purchases through the iTunes store again, which kind of sucks (for me) because it is so easy and (for them) because I do it so often and I have bought so many songs, videos, episodes, and movies from them.  In the past 3 and a half years, I have spent at (or around) $3516 (or 1/5th of my income for the same length of time) in the iTunes store.  Now, I&#8217;m sure that there are people who have purchased more than that in that time period, but, aside from the hacked account (and $20+ purchased by said hacker) and this one time, I would say that I have been a good customer.  I&#8217;m even so nice about iTunes/iPods and stuff that I won&#8217;t insult the company in front mine.  (Silly, I know.)</del></p> <p>Ah, just got an email saying that I would get a refund. Good iTunes.  Now, I just wish I could take back the admitting to my dad how much money I&#8217;ve spent in the iTunes store in the last 3 years because he almost freaked out.  (Not that I blame him.)  Of course, there was quite a bit spent using gift cards purchased with money given for gifts.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/30/180-days/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li class="share-print share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-print share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/30/180-days/#print" title="Click to print"></a></li><li class="share-facebook share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-facebook share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/30/180-days/?share=facebook" title="Share on Facebook"></a></li><li class="share-reddit share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-reddit share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/30/180-days/?share=reddit" title="Click to share on Reddit"></a></li><li class="share-digg share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-digg share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/30/180-days/?share=digg" title="Click to Digg this post"></a></li><li class="share-custom share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" style="background:url(http://www.dandyid.org/code/images/miscellaneous/favicons/tumblr.png) no-repeat center left;" class="share-custom share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/30/180-days/?share=custom-1303589712" title="Click to share"></a></li><li class="share-stumbleupon share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/30/180-days/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/30/180-days/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=12145" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:11548 2011-12-19T13:33:33Z 2011-12-19T13:33:33Z public 0 <p>Last week I finally went to the neurologist for the worsening ice-pick-through-the-brain headaches.  I didn&#8217;t actually see him, but I did see his nurse practitioner.  She had an appointment for an MRI and another EEG set up for me, and she suggested Botox for the neck pain that comes with the headaches.  I don&#8217;t feel very safe with that idea, because though I know the Botox shots are supposed to be safe, I don&#8217;t particularly like the thought of having some part of an extremely dangerous poison injected into me.</p> <p>Anyway, I had the MRI on Saturday and the EEG is scheduled for tomorrow.  I won&#8217;t find the results out until December 28, aka three days after &#8220;Christmas&#8221;&#8211;I&#8217;m not acknowledging that Christmas is even happening this year.  With the disappointment of last year and the implosion of my extended family, which apparently occurred because of what was said by me on here<em> in 2002</em> and was wiped off the site and the internet entirely by the epic fail/major scamming of INI Hosting, I am not acknowledging that Christmas will even be happening this year.  I mean, I was miserable last year because we got snowed in and then this whole family-falling-apart-over-the-words-of-a-severely-depressed-eighteen-year-old-version-of-me has me hesitant to acknowledge that my favorite holiday is even going to happen this year.  It&#8217;s not like it even matters if I celebrate it or not.</p> <p>Okay, I&#8217;ve gotten distracted on stuff that gets me all teary, and I hadn&#8217;t even gotten to the very best part of the medical news.  I&#8217;ve apparently lost about 50 pounds this year.  My secret, you ask?  Let&#8217;s see, eat at least 7 Cadbury Dairy Milk bars, 2 boxes of Crackerfuls, and 1 bag of bagels with regular whipped cream cheese per week &amp; drink 1-2 Caffeine Free Cokes (2 liter variety, of course) per week, plus the occasional binge of chips, chocolate frosting, and various other unhealthy crap.  Oh, and have dinner that consists every night of the Stouffers, Walmart, and Marie Callender&#8217;s varieties of throw-in-the-oven-for-a-quick-meal-for-the-family.  And, last but not least, no exercising.  In fact, spend almost every waking minute of your life on the computer.  Yes, this is the way to lose 50 pounds quickly.  No wonder I always gained weight on diets.  I&#8217;m the opposite of normal.</p> <p>Actually, I know that the junk food binge is not a good thing to do, but I&#8217;m still not ready to contact the gastroenterologist over this.  I mean, I&#8217;ve told him for years that regular food makes me sick.  But I just don&#8217;t think he&#8217;d believe that I would lose some mass amount of weight after eating unhealthy food the majority of the time.  I know that if I were a doctor, I would have a hard time believing it.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/19/so-unhappy-but-safe-as-could-be/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li class="share-print share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-print share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/19/so-unhappy-but-safe-as-could-be/#print" title="Click to print"></a></li><li class="share-facebook share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-facebook share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/19/so-unhappy-but-safe-as-could-be/?share=facebook" title="Share on Facebook"></a></li><li class="share-reddit share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-reddit share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/19/so-unhappy-but-safe-as-could-be/?share=reddit" title="Click to share on Reddit"></a></li><li class="share-digg share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-digg share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/19/so-unhappy-but-safe-as-could-be/?share=digg" title="Click to Digg this post"></a></li><li class="share-custom share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" style="background:url(http://www.dandyid.org/code/images/miscellaneous/favicons/tumblr.png) no-repeat center left;" class="share-custom share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/19/so-unhappy-but-safe-as-could-be/?share=custom-1303589712" title="Click to share"></a></li><li class="share-stumbleupon share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/19/so-unhappy-but-safe-as-could-be/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/19/so-unhappy-but-safe-as-could-be/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=11548" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:11425 2011-12-11T10:29:01Z 2011-12-11T10:29:01Z public 0 <p>I feel like a little kid with her first headache. I want to whine and whimper about the pain. I feel like I should be acting pitiful, which is crazy since I&#8217;ve had headaches for over 2 decades now. I should be able to suck it up and deal with it. Of course, I wasn&#8217;t able to do that in 2000, when I had such bad &#8220;tension&#8221; headaches that I would spend long periods of time in my room with no lights on at all and nothing touching certain parts of my head. That was also when I had them to such a degree that even the school counselor thought I needed to be resting. The &#8220;tension&#8221; headaches then were one of the only <em>physical</em> issues that contributed to my dropping out of high school. The headaches that I&#8217;m having now are just as bad, and sometimes worse.</p> <p>I think my neurologist appointment is this week. That should help me some. I hope he&#8217;ll have some ideas for what causes these awful headaches. I get migraines and even they aren&#8217;t this bad. I don&#8217;t think they&#8217;re tension headaches because, from what I&#8217;ve learned about them, tension headaches aren&#8217;t crippling. (I also think the tension diagnosis was crap back in 2000.)</p> <p>The headache probably isn&#8217;t helped by the fact that I forgot to finish my (already late) dinner. &nbsp;I had only eaten once yesterday before I started my dinner at almost midnight. &nbsp;Then, I didn&#8217;t really like what I was eating (imitation crab salad with crackers), so I put it aside so that I could eat it once I got hungry enough to not care what I was shoving down my throat. &nbsp;Well, I forgot to shove it down my throat until four o&#8217;clock, which was about 21 hours since I had actually had a legitimate meal. &nbsp;I had been nauseous the entire time, but by four, I had started shaking, twitching, palpitating (it&#8217;s a word), and just feeling like shit. &nbsp;My muscles felt weaker and I was almost in one of those moods where my body was either going to shut down or start making me sound like someone who&#8217;d been drinking for about 10 hours straight. &nbsp;It was not pleasant and it was getting less pleasant by the minute. &nbsp;So, I ate the rest of my dinner quickly, shoved some other high-carb crap down, and basically tried to swig anything that had even a slight amount of sugar.</p> <p>My sugar doesn&#8217;t feel so low now. &nbsp;Actually, it feels like I <em><strong>over</strong></em>compensated. &nbsp;So, instead of having the typical nausea of hunger, I am now having the gagging feeling that I assume children get on Halloween when they toss their twenty pounds of candy in their mouths without thinking. &nbsp;Yeah, it&#8217;s that unpleasant feeling that was described in the episode &#8220;The Almost People&#8221; from<em>&nbsp;Doctor Who</em>:</p> <blockquote><p>I expect chocolate for breakfast. If you don&#8217;t feel sick by mid-morning you&#8217;re not doing it right.</p></blockquote> <p>Of course, mine isn&#8217;t from jumping on the bed on my birthday or eating chocolate for &#8220;breakfast&#8221; so it isn&#8217;t exactly the same, but it is pretty close to what happened, so it&#8217;ll do. And I guess it serves me right because I know better than to completely or almost completely skip eating meals. I&#8217;ve had low sugar issues for almost as long as I&#8217;ve had headaches, so I should know how how to not abuse my body in such severe ways.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/11/i-think-i-should-know/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li class="share-print share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-print share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/11/i-think-i-should-know/#print" title="Click to print"></a></li><li class="share-facebook share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-facebook share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/11/i-think-i-should-know/?share=facebook" title="Share on Facebook"></a></li><li class="share-reddit share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-reddit share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/11/i-think-i-should-know/?share=reddit" title="Click to share on Reddit"></a></li><li class="share-digg share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-digg share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/11/i-think-i-should-know/?share=digg" title="Click to Digg this post"></a></li><li class="share-custom share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" style="background:url(http://www.dandyid.org/code/images/miscellaneous/favicons/tumblr.png) no-repeat center left;" class="share-custom share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/11/i-think-i-should-know/?share=custom-1303589712" title="Click to share"></a></li><li class="share-stumbleupon share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/11/i-think-i-should-know/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/11/i-think-i-should-know/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=11425" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:11205 2011-12-10T06:49:11Z 2011-12-10T06:49:11Z public 0 <p>It is almost Christmas, just two more weeks now, and I still don&#8217;t know when my parents and I get to go see Nana.  Apparently, my Aunt has yet to pick her day.  And since we can&#8217;t have Christmas together like a <em>normal</em> dysfunctional family and since, according to her, we &#8220;picked&#8221; Thanksgiving Day to spend with Nana, we can&#8217;t pick Christmas as well.</p> <p>I don&#8217;t get how we picked Thanksgiving.  There is one day to celebrate Thanksgiving on and that&#8217;s Thanksgiving.  We didn&#8217;t say we wouldn&#8217;t eat with them.  That was my aunt&#8217;s decision.  And since all that we do on holidays is eat together, because they always seem like they&#8217;re ready to be somewhere else, I don&#8217;t get why we couldn&#8217;t stick food in our mouths at the same time and in the same place.  They would leave right after anyway, so I just don&#8217;t see why they can&#8217;t be grown-ups and bottle their hostilities towards us for an hour or so on two days this year.  I mean, I&#8217;ve been bottling it up (obviously) for years and they want me to continue bottling it up publicly, so why can&#8217;t they do it for two out of the 8760 hours in the year?  Apparently, that&#8217;s too much to expect.</p> <p>And if we have to have separate holidays, then I think that we should get to pick Christmas.  Last year, we got snowed in on Christmas and <em>they</em> <strong>chose</strong> to eat lunch and open presents at my grandmother&#8217;s house on Christmas, without us.  And, according to Nana, the cousin-in-law was none-too-pleased that my parents and I weren&#8217;t willing to drive over an icy bridge, up and down an ice-and-snow-covered mountain, and down some country roads to get there in a car that&#8217;s 12 years old and didn&#8217;t even have much get-up-and-go when it was purchased, doesn&#8217;t have 4 wheel drive, and doesn&#8217;t have any winter weather gear (because this is Alabama) to celebrate Christmas with them.  Oh, and the drive would&#8217;ve been without the dogs because we haven&#8217;t been allowed to have them around this particular family member since we first got Xander.  (Odd, since they have a dog of their own now.)  So, we would&#8217;ve been leaving 5 dogs at home, without food, with a limited supply of water, and (for Willow) without their medicine.  We also would&#8217;ve had to take all of our medicine and some extra clothes with us, in case we got snowed in there.  So, I&#8217;m not exactly sure why she was upset at our not coming last year and I&#8217;m not sure how it is that they got to choose when they celebrated Christmas with Nana last year and how they get to choose it again this year.  Of course, they picked the day the family celebrated Christmas during the first few years that my cousin and his wife were married, thus leading to some issues for my family with regards to Christmas.  So, it&#8217;s always been them who gets to choose that day.  It kind of makes me feel like my family has never really been appreciated by their family.  And that&#8217;s not exactly the warm, fuzzy feeling that one should have on Christmas or at any time of the year.</p> <p>It&#8217;s not like it should matter to me when we celebrate Christmas.  There are no presents to open in my immediate family, so it&#8217;s not like there will actually even be a Christmas here.  At least, not a materialistic type Christmas.  And Nana doesn&#8217;t buy presents anymore, so there won&#8217;t be anything like that from her.  So by not getting Christmas with her (again) I&#8217;m just missing out on one of the two days a year when I don&#8217;t (generally) have to cook.  Basically, I&#8217;m not getting one of my days off because some members of my family can&#8217;t put their big kid underwear on and deal with us for an hour or so.  Way to go, them.</p> <p>I could easily end this by apologizing, but the more ridiculous they get with their behavior, the less I think I should.  Besides, like I&#8217;ve said many times (online and off), I haven&#8217;t said anything that I should really have to apologize for.  They&#8217;ve used the same language in conversations about other people.  Why do I have to apologize because my &#8220;conversation&#8221; is available for lots of people to read?  Their conversations are a lot more likely to be overheard by someone that could take offense than my posts are to be read by someone who would get upset.  Maybe I&#8217;m not completely competent about social mores, but how is their behavior any better than or my acceptable than mine?  How is it okay to insult or degrade people about their lives behind their backs if you&#8217;re doing it vocally, but it isn&#8217;t okay to rant about my own feelings about what goes on in my life on a website that I pay for?  Why is <em>that</em> okay?  Maybe whoever is reading my blog on their behalf (&#8217;cause I know they are) will be willing to have my aunt or uncle or cousin or even the in-law send me an email or something explaining that.</p> <p>Sometimes I wish that I had a truly boring life.  One where my family got along and everything could be considered normal.  Then I realize that wishing for a different life won&#8217;t do any good because I&#8217;m stuck with this one.  I&#8217;m stuck in a family where our relationships are basically based on some antiquated caste system with the &#8220;better than&#8221; members not wanting to talk to or spend time with the &#8220;less than&#8221; members, where it is normal to have third parties read blog entries to find negative words and then report back about how &#8220;this&#8221; or &#8220;that&#8221; was said even when it wasn&#8217;t, where it was okay to give R-rated movies to me when I was 15 but the second I mentioned being suicidal or psychotic I started getting gifts most families would consider to be okay for a little girl, where censorship is okay when I judge but they&#8217;re allowed to spew whatever crap they want, where my dad has to get &#8220;groomed&#8221; (haircut and extra shaving) to keep them from calling him names behind his back, and where I&#8217;m told not to talk about them, but they get to lie to my only living grandparent about what I say so that maybe, just maybe she might decide to quit talking to me or loving me or something.  Yeah, that&#8217;s the family I <em>get</em> to have.  I should just accept it and move on.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/10/pick-a-day-already/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li class="share-print share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-print share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/10/pick-a-day-already/#print" title="Click to print"></a></li><li class="share-facebook share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" 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class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/10/pick-a-day-already/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/12/10/pick-a-day-already/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=11205" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:10753 2011-11-28T22:33:38Z 2011-11-28T22:34:14Z public 0 <p>I think that in the last 30 days or so, I have been seriously frustrated by some things that have gone on.  I&#8217;m not really sure why this month seems to have sucked more than usual.  Oh, wait.  I know exactly why it sucked, but I don&#8217;t really get why it all had to happen in one month.</p> <p>First, there was the whole iTunes account hacked issue, leading to me getting charged for an app that I didn&#8217;t purchase.  I did get that taken care of, but I ended up having to delete my PayPal account (since it was the funding source and I felt like it might have also been compromised) and put a fraud alert on my credit report.  I had to change all of my passwords everywhere, but apparently missed a few, as I would find out a few weeks later.</p> <p>After the iTunes issue, my laptop decided to take a break.  My external hard drive&#8217;s enclosure was also on a break.  The new enclosure came first, but I couldn&#8217;t see if it still worked until the laptop came back.  When it did come, I had to format the external hard drive&#8217;s drive <em>again</em>.  Now I&#8217;m working on getting everything back on the drive.</p> <p>Meanwhile, I go to log-in on likesototally.me&#8217;s WordPress and find that it has been hacked.  I figured out what was hacked&#8211;the .htaccess.  I decided to download files from it that I knew were safe and not located elsewhere before trashing everything else.  The deletion finally got done last night.  I changed the domain&#8217;s username&#8217;s password <em>before</em> I decided that I needed to change the username as well.  So, that was fun.</p> <p>In terms of non-tech related bad things, I had thought the disintegration of my extended family on my mom&#8217;s side was the worst possible thing in the world that was going on, until we got a nice little letter from ALFA (our insurance agency) letting us know that we would be dropped from our homeowner&#8217;s policy in February.  Apparently, insuring us was<em> <strong>&#8220;too risky&#8221;</strong></em> and wasn&#8217;t worth continuing the (at least)<em><strong> 26 years</strong></em> of business with my family.  Well, technically, they&#8217;ll still be doing business with us because the life insurance policies for my dad and for me are under them, but my parents are planning on moving the car insurance when they find a new insurer.</p> <p>I felt like it was my fault that the insurance got dropped.  First of all, ALFA is the employer of certain members of my family that I am not really on speaking terms with and their position in the company is fairly high, so my first thought went to that ongoing crap.  Even though they don&#8217;t want to be around us, I figured out that they wouldn&#8217;t do something that petty in order to punish me for talking about them on here.</p> <p>After realizing that they were probably not behind the dropping of coverage, I thought that maybe my dad had decided not to pay the (staunchly conservative) PAC  &#8221;contribution&#8221; when he paid the membership dues for the farm bureau.  (You have to belong to the bureau in order to get insurance and it is requested that your membership payment include a &#8220;voluntary&#8221; contribution to the PAC.)   But they say that you don&#8217;t have to pay into the PAC, and I don&#8217;t know if the company would really drop people because you choose not to contribute to it.  Somehow, I&#8217;m not sure if that decision might keep us from being insured.</p> <p>The other possibility is that because of the continuing issue with the grass, this house might be considered too unsightly for them to insure.  Their standards are pretty high, and my mom suggested (at one point) that they may have been doing some of the reporting to the city about the grass and the stuff on the porch.  Of course, that makes me even more paranoid.  The idea that you can lose your insurance and get threatened with jail time because of grass and because of other random crap is just something that causes me <em>intense</em> anxiety.</p> <p>And, as per the norm for me, I have felt worse lately.  I&#8217;ve had bouts with dizziness, pain, fever, sinus crap, and (of course) the heavy period that came around for a week and a half, and is currently on hiatus again. And I got a call from my family doctor about wanting to do blood work, which is always torture for me, so that has me kind of apprehensive.  Then, of course, there was the depression, mood swings, and generally nuttiness that I usually deal with and that usually gets worse this time of year.  It&#8217;s just been the rotten cherry on top of a melted sundae.</p> <p>So, yeah, this past month has really, really sucked.  I&#8217;m hoping that December will be better.  I&#8217;m guessing that it won&#8217;t, though.  That&#8217;s not me being pessimistic or anything.  I&#8217;m being completely realistic.  And realizing that the most joyous time of the year is probably going to be suck-filled is awful.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/28/the-worst-month-of-the-year/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li class="share-print share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-print share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/28/the-worst-month-of-the-year/#print" title="Click to print"></a></li><li class="share-facebook share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-facebook share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/28/the-worst-month-of-the-year/?share=facebook" title="Share on Facebook"></a></li><li class="share-reddit share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-reddit share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/28/the-worst-month-of-the-year/?share=reddit" title="Click to share on Reddit"></a></li><li class="share-digg share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-digg share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/28/the-worst-month-of-the-year/?share=digg" title="Click to Digg this post"></a></li><li class="share-custom share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" style="background:url(http://www.dandyid.org/code/images/miscellaneous/favicons/tumblr.png) no-repeat center left;" class="share-custom share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/28/the-worst-month-of-the-year/?share=custom-1303589712" title="Click to share"></a></li><li class="share-stumbleupon share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/28/the-worst-month-of-the-year/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/28/the-worst-month-of-the-year/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=10753" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:10663 2011-11-28T20:25:06Z 2011-11-28T20:25:06Z public 0 <p>I thought I&#8217;d post <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/11/23/holiday-wishlist-meme/">this meme</a> again this year, though I do not expect to get anything. It&#8217;s just fun (for me) to make wishlists.</p> <p><strong>STEP ONE</strong><br /> Make a post to your blog, tumblr, facebook, myspace, what have you. The important thing is to make sure these wishes are things you really want and that people can see the post. If you wish for real possible things, make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it’s your address or just an email address at which you can be contacted by potential wish-granters. Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your post, so that the holiday joy will spread.</p> <p><strong>STEP TWO</strong><br /> Surf around your friends list/blogroll/RSS feeds (or friends friends, or just random places ) to see who has posted their list. If you have a list be sure to leave it in my comments section so I can view your wishes! If you see a wish you can grant, and it’s in your heart to do so, make someone’s wish come true. Sometimes someone’s trash is another’s treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don’t want or a gift certificate you won’t use–or even know where you could get someone’s dream purebred Basset Hound for free–do it.</p> <p><strong>WISHLIST</strong><br /> If you actually want to get me anything listed here, email me at janet.main@fuzzypinkslippers.com. I don’t expect anything, but I thought it might be fun to post it.</p> <ol> <li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/HASQQD9ATP6V/ref=cm_wl_rlist_go"><strong>Amazon.com wishlist</strong> </a>- I think that I&#8217;ve got it as up to date as possible.</li> <li><strong>Gift cards</strong> (iTunes, PetSmart, Target, Walmart, and Kroger) &#8211; I have a tendency to buy music when I can&#8217;t necessarily afford it, so it would be nice if I had an iTunes card to help me not blow money that should go to pay for bills. PetSmart would, of course, be used for food for the dogs. My parents and I sometimes have issues with having enough money for groceries, so Walmart and Kroger gift cards would enable us to pay for food.</li> <li><strong>Chocolate</strong> &#8211; Hi, my name is Janet and I am a chocoholic. Even though I usually prefer dark to milk, I&#8217;m less likely to get sick or have massive migraines on milk chocolate, so I&#8217;d rather have some form of milk chocolate. I don&#8217;t like peanut butter or artificial cherry flavoring, so I&#8217;d prefer not to have any chocolate with those flavorings.</li> <li><strong>Clothes/shoes/pajamas</strong> &#8211; I don&#8217;t have many clothes or shoes anymore, other than some ratty pajamas, a pair of sandals, and a couple of shirts and pairs of pants. I wear 8 1/2 Wide to 9 in shoes. Clothing is a little more difficult. Tops are generally 3X in Juniors (and some Women&#8217;s) and sometimes 2X in Women&#8217;s. Pants and shorts generally need to be about 2 sizes larger. Used clothing is fine. Actually, used would be great. If there is anything you just need to get out of your closet, then just send it along.</li> <li><strong>Paid time/icon packages on LiveJournal</strong>- I think that <a title="LJ" href="http://princess-loser.livejournal.com">my account</a> is paid through February, but my icon packages expired about a month ago. I&#8217;d had 3 packages, so I&#8217;d like to have them back&#8211;even if only for a short time. (Also: would love to have <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/janetdmorris">my Flickr Pro account</a> and Premium Membership <a title="deviantART" href="http://princessloser.deviantart.com/">on deviantART</a> back &#8212; DA has a donation pool thing, so the donation can be super small.)</li> <li><strong><a href="http://www.dreamhost.com/donate.cgi?id=6702">Web host payment help</a></strong> &#8211; I have several domains that I use for different purposes, including one that hosts my graphics and caps for my graphics community <a href="http://likesototallyme.livejournal.com">likesototallyme</a>. A few years ago I decided to try a VPS (virtual private server) on a free weekend and, long story short, I found out I used so many resources that I had to stay on the VPS, which is more expensive. A few months ago, after uploading craploads of caps, I had to up my resource load so the price went up. Even just a little help would be great.</li> <li><strong>Stuffed animal</strong> &#8211; I love cute, cuddly things, so even though it is childish, I would be ever so grateful for a stuffed animal.</li> <li><strong>Books.</strong> &#8211; I love to read and sometimes it is all I have the energy to do, so I would love to have some new books to check out. Used books are great&#8211;as long as there aren&#8217;t any missing pages and it isn&#8217;t so marked up that it is illegible, I&#8217;d love to have it.</li> <li><strong>The newest versions of Paint Shop Pro &amp; Photoshop.</strong> &#8211; That&#8217;s a pipe dream, I know, but it would be nice to have newer versions than the ones I have. (I&#8217;ve got Photoshop CS2 and the only PSP that I seem to get to work lately is 7, even though I used to have discs for X and X2)</li> <li><strong>Make a donation to charity.</strong> &#8211; It would be incredibly awesome if you donated to one that I like, i.e. ASPCA, AARDA, the Human Rights Campaign, Doctors Without Borders, NARSAD, the Southern Poverty Law Center, or the National Organization for Women Foundation. Even if it is only a few dollars or your time, that would be enough.</li> <li><strong>Christmas card or a letter.</strong> &#8211;  I can’t promise that I’ll write back, because if I do promise that, then it generally means it will never happen. Basically, I’d like to hear from someone who lives outside of my house.</li> <li><strong>Blankets</strong> &#8211; My temperature likes to fluctuate, so I like to have a blanket nearby.</li> <li><strong>My family to feel better.</strong> &#8211; We are all suffering from or dealing with differing ailments, so it would be nice if one day we didn&#8217;t have to suffer from them.</li> <li><strong>To go one week without being hacked or have something quit working.</strong> &#8211; Lately things have either quit working or have gotten hacked on a pretty much weekly basis. It would be nice to get through at least a week without something bad happening.</li> <li><strong>A ticket to see Breaking Dawn</strong> &#8211; I still haven&#8217;t seen it and it would be really nice to see it, since I enjoyed that book.</li> <li><strong>A maid or a bulldozer or just some way to have a clean house</strong> &#8211; My house is a complete mess and I think it being this bad is part of what is making my family so sick.</li> <li><strong>Surprise me!</strong> &#8211; As a control freak, this one is probably the most worrisome wish I could go with.</li> </ol> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" 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src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=10663" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:10417 2011-11-25T21:27:58Z 2011-11-25T21:27:58Z public 0 <p>Well, the computer came back today.  Yay.  It appears to be working fine.  Unfortunately, my external hard drive has to be reformatted again, so that makes me quite unhappy.  I guess I should just get used to this kind of geek-related disappointment.  So, I&#8217;m waiting on the formatting to finish.  I&#8217;m also trying to get my iPod to sync.  It keeps saying that it&#8217;s done syncing, but it hasn&#8217;t added ANY of the (1000+) songs that I spent the last couple of weeks listening to.  This is also disappointing.</p> <p>In less disappointing news, I had a pretty good Thanksgiving.  Aside from my mom&#8217;s blood sugar dropping throughout the day, my getting a migraine from (of all the foods that could cause it) <em>pinto beans</em>, and finding out that my aunt is apparently going to get to pick what day she has Christmas with my grandmother before my parents and I get to (thus ensuring that she doesn&#8217;t have to see us), then it was actually quite good and bordering on superb.  Of course, when you factor all of that in, it knocks it down a few pegs.</p> <p>I have to have blood work done sometime in the next week or so.  One of the doctors from the UAB Clinic wants to do his own hormone-research stuff to figure out why it is that I don&#8217;t get my period regularly.  Even though I&#8217;ve been diagnosed with PCOS, apparently, he feels the need to figure out what is going on.  So, good luck to him with that.  He thinks it is my thyroid, which is a theory I bet he will abandon when the blood work comes back with a low-end-of-normal reading on my thyroid function hormones.  Then he will probably give up.  If I sound convinced of this, it is because I am.  This is what<strong> always happens</strong> when doctors decide to check my thyroid.  I even told this doctor that, but he seems to think this time will be different.  (Maybe he is a bigger nut than I am.)</p> <p>Oddly, right after he made the first call to find out if I had ever had the thyroid tests done, I got my period.  I was quite surprised by its appearance, since it had been many months since it had last come around.  Of course, it was very heavy, painful, and nausea-fever-and-dizziness-inducing.  It was not fun.  Of course, I don&#8217;t think it has ever been fun.  I think that it is over for now, which is odd, because I only got it for about a week and a day, but it could come back.  (Sometimes it just appears randomly a few days after it has supposedly quit.  It&#8217;s very rude like that.)</p> <p>Tomorrow is the wonderful day which will test my dad&#8217;s anger management skills, aka the Iron Bowl.  I&#8217;m hoping that his ability to keep his temper in check this season will continue through the game tomorrow.  If he does, then it will be an Iron Bowl miracle.  There might even be holiday specials made in his honor if he manages it.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/25/you-are-the-silence-in-between-what-i-thought-and-what-i-said/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li class="share-print share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-print share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/25/you-are-the-silence-in-between-what-i-thought-and-what-i-said/#print" title="Click to 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no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/25/you-are-the-silence-in-between-what-i-thought-and-what-i-said/?share=custom-1303589712" title="Click to share"></a></li><li class="share-stumbleupon share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/25/you-are-the-silence-in-between-what-i-thought-and-what-i-said/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/25/you-are-the-silence-in-between-what-i-thought-and-what-i-said/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=10417" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:10075 2011-11-15T13:24:53Z 2011-11-15T13:24:53Z public 0 <p>My mom decided to call her sister on Saturday to find out why exactly her sister&#8217;s family won&#8217;t be at Thanksgiving. It was, of course, my fault. Apparently, she is upset because she had been told that I called her an evil bitch. I didn&#8217;t remember doing this, so I decided to do a search. In the ten years that I have had this site, I have used the phrase &#8220;evil bitch&#8221; 3 times.</p> <ul> <li>The most recent was in <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/06/15/you-stink/">2010</a>. I referred to a psychiatrist as an evil bitch after she told me I smelled bad, even though I had showered, put on nice smelling clothes, etc. Valid use of the phrase, no?</li> <li>The next most recent was in <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2005/03/23/comprehensive/">2005</a>. It was a reference to the <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2005/03/03/return-to-hell/">furthest back entry</a> where I had called a psychiatric nurse at the Mental Health Center the &#8220;Evil Bitch Monger from Hell&#8221;.</li> </ul> <p>Clearly, since my aunt is not a psychiatrist or a psychiatric nurse, I didn&#8217;t call <em>her</em> an evil bitch.</p> <p>I decided to try just evil next.</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/10/14/hello-darkness-my-old-friend/">Last month</a>, I jokingly called myself evil.</li> <li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/07/20/because-thats-what-divorce-is-for/">In July</a>, I asked who Sean Winchester was (because of search statistic) and I determined (as a joke) that he must have been Sam Winchester&#8217;s identical twin that was taken by 3 fairies to the forest so that he wouldn&#8217;t be turned evil.</li> <li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/07/04/the-4th/">On July 4th</a>, I was ranting about locals who categorize undocumented immigrants as being evil</li> <li>The <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/06/09/fanlistings-and-such/#comments">next entry</a> is from 2010 and is a reference to a person who shut down the Avatars fanlisting right after I adopted it out to her and shortly before TFL discovered she was a creeper-type.</li> <li>Another <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/05/30/fire-bad-tree-pretty-meat-yum-the-morality-of-food-consumption-and-all-kinds-of-crap/"> called the must-consume-too-much-culture evil</a></li> <li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/05/28/the-devils-son-has-left-the-neighborhood/">Also in 2010</a>, I used the word &#8220;evil&#8221; for the name of a Buffy website and mentioned it on this blog. (Also mentioned in another <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/01/29/tumble-along/">entry from that year</a>.)</li> <li>In 2010, I was accused of being <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/02/15/that-girl-is-so-dangerous/">evil</a> because of my political beliefs</li> <li><a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/02/15/evil-little-white-girl/">In 2010</a>, I was also accused of being a closet racist by some blogger from the SFGate because I said that UAH was not an anti-intellectual school. (The blogger had said this as part of his [uninformed] entries about Amy Bishop, the professor that shot her colleagues.)</li> <li>In 2009, I made a comment about <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2009/09/28/as-soon-as-possible/">local residents believing that liberals are evil</a>.</li> <li>Evil was also mentioned in entries in 2009 about <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2009/07/30/update-on-the-neighbors/">out of control little kids at Walmart</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2009/04/24/some-people-disgust-me/">illegal immigrants being categorized after the accident that killed Tad Mattle and Leigh Anna Jimmerson</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2009/02/11/reasonability/">more about evil liberals</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2009/02/01/ever-feel/">feeling like I was an evil being</a>.</li> <li>In 2008: <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2008/10/26/hot-like-fire-a-twisted-fairy-tale/">evil was used to describe fibromyalgia</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2008/10/20/the-redhead-myths/">it was also used to describe sentiments from gingerphobes</a> (<a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2008/10/20/the-token-redhead/">twice</a>).</li> <li>In 2006: <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2006/03/03/ebay-is-the-root-of-all-evil/">the temptation that is eBay</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2006/02/16/candle-time/">someone calling Buddhism evil</a></li> <li>In 2005: <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2005/07/28/anxiety-everywhere-you-look/">the phone-phobe in me calling phones evil</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2005/07/01/when-she-was-bad/">my being annoyed by Sandra Day O&#8217;Connor stepping down</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2005/06/25/puzzling/">me calling my dad&#8217;s father evil</a> (<a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2005/06/20/someone-so-horrible/">and again</a>), <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2005/06/14/sarcasm-is-a-necessity/">talking about therapy</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2005/05/24/religious-misuse/">ranting about ignorance about other religions</a> (<a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2005/05/15/gnawing-sensations/">and again</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2005/02/03/scream-and-he-wont-hear-you/">the evil psych nurse</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2005/01/02/new-skin-the-evil-roommate/">a new skin for the blog</a></li> <li>In 2004: <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2004/09/14/efficient/">mayoral election</a></li> </ul> <p>As for various forms of the word &#8220;bitch&#8221;, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/07/a-face-that-laughs-every-time-i-fall/">I said others described her decision about the separate Thanksgivings as bitchy</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/10/19/i-am-not-your-insert-something-or-someone-here/">I described someone from the other side of the family as saying things that distressed me and led to me making bitchy responses</a>, <a>I mentioned an argument between my mom and me (later in the argument, my mom began talking about how awful I was vs. her sister, which led to sarcasm from me)</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/08/17/im-sorry-but-you-gotta-be-shittin-me/">I called myself bitchy</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/03/11/30-days-of-truths-day-4/">I called my eighth grade history teacher a bitchy person and said she was a misogynist</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/01/08/heres-the-deal/">I described the call from my aunt&#8217;s daughter-in-law as being done to bitch me out</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/01/08/hello-this-is-m-i-a-could-you-please-come-get-me/">I described my mom&#8217;s mood swings as &#8220;incessant bitchiness&#8221; right before I first mentioned how frustrated I was about the video on the news</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/10/11/might-like-you-better/">talking about nother bitchy psych nurse</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/09/30/how-to-hold-my-heart/">a reference to myself</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/09/15/dont-call-my-name/">my mom calling me a bitch</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/08/10/been-there-done-that/">saying my dad was bitchy about Farmville and Facebook</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/07/19/bitch-please/">my being pissed at a former family friend</a>, <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/07/01/a-million-theories/">me mentioning a philosophy teacher that I felt was bitchy</a>, and <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2010/06/25/doctor-doctor-mr-md/">talking about the evil psychiatrist</a>. That&#8217;s pretty much it when it comes to calling people bitchy or bitches or anything of the sort. So, technically, I didn&#8217;t call my aunt a bitch. I also didn&#8217;t call her evil.</p> <p>She also said that I said that she made my life a living hell. I <strong><em>did</em></strong> accuse her of that as part of <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/04/20/30-days-of-truth-day-8/#respond">a meme I was participating in April</a>. I spelled out my reasons for it, too, which I think she should read since apparently she has never read the actual entry. Other than that, my comments about her have been relatively mild. They have all been based on the same things that were discussed in the other post, which makes sense because we, as a family, have not dealt with the cause behind the feelings. Until we do that, the words will continue to be something that probably comes up. That isn&#8217;t a threat. It&#8217;s just part of what goes on until some kind of resolution happens.</p> <p>It&#8217;s weird how she is upset over the 5 or 6 that had any negative content about her in the past year, but doesn&#8217;t realize I&#8217;ve also posted 1 where I was genuinely concerned about her after she had eye surgery, quite a few posts after Thanksgiving last year gushing about her cooking the meal, the 3 or so in the last year where I talk about missing her in some way, etc. That&#8217;s out of around 100 posts total that I&#8217;ve made on fuzzypinkslippers.com in the Family category and the 152 on the site overall the beginning of 2011. Most of the posts in the Family category refer to my mom or my dad or both. There are  probably more posts from the last year about going to court over my grass than there are about my aunt. So, I think a littler perspective might be helpful.</p> <p>Now, if she wants to claim that I&#8217;ve been more harsh about her daughter in law, then that might be a legitimate issue, but&#8230;I haven&#8217;t even called her a bitch or evil.  I did accuse her of being a catalyst in tearing apart our family and of having a double standard about medications, but I didn&#8217;t even get all that vicious on her.  So really,  they need to get over it.  If what I say is causing them so much anxiety, stress or anger, then they are old enough to know how to click the little x in the corner of the browser.  They are also old enough to not have surrogate blog monitors check out the site for them.  I think that if they would lay off on the familial pressure (via the monitoring and the accusations they make to my mom and grandmother) then things might get better.  I keep posting things related to them because their anxiety heightens my anxiety and my paranoia.  I really wouldn&#8217;t think that people who are related to me would want to cause me to either get so angry that I have severe headaches or so depressed that I cry for hours on end because I&#8217;ve heard yet again how horrible (in terms of actions) yet insignificant (in terms of importance to them) I am.  Honestly, the best way to end all of this drama is for them to back off.  They want to prove that I&#8217;m immature or wild or needing to be controlled by my parents*&#8230;that&#8217;s fine, but this all seems like a way to bait me, which doesn&#8217;t make them come off as being much more mature than me.</p> <p>*Yes, my aunt actually told my mother that my mom should be able to exert some kind of parental control on me about what I blog about because she is my parent.  Yes, my aunt knows that in less than four months, I will be 28.  She also knows that I am a lot better behaved at 27 than my mom was during her teens and twenties.  So, again&#8230;perspective.</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><div class="snap_nopreview sharing robots-nocontent"><ul><li class="sharing_label">Share this:</li><li class="share-twitter share-regular"><div class="twitter_button"></div></li><li class="share-email share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/15/come-on-now/?share=email" title="Click to email this to a friend"></a></li><li class="share-print share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-print share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/15/come-on-now/#print" title="Click to print"></a></li><li class="share-facebook share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-facebook share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/15/come-on-now/?share=facebook" title="Share on Facebook"></a></li><li class="share-reddit share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-reddit share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/15/come-on-now/?share=reddit" title="Click to share on Reddit"></a></li><li class="share-digg share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-digg share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/15/come-on-now/?share=digg" title="Click to Digg this post"></a></li><li class="share-custom share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" style="background:url(http://www.dandyid.org/code/images/miscellaneous/favicons/tumblr.png) no-repeat center left;" class="share-custom share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/15/come-on-now/?share=custom-1303589712" title="Click to share"></a></li><li class="share-stumbleupon share-regular"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-stumbleupon share-icon no-text" href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/15/come-on-now/?share=stumbleupon" title="Click to share on StumbleUpon"></a></li><li class="share-end"></li></ul><div class="sharing-clear"></div></div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/15/come-on-now/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=10075" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-07-14:425634:9801 2011-11-15T07:50:29Z 2011-11-15T07:50:29Z public 0 <p>My laptop is on vacation right now. It decided to quit working properly last Tuesday. At first, I thought it was just a monitor issue, but after going through the troubleshooting process (twice) I found out that there was also a motherboard problem. So, a technician was supposed to fix it about 12 hours ago. Even though he showed up a couple of hours late (he went to the wrong location), he <em>tried</em> to fix it but his efforts were unsuccessful.</p> <p>I got to watch him (and listen to him) call the technician technical support line for Dell. He told them that it needed more work done, including that it probably needed a new cable for the monitor, a new backpanel (I hope they still have pink ones), a new palm rest, and a new base/underside. He told them that he had trouble getting the new (refurbished) monitor to fit properly, even though it was supposed to fit my particular model of XPS. The tech support dude had to verify with me that I was okay sending it to Texas to the Depot, and I told him that I was. He then told me that it would be back to me in about 10 days. I sighed and said that was okay. (Maybe I&#8217;ll have my external hard drive cover by the time it gets back.)</p> <p>Then, the tech support line guy said I needed to back up my hard drive. Now, I may not know how to fix my laptop, but I&#8217;m pretty sure that I have been around computers long enough to know that backing up a hard drive is pretty damn near impossible if you can&#8217;t access it to copy it. I pointed that out to him, so he said to specify that I only wanted them to fix the hardware and that I didn&#8217;t want them to mess with the hard drive. (I don&#8217;t care if they mess with the drive, as long as they are able to back it up before messing with it.)</p> <p>Anyway, I should have my laptop back in less than 2 weeks with its 3rd new motherboard, 3rd or 4th new monitor (assuming they put one in that fits), second or third palm rest, and second back and bottom panels. I think I&#8217;m going to mention on the form that I&#8217;ll be filling out in a few hours that I would like to have them check out the webcam, since it has had kind of a glowed effect ever since the newest webcam was installed.</p> <p>Eventually, I think Dell is going to go nuts fixing this laptop. I swear, it has had more problems than every other computer I&#8217;ve ever had or regularly used combined. I know that it has had a hell of a lot more issues with the motherboard (and the monitor, for that matter) than any other computer that I&#8217;ve ever had. (I think that I&#8217;d never had motherboard issues before I got this laptop in 2009.)</p> <div class="share-this"> <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a> <div class="facebook-share-button"> </div> </div><p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://fuzzypinkslippers.com/2011/11/15/motherboard-may-i/" title="Read Original Post">fuzzypinkslippers.com</a>.</small></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=janersm&ditemid=9801" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments