Happy Halloween!

Cool day today. My costume won me an honorable mention and a $10 Chipotle gift card, our Skindecent order arrived, and my goodies from UK Lush Retro were waiting on my doorstep when I got home.

These are why my pumpkin didn't win a prize, they're amazing:



This is mine, nice, but in no way in the same league:



And my costume:

Happy Halloween

Now go carve a pumpkin!

Arm, arm, hip, thigh, belly, belly, thigh, hip

That's my little chant so I can remember where I'm supposed to do my Copaxone injections. It's fairly easy to tell where my last injection was, thanks to the quarter-sized itchy hive. I'm back into doing the injections as easily as if I'd never stopped, but every night when I shoot up, I worry about my friend Julphia. She's so young for MS, and it's hitting her hard, and none of the standard therapies (Avonex, Betaseron, Copaxone) seem to be helping her. I haven't heard from her in a while, and I worry. If any of my half-dozen readers can send some good thoughts her way, I'd appreciate it.

Somehow, I managed to strain a muscle in my neck, and today has been sheer agony. Thanks to the surgery, ibuprofen and aspirin are forever on my forbidden list, so I've been alternating heat and cold and tonight I took a bath with a Marathon bubble bar, and used Wiccy afterwards. Sadly, it's impossible to give yourself a really thorough neck rub. Mom helped by telling me she had the exact same thing happen, and it lasted four days even with lots of ibuprofen. Thanks Mom, love you too.

I've been at Hyphenated Corp. for ten weeks now, and I'm getting into the swing of things. I still screw up, but I haven't yet made the same mistake twice, and I'm writing down every new thing I learn. One of these days, I'll take my scribbled pile of notes and type them up in Word so I can stop trying to decipher my own handwriting.

On the home front, with all due respect to the Bard of Avon, what Hell really hath no fury like is a dog whose bed, which he finally got smelling just right, is taken away, washed, and put back together smelling like lavender. And you haven't ever really been cussed out until you've been cussed out in German Shepherd.

Christmas in October

Yesterday, as I was home trying to unstick my eyelids, three packages arrived in the mail. The lovely Yisabeyya returned a book I had loaned her and sent me a soft, fuzzy jackelope (which I managed to rescue from the 'Foots before it got more than a bit slobbered on). A fellow Lushie sent me four Ice Hotel bubble bars as part of a swap, and my wonderful, amazing friend Kogi sent me a mug she made, plus 2 full bottles of BPAL perfumes (Lurid Library and Love and Pain), two of my precious discontinued Green Day bubble bars and another Ice Hotel.

Kogi used stills from "Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me" to create this amazing mug:




Then today, my new insurance came through with my Copaxone. Tonight, for the first time in 9 months, I shot myself. Yup. Still hurts, still gives me a giant site reaction. Still, if it keeps my polka dots under control, I'll continue to shoot up.

Not a bad haul for mid-October. Now to plot a really amazing Christmas Box for Kogi...

Happy, happy autumn!

The last few days, I have been harvesting. My volunteer grape tomato plant has provided me with dozens upon dozens of tasty tomatoes, my lavender is ready to be cut down for the winter, and this past week I have harvested nearly half a cup of morning glory seeds.






The lavender is going in my linen closet and to co-workers, and the morning glory seeds are being divvied up into packets for next spring. I am going to plant some of them, some are going to Mallie for her new house, and the rest are available for anyone who wants some very pretty vines with dark purple, red-streaked flowers.

The cold fall air makes my evening baths much more enjoyable, and now I can use all my glorious fall scents. So far, the winner has been Julphia Soapworks' Sandalwood Vanilla, followed by Red Egyptian Musk from Skindecent. I am also very proud to announce that I was one of the forum contest winners for Isle of Eden's holiday collection. My suggestion, called Tucked In, is a pretty layered scrub, is currently one of the top ten best-sellers on the site, and I get a free jumbo scrub!

I built my very first book recently at work, and I am now responsible for three more. Even though my name doesn't appear on them anywhere, I still feel a real sense of pride in them. I'm also amazed at how much I am learning. And earning, for that matter--overtime is not only permitted, but encouraged, and so I have been bringing work home with me. I'm sure I will get tired of it, but right now, it makes me feel very grown-up to bring a book home with me and work on it. There is one annoyance that is not going to change any time soon--the software which converts data to PDFs for our books automatically adds "ISBN #" despite the teeth-grinding redundancy thereof. I get little angry quivers when I think about this, so I shall try not to think of it!

To paraphrase Berke Breathed, "L. R. Jammies, signing off and heading for the tub!"

For a friend

The person for whom this is intended will know it, and I want you also to know that while I can't do much from this distance, I am here to support you whatever way I can. Please read the last sentence and let me know how I can help you fight the depression.

Monday, April 19, 2004

Today seemed to be a pretty typical Monday...Mom's out of town for the week, so I had planned to catch up on the filing stack, which was about 2 feet tall, then get some of my other work done, plus get started on all these annual accountings we have due when she comes back. The Monday part came in when of course I didn't get any of that done owing to a client crisis, and having to prep a Motion for a change of custody and get it ready, along with assorted other court paperwork, have Susan sign Mom's name to all 4 forms and the check and give it to the law clerk in less than an hour...I managed to get it done, only to have Brad come back and say it was all held up because we have a visiting judge on this 10 year old case, so it should be ready for pickup and mailing to our client and opposing counsel tomorrow.

Despite phone calls from four clients who had total mini-meltdowns at the thought that their attorney was out of town for a week (how dare she!) and trying to explain to them that not only can I not give legal advice, if I do so, my boss can lose her ability to practice law, hellooooooooo, I managed to get a pretty good jump on the filing this afternoon, so when I came home, I felt like I'd earned a nap. I got out of my work clothes, grabbed something to eat, and had probably been asleep for about half an hour when the phone rang.

"Pam?"

"Dan?"

"No, Mark."

Oops...guessed the wrong little brother...my only excuse is that I was still half asleep. He figured this out and offered to let me go back to sleep, but I never talk enough with my brothers so I said nah, and tried to shake the cobwebs out of my head. I heard him sending his kids into the other room as we chatted, then he asked if Mom and Dad were going to be taking any overnight trips with our other brother and his wife and daughter and I said no, why? He said he had bad news...I thought first of the tax forms I'd just done for him and asked what the bad news was, still in my sleep fog. His next words shocked me wide awake.

"Uncle Skip killed himself last night."

He went on to tell me that that's all he knows...our cousin called to tell him just now, and he didn't question him on the subject, just called me and was going to call Mom and Dad. We talked just a bit, in the disjointed way of people who are utterly stunned...neither of us had a clue. This is my aunt's ex-husband, or was, I guess I should say. The last time I saw him was early October, and he seemed happy enough with his life, his lady friend, his grandkids. When I was diagnosed with MS, he sent me a thoughtful card, one of the few family members to acknowledge that I have a life-altering disease, and to tell me to keep my chin up.

I'm so sorry I never knew it was so bad for him...I've been whining and moaning about my own depression, about having to take something, and a man who watched me at my first birthday party killed himself, maybe because there wasn't anybody he could moan to, wasn't anybody to talk to about taking an anti-depressant...

No matter how bad it gets, suicide is just too FUCKING FINAL.

A Thousand Words

From I Can Has Cheezburger?

Weirdest dream ever

I was on the front porch of my house in the dream (not this house, just one I made up in the dream), talking to Harvey Fierstein about how a writer had written books about me fighting vampires and it was true and he and his significant other needed to move to someplace remote where they could hide from the vampires. He wasn't wanting to leave and was all insulted that I didn't think he could help me. Then his SO arrived and agreed with me.

Other people started showing up, including a famous vampire hunter who didn't seem to be anything but old and useless, my father in the dream (much younger than my real dad, and a musician) and a female vampire who was not so much on our side as more against the bad guys. She brought a ghoul and a beastie with her, and said that the vampires knew where I was and I had until sunset to get out of the house and hide my tracks so I could keep fighting her.

The vampire hunter showed her that her "ghoul" was just an animated mattress (twin-size, presumably) wearing clothes and I wanted to see it sit down. Then my dream-father turned out to have been changed to a bad vampire, and he turned my dream-dog, and a bunch of friends who had shown up had to kill them both. My dream-father had me by the throat when the vampire woman's beastie changed its allegiance to me and bit my dream-dad, who, btw, said he turned my dog because he had to because he was a guitar player.

MaryMargrt saved a little computer disc which had all kinds of information on it from my dream-dog before he could take it to the bad vampires. My friends helped me get my stuff out of the house and were going to set it on fire when I was out, but it was getting closer and closer to sunset and I kept trying to save books. I was arguing with Mallie, who'd redone my bedroom to look like a teenager's, that I needed to take "grown-up books" out of the room so it would be realistic. I woke up as she was pulling me out of the room because someone had set the house on fire.

My first thought on waking up...

"Why was I putting books in boxes when I could have just chucked them out the window?"

Ahh, retail therapy!

Today was a lovely day. Good company, great purchases, lots of fun. It would be even better if Bookworm Mathgeek could have joined us, but the OhioMart is held every year, so perhaps some year we can get her to fly in for a weekend and join us. I got quite a few Christmas presents, as did Mom & Annabelle, and now I'm wishing I could afford to go back for a few things, but sadly, the $12 to park and get in would make too much of a dent in my budget. Still, I did well today, and I'm pleased with my haul.

CT scan results are in

And I was quite worried, because the tech last night told me they'd go to my doc fast if there was a problem, by Thursday if there wasn't. However, the scan was normal, which presumably means I have all the appropriate organs in the appropriate places, unlike Her Majesty's brother, and the nurse at my doctor's office managed to convey that I am either imaginative or exaggerative, as there is nothing wrong with me.

So. There will not be a repeat of the trudging from doctor to lab ad nauseam that there was four years ago, and I merely have MS and possibly gas.

I can live with that.