Meta, random stuff, and a promise

First, the promise: I owe you a post about my most wonderful day in Asheville at the Biltmore Estate last Wednesday. I took a whopping 27 pictures! If I recall correctly, I believe Larry* said he took a few hundred. Yeah, I'm not much for taking pictures. So I promise to write at least a little bit about the Biltmore trip. But I'm not putting a time limit on that promise, because, well, I know me.

I'm doing a lot of these "random stuff" posts, and frankly I'm getting tired of it. Not tired of blogging, mind you, though the increasing time between posts might suggest otherwise. I'd like to write something deep and meaningful, perhaps philosophical, but my brain has been wandering to the shiny recently.

I finally, after much mumbling about good intentions and such, have added a blog roll to this site. It has been over a year since I had a blog roll, and man, Blogger has made it much easier to generate those things. There are a bunch of blogs I "follow" with the Blogger gadget that does that, and I was able to pick which ones of those I wanted to put on my blog roll. I did not put all of them up, as some of the ones on my "follow" list either haven't been updated in months or are ones that I don't check regularly. I suspect some of them have folded. At any rate, if I missed your blog and you would like me to add it to the list, just send me an email (see the profile page for the address).

I'm pleased to say that some of my long-time blogger buddies have earned the coveted (by some) Content Warning on their blogs. Though I have no need to achieve that accolade, I appreciate the dedication and hard work (a-hem) that these devoted men have put into their image searches. Congratulations, fellas.

I mentioned my infected ear in my last post. Just inside the outer ear, above the lobe, has a pocket of infection. It's been bothering me for nearly two weeks now. I saw the doctor, he put me on antibiotics, it still hurt like a mo'fo' after five days so I took my ear back to him. He put me on a brief course of Prednisone to attack the inflammation. (Prednisone and I don't get along well, and he knows it, so he kept the dose relatively low.) Finally the ear is getting better! The swelling is down significantly, it doesn't hurt constantly, my lymph nodes are no longer sore and swollen (that happened after the first few days on the antibiotic, thankfully), and the itching has subsided. Superman helped me clean it out a bit this evening. I'll spare you the details. He put some hydrogen peroxide on the sore and it bubbled beautifully. The thing is finally healing!

We saw Diva on Tuesday for a therapy team meeting, my first one. They are a monthly delight, and I missed the first one by attending class instead. "They" were not amused. "I" don't give a shit. Anyway, we had the meeting and it was a meeting. She's doing well in school, somewhat surprisingly. The individual attention helps, I'm sure. They've got her on quite a few meds. Whatever. She behaves well enough most of the time, with the exception of a few fights. No biggie, though, evidently. We had some time after the meeting to visit with her and meet her new therapist. (The other gal left for a new job. I don't blame her.) Things were going along smoothly until I denied her something she wanted. BAM! She completely shut down, wouldn't look at me or Superman, wouldn't talk, nothing. She didn't look mad, didn't actively pout, she sort of went blank. No emotion. It was like turning off a light switch. The new therapist was there to see it, for which I am thankful. It may not seem weird as you read this, but it was striking. It's more of a gut/emotional reaction thing, and I'm not writing about it very well. However, I'm glad she demonstrates for the staff there how "off" she is.

Short hair is easier than long hair. It looks kinda funny, but it's cool, easy to wash, a snap to dry, doesn't need a brush or comb (yeah, it's that short), and feels nifty when I rub my head. It also doesn't wad up in the shower drain to cause nasty plumbing problems. We all appreciate that.

Maybe I'll get my head together and write something meaningful this week. Here's hoping!

*There is no link to Larry's blog because Larry no longer has a blog. His partner Greg does, though, and it's there in newly minted blog roll over there --->

Five things I have done for myself

But first, a little bit of rambling and some newsy-ness. I wasn't online at all yesterday because I went with Light to get the rest of her stuff from college town. Superman and Twitch got almost all of it on the truck Thursday evening, but there were just a few things they couldn't fit on the truck. So Light and I went back to get those few things. 

Which, while necessary, was really (for me, anyway) an excuse to get some good Hot Fresh Now. 

We don't have any good doughnut bakeries in my little town, but college town has Hot Fresh Now Krispy Kreme. Glazed heaven. 

And no, buying myself some hot fresh glazed doughnuts is NOT on my list of things I have done for myself. 

There has been some discussion as I prepare to compose this list as to the definition of terms. Things I have done for myself - intentionally? or just things I have done with other motivations that have turned out to be good for me? Patrick and I decided that these things didn't count. That leaves out a lot. Another question: just how recent do these things need to be? Most of what I have done for myself, I did 25 + years ago. I'm going to include some of those, since that may be the only way we'll actually get up to five. And I'm only considering things that are significant enough to have made a real impact on my life. So let's do this thing.

Five Things

1. I went to Boston. In the early spring of 1982, when I was a sophomore in college, I had an opportunity to help a friend drive up to Massachusetts from Macon, Georgia. It would require that I skip a whole week of school, since the timing didn't coincide with Spring Break that term. She was to be in a friend's wedding somewhere in central Massachusetts, but I wanted to go to Boston because my boyfriend at the time, Rohan, was attending MIT. I went, spent the week with him, did all manner of interesting things, and had a wonderful time. I ended up flunking one of my classes, but I had taken it Pass/Fail anyway, since I did not get along with the professor, so the "Fail" didn't affect my GPA. I'm no dummy. 

About a week after my return to Macon, I met Superman. That changed the course of my life in a most astounding way, but I had no active role in the arrangement of that meeting. It doesn't count as one of the five. 

2. I married Superman. Hell, I backed him into proposing to me. (I might tell that story sometime.) I will include this in my list because it was an active decision on my part, and I guess I did it for me. The truth of the matter is that I just had to marry him. Not "had" to marry him as in I was "in trouble." When I called my dad to tell him we were marrying, he asked with a snippy tone of voice "Are you pregnant?" No, I wasn't. I just couldn't live without the man. It was compulsory that we marry. He proposed on November 2nd, 1982, and we married on March 17th, 1983.

I stayed married to him. That isn't numbered because it technically doesn't belong in this list. It was a very good thing to do, and it benefited me greatly, but that's not what I was thinking when I made the decision(s). There were a few times in the first few (10?) years of our marriage when the thought of leaving his sorry ass did cross my mind. Deciding to stick it out was motivated by my unhealthy martyr complex more than any good will toward myself. As it turns out, being married to Superman is the best thing about my life now. 

3. I put my kids in public school. I did it for me, but also for them. There again, I had pushed myself to the brink of insanity with homeschooling the older two and trying to care for the toddlers/preschoolers Diva and Sproing. Those two have never been easy to parent. Keeping them out of trouble while successfully educating Light and Twitch was more than I could handle. I put the two oldest in middle school, and the next year Diva and Sproing were in all-day kindergarten. The 2003-'04 school year I was without specific employment. I enjoyed a year off. The following year, 2004, when the kidlets were in first grade, I took the bus driving job. 

4. I quit my bus driving job. That was only last year; March of 2008. Really, though, I should have stopped driving the bus at the end of the previous school year. By the time I finally did quit, that job had sapped nearly every bit of emotional stability out of me. After Spring Break last year (March 2008) I just could not make myself get back on the bus. I figure this entry is a little bit fudged because, like getting married, it seems more like a compulsory action than a self-benevolent decision. 

5. I went back to college. That, obviously, is very recent. Since I graduated from Mercer U. in 1986 I have wanted to return to college. I really want my master's degree, but right now I'm getting a second undergraduate degree. That has more to do with where I live and what's available to me than what I really want to do. The idea is that when I earn my second degree I will go into a graduate program more to my liking, both in academic subject and geographic location. 

So there you have it. I think only the first and last items really belong in this list, since the middle three I only did when I had finally worn myself to a complete frazzle and didn't have too much choice in the matter. 

What do you think? 

Time keeps on slipping...

away from me. It is even later tonight than it was last night when I finally got to posting. I had every intention of regaling you with all the exciting things I experienced today. Or something like that.

I will tell ya' this one, though. As I have perhaps mentioned before, I have a bit of stress in my life. Did you know depression runs deep and strong in my family? It's my dad's fault, of couse, but we won't go into that now. The point is I am well medicated. I try to keep ahead of things, making sure I have my fills re-'d before I run out, expecially of the mood-influencing meds.

About 18 months ago I ran out of Cymbalta. It was over the 4th of July holiday weekend. I went unmedicated for 4 days, if I recall. Superman had gone out of town to visit his folks, leaving me here with the whole crowd of hooligans. I lost it. Cried all weekend. Made pathetic mournful calls to the poor man begging him to come home, sobbing almost uncontrollably. I got poor ol' C's shoulders good and wet. Only later did my doctor inform me that I had experienced typical withdrawal symptoms from the Cymbalta. I vowed to keep current with my refills!

Back to this weekend... I called in the refill to the pharmacy in time. What I failed to notice was that I had no refills left on that perscription. They had to call the doctor to OK the refill. Unfortunately it was late on Wednesday that I called it in, and of course the office was closed for Thanksgiving until today. I took the last capsule in that bottle on Saturday. No Cymbalta yesterday (Sunday). None this morning, either. When I went to get it late this morning the pharmacy still hadn't heard from the doctor's office. blah blah blah. I finally got the new bottle at 7:00 tonight. I managed to keep my sh!t together through the last two days. This morning my brain started drifting into the danger zone, but I recognized it for the unmedicated mess it was and backed away from those thoughts. I'm pretty proud of myself for that, really!

There is so much more to say, blathering on, yada yada about this and that. Warning: I tend to ramble when I get tired. But I'm going to shut 'er down and go to sleep now. HOPEFULLY I will get back here in time tomorrow to go into some topics I'd like to explore.