God dammit...
For most the night I had calmed down to the point where I could pretty much sit still without vibrating. I couldn't get comfortable in bed, but tried. A bit ago I gave up and came in to check about that song. Now I'm sitting here and just realized my foot's bouncing around again. I hate this.. HATE HATE HATE it.. I'm almost scared to take the welbutron now. It's supposed to be an upper and she even warned me it might send me into a manic phase. But what if I'm ALREADY IN ONE!?!?

*cries*

Do I take it this morning and see what happens, or do I want, see the therapist, get their opinion, then take it tomorrow if she says ok? I hate putting off meds... it's a bad habit to get into.

Screw it.. I'm waking quu up and making him take me for pancakes. I can't stay still any longer.

I'm also noticing it seems to coincide with being hungry. WTF is up with that? Hungry = manic? Usually Hunger means I go into shutdown mode to conserve energy... not expend EVEN MORE.

I hate my body, i hate my body, i hate my body.

Yea, I just don't seem to post here much anymore. Been writing a bit over in my Wordpress blog, but that's mostly just reviews and whatnot. I've been wrestling with a bout of depression since the middle of last year. Fuckups with my medication and whatnot. Mostly due to really bad insurance. Now we're on Kaiser, which, despite being an HMO has been really good so far.

Today I went in for the Behavioral Health. My meds had pretty much run out and one of the nurse practitioners down in Cumberland was able to squeeze me in today. After a very thorough interview, she went ahead and refilled my Lamictal and put me on Wellbutrin. I'm also going to be starting therapy again, this time on a monthly basis. In all the paperwork she gave me I found out there's actually a support group for people with Depression and Bipolar called DBSA. I'm tempted to go to the meeting next week.

Right now just juggling a lot of emotions and feeling generally lost and out of it.

Oh.. and I have my car back. Only issue is the trunk is finicky to close now. Beats what it was at though.

Well, I'm not going to be able to head to Memphis like I planned. My gas tank is empty and quu warned me that most the gas stations around here don't have gas. Frankly I'm terrified that I'll be out in the middle of no where and stuck with an empty gas tank at a gas station that won't get gas for a week. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I tend to go with my gut feelings about things. Things usually turn out better that way.

This sucks because I really wanted to go support synamontwist. Why can't Memphis and Chattanooga switch places? Now I'm really all depressed.

On the weird side, I had a dream last night that I found two miniature yorkie puppies in my bedroom nesting in some old clothes and blankets. They were so tiny I could hold both in one hand.

Updated: Image wasn't actually LINKED to the fullsized version. Gods I miss my Semagic. Need to get it reinstalled.

 

A friend sent me the URL to this. I just HAD to screen it and keep it for posterity. Probably one of the best Blue replies I've seen in forever. Someone give this man a cookie, maybe a raise too. You can see the official thread here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9336870406

Take my advice, copy and paste the ASCII art into something that has 10pt Arial, looks fucking awesome.

Yea, I haven't posted in forever again, got depressed for awhile  after Dragon*Con so I visited a friend and been busy since. Have a WiiFit now and been making sure to do anywhere from half an hour to a full hour a day, not to mention taking River down to the park to walk for at least 15 mins.

I need to post more, but lack of a good LJ client for the iphone is making me drift away from it more and more. Yes, there are half a dozen blogging clients, but none do things like tagging, mood, location, music, or anything. It's just public posting. Hell, the overall lack of a good text editor really makes me miss my old Treo sometimes.

In other news, my new laptop is working great, except my external HD died. As in, corrupt master table. Quu has tried to fix it to no avail. The sad part is, not only did it have all my music on it (which was just copies from our master collection on the network) but all my stories and documents. All my notes. I had no less than two novel outlines in the works. All of it wasn't backed up elsewhere because I was in the middle of moving it to the new computer. THinking about it makes me depressed so unless I post to say it's fixed, don't expect me to talk about it much.

If you don't have a Wii, trust me when I say it's worth getting one just for the Wii fit. People spend thousands of dollars on excercises equimpment, but this is one that you will actually USE. The only bad part of it is that, according to the current BMI charts, the vast majority of americans are OBEASE. Most of these people are not obease by comparison to others, but the poor WiiFit can't tell the difference. Believe it or not, Quu CAN use it, but getting him to do so will be a chore. Pointing out that sex will be better when we're both in shape doesn't seem to effect him. *sighs*

In any case, I have a dozen errands to run and a puppy to take to the park.

My heart goes out to synamontwist .

Bleh..

Really, I haven't been posting because I haven't had much to say. Been in and out of a depressed funk since I've been home. Most of it is just dealing with leftover stress from my trip. Getting used to things down here again is rough. I'm loving being home but it's not easy.

One of the best things, if y'all haven't figured it out by now, is that I managed to get an iPhone this past Monday. Woke up and went with quu to work, tatianamik actually going with us. After dropping Quu off at work, Tanya and I went over to North Point Mall where there is an Apple store. It opens at 10:00 am and we probably get there around 10:45 am. There is already a line, and they are already sold out. A bit frustrated, I drag Tanya over to the Gamestop or whatever it is that is there in the mall and ask if they have any Wii Fits... none. We then walk over and end up touring in the Waldenbooks for a bit. See all sorts of blank journals and whatnot, but I already have tons. Nearly got some book marks, but Tanya persuaded me to check back at the Apple store one more time to see if I could get a card to cut in line the next day. We get down there and one of the apple clerks is handing out more tickets. I ask, and yep.. they had gotten more instock while we were away. All they had left where some 8gigs and some 16gigs in white. Ick.. but.. I can live with it. Get a card and the two of us stay in line for probably two hours.

The line was pretty ok. A young guy and an older man behind us, a 'business casual' guy in front of us. Talked to some people who were asking questions before moving on. My knees were hurting bad by the time we get in, but it was livable. At long last we get up at the front of the line and after what seemed like forever had a sale's rep free up. I go in, give him my ticket and he heads back to go get it out of the stock room. I'm looking at the cases and stuff until he returns. When he does so, he hands me a box, and I notice it's black. My initial reaction was happy surprise! Maybe they had a black 16 gig! But then i notice... 8gig. WTF? Yea, he proceeds to tell me they didn't have anymore in stock. My brain is going "WTF, WHY ME?!" while my mouth keeps saying "She had more cards, there are others BEHIND me who have been told they had them in stock!" He says, "We're sold out of the 16gigs, but you can make due with an 8gig right?" I flat out tell him no, it's not enough. I should have told him "Hun, my house measures in terabytes, not gigs, so no this isn't going to be nearly big enough." He heads back into the stock room to check once more and I'm about ready to burst into tears while Tanya is ready to go nuclear and destroy the store. At least she was thinking "Can she at least get a card to get one tomorrow so she can skip the line?". Anyway, the guy comes back... with a shiny white box in his hands. "Luckily the manager had set some aside as 'emergency stock' for just these occasions." Yea, right. I know for a fact that the flat rule to all Apple and ATT stores is "SELL THEM ALL". They are not supposed to hold any back for whatever reason. Hell, Quu's seen memo's that went out to all ATT employees saying "If you don't -need- one, let the customers get them first."

So, I get my 16gig in white, nearly freak because Tanya forgot to warn me we needed a credit card, but thankfully Quu had just made me zero out my Discover card. I was waiting for him to say "we don't accept discover" in all honesty. But then next thing I know it's mine, it's activated, and I'm heading over to the accessories in this state of shock. They didn't have any docking stations, but that's ok. It's useful but not needed. Got a case but not sure if I'm going to stick with it or not. It has a belt clip as well as an armband. Nifty huh? Also got the car charger (with extra wall plug and mini usb cable) and a retractable Aux cable.

All in all I'm quite happy with it. Still getting used to it, but that's expected. I can now ditch all the "Agendus" software I had, which is good as it kept crashing my Outlook. I do need to go in and clean up my contacts though. A few things I don't like: Can't edit/rotate pictures I've synced from my computer, aim gets wiggy due to the 'no background processes' shit from apple, limit of 10 custom ringtones, still very very few Apps for it yet. I'm waiting for a blogging app for LJ and Wordpress. Web Apps galore but still few native apps. It will come in time though. My biggest love is Pandora radio. I'm gonna make a new post about that later.

Anyway, I've spent far too long typing this up.

Yes, it was awful -- now please shut up - CNN.com:

Poignant, tragic, funny, outrageous --most of us have at least one story we tell (and retell) to explain our emotional bruises. But there's a big difference between understanding the past and being stuck in it.
--
"Oh, for God's sake," she says, rolling her eyes. "Could we please stop the drama and get on with our life?"

I normally try to avoid anything dealing with Oprah anymore, but I stumbled across this article on CNN. It echos nicely what I've been saying for years. For me it can be very very easy to slip into self pity. My brother died when I was eight; my father has a violent temper, though never physical hit anyone; was constantly bullied throughout school; so on and so forth. I could weep and moan and go on about how my life was so horrid.

Your life is shaped by your past experiences, not defined by it.

Probably the greatest thing about this article is the points it has to help you avoid getting stuck in that self pity rut. Teaches you how to recognize it and how to fight it.

Depressed bad tonight. Pretty much crying myself to sleep.

Just hard. My knees are hurting bad. Meijers was having a Dr. sholes shoe sale, buy one get one for a doller. made each pair about 18 or less. Picked up two pair of really nice black leather shoes. One is casual, closed toe shoes for everyday use, another is a small pump that's really comfy. The only two closed toe shoes I had were my grey boots and a pair of white sneakers. I wanted to get a brown pair of the casuals, but they didn't have any my size. Need to break them in. Left fits perfect, but the right seems a bit too long. I have funky feet anyway: left is a 7 1/2 medium, right is a 7 wide. Near impossioble to get a single pair to fit comfortably.

Anyway, I needed the shoes because its so cold and rainy up here. All I brought were my sandals. My knees are giving out too. Really hurting. Mom doesn't have a working dishwasher so I have to stand there and hand wash everything.

That isn't helping things at all. Mom is... difficult to say the least. Emotional and cranky is about the best way I can describe it. She was doing so well in the hospital. I feel like I'm failing to help her since we've not been doing what we need to do. She's not helping though. Puts off taking her pain meds and resisting taking them at all. I'm trying to be patient, but many times she just doesn't trust me at all, doesn't believe that I've got a brain and know what I'm doing. Trying to be patient, but its quickly wearing me down.

Keep hearing a conversation I had with my sister some time ago. She was saying that I have a real 'gift' for being able to take care of people like I do. What I should have told her is that its not so much that, as I'm able to put on that mask for a time and do what needs to be done. I do it, I don't enjoy it. I'm very good at hiding the pain it causes, hiding the frustraition. I don't let them see me curling up at night and crying myself to sleep wondering how I'm going to make it through the next day.

What hurts the most is that I know it doesn't go both ways. I help everyone else, I be there when they need me, but they will never be there for me. Never really have. Sure Mom's done all the mom stuff, but.. no one can help me with my problems. I stand by them, but I stand alone. Its how its always been. Maybe its my own fault for being able to take care of myself for the most part. Doing what I can to adapt to my difficulties. I don't know.

All I can say is how thankful I am to have quu. He's been with me through the worst, stuck it out and helped me through it. I can count on him. In many ways he is a shealter from the storms of my craziness. I feel so alone up here. Like a lone tree in the middle of a field being buffited by the storms. Just want to go home so bad right now.

Maybe tomorrow will be better. Part of my problem is I don't think I've been taking my meds. I know I took them today, but think I forgot for the past 2-3 days. Feel scatterbrained, frustraited, tired, and just short tempered.

Miss my home. Miss my bed. Miss the fuzzy kitties. Miss the puppy belly. And most of all I miss my husband.

Anyone got a spare set of ruby slippers?

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I don't know what it is, but, I think, after the last time firefox update I started having some major issues.

-Despite what i tell it to in the options, links that 'open in new window' do indeed open up in a window, not a tab like i tell it to (I even installed a tab preferences addon to give more options, neither works)

-Pages are not refreshing on load. I can't find the option that it used to have that told it to auto refresh the page on load, not pull from the cache.

Anyone else having these issues? Know where/how to fix them? What am I missing? I'm really frustrated because i had it all working before, and now suddenly I can't seem to find ANY of the options I had before or those options REFUSE to work. I'm sick of having to right click every link to have it open in a new tab. I HATE having a bizillion windows open when firefox does tabs so nicely. *sighs*

Gods today is a bad day.

My friend internetbrain linked these two articles on her blog and all but beat me upside the head to actually read them. Well I did, some time ago in fact, and they were something I've been trying to get quu to read since then as well. What are they? Well the first (Because I couldn't say it on the phone) is a blog entry from this woman who is diagnosed as Bipolar. She's much worse than me, but it's still a good read into what perspective is like there. However, this is only the introduction to the real article you need to read: (How Do I...). This is her husband's blog entry. The key thing that he's having to deal with, which many people know and yet just don't let it sink in, is that when someone around you is having mental/emotional 'breaking'... you-just-can't-fix-it. All you can do, all you NEED to do, is watch for the warning signs and then weather the storm. Sometimes things can be prevented (like how pat helps me keep to my meds), but when shit hits the fan, the best thing you can do is just be there and let it work itself out.

Although these articles are centered around Bipolar, in all honesty it is something that can be applied to just about all things in life. Truthfully, I think anyone can make use of the advice included.

Well, christmas is come and gone, still have a handful of cards to still send out.. hopefully before new years. *sighs* But.. got a LOT done.

( Cut for kids stuff. )

( Cake and Soup Adventures! )

( Christmas. )

( Gaming. )

( LJ Icons! )

( Health and Depression. )

( Da House! )

Gah.. that's about all I can think of.

Trying to get back in contact with friends again.. but it's hard. Ya'll know how bad I am at keeping in touch.

Looking forward to ShadowCon though.

Enough for now.. hope ya'll enjoy the LJ cuts.. didn't want to clog up the friends pages and make everyone ignore me. >_>;;;

Laters!

Mom went to her orthopedic doctor today. Her flabitius (sp?) was acting up again and she needed him to look it over before the surgery on friday.

Well, after they took an x-ray, no sign of a stress fracture so its highly likely its an infection. As it stands now, they are going to have to postpone the surgery at least a month. She needs some blood work, a bone scan, and a few other tests to confirm there is an infection though. If they all come clean they might have the surgery while I'm still here.

Dunno what's gonna happen. Right now we are not even thinking hypotheticles until we know for sure what's going on. It might be incovent, but everyone has to agree that it would be monumentiusly stupid to have surgery nine inches away from a possible infection. He knows its incovenent, hell its incovenent for him too, but its the smart thing to do. I really like him.

Still need to call my insurance and work out the stuff with the GP up here. Just wish I could find good doctors down in atlanta. This GP is the one who originally diagnosed me with Bipolar (back then it was manic/depressive disorder). Really nice, but good doctor. Maybe he knows someone down in atlanta.

I wanna go back to sleep. Feel like I'm getting depressed again. Don't want to do anything. I don't get out of bed till after noon. Mostly sitting there with my laptop playing games and surfing the net. I think I'm homesick. I miss Pat so much. Miss River and the kitties. I'd almost kill to have Ladye Grey curl up in my lap. Last night I could almost feel River curled up with me.

Just wanna go home. But I'll deal. At least we'll have a vacation.

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I lasted about a week. It was hard but I managed. Used email and TS to keep in touch with some of my friends, but wasn't 'dependent' on it like I have been with AIM and chat in general.

My browsing time was pretty much gone and I find it's easier not to just sit and surf the net. Of course, rhast pointing me at Apophysis kinda helped with that. I was able to get on the computer, be super creative while talking to peeps on TS, then set my fractals to render and get off the computer for hours at a time. (Go check my DA page to see all the awesome stuff I've been making!) Played more of my DS, filled the carpenter bee holes, cooked and cleaned a bit all this week.

So I'm going to allow myself back on AIM and stuff, but if I find i'm slipping back into old habits I'm going to be logging off again.

Still sore from yesterday.. but mostly couldn't sleep till late last night because my knee was throbbing SOO bad. I don't know what it was but my knee hasn't hurt like this in a very very long time. I wanted to rip the muscles and tendons in my kneecap off just to make the pain stop. >_<

Oh, ottom, You'll be happy to know that quu and I did actually watch Ocean's 11 last night. Thanks for loaning it to us and if you've got Ocean's 12 I'd love to borrow that too.

Hungry.... quu just heated up some of the potato soup I made the other day... now THIS is comfort food for me. ^_^

While doing some ironing tonight I realized that I've developed some really bad habits, one of which is being addicted to the net and to chatting. I need to break myself of this with a vengeance. And well.. you know what they say.. when the 12 step program doesn't work, sometimes you just gotta go cold turkey.

So, with that being said, I won't be on AIM or any IM program for the next week, maybe two. If people want to talk to me.. call my cell. If you don't have my cell number, email me at lethann @ livejournal.com and if you should have it I'll make sure you have it (see below). This will also be my last LJ post from the computer during this time. My goal is to not be on Chat or have any web browser open (with the only exception being Georgia navigator on my Treo for traffic reports) during this week. While I won't be posting to LJ from my laptop during this time, I'll allow myself to post from my phone. I hope I won't be over posting much. Just be warned that I might be posting more, so feel free to shove me into a friend group off your default view for your friends page. 

I'm already printing out directions to the site for this Sat. Everyone who's going has already verified with me and I'll see you at the house between 10 and 11. If that's not ok, then just call me. ^_^

The puter isn't offlimts or anything, but I'm going to use it for actually DOING things. Either playing games, photoshop, listening to music, or whatever. Just no general internet and no chat. One thing I will be doing is checking my email (since my family only email me anyway), so I'll be getting any replies to my entries, but won't be responding to any unless it's in another post (very unlikely).

This isn't to cut off communication with my friends, this is to get me to start living off the computer again. I need to stop being 'afraid' of the phone. Don't hesitate to call!!!

This.. is gonna hurt... -_-;;;

Anyway... Laters peeps!

Yes... after dropping quu off at work I had to stop for gas (was running on empty) and said "fuck it" and went to that Handcocks closing sale I mentioned a few days ago.

Came away with 6 yards of brown crushed velvet, almost 11 yards of this ruddy reddish crushed velvet, both for $1.20 a yard. Nine yards of this brown twill cotton for 90 cents a yard. And a whopping 17 and a half yards of this gorgeous amber Kona cotton for 86 cents a yard. Also got some real Tatting thread (white and off white), 2 plastic tatting shuttles, one metal 'heirloom' shuttle (so I can tat while sitting around events and stuff), some buttons for the green dress (they go on the sleeves), as well as some more green thread 'just in case'. Even with the cheap prices it was more than I should have spent. But then I'm sorta a cheapskate. However, I have had kinda a crappy past few days, and while some women go therapy shopping for shoes or clothes, I go therapy shopping for craft stuff. Well.. at least it wasn't power tools.......... >_>;;;

Thinking of making some nice dresses out of the velvet. The brown I'm looking to use for some pants and maybe a sideless surcoat (not sure if I've got enough to make both). The amber is going to be a dress and then some. I can almost see using the brown sideless surcoat over an amber dress, but I'll need more color to go with it. I'm kicking myself for being silly and using this pattern rather than using the default easy dress layouts we all use for the SCA. Parts of this dress are lackluster (the lacings in the back and the neckline that's gathered for starters).  Also, if anyone wants some of this fabric just lemme know! God knows I've got PLENTY of this amber cloth. I might take pics of it later.

Speaking of the dress, I'm having to re-baste the whole thing. When I basted it the first time I stayed inside the 5/8ths of an inch seam allowance (like right along the edge of the fabric). The problem I'm now running into is the markings for the arm's is completely off. I wouldn't be so pissed if River hadn't have eaten my spool of navy blue thread that I was using for basteing. I've got a couple white spools so if I can't salvage more of the blue I'll switch to it.

Had a doctors appt today, went well. He's going to keep me on the 100mg of Lamictil for now. After a month or so might change the dosage but for now the current one is doing good. He did say that the antacid meds (even the bigger ones like Prolosec) should be fine, just being sure not to take them at the same time. I might try that and see if it helps. Things are getting worse. Made a mistake with dinner tonight and ended up with something akin to Italian sausage (cept it was Mediterranean) and it's ripped my stomach to shreds. quu was a sweetheart and stopped to get me a smoothie on the way home which helped a TON. One thing the doc today suggested was just going straight to a GI specialist rather than wasting time trying to find a GP that doesn't suck. I -think- though that to go to a specialist my insurance requires a referral, but might get around that by just going to a 'doc in a box' and getting a referral that way. Tomorrow I have to call the insurance anyway cause they are doing something funky with my therapist bill.

Anyway.. I'm exhausted so I think I might grab the DS, the rest of my smoothie and go lay down for a bit.

I was on the phone last night with a close friend going through a really hard time in their life right now. In the midst of talking with them and helping them share their troubles I discovered something about myself.

Over the past 3-4 years, my depression has been, for lack of a better term, a buffer between me and the rest of my emotions. These past few weeks that I've been on the full dosage of my meds I've been... well... weepy. Not necessarly in a bad way. Little things that tug at heart strings practually have be bawling my eyes out. I'm kinda jumping at shadows for a lot of things. I also feel almost manic... but I'm not.

Its just.. after so long.. I feel alive. My emotions are at a normal level but I'm just not used to it. While my body is finally balancing out, I have to get myself balanced out. Relearning how to deal with real feelings again. Trying not to over react, but its hard. At least I am used to second guessing everything I think and feel, so I'm kinda being able to prevent it from affecting those around me.

It just feels so weird. Part of me that's been bottled up for so long wants to rush out and make up for lost time. Have to restrain myself so I don't go wild. Guess that's why it almost feels manic, but I know its not. For the past 4 years I've been content to stay home and pretty much do nothing. Now.. now my shelter is beginning to feel more like a prison. Pat is so supportive though. I feel so lucky to have him. *blows a kiss to her baby* I love you honey!

Anyway... time to go.

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tatianamikhail and internetbrain are both seriously thinking of moving down here. I'm almost scared to hope. I really miss the two of them and you all know how horrible I am about keeping in touch with people (I'm the first to admit it!).

In other matters, I'm doing really really good. I've been on the 50mg dosage of Lamictal for a week now and gods I feel NORMAL, well maybe slightly manic, but not overly so. Excited about everything coming up: Ren Faire, SOLAR, seeing my friends, getting the floors done, etc. Since I've pretty much outgrown all my old garb, decided to sew up a new dress. It's a pain in the butt, but it's fun.

BTW, for those interested, I've updated that SOLAR post with better pricing and a bit more info.

Anyway.. back to cutting out fabric...

Woke up around one today, but I didn't lounge in bed like I have been. Got up and was almost immediately out the door. Ran to Kinkos to mail off a package for a friend, can't say what it is here cause its a surprise!

I really think the meds are working. Oh! I don't think I've posted about that here.

After the disaster that was effexor, doc put me on Lamictal, the second oldest bipolar drug next to Lithium. This is the only bipolar drug (at least that I know about) that doesn't require regular blood monitoring. They have these nifty starter packs, so he put me on the one that starts you off on the lowest dosage, 25mg a day for two weeks. Then up to 50mg a day for another two weeks before moving up to 100mg. I'm in my third week, currently at 50mg and I'm finally starting to notice differences. I'm back listening to my music again, feeling antsy and wanting to get out of the house and do stuff, it's not so much of a battle to get myself to pick up stuff, though I can't seem to buckle down and give the house the proper attention it needs just yet. Reading again. Playing WoW and having fun, well.. when Jaero does't drag me to off to Scholo or Strath. (Just kidding hun, it's fun.. well aside from my repair bill.)

Anyway.. dragging Quu to Phoenix and Dragon. I want to look at Tarot decks. As much as I like my Orphalese Tarot program, it's not really portable. Made a new spread.. not really new, cause I'm sure others have made something similar, but I like it. I'll talk about it later. If anyone wants a reading, just lemme know. This program is pretty damn good (and scarly accurate, at least for myself). I'm not the best, but it's mostly just for fun anyway.

Laters.