Post- Blizzard 06 report

Here's a quick update on my health. I'm sorry to have given some of you a scare. I'm going to be ok. Today I had the ultrasound. I tried to get it done on Tuesday but when I got there they told I was supposed to be fasting. The facility was filthy by the way. It looked like that hadn't cleaned the waiting room in weeks. It was unpleasant but didn't take too long and could have been worse. I didn't even have to strip. But I was alone with the technician in the room and that made me nervous. I thought a third person was always supposed to be present in those types of situations. He didn't tell me anything other than to call me doctor in 4 days.

Meanwhile, my 3 days of antibiotics are over and I felt better until yesterday afternoon. I started feeling sick again before teaching my second class of the day. I had cancelled classes last Friday and Monday due to my feeling so bad. Tuesday and Wednesday morning I felt much better. But by that afternoon I had to sit while lecturing which is not as effective. I also let the class out early. I've noticed that my mental acuity fades when the fever swells. I felt so weak I even paid for a cab ride to the train station from the campus. It's a 2 mile walk but I usually hike it. I knew I'd miss my train if I tried.

lucky for me though I found I have a prescription for more antibiotics. The doctor wrote me the scrip then gave me free samples instead. I meant to get it filled tonight since I'm feeling so crappy but I put it off until it was too late and all the pharmacies are closed--one of the many disadvantages of not living in the city where there are 24 hour pharmacies. Of course, I could take a bus into Manhattan and find one of the drug stores but, ugh, I'm too tired. I have to go in tomorrow to teach my double class, it's 2 1/2 hours long so I'll get the meds then. I can't cancel again since I did last week. This being sick thing sucks. At least I don't have to blame my mental state for this one though.

Tonight I emailed two long-lost friends. I'm very proud of myself. I'd let them both go last year as I let everything in my life go. I wrote apologies and explanations to both of them. I have a long list of people I need to email similar letters to. I'm haunted by the people I've lost.

The Blizzard of 06 was amazing and beautiful! I loved it. I didn't have to shovel any of it of course nor dig out my car or navigate through 2 feet of snow on the road. I've never seen so much snow in my life. Which was very exciting. It started snowing Saturday afternoon while I sojourned to the health clinic and didn't stop until late Sunday afternoon. The snow plow came down our street three times during the night while I was still awake.

Sadly, today it is all melting because it is something like 60 degrees outside! I guess it's good it won't get dirty and ugly. I was disappointed there were no snowmen. Some of the drifts after the shoveling were 4 feet high. I wanted to make a snowman and might have if I'd felt better. I also wish I'd felt well enough to go to Central Park. I always like to see the snow there. I don't think I'll ever get used to the snow.

Valentine's Day was anti-climatic. I ate ice cream and watched TV. Last year at this time I had two men calling me for dates and one man I was dating. He didn't call me on V-Day because he was angry and punishing me though I had no idea. Mature, huh? But I did buy myself some roses this year. I had decided to be my own Valentine. The roses are an unusual color, rust on the inside and cream on the outside. Very Victorian looking. Surprisingly, my ghetto cat hasn't eaten them yet. Well, my deceased cat was the one who always ate my flowers, but this one likes to knock them over and shred them for fun. She started to mess with them but I yelled and she desisted. She has a new game of climbing my clothes drying rack like a jungle gym and that has kept her occupied.

It's hard for me to write because my the sickness makes me feel weird, like I can only think one sentence at a time. So that's all for tonight. I'll keep y'all updated on the state of my kidneys. My father has agreed to finance any necessary procedures, that's good because he's the money bags of the family. Good night. Thank you for all your concern.

A beginning

I have not made peace with time. She has haunted my life like an overbearing mother, one whom I spent 30 years trying to defy, manipulate and disown. Because she made me feel a stranger here: Time, the arbitrary and cruel mother, I, the rejected child. Yet, the whole world moves in accord with Time, myself excluded. So my greatest fear is permanently slipping out of time, unnoticed and forgotten like the lost toy a child never wanted in the first place.

Such animosity is not as bizarre as it may seem. Time and her devices torture humanity. We strap these things to our bodies and fill our homes with counting machines. We spend our days chronically fixated on 'the time'. And forever wanting to "be 'on time'". I, too, have spent half my days attempting to fit my maladjusted self into the measured minutes and hours of civilized society. Dutifully, I tried to discern how many units it would take to get there, to do this and to finish that. But I could never manage it. I always got the amounts wrong. Because no two minutes are exactly alike. They are not the same! Otherwise one could explain how it only took 30 minutes for me to leave my house yesterday morning but today it took 48? There is no explanation for this anomaly, hence my enmity with time.

The war began long ago, likely declared in the womb. I was born one month early. Not by my own design however, the doctors did it because we were twins. So I entered the universe too early and since then have been too late for everything else.

This war with time has cost me. I never knew how expensive it would be.

***I've been reading a lot of novels lately. It's part of this new relaxing thing I'm trying. And because of my twice a week 6 hour commute. But I had to put a novel down tonight because the whole first chapter was the day in the life of a woman with lots of friends, four smart kids and a goodlooking husband. Yuck. The point is that many of the books I have read in the last few months weren't great. And they're giving me an itch to do something that's better. So I'm letting the idea of writing a book mill around my mind. I even came up with a whole scenario for a fantasy novel--my trashy genre of choice. But I'm just not in the mood for it.

After putting down the offensive novel about the happy woman I picked up Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut. I was so impressed with his voicing. It's always distinctive and authentic. Far superior to most everything else out there. While pausing my reading to consider the genius of Vonnegut I was inspired with a beginning of my own. The above few graphs are what I came up with. Please keep in mind that it is after 1 am and I am on antibiotics and prescription pain meds for my kidney infection and/or stones and/or structural problem--diagnosis pending the ultrasound.* Also, it still needs working. But, from the glow of my pooter screen and the snowy streetlight outside, I'm fairly pleased with what I wrote. That will all change tomorrow but so be it and good night lovely readers.

Wow, it just lightninged and thundered amidst the snow. The flakes are all glommed up onto my window screen so I can barely see out of the bottom pane. Cool. This is supposed to be a big blizzard.

*I walked back to the nasty clinic this afternoon but I took a Ritalin first so I would have greater impulse control and not leave before it was my turn again like I did yesterday. It was better in there today with fewer people. I saw a doctor and peed in a cup. I need more tests but he gave me drug samples. Then I walked home in the snow because the clinic cost me all my cash. But that's ok because I like snow.

Don't read this

In less than 30 days I will be 30 years old. I have tried to prepare myself for this since the reality of passing time hit me in the face with my 29th birthday. This year didn't go the way I had hoped. It was supposed to be my big bang say goodbye to my youth year. Instead, it was my descent into acquiescent death.

I gave up. I lost the fight with myself and my ailing body. My heart broke twice over as my body struggled with withdrawal from 6 years of Xanax addiction. Now I'm trying to taper off the antidepressants I've eaten for a decade. Next month I'll be a 30 year old who wants nothing but to disappear. I ran my life into the ground, I can't salvage it. Because I don't care enough to bother. My passion is gone. Hope left me the day I spent an hour crying in my shrink's bathroom hoping someone would commit me. When they didn't I came home and cried myself to sleep after screaming and raging through my apartment.

I wasn't depressed last year. Not until after that day when I gave up. I had chronic anxiety and exhaustion, but they still told me I was depressed. Eventually my moods became unstable and my thoughts irrational but not depressed. I tried to tell them that. I wasn't sad all the time, I was hopeful, I didn't hate myself, I wanted to succeeed. But now all that is gone. Now I am depressed. Which disgusts and bores me. This is why I haven't been blogging. I have no interest in anything I have to say. It's all the same: boo hoo, poor me, I hate my life. Disgusting.

What now? I could eat myself fat. But I really can't afford to do that. It does have advantages though, then I could justify giving up on a love life. Wouldn't it be easier to stay home because I know I'm unattractive than it is to stay home because I know I can't get hurt again? Because I can't get over the last one? And because I can't figure out how to fix what's wrong with me? I want to buy a car and drive and drive and drive forever. Or maybe stop driving in a new city where I can find a new career and a real job that will pay my bills. Some dumb job where I just have to show up everyday and follow directions. Then I can go home and disappear in oblivion until work the next day. That's what I want. But I'm committed to teaching 3 classes until the end of this semester. That's through mid-may. I've taken a leave of absence or withdrawn or something from my phd program because I want it all to go to hell.

I have a bladder infection. I got this two weeks after I got over my kidney infection or kidney stone or whatever the crap it was that made me feel like I'd been run over by a truck, which caused me to spend January lying in bed. Today I spent two hours trying to get antibiotics at the local clinic. But I walked out when I couldn't take being there anymore. There were screaming sick babies and spanish novellas on the tv and uncomfortable chairs and fluorescent lights and I felt feverish. No one there spoke English. 4 people were served in 90 minutes and I still had 2 people to go before it was my turn. So I walked out. Foolish of me. I didn't want to walk the mile home in my weakened condition so I paid 5 bucks for a cab ride.

Since then I've been eating chocolate and watching garbage on tv. This is not a life. I am a waste of flesh and space. But I'm too tired to move. I'm beyond lonely and bored. I haven't been this unhappy since 1996. And that was different because I still had my future. I knew things would change. But this is it now. This is my wasteful hateful disgusting life. I'm ashamed of everything I've ever done. I'm ashamed of how I live now. I'm envious of the horrible characters parading on the tv because they aren't alone. What am I supposed to do now? I am the cat lady. I hide in my house and watch tv all day. It's despicable. I suspect much of this is the result of cutting down to 150 mg of Wellbutrin last month. Until I got the kidney infection/or stone cutting my meds made me feel better. My shrink didn't return my phone call in January so I consider our relationship terminated. She did tell me I was too depressed for therapy and beyond the help of medication so that means she has nothing to offer me anyway.

I need help. But I can't even get some freaking anti-biotics. Maybe I'll just leave it alone. In a few weeks the infection should spread from my bladder to my kidneys and then maybe I'll have renal failure. My father asked me what I was going to do for my 30th birthday--it was his bimonthly phone call. I told him I wanted to throw myself in the river. He laughed.

It will snow tomorrow. That will be nice.

***Today I find myself wondering if I've had this infection since last year. Last fall I got exhausted like this. I told my shrink that I didn't feel depressed but I was just too tired to do anything. Living in Brooklyn was when I started having to pee constantly. TMI, I know.

Happy New Year!!!!

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy New Year!!!

I resolve to waste no more time on unworthy men. (See the archives for multiple examples of such.) Please feel free to remind me of this promise if it becomes necessary. Bang me over the head with it if I stray...

This time of the year is crazy busy for academics... I was giving exams then grading them then had to jump on a plane for my parent's city. And with the lovely transit strike on the 20th--exams got all screwed up. I just gave a make-up exam early today.

I didn't do anything for New Year's Eve which is a bit sad because it's my favorite holiday with Halloween. I had wanted to go to Berlin with my best friend but I didn't have the initiative to bother. I didn't even have the initiative to call any of my friends to see what they were up to. I stayed home and watched TV. So, 'send in the clowns. Maybe next year.'

Christmas was nice. Not the profound experience I had last year but that's to be expected. I'll post about my week in Ft. Lauderdale soon. It was nothing exciting though.

I love New Year's Eve because I love the idea of starting over. I like things to have a definite ending and a distinct beginning. That way, all my mistakes are gone and I get to try again. Especially after a bad year, the New Year feels significant and necessary. I've had quite a few memorable eve's. This year I didn't want any drama.

*Last New Years/2005 I spent quietly with the Reticent puppetmaster boy. (see psot below.) First I had a nice dinner with two girlfriends at Cozi's in Union Square then I went to Brooklyn Heights to the Boy's house. We walked over to the Promenade where we cuddled and watched the fireworks shot from the river. Then we kissed and cuddled the night away.
*2004 I spent traveling back from Florida and was on the subway when the ball dropped in Times Square. I was so angry about it that I called my father and cursed him out on his voicemail for flying me into Newark ( I lived in Harlem). That was very unreasonable and horrible of me. As a result he won't ever buy me a plane ticket again.
*2003 I meant to spend it with my unrequited love interest visiting from Georgia but he wanted to sleep through it so I left him to hang with my buds in the village and kissed another boy for an hour in the street....
*2002 my last year in Atlanta, my friend had a party. I got sick because my Marine boyfriend at the time was falling all over the gay guys and was way more interested in them than he was in me. He had more fun than I'd ever seen him have before. So I spent the night lying on my friend's bed in her room listening to the party. I dumped him a few days later.
*2001 I went to London with 3 of my best friends and my sister. We had an absolutely fabulous time. Even though the drunks the boys invited back to our flat robbed us. Before that we were singing and dancing in a pub near Euston Road
*2000 it was just me and my best friend. We spent 24 hours in indulgent decadence, rich foods, pajamas and a dozen movies. We had planned to travel to Philly but our friends there ditched us at the last minute to go to the Barbara Streisand concert in Las Vegas. Can you guess that they aren't straight men?
*1999* I think I went to a party at church. Yeah, it was a dance at the single's ward. Yuckie. It was the first dance after the last one where I met a really really cute and very tall boy. So I must have gone to see him. He was dumb as dirt but he was so cute it took me awhile to figure that out.

Beyond that I don't remember. 2000 was the year I decided to make New Year's a big deal. I have nothing to complain about for sitting this one out. Next year we will definitely go to Berlin. That will be awesome.