HAPPY FREE AGENCY DAY, EVERYBODY!

HAPPY FREE AGENCY DAY, EVERYBODY!

Now, a moment of silence for the recently traded and those signed by Florida, Calgary, Buffalo, and Edmonton.

There is no hockey until October. I haz sad.

***

This 30+C heat and humidity is REALLY starting to piss me off. Spousal Unit took some time last evening to install the AC unit in the hole in the wall provided for such things. That has cooled down the living room, my office and the kitchen, but the bedroom and bathroom are still saunas.

Spousal Unit and I also have an ongoing debate on what temp our (US made) AC unit should be set to.

I say between 72-74F. He says between 65-70F.

He is wrong.

***

My birthday is in 12 days. I don't think I have enough booze in the house to forget that.

Though this milestone birthday year is going SO MUCH better than the last milestone birthday year.

***

Next two weeks are going to be full of introspection, writing, thinking, thinking about writing, writing about thinking, and trying to figure out where all of this is going. Deciding on where I want to be in a year. In 1 to 2 years. In 5 years. When and how I want to die.

You know, birthday-related panic and angst. Big whup.

Wish me luck.

Annual Life Crisis

Next year, I will start calling this my Annual Midlife Crisis.

So I had a birthday. I'm 39. I'm in reasonably good health for a fat woman with MS.

I am in a financial panic, again, because my job just isn't coming close to paying the bills and it's going to be MONTHS before all that shit works itself out. Unless... I get my shit together, figure out how to get a small business loan (or Kickstarter my dream job and hope it works out), and just try to hustle more work in ways that I can't as just a person.

I've got a great deal of spare time (because I'm not working enough) and today was the first day where I actually sat and wrote. I worked on my business plan, I wrote a blog post for my real life website, I wrote a little bit about why I don't write (yeah, really), and I wrote about my day.

I think I can make more time to write.

***

The big mystery I am trying to solve in my 40th year:

WHY is it that everything I love to do, no one will pay me to do?

***

I'm not very good at making friends here. Or rather, the people I have been meeting aren't really the kind of people I want to be friends with.

If I have coffee with one more group of women who are carrying Coach bags, wearing D&G rhinestone watches, and Lucky Brand jeans, I will stab myself in the eye with a Starbucks stir stick.

***

I'd also like to meet one childfree woman who isn't out to "land a man before its too late".

***

I'd also like to meet women who know what a smartphone is. And know basic internet terms. Maybe uses the internet a little bit more than just Facebook.

***

I'm trying to start writing again to meet a goal I started about a year ago. I'm *really* behind on that goal, but I think I can make it up if I really put my "taking action" principles to it.

This blog may just become a report of what happened today, or what I'm thinking about but I am going to try to write 750 words a day that aren't for my website and aren't for my business plan. All of those 750 words might not end up on the blog, but a lot of them could.

***

I'll try to keep from boring you.

***

I had another year of waking up crying on the morning of my birthday. Full of fear and dread for the future, and sobbing because I'm now fairly certain that unless there is a polar shift in my life, I will amount to nothing.

***

SO. I. WRITE.

So many things.

I have to do laundry tomorrow, just so I can wash the fabric I need to sew into a pillow.

I want to get this thing done by midnight on December 31, just so I can say I finished it in 2012.

***

Rage against the penis is a real thing. I have to stop reading the feminist web again, so I can forget.

***

I also need to stop watching old men cry on television when they provide commentary in WWII documentaries.

***

I don't know if I have enough time in the next two days to get all of the crafting, writing, and planning I want to do by midnight on December 31. Writing is the most difficult, crafting is the most time consuming, and planning is the most exhausting.

***

Maybe I should go to bed now?

Ifs

I was as sure then as I am now that it was the best choice I could have made at the time and I am as certain now as I was then that I did the right thing.

It was the path that was going to lead me to a new life, and it did, just not the life I thought I wanted to walk into. This one is much better. This one has different limitations.

If it had lasted. If I hadn't caught him in bed with a young woman I knew from high school who was mainly trying to get even for me dating her ex-"fiancé" 9 months after they had broke up. If hadn't been drinking so much. If I hadn't been drinking so often. If hadn't been trying to cram myself into a gender stereotype that didn't fit.

If I hadn't been trying to find a way to live with myself and what I was told I should be ashamed of.

If I hadn't learned the lessons...

Today would be my 19th wedding anniversary. The 19th anniversary doesn't come with a traditional gift, so I can't even crack wise about missing out on the "papier maché"or "aluminum foil" anniversary.

I could have been married for exactly half my life today had he not had the sense to cheat on me and treat me so terribly that I had to go looking for Plan B. That's the truth of it. I would be someone completely different than I am now if he hadn't done that.

For the record, my Plan B was terrible. But it got me to the place where I read the books that changed my mind, which led me to the place where I learned about the internet and through the internet I figured out how to use my words. And when I finally, FINALLY, learned to use my words I realized that the guy had done me a favour. I had limited my life to what I thought was expected of someone of whom little was expected as soon as he handed me the ring. The failure of our marriage after seven and a half months (plus three additional months of drama, emotional blackmail, threats, violence, reconciliation, more drama, more threats and spending a night in jail) was the humiliation I needed to reconsider my future.

Not that I saw it like that at the time. Oh no, I was mad. Mad in the English sense of the word, not the North American one. I was broken and fallen and tired of living and I would not turn 20 until the week before the drama ended.

I didn't know it then but I know it now, my divorce was the first step I took toward saving my own life.

Rob, I have no clue where you are but I hope that you are happy. I also hope that you are as happy as I am that this isn't our wedding anniversary.

There are monsters outside.

I turned 38 years old yesterday. For more than 10 years I have had this annual sulk about how my life didn't turn out like I planned; which is kind of rich coming from someone who never had a plan for her life in the first place.

Since my mid-20s I have had this obsession with trying to keep my personal monsters at bay with massive levels of organization. I blame a couple of years of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for starting it. I was not born organized, but I have learned it over the past 10-12 years. My sanity seems to hinge on it at times.

It started with endless written lists, then Flylady, and a WhoMi agenda, then GTD and Lifehacker (which is the church of my religion) and webapps like Remember the Milk and Toodledo. I got a Samsung S Glide and with my new Android phone, my obsession with Google Calendar and other awesome Google products I am very close to organizing my personal life paper-free.

My new favourite to-do list is Astrid.com which works on the web and syncs with the phone app. I use my Google account to login, so there's not another web account to remember. I heart it to the power of eleventy1. I use Calendar for appointments and events and WorkFlowy for lists of things I want to remember but can't necessary set into action at the time I remember them. I also have a notepad and pen with me at all times, and set the items I write down as either a to-do in Astrid, and appointment in Calendar or a list item in WorkFlowy at the end of each day.

But all of this organization obsession masks my real fear of being out of control (again). I know exactly what to do, and often schedule what time to do it just so I know when to do it.

What the monsters do is fuck with my motivation. What the monsters do is tell me that it doesn't matter what I do, if I am not exceptional at it - it's worthless. What the monsters do is help me check "complete" when it's not really done. They convince me to hit the snooze bar or reschedule to a more "convenient" time.

They enable me to believe that it's just not worth the time or effort because I am not good at anything and trying won't change that.

I woke up this morning without a feeling of dread for the first time in a month or so. I checked in with Lifehacker (as Saturday is my holy day, it seems) and clicked around and found a link to a post that linked to a site that led me to remember two things and decide another:

1. In a year I will wish I started today.
2. I can refocus and start again.
3. I decided to join DayZero.

I am going to try 101 Things in 1001 Days again. I only have 15 things on my list, but coming up with 101 things in about three hours seems a little... over-eager. But I have scheduled the time to do the things on my list and remind myself of my list. I'm making my list public because I have to be unafraid of failing and failing in public.

The monsters are still here. I can hear them laughing as I write this, because they think that I am not good enough to write, to create, and to get what I want and where I want to go.

I've already proved the monsters wrong. Only 499 blog posts to go.

Just World?

Insult to injury? I mean, you think that you can OD on drugs in your car in peace and NOT have your corpse dragged off into the woods to be snacked on and then saved for later.

Though I am sure that there are many who think that the bear was too good for the likes of him.

I hope Stephen Colbert is more fearful of Canadian bears. Our bears are extra bad-ass.

Having a Bad Week

I'm not sure what has to happen in your life that makes you kill and dismember someone and put their torso in a suitcase and then mail some of the parts to national political parties; including a note that there would be more deaths then bugging out to Europe - probably France. However, I hope that if I am ever the subject of an international arrest warrant, my wanted photos are as well composed and professional.

How bad does your day have to be that you walk into a local cafe, shoot five people then walk off to carjack and shoot a sixth person? Five of those people are dead, the shooter killed himself when the police confronted him.

I have never been angry enough to shoot my landlord and then have a stand-off with the police. Not ever. Or be suspected of killing two people in a suburban sushi bar before I shot my landlord.

I have never wanted to eat the face of a homeless man whilst naked. I have wanted to rip the heart out of a couple of my ex-boyfriends, but that was more metaphorically than literally. And it never included tearing tongues out, shredding faces, or removing eyeballs - especially when unclothed. Turns out, that happened in 2010. I should learn to read the dates on these things more closely.

I really don't have an explanation for any of this, so....









OMG BABY PLATYPI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is how my brain works

I have the drum track from this with the lyrics to this playing over it.

This is the weirdness my brain just comes up with spontaneously, because I haven't heard either track in months, if not years.

Paranoia will Destroya

Two months ago to the day my mind and body just completely crapped out on me. I had done two straight months of being completely on top of my game and feeling great about it. Then one day, it all just broke.

My anxiety is constant and shifts from quietly lurking in the background to full out, screaming loud hyperventilation as it feels like the weight of the world has been rested on my chest. As I write this, I'm about a five on the ten point scale between those to ends. I'm terrified of everything.

Once again on my lunch hour I found myself in the self-help section of the bookstore scouring the shelves for the book, the program or the workbook that would help me fix my lousy fucking life. But it's not there. No matter how much I want it to be there, it's not.

My neurologist doesn't want me to do cardio (other than walking) or strength training every day because recovering from the nerve fatigue gets harder and harder with each successive day. So instead of figuring out a routine that would work I just quit. I just quit because I know myself.

Building a habit for me means I have to do it, practice it every single day. If I can't do something every day, I won't do it. I know myself. That's how I maintain my employment, I have daily routine that gets me out of bed and to the office and then home again. Any deviation from that can cause problems. Which is why I sit here.

I'm sitting here because I know I am being judged. I'm being judged by everyone I come into contact in a day. That is not rational, but I feel it. Every screaming loud hyperventilation trying to get out is telling me that I am a failure and completely worthless. No book or program or church or whatever is going to fix the MS to take this away.

My brain is broken. That is the most difficult thing for me to accept. I rebel against the idea on an hourly basis, but then reality smacks me in the face by making me bang into a door frame, not be able to lift my arm up, or just leave me so hopeless I wonder if there's any redemption in this world at all.

I keep making plans that keep getting blown up before they even taxi down the runway. It's gotten to the point that if the next plan gets shot down, I'm not telling anyone until they actually happen. It's just too devastating and makes me self-loathe with almost a religious fervor.

My friend Karen sent me a BBM after the MS Walk telling me that I am awesome and the over $2,100 we raised as a team was because of me. I never thanked her, because I was too embarrassed by her words. So Karen, if you are reading this... thank you. Your kindness humbles me.

So here I am with a sink full of dirty dishes left by Joe as he skipped the country, a disorganized house, a 1000 piece photomosaic jigsaw puzzle of the Canadian flag set up on the table, two cross-stitch projects started and one to just do the finishing on and all I can do is sit here and just obsess about how much my life sucks already and how what happened last night can only make matters worse.

I've been through enough therapy in my life to know that reality is what you focus on. I just don't know where you get the drive to just keep going through the motions. I don't have any goals that are important. The only dream I have is to have enough money that I can have a haircut, manicure & pedicure, waxing and threading scheduled in the same month. My only goal is to have a clean enough house and do enough writing in a month that I don't completely lose my mind. I'd like to lose 30 lbs, but that's highly unlikely given my strange food obsessions, fear of cooking and grocery stores and propensity to sit for hours and days on end.

I finally started to cry. That's where this ends.

France

Not the country, my Copaxone support nurse.

She calls me every month to check in on my "success" with the daily regimen of my injectable disease modifying drug.

It feels a bit like a pep talk but I realize that Teva pays a lot of people a lot of money to keep me on this $1,400 a month drug. I've already decided that I'm sticking it out until my next relapse, whenever that happens. I'm generally stable, with small things improving because of "Magic Hands" Ray and the physiotherapy exercises I manage to throw into each day and maybe the Copaxone.

Are the improvements because of the Copaxone? I don't really care. I'm not in a wheelchair, I've got 20/20 vision, I can generally control all of my limbs and I only need 7 hours of sleep.

When you've got MS, that's about as good as it gets. I have distinctly lowered the expectations for the remainder of my life.

It's going to be *AWESOME* living like this when I know that almost every woman I'm descended from lived to be 80+ with most of them getting beyond 85. I've probably got 50 more years of this shit to deal with.

I have my three months on Copaxone follow up with my neuro on 5 August, right after an appointment with my physiotherapist to figure out why yoga and pilates movements involving the movement of my head make me so dizzy I feel like puking.

This whole getting exercise thing is going really fucking badly.

I've been just obsessing on cigarettes and lattes for about 24 hours now, knowing that in my old life that would solve this weight problem by the first of October, but I'm pretty sure it would kill me now.

Age and MS have completely changed my problem solving skills, much to my near-instant-gratification-loving-brain's chagrin.

Oh, to be 30 again. It seems like a lifetime ago.

Weird

Is the deal with MS that you either get to walk straight or think straight but never both at the same time?

I have had all sorts of cognitive and memory stuff going on that's driving me crazy.

I've also had all manner of emotional issues as well; crying when I can't solve a puzzle, I hear a particular song or trip on my left foot.

I know that I am not in my right mind, and it's driving me batshit crazy.

So, on July 17 I'm throwing myself an Ultimate Dance Party post-afternoon burgers, dogs and sangria birthday party.

If you're in Vancouver, you should come.