Do I Have Samantha Stevens' Twitchy Nose, Or What? #ROW80 #Preptober

Here's the #ROW80 #Preptober portion of this post.
This is Ed's office after I got done creating my island of sanity before returning to work on Ed's mess.  I changed my mind about using this room as the sorting and packing station.  I needed someplace less public than the balcony to escape the chaos in between spurts of activity.  So I made my bed on the floor next to the wall adjoining Ed's closet.  I cleared all of Ed's things off his desk and made it mine. I set up a charging station for the many USB chargeable items--lights, power packs, earbuds, speaker, keyboard, androids x 5, mouse x 2 and more. With creative use of a tall chair and a couple cardboard boxes I made a second desk for spreading out papers and tree books and writing by hand.  I didn't advance any of my ROW80 goals since Sunday but by creating this environment I increase my odds of advancing one or more goals by Sunday.

The answer to the question posed by the post title is: Or what.

The photo essay I posted Wednesday morning was a walkthrough tour of Ed's apartment upon my arrival Tuesday afternoon. [Look at your own risk as they cannot be unseen] My intention to spend the night was thwarted by not being able to create a safe enough environment  before Carri had to return to Mom's coupled with having no phone or Internet to reach out for help if necessary.

If you haven't  seen those pictures yet, you might want to go check them out before proceeding as the photos below will be more meaningful and the meaning the title is referencing more poignant. Because the photo essay I'm about to commence shows the apartment conditions less than thirty hours after the first photos were taken.

I will caption the location of the shots briefly and save the explanation for after the last photo.

I tried to trace the same path with similar angles as I did Tuesday.  Keep in mind, the difference between the two sets of photos is under thirty hours.

Crossing the Threshold Facing the Long Wall Between Hall and Kitchen.

Looking Across the Living Room Toward the Kitchen.

Looking Toward the Far Wall of Living Room With Visual of Couch.
The trash bags against the wall contain only aluminum cans for redemption.  The rest of the trash has vanished.

Standing On Edge of Linoleum Facing the Kitchen Table.
The stuff on the table, all related to eating and drinking, came with me. 

Along the Kitchen Window Wall

Looking Across the Expanse of the Kitchen Towards Counter and Sink.

Including the Rest of the Long Counter Along With the Stove.

Looking Down the Long Wall in Living Room Toward Coat Closet and Hall Closet

The Bathroom Sink, Mirror and Cabinet.
That's all my stuff on the counter.  The cabinet is still all Ed's.

The Toilet.

The Tub

Standing in the Hall Looking Past Foot of Bed to Far Wall

The Bed is Now My Sort and Pack Station.

So if It wasn't my twitchy Sam Nose what accomplished this in under thirty hours?

The answer:  Two of Ed's friends from across the street.  The didn't get started until after my return approximately 24 hours after the first set of photos were taken.  So it actually took them less than three hours.

It happened like this: Because it was Mom's shower day we were unable to leave until after Mom's was settled for her after lunch nap.  It was after three and we had to make a stop at T-Mobile to get a SIM card for my RCA Smartphone.  I purchased a senior citizen plan that gave me unlimited data and ability to use as hotspot for up to six of my Internet capable devices.

By the time we arrived at the apartment Carri was already late getting back to Mom for her next potty break so she schlepped my stuff up the stairs and left it next to the door as I unlocked and then started schlepping it all inside.

She left as soon as I and all my stuff was inside so I could lock the door.  I commenced to work on my plan to create my safe haven in Ed's office.  The plan was to ignore the rest of the apartment until I had my safe place.  I meant to begin by removing all of Ed's things and all of the packing related materials and then set up good lighting before unpacking my electronics and setting up my computer workstation.

I hadn't got far.  In fact I had only cleared Ed's desk before realizing that I needed the lighting figured out before I could proceed.  My lighting plan included stacking empty boxes until the top was over my head and then set a lamp aimed at the ceiling 

I was working on that stack when there were footsteps on the balcony outside the window.  They stopped instead of proceeding to apartments beyond Ed's.  They knocked.  And I heard my name.  I hate answering the door nearly as much as answering the phone.

My first thought was it might be Carri returning for some reason.  But it was definitely a mam's voice. I head for the door deciding the fact they were calling my name meant it was probably safe to open the door on the chain.  Once I did I recognized the face as belonging to a man across the street that would often speak to us as we were coming down the stairs of crossing the parking lot upon our return from somewhere.

He introduced himself as James and his friend as Kevin also from across the street.  They had just been talking to my sister and she'd told them I needed help bringing trash down to the dumpsters. I let them in and showed them the six or seven tied off bags in the kitchen that Carri had created the night before.  While they were bringing the bags down I returned to my project in the office.

When they returned from their last trip to the dumpsters James asked if it was OK if they worked at clearing the big pile of trash and cans in front of the couch.  I said sure and showed him where I'd put the big role of Hefty bags I'd found on top of the pile of stuff on the couch. (Evidence to my mind that something had sparked some motivation in Ed shortly before he died.)

So I stayed out of their way by continuing my safe haven project.  

I had explained the 'rules' Carri and I had been using: Keep all aluminum cans in separate bags and do not take down to dumpster as we plan to redeem them at the dump.  Separate out paper, plastic and glass recyclables and set aside anything that looked like important papers or papers with information about Ed.  That meant going through all the loaded bags as Ed had not kept any of that separate.  And watch out for things that are obviously not garbage like dirty dishes and silverware, clothes, electronics, books, pens and pencils, coins and what have you.

In spite of the restrictions it sill took the two of them only about an hour to process the equivalent of what Carri and I had handled in six--the four hours I did without Carri plus the two with her.  When they called me in to see the three of us stood there in the living room chatting about Ed for twenty or so minutes.

For some reason I spoke of my ordeal the previous evening working alone between five and nine and how I'd had to step out on the balcony at least twice an hour to get some cleansing breaths as the stench from the bathroom was overwhelming.  'We saw.' Kevin said.  'We were keeping an eye on things wondering what was going on.'  ;But, I said I couldn't stay on the balcony for more than a couple minutes before I'd start to cry and would make myself get back to work to put a stop to it.'  'We saw.' Kevin said.

Then James who had been standing nearest the hall in the cross currents of air wrinkled up his face and said, 'We can't leave you here alone with that. It's not safe.'  So with my permission he set to work cleaning the bathroom and Kevin proceeded to do the same in the kitchen.  Except for a stint playing paper towel dispenser for James while sitting on the office chair in the hall, I continued work on my safe haven.

Turns out James had professional experience cleaning up extreme messes.  In his twenties he'd worked for a company that cleaned up after deaths both violent and peaceful and when significant amounts of time had passed before the bodies had been discovered.

Before they left James ran the vacuum cleaner over all the carpet in the apartment wherever there was room to maneuver it.  They had accomplished in under three hours what would have taken me at least three days.

There was plenty more to my evening and night but I must leave off here as I did not sleep last night and my intent to go to be early flew off hours ago.  It's nearly 2am already and my sister is going to bring me a bathmat on her way out of town to take Mom to our brother's in Portland.  That way I get to tell Mom goodbye.  But that goes down in just twelve hours and I could easily sleep that long after being awake more than 24hrs.

Oh, dear.  I just realized that I've severely sabotaged my chances of making the whole 24 hours for the Dewey read-a-thon which starts in 27 hours.

Read more...

A Sad So Big- ROW80 - Preptober

 

iz gonna haz a boo kwissmus wifowt U

I woke up Monday morning before dawn after less than seven hours of sleep and in spite of having taken a double dose of the Trazadone as I lay down hoping for a solid 9 or 10 hours to make up for the short, erratic sleep all weekend, I was still awake thirty minutes later and the tears were already flowing again as they had been doing all weekend every time I woke enough to remember all over again.  

With Mom now sleeping inches away I could not let the silent weeping devolve into the shuddering gasping sobs and the only thing I knew that could nip it in the budding stage was to find a distraction.  So I sat up in the dark and pulled out my DVD player which was already loaded with the third disc of Game of Thrones season one.  Just as the opening titles finished there was a load explosive CLAP that seemed to surround the room or even suffuse the room.  My ears felt as they do when a July 4th celebrant sets off an M80 yards away.

My first thought was it was the story but I immediately realized there were no explosive devices in Game of Thrones.  I paused the player and pulled out the earbud just in time to hear the loud follow-up rumble of thunder and the sky opening up.  I got up and went to the front room to watch the rain fall and was reminded of this LOLcat I created as the first Christmas apart from Ed approached in 2013.  I had set such store in the hope of being home for Christmas that year and again every year that followed.  And though he had returned to Longview in 2016 we still had not resumed living together.  Sleepovers in his apartment did not count in my mind and heart as 'coming home for Christmas'.

Now it will never be.

I knew this in June when I made the choice to break up to protect my self.  I knew this season was going to be rough as between his birthday in September all the way through the anniversary of our last sleepover in mid March just before Covid shelter-in-place rules took effect there are few weeks without a holiday, birthday, anniversary or strong memory attached.  I knew it with my head anyway.  And I had just made it through the week of his birthday with barely a blip in mood change and was congratulating myself on that in the four days before the phone call that shattered my world all over again.

Have still not begun to write in either my journal or other files.  This seems to be the only place I can make the words flow.  I think it is because in order to 'speak' to an audience I must stand back from the rawness of my emotions put on at least a pretense of objective reportage.  Also I've put up fences around certain topics that still feel taboo (inappropriate sharing) for blogging and it is exactly in those areas where the emotions are the rawest and the tears most ready.  I can see how that contributes to the post editor feeling like a safer place than my journal.

I was mystified all weekend as to why my emotional state had devolved so drastically from the initial days which I had thought at the time were really bad.  The last five days has been exponentially worse.   I came to realize in the last day or so that what changed was the infusion of anger into the grief.  

Unconscious anger until yesterday.

There are layers to this dynamic for me.  There is the fairly typical grieving process anger that's to be expected according to the stages-of-grief literature.  But as complex as that is it is greatly exasperated by the habitual suppression of anger that was ingrained in my psyche from toddlerhood on.  This too was at least two-fold because both of my parents family of origin were quite stoic and did not condone any expression of strong emotions from exuberance to exasperation.  

But anger was in a separate category all its own.  According to Scripture, we were told, God equates anger with murder.  There is a verse (I'm too tired to look it up right now so I'm paraphrasing) that claims that being angry with your brother is the same as wishing him dead and he who holds anger in his heart is as guilty of murder as the one who sheds blood.

Contrary to the Scriptural teachings of my childhood, psychological principles declare anger a natural, normal and even healthy response to the violation of ones boundaries. As much as I loved Ed, (love him still) there was a great deal in our relationship dynamic that was a trigger for anger. Not all of it could be blamed on the alcohol.   But I was not allowed to express such a response either outwardly or inwardly.  I could not most of the time even allow myself to be aware of it.

It wasn't Ed that forbid expression of anger it was my training and I was a very good enforcer of the rule in spite of the fact that he and his entire family were loud and rowdy with what seemed to me unfettered emotions running the entire gamut from glee to rage.  Sometimes just being around strong emotion even if it wasn't directed at me was enough to trigger my goto reactions.  First anxiety revving up from mild to panic attack level unless I was able to suppress or release the emotional charge.  

Guess how I did that?  

Tears!  

No matter what the strong emotion that was the only safe way for me to express it.  Safe for my psyche that is.  It's not like I got any positive feedback from anybody subjected to my tears from at least age five on. Not even in my family whose rules and attitudes set the framework up for my particular coping method .And I did get plenty of negative feedback.  Just not enough to override the 'rules' against expressing strong emotion.  

Complicating all of that is two more layers related to being female.  There is the western cultural zeitgeist that considers anger unfeminine and that would be plenty all by itself to flummox a woman from blushing bride to grieving widow.  Add to that the doctrinal demand that I was raised under that a wife must submit to her husband in all things.  A wife could no more say 'No' to her husband than a daughter could say 'No' to her father.

Now consider all of that in the light of the fact that I had consciously felt and acknowledged my anger last May when Ed froze me out again.  Two weeks in I not only acknowledged it I used it to fuel my determination to draw a line, to say 'This I will not accept!' 

I used my anger to name his withdrawal as abuse. 

I used it to stiffen my spine.  

I used it to dry up my tears.  

I used it to feel strong.  

I used it to give him a tongue lashing in the middle of his apartment complex parking lot.

I used it to accuse him of abandoning his disabled wife and dying mother.

I used it to amplify my outdoor voice on a summer day with an array of open apartment doors and windows, putting his and my shame on display.

I used it to stay resolute all summer.

Then I got the call.

The anger fled and grief took over for a time.

But now the anger is back but it is no longer making me feel strong.

Only wrong.

Tho I was not thinking about it at the time I knew that shame was his most potent drinking trigger. All I was thinking about was getting away, breaking the spell he had me under. I got back in the car, slammed the door and rode my anger across the river, leaving him with nowhere to hide from the public shaming except inside his apartment gripping an aluminum can.

It is almost as if some supernatural storyteller just wrote Joy's story to prove the truth of the 'biblical principle' that anger is the equivalent of murder.

What am I to do with this?

____________________

As for my goals below? The first six are satisfactory.  The rest--zip.

Backstory highlights and high and low notes:

2013 Piles of Painted Echoes

2013 Our Broken Valentine

2013 Together We Are Amazing

2015 My Heart is the Lake of Fire

2020 Who Am I Without You?

2020 Sunday Serenity - Sorting My Stuff

2020 Of Truth and Words and Rude Epiphanies.

2020 Sunday Serenity - Sads & Hugs - LOLcat Therapy - ROW80 Check-in

2020 In Memorium: Go Forth Ed and Be in Peace

2020 Sunday Serenity - Wallowing - ROW80 & NaNoWriMo Goals

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 4 2020

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

NaNoWriMo 2020

2020 Round 4 ROW80 and NaNo goals:

Sleep 7.5 hours Daily Minimum --  This used to be a major challenge for me but I've got it managed since mid March.  Or at least I had until this past week.  Grief has taken a toll.

Move/Breathe/Meditate 15 min Daily minimum  -- proven to provide a high yield return on investment as whenever I've practiced any of them it stimulates creativity, memory, and insight; lowers anxiety, and increases energy, stamina and a positive mood.

Storydreaming with note-taking tools at hand. 15 min Daily MInimum -- This is a technique I learned from Robert Olen Butler in the book From Where You Dream.

Read Fiction 30 min Daily Average

Read/Study Craft 15 min Daily Average 

Social network activities 30 min Daily Minimum (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc) -- something I've a strong resistance to.  The autism diagnosis helps explain this but doesn't let me off the hook.  If anything it makes it more important.  Plus this is preparing the ground for future promotion once I'm ready to publish

30 min Daily minimum engagement with a scavenger hunt though all my creative writing files including Joystory looking for better than shitty first draft scenes, sections, stories, poems and essays and edit, organize and make hard copies. --  It's been years since I've made clean copies of manuscripts in my portfolios and for most of the noveling writing challenges I've never printed hardcopy.  That is a lot of words to mine as between 2004 and 2015 I participated in more than one such challenge per year-- Nanowrimo, Junowrimo, Camp Nano, ROW80 and Sweating for Sven.among them.  That is a lot of novella length WIP just gathering electron dust.  A conservative estimate is over 20.  I've been wondering for sometime now if the neglect of these stories after the challenges were over is at least partly responsible for the storyworld's elusiveness over the last several years.  I'm hoping that this exercise in honoring their existence will cure my character's recent shyness.

To prep for self-pub: Gather all my poems into a single Scrivener file. Minimum one poem per day until all accounted for.  Adding new ones encouraged.  This will take most of the Round as there are over 80. See Poems by Joy Renee Portal.  Another exercise in honoring old work to encourage new work.

Via the above mentioned Scavenger hunt: Collect everything resembling personal essay into a Scrivener file.  Either this will be added to the self-pup poetry ebook or will become the second ebook.  Or a combo of those options.

Personal Journaling 20 min or 500 words whichever comes first Daily Minimum -- This is the heart of the writing challenge.  The preceding provides the structure and the nutrients that nurtures and honors the work which I've learned over time must exist to ensure that this becomes more than just dabbling.

NaNo Novel 1666 words per day on average. Am going to rebel a bit and bring back a previous NaNo WIP and rework it.  It is fitting because it's premise was rooted in the dynamics of my own marriage. I'm hoping this can be an exercise in grief processing. It's title is The Storyteller's Spouse and it was an exercise in 'unreliable narrator'.  The wife in my story is a YA novelist and the husband is a life-of-the-party natural born storyteller aka raconteur aka tall-tale-teller. I think the reason I got discouraged with the effort after that NaNo ended was because I had tried to lay all the unreliableness at the feet of the husband not realizing how much the wife's denial about the extent to which his storytelling was not confined to social gatherings put her squarely in the same camp. Older and wiser now.
   Am tweaking this goal to combine Storytellers Spouse with another story.  I had forgotten that I've made it a tradition since 2008 to write my election year NaNo in the same storyworld as Mobile Hopes which is set in a mobile home park called Hope Estates.  Each of the novels is set during its election year and the families in the park are living the issues that dominate the campaigns: health, jobs, housing, immigration, women's rights, law and order, climate change, race relations and so on.  Alll I have to do is have the characters move into Hope Estates and share the novel with several other families and I don't have a reworking of an old NaNo but a new story in the Hope Estates series. 

Read more...

I'm Sooo Ready! The Dewey Thon Is Almost Here.

Dewey's 24hr Read-a-Thon Fall Edition 2020:
October 24

Reader Sign-Up

 I am so ready for the Dewey Thon!! 

I definitely need the distraction of a read-a-thon.  It would be a lot more productive and healthier than binge-watching videos and playing video games to keep my memories and emotions from swamping me.  

Reading has been hit-or-miss since I got the news of Ed's death.  My attention span would fit in Thumbelina's Thimble.  And tears are not substitutes for reading glasses and they still just spring up out of nowhere any odd moment of the day or night.

I did have a couple of stable days earlier this week when I kept the tears at bay for most of the day and only got a bit weepy towards bedtime when fatigue had worn down my resolve.  But then on Friday--yesterday--I had to talk to the coroner again and then the funeral home to make arrangements for Ed's cremation.  I've felt like Alice in the lake of tears ever since.

Bedtime is the worst time of the day.  No matter how tired.  To keep the tears at bay I have keep myself distracted and the quietest way to do that is binge watch videos with earbuds or play silly match three video games until my eyes are crossing.  But even if I'm falling asleep over them by the time I've put away the device and settled among my nest of pillows and blankets with the light out I end up watching the video of my life on the back of my eyeballs and if I don't want to devolve into the silent head-ache inducing ugly cry, clutching my waist in the fetal position I must nip it by sitting back up and pulling out a distraction or getting up to wander from room to room or sit at my desk and fiddle with aps or aimlessly browse websites from my overloaded bookmarks or cull my email inbox...or...or...

Those last listed activities are not as unproductive as it sounds as they are part of the sort/organize project that has been the theme of my year. There are the bushels of physical belongings that I've blogged about but there is also a lot of electron belongings: files of manuscripts, notes, graphics etc and my email from inbox to archive and thousands of browser bookmarks.  But late night after a long day with morning on its way and no way I can just sleep in with Mom's wake up ritual my responsibility...is not conducive to efficiency.

Distracting myself from the grief this way is also keeping sleep at bay and putting my whole sleep hygiene program at risk which puts my mental health at risk and would lead inevitably to having to go back on meds.  And I don't want that.  I don't want my thoughts and feelings wrapped in cotton candy and marshmallow cream again.  But I can't let sleep depravation take over my life again either.  So I've struck a compromise.  I'm taking the Trazadone at night for the days Mom is at home (Sunday night through Wednesday night and optional Thursday night as she leaves before lunch) but I'm not taking it on the weekends she spends at my brother's.  

Those two calm days I had this week followed 8 hour sleeps induced by the Traz.  And yet I won't yet let that tempt me into a daily regimen as I refuse to be addicted/dependent on it again.  It messes with my vision which I cannot afford. It takes my eyes several hours after waking to be at what passes for their best.  It's not just my vision.  I'm clumsy also for hours after waking.  I'm sure the vision issue contributes to this but it isn't just eye-hand coordination.  It's like my brain isn't mapping where my body is in space and in relation to other objects and this includes muscle memory not just sensory input from my eyes.

Which means productivity is down.  Waaaay down. Because mornings between Mom's wake up routine and lunch have been my 'office hours' so the work I had been doing then gets pushed back until Mom is in bed at 9 and when I've finally started getting productive work done on my WIP or the sort/organize projects or blogging I am tempted to push back the time for taking the Traz until it's nearly too late as I must give it nine hours to clear my system enough I can manage my morning duties with Mom by 9am. 

But I can't call these weepy, wallowing weekends sans Traz productive either. At least not regarding WIP or sorting stuff.  This may not be sustainable long term but I'm hoping that giving the emotions permission to exist and express themselves will pay off in the long run as this is after all just another sort/organize project:  memories and emotions.  It is the repression of them that is often at the root of clinical depression and I know that has been one of my issues.

Here's hoping that I can do without a wallowing weekend by the 24th.  Weepy I can tolerate for the read-a-thon as I have plenty of audio options.  The ugly cry and the choking sobs and gritted teeth, hiccups and hanky honks and tear soaked neckline and hugging pillows in the fetal position and burping swallowed air are all things I hope I'm ready to be done with by then or if not at least able to be distracted from for 24hours.  

The Dewey Thon has been an integral part of my life since 2007 so I think in two weeks time grief can take a holiday for 24hrs.

It will also be something I can do to honor Ed's memory and memories of some of our best times together.  It was in the high school library we first started hanging out together and developed a friendship around reading and philosophical debates.  One of our favorite activities was sitting side by side reading. He even participated in the first several of the Dewey Thons with me tho never for the full 24 hours he was very partial to his sleep he was.  

So if I can set my mind to hold the space of the Thon as a space I'm sharing with Ed the way I knew him when he was still himself that could be a healing experience. 

Backstory highlights and high and low notes:

2013 Piles of Painted Echoes

2013 Our Broken Valentine

2013 Together We Are Amazing

2015 My Heart is the Lake of Fire

2020 Who Am I Without You?

2020 Sunday Serenity - Sorting My Stuff

2020 Of Truth and Words and Rude Epiphanies.

2020 Sunday Serenity - Sads & Hugs - LOLcat Therapy - ROW80 Check-in

2020 In Memorium: Go Forth Ed and Be in Peace

2020 Sunday Serenity - Wallowing - ROW80 & NaNoWriMo Goals

Read more...

Sunday Serenity

I made it the full 24 hours again.  First time in 2 years.  Before spring of 2013 doing the 24 hours was easy breezy.  It was my thing.  The thing I could still do with the best of those who could.

With my visual impairment it is no longer possible for me to excel at reading fast or reading long so my metrics on number of pages or completed books are sad.  So I would always, since the first Dewey thon in 2007, take pleasure and satisfaction from being one of the few who could breeze through the 24 hours.

After all I'd had a lot of practice since my tween years.  It's always been my thing, staying up all night.  And usually gone hand-in-hand with reading.

But spring of 2013 I was put on a new antidepressant, Trazadone, which made me groggy and kept me that way for 8 to twelve hours.  Skipping doses would have nasty repercussions--headache, dizziness, vision issues and anxiety attacks--so for the last four thons I had to quit two to four hours before the end.

The end for me here on the Pacific Coast was 5am today. I made it.  As I hoped I would the moment I got the OK from my med nurse to withdraw off the Traz.  But when I was unable to sleep the night before that put me already 17 hours awake when the thon started for at 5am Saturday.  Thus I've been awake for 41 hours and it looks like it will be at least 42 before I'm actually asleep.

I did manage to read one book cover to cover for the thon: How to Avoid Making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy) by Julia Cameron and Elizabeth Cameron (artist). 80 odd cartoons illustrating quite LOL the many excuses artists use to explain why the aren't doing their art.  Too many of them too true of me:

• Demanding 15 hour blocks of free time before considering getting started while using scattered 15 minute chunks for frivolous things.
• Preferring to watch the movie on the screen over watching the one on the back of your eyelids. (your story)
• Feeling depressed you don't have time to write.  Then turning on the TV to make yourself feel better.
• Acquiring high-maintenance relationships that suck time and energy and overload you on drama that doesn't belong to you and leaves no room for the drama of your stories.
• Surrounding yourself with negative naysayers.
• Setting yourself up for failure by planning a project to big and complex for your current skills.
• Getting stuck in the research stage forever.

OK that last wasn't in the book but it should be.  It is one of my things.

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Saying Hello, Saying I Love You, Saying Good-bye

Growly Bear and Bruiser

Early afternoon. Our whirlwind trip to the Rogue Valley is nearly over.

That's Ed sitting on his Mom's couch with their dog. Bruiser is wearing the hat I made Ed.  It's just minutes before I head out the door.

Such a quick trip.  Over too soon.

The hours and days and weeks stretch ahead like a tarred road on a hot day.  A slow difficult slog with every step feeling like it's glued to the ground.

The recent fumble of our relationship weighs me with fear of a repeat.  It was twice in two years.  The same weeks of the year.  And since I still don't really understand what happened there's nothing substantial to hang onto.

Hope is fragile.  Brittle.

The last three weeks will haunt me for the rest of this separation.  It still feels raw like a blistering sunburn.

I almost didn't post this picture because looking at Ed here I want to cry.  It's like looking in a mirror.   He's the picture of depression.  He's always had the winter blues but this year is the worst I've seen in 35 years.

And I can't be there to pull him out or at least keep him from sliding further in.  It scares me.

If only he would stop self-medicating and seek the help he is requiring me to seek.  Maybe then I could spare more attention to my own self-care.

For contrast, remember the picture from two years ago April?

Tickled

That too was taken just before leaving. Only minutes before Carri and I backed out of the driveway of our house with the second load of our stuff in April 2013.  Early in this unwanted separation that began that January...and continues two years later.

Such hope that day.  Where did it go?

I guess to be fair I should reveal my own true face:

That's a selfie taken shortly after we arrived in the Rogue Valley late Friday. Tho it was after midnight by this time.  Carri had just finished unloading the van and had gone after half and half for our morning coffee.  I'd just finished setting up my laptop to prep Friday's post and was taking the picture of the hat I'd just freed from the hook planning to make my post about finishing the hat during the drive.

But I couldn't bear to look at that.  It looks like I've been crying for a week. Which is about right if you count the crying on the inside.  Looking at it made me want to start crying again.  Why would I subject it on anyone else?

That's depression.

Instead I took about a dozen pictures of the hat from different angles laying on the bed or perched on my hand or fist.  By the time I had one I liked I was out of energy and could not face the prospect of transferring the picture from my cell to GDrive to my laptop and then opening it in an image editor and prepping it for the post and then prepping the post and then posting to fb.

That felt like another 300 mile trip with me behind the wheel.

That's depression.

With less than five hours before I was planning to show up on my in-law's porch I went to bed.  But it was hours more before I slept as I obsessively rehearsed what I hoped to say to Ed or helplessly watched the mini-movies made by my mind playing out possible scenarios.  None of which had a happy ending.

That's depression.

It's a bitch to live with.

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The Sister Plan

Meta Morpho Sis

Tonight is our class with the nutritionist in Battleground.  My sister and I got a family member's discount when we signed up last summer.  It was still spendy.  My share is 50% of my disability check for fifteen months.   That means 9 or 10 more months of payments.

It includes a lot of reading matter, supplements, consultations, lab tests and classes every other Tuesday and recommendations for more reading and film watching.

The Metamorphosis book is included along with the binder of articles and charts.  The book at top, Why is My Brain Not Working? is a loaner to me from his library.

You'd think I would have been treating the plan with more respect considering the cost but I've been a bit lax about it since mid November.

I've not completely reverted to across the board unhealthy choices but the handful of poor choices I have made are having a huge impact.  I've not started gaining either ounces or inches but I've stopped loosing.  Except muscle mass.  And my mood has been volatile.  And I stopped reading the material and the other complementary reading and studying I had been doing before and after signing up.

I think the two most impactful choices have been the return to drinking coffee daily after a year and a half with only rare treats and the neglect of exercise.  Those two choices contributed to an increase in insomnia again after nearly a year of only moderate issues with it.  Thus sleep deprivation accumulated and my mood and energy tanked and that fed the 'need' for more coffee and the aversion to exercise ...

This all contributed to the difficulty concentrating, staying on task and comprehending and retaining information.  Hence the loss of enjoyment in reading and writing...

So I'm back on the merry-go-round.

I have a choice to make.

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Sunday Serenity #402

One of these days I'm going to have to start this in the middle else I'm never going to get to see and hear beyond the first thirty minutes.

The vid is a slideshow accompanied by Delta Wave entrainment music.  Every slide is an image of the moon.

Seven screenshots from the slideshow:

This captures one slide fading into the next

One of these days I need to set it up on my Nexus and listen in bed as I fall asleep instead of falling asleep in my chair and having to stumble zombie-like to bed with a stiff neck and throbbing tailbone.

[This is one of the posts going up retroactively after the weeks long unintended hiatus that began the week after July 4th.  See She's Back for more detailed explanation.]

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Chin Grin

After Terry had cleaned it up and spread a reddish brown, homemade anti-bacterial solution with cayenne and other Native American wound treatments.

My latest tangle with the dishwasher door split my chin like an overripe plum, bruised my jaw and snapped my neck back with a crackle-pop that had me thinking for an endless second that I'd be looking to Christopher Reeves' last years for inspiration and motivation.

Once again sleep deprivation, ADD and visual impairment joined forces in an attempt to knock some sense into me.  When am I going to learn:

• to always push in the rack and shut the dishwasher door if I'm going to turn away for anything other than to reach into the sink for another item
• to always turn in place and get visual bearings before attempting to move in the new direction
• to not be thinking ahead or about anything other than the task at hand when it involves the dishwasher door, knives, or anything hot--stove, oven, dishes, pans
• to move with slow deliberateness always

I'd just served Mom's lunch tray and had gotten a deep pan out of the dishwasher that I needed to put the artichoke to soak that I was going to fix for dinner.  It had wilted a bit and I hoped soaking it would revive it.

I put the pan in the sink, the artichoke in the pan and ran the pan full of water.  Having forgot to shut the dishwasher door immediately, I had now forgotten it was open so when I turned right to head to my desk to grab my Nexus so I could read to Mom while she ate there it was and it was too late to stop my motion.

I was in mid step with my left foot off the floor as I twisted right on the right foot when my right knee encountered the bottom rack and...well, I now have a concrete and visceral understanding of the cliche, 'getting the pins knocked out from under me'.

I was in the air like a bowling pin hit low and barely touched the dishwasher rack or door before landing chin first on the other side.  In my head it sounded like a bowling ball hitting the floor.

I now have a concrete visceral knowledge of what it means to take a punch in the jaw.  This should come in handy when writing the scenes in my stories involving fist fights, bullies, domestic violence and such.

As I verified I could wiggle my fingers and toes, I was hearing Mom calling from her chair, "What happened?  Are you all right?"  But her voice was faded and far and I wondered if it was just my pulse pounding in my ear or was I browning out.

I couldn't see any better than I could hear as my hair was in my eyes and my hand was trapped under my ribs so I couldn't brush it away.

I tried to kick the floor to get the attention of my nephew downstairs but my legs were trapped under the dishwasher door.

All I wanted was to sleep but I knew Mom would try to come see if I didn't answer her.  So I pushed the floor with my free left hand and managed to flip over onto my back which allowed me to suck in a lungful of air and the pulse pounding in my ear went silent and Mom's voice and the traffic noise, the air pump and the fridge motor were all clamoring for attention.

I finally managed to say loud enough for Mom to hear, "I'm OK.  I can move.  Don't try to come in here."

Then I tried to call my nephew again but there was no way I could project my voice to be heard down in the basement.

It was about then that I noticed a tickle on my neck and jawline and crawling into my ear.  I reached up and touched it and found it wet and hot.  So I touched my chin and my finger sank into mush triggering a vivid vision of the split in the plum I'd trimmed and shared with Mom for lunch.

Was that nausea? If so I better not be laying flat on my back.

Breathe.

I struggled to turn over again, pulling my knees up to my belly to free my legs first and then onto my hands and knees.  That's when I saw the puddle of blood bigger than my head where Id been face down at first and a new baby puddle forming as drops rained down from my chin.

Breathe.

Two feet away beside the back door was Mom's white visor that I'd been wearing to cut the glare from the window as I worked at my computer that morning.  It was spattered with tiny red dots.  Does that mean my chin actually squirted when it first split?

Breathe.

Now it was imperative I get my nephews attention as I could not move from this spot until I had something to staunch the blood flow.  I tried pounding the floor with the padded bone above my wrist but that hurt.  I tried the other and so did it.  Later I discovered they were both bruised already.

I think they encountered the edge of the dishwasher rack.  Which might explain why I nearly cleared the dishwasher before landing chin first like a diver.  My hands might have added to the momentum with a little push off if they came down mostly on the far edge of the rack.

Now Mom was trying to call Levi too but she can barely project her voice to be heard across the room.  She would have done better by pounding the floor with her cane.  But with her tray on her lap she couldn't reach it.

Adding to the challenge of getting Levi's attention was the factor of his room being at the far end of the house from Mom.  I was at the midpoint.  I was right across the hall from the stairwell and the laundry room was under me.  Ah the laundry shoot was right above my head and a foot to my right as I faced the pantry cupboard.

I reached up and grabbed the edge of the open shoot and lifted myself up to a crouch until I could knock loose the stick propping its door open.  The stick fell down the chute and I started banging that lid down again and again until I heard Levi's feet on the stairs.

I sank back to the floor sitting with my back to the chute.  Now blood was soaking my collar and running down my front inside my shirt.

Breath.

Levi got me a wad of paper towel to hold against my chin, closed the dishwasher door, cleaned up the blood on the floor and pantry doors, dropped the visor down the laundry chute, and called my cousin's husband to ask if he could take me to the ER.  Later that evening he made and served Mom and I scrambled eggs.

I spent the time waiting on Terry gathering stuff I needed--purse, ID, medical card, cell phone, Nexus, charger.  Then dropping a quick message into chat for Ed to find when he got off work--that I'd had a bad fall, split my chin and Terry was on his way over to take me to ER.

But when Terry arrived he brought a first aid kit and offered me the option of his tending to it with butterfly bands.  I jumped at that offer because I'd rather risk a scar than spend hours in an environment that has nearly every one of my panic/anxiety triggers--noise, crowds, flickering lights and shadow, social engagement.  Call it sensory overload.

Besides a scar might help me remember:

• to always push in the rack and shut the dishwasher door if I'm going to turn away for anything other than to reach into the sink for another item
• to always turn in place and get visual bearings before attempting to move in the new direction
• to not be thinking ahead or about anything other than the task at hand when it involves the dishwasher door, knives, or anything hot--stove, oven, dishes, pans
• to move with slow deliberateness always

[This is one of the posts going up retroactively after the weeks long unintended hiatus that began the week after July 4th.  See She's Back for more detailed explanation.]

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Desperately Seeking Sleep

Insomnia iza nawn senz wurd.Sleep less? R U dysturbd?

Past my bedtime so no time to linger.  Woke with 7.5 Tuesday morning, breaking the more than two week chain of less than 7.5.  Woke with 6.5 Wednesday and 8 this morning. Hoping to make that 8 the first in another unbroken chain like the one I'd had towards the end of April.

Just spent the last  hour or so looking at pictures of sleeping cats on cheezburger.com and sleep quotes on Brainy Quotes and Pinterest.   Hope something rubbed off.

Tho my issue is not so much insomnia anymore.  Not if I take my meds on schedule.  I mostly fight the need for it, hating to give up my day.  But I need to take recent lessons seriously.  The 'productivity' I gain by dissing sleep is an illusion.  There is always a pay day and the cost is high.

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Turning Up the Heat Under My Feet

The space heater got to make
to give this this Dark and Early
Early Bird  compensation
for abandoning cozy warm bed
before 6am

I'm under orders on a mission to be in bed by 9pm regardless of whether I'm posted or not.  Ed suggested rather sternly that it was unacceptable to have pulled two all nighters inside of 4 days and thus meds and bed by 9 must be my highest priority tonight.

Yeah after reporting on my highly successful first week under Ed's  time-management coaching I immediately fell off all the wagons I'd climbed on.

It's like a domino effect.  One thing falls and starts a chain reaction and soon everything around me is crashing.  Including my mood, energy, motivation, IQ....

Well that's all she wrote tonight.  Got 25 minutes...

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Praying for Sleep--A Purrview

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This one has layers to it.

It's a LOLcat.
It's saying the straight up truth: I'm praying for sleep.
It's a riff on a book:  Title is correct but I had a bit of fun with the author's name.  :)
It's an entry for this months challenge over a Jeff Cats Book Club @cheezeburger.com -- Spotlight: Detectives

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Desperately Seeking Sleep

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Sleep irregularity increased in the last week with difficulty getting back to sleep once wakened in the night or difficulty staying asleep.  Along with that my mood has plummeted again and irritability increased along with anxiety including the pesky startle reactions when I'm interrupted. As well as fatigue and low energy.

This is so demoralizing after the feeling of progress I was having less than a month ago.  Such progress that the med nurse had basically sent me away on a 'maintenance' schedule--no new appointment in a month just call to renew meds and call if there is any question or problem etc.  I may have to call.

Unless the problem can be traced to the fact that I cut back my daily intake of 5-HTP just after that last appointment out of fear it was interacting with the Trazodone to increase serotonin too much but now I'm thinking it wasn't at least adversely.

I spent hours this afternoon reading online about serotonin and the serotonin affecting drugs but especially Trazodone, 5-HTP, and Melatonin. I came to the conclusion that there shouldn't be an adverse reaction at the levels I was using and  I'm thinking of adding back the 5HTP but wondering if maybe I should try the Melatonin first as it seems to help reset circadian rhythms and that seems to be my biggest issue and may actually be the root cause of my mood disorder.

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From Topsy-Turvey to Groovy

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The two week project to switch from night owl to early bird has gone from feeling topsy-turvey to groovy in just the last two days.  I woke without alarm between 5 and 5:38 the last two mornings and both Sunday and Monday nights was asleep by 10ish.  The key I discovered is to be already in bed and relaxed when my natural circadian rhythm hits a down point between 8:30 and 9:30pm.  Not starting the go-to-bed routine but already there with head in the game.  Because if I miss it I get a second wind around 10pm that carries me past midnight no matter how tired I am and even with the night meds in my system tho they make me useless for any kind of productive activity.

That means that I have to have all me necessary tasks completed before dinner so that when I finish reading to Mom at 8pm I can call my husband for our good-night chat while taking my meds and lay down by nine.  One of those necessary tasks is posting which I'm trying to get fitted into my pre-lunch hours.  This morning tho, my computer was busy updating something when I tried to start working on it and then I had to start getting ready for my appointments with the med nurse and my counselor and fix lunch for Mom.

The med nurse has per my request added a second 10mg tab of Adderall so that I'm covered from 8 to 8 for both the brain work in the mornings and the physical activities in the afternoons.  Everybody observing me on it seems to agree that it has been quite beneficial for me.  I'm more focused, more active, more social, more creative, more spontaneous, more flexible...

Now that I've had two days in a row that look and feel successful I'm going to start requiring more of myself for both the morning brain-work and the afternoon physical and social.  That is what I consider the skeleton of the schedule.  Now it is time to flesh it out with specific tasks and routines.  Getting posted before lunch and exercise after lunch are the two biggies.

My original plan was to get to a 4am wake up but my husband has cautioned me not to pin my sense of success on that goal as it may not fit my circadian rhythm and thus not be doable.  Since getting a minimum of 7.5 hours of sleep is one of the non-negotiable points for reasons of both physical and mental health that would mean being asleep by 8:30.

So I'm in the process of letting go of that as my goal.  But I wanted to hang onto an uninterrupted 8hr brain-work block for writing and reading so I asked Mom if we could schedule lunch for between 1 and 1:30 instead of 12:30 to 1.  Often she has not been ready yet by noon or 12:30 anyway but once I've interrupted my work to come ask it is too late for me to continue productively.

Another big milestone reached today when the med nurse did not have us make an appointment for next month.  She left it open-ended saying I can call if I have concerns and call to have prescriptions renewed each month.  Which my sister has explained to me means that she considers having reached a maintenance level on the meds.

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To Sleep Perchance

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Two weeks into the night owl to early bird shift.  Yesterday I was feeling hope again.  Today not so much.

Had another rough night.  Was awake past midnight tho in bed before ten.  Slept hard in between frequent wake-ups. Was awake three different times for over fifteen minutes. Then when finally time to get up only wanted more sleep.  Have been lazy and lethargic all day.

Fiddled away morning playing Spider solitaire and so did not get anything productive done including a post.  Started working on the post at four by visiting cheeseburger and two hours later found the picture then spent an hour on quote sites looking for a quote.  Then an hour on the phone with my husband followed by another hour reading quotes about sleep and insomnia.

Collected a lot of interesting titles while I was at it but now, once again I'm just now wrapping up my post and about to begin the go-to-bed routine and it's already fifteen minutes past my ideal lay down time.

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The April 2013 Dewey's Read-a-Thon is Upon Us

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The next 24 hour Read-a-Thon, an event for book bloggers created by Dewey in 2006 and carried on in her name after she was lost to us in 2008, is scheduled for this Saturday, April 27.  For me in the Pacific Coast time zone it starts at 5am.

Book lovers from around the globe participate in a marathon of reading, blogging, social networking, leaving cheering on comments, and entering mini-challenges (games, tasks, trivia) and drawings for prizes.

I have participated in every one since April 2006 and have always prided myself in participating the full 24 hours.  With my visual impairment I couldn't compete in number of pages or books finished and I've always had a talent for the 24 and more hours awake so it seemed a natural fit.

This time will probably have to be different for me.  Anyone following the recent events associated with what I call the lifequake that hit me in January will know that I've been under medical care to address my issues with sleep and a mood disorder.  There has been great progress.  I'd even made it nearly a month without a 24 hour day and then a week ago fell off that wagon and into a meltdown that consumed most of this past week.  It turned out to be the disruption in one of my meds at the root of it so it would be an unhealthy choice to disrupt the med schedule for this.

Even for this.  My head knows.  My heart resists.

Add to this, I will be on duty with my Mom all day Saturday, responsible for lunch and dinner and at least some socializing.  For the latter, I can spend some extra time reading aloud from the Mitford series that we have been working through this year at the pace of a chapter or so each evening she is home.

She usually spends the weekends with my brother's family but she is staying home this weekend because she will be staying there Monday thru Wednesday next week while my sister drives me down to Phoenix and comes back with another van load of my stuff, leaving me behind for about ten days to help Ed finish packing up and deep cleaning the trailer in preparation for his vacate date May 15th.

Which adds another level of complexity to this for me.  If I were to stay up the full 24 hours I would have only another 28 or so to recuperate and prepare for the trip.  This could put me at risk for another week of disrupted sleep and mood, leaving me vulnerable to more meltdowns.  Not exactly the healthy choice for the fragile state of our relationship as we continue to climb out of the abyss we had tumbled into.

So I ran all of this past Ed in an email this morning and asked for his honest input and during our Skype session this afternoon he gave it.  Essentially he made most of the above points and then said he would support whatever decision I made.

He understands how important the Dewey Read-a-Thon has been for me and has always supported my participation and believes it is important that I continue to participate but he hopes that I am able to let go of the need to do the full 24 hours.

I tend to have an all or nothing mind set.  I can't imagine not participating.  But I know how hard it would be to quit before it was over.

I didn't make a commitment about the 24hr part but I did commit to zero energy drinks, no extra caffeine beyond my two cups a day and none after 3pm and to getting a solid 8 hour sleep the night before.  Which means if I'm not asleep by 9pm Friday night I can't get up at 5am.  

He was encouraging me to keep my med schedule in place at both ends.  Which would mean between 1am and 2am for the night meds which has me waking up between 9am and 10am.  Which means starting 4 to 5 hours late and quitting 3 to 4 hours early.  *grimace*

I countered with taking them between 11 and 12 Friday night and then between 3 and 4am Sunday.  He countered with 12 and 2.  I'm still dithering.  All scenarios have drawbacks.  Like having to go to sleep before time to take meds and then wake up later to take them.  Kinda silly.  And at the other end of the thon purposely inducing a drowse state while intent on fighting it while committed to no stimulants...

I've been going around and around with this all day.  The only given so far is that I will be participating.  I signed up this evening.

The rest is up in the air.  A lot depends on how the rest of this week goes and where things stand Friday night.  I'm rarely posted for the day by 9pm let alone ready to crawl into bed.  So it would take some planning ahead.  Then too there is a new med in the mix.  The med nurse prescribed a low dose of Ritalin for mornings to see if it has any impact on the frustrating way my brain won't come online for six to ten hours after I wake up if I've slept more than six hours.

That's the single most significant issue that contributes to my tendency to stay awake for upwards of 24 hours or string together weeks of 4 hour nights or chase the clock by staying awake 20 hours and sleeping for 5 or 6.  And so on.  It is also the one thing making staying on the schedule so difficult.  So I'm really hoping this helps.  Will be taking first dose in the morning.

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Please Forgive Me

After several weeks of what felt like sustained progress on the mood and self management fronts I have had a massive set back in the last two days. A major meltdown. Probable cause? I've lost count of the number of nights in the past week I've not taken my meds on time and still been awake as dawn tints the sky with grey. Add those to the nights that I did take the meds yet slept fitfully waking frequently with startle reactions to hypnogogic images and then laying there with anxiety washing through me like storm surf. What that adds up to is significant sleep deprivation which is both cause and effect--an endless feedback loop. and as i write this line it is 6 am Saturday. and I've been awake since 7am Friday. i'm not likely to be asleep before I hit the 24 hour mark. So another colossal failure on my commitment to the new regime of meds and self management that needs to be in place before I can rejoin my husband even if by some miracle the financial aspects suddenly resolved to provide home and healthcare.

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Our Funnel-Headed Fur Baby

Merlin
pic via screenshot while Skyping

Our Merlin aka Mr Wizard has to wait until Monday to get the stitches out of his eyelids and the funnel off his head.  He is hating that funnel and frustrated his skills at escaping are not working for him here.

He had surgery for inverted eyelids and removal of rotten teeth last week.  He has come a long way since then, gaining weight, grooming, playing and eating like he's making up for lost time.

This is all happening back home in Phoenix OR and I hate not being there to comfort him through it.  On days Ed works he has to be home alone.

Next month he will be coming back to Longview WA with me after my ten day visit down there to help Ed pack up the rest of the house and deep clean it in preparation for his vacating it May 15.

I'm putting up this quickie post tonight because I'm seriously sleep deprived and have had several days of emotional turmoil.  The two things are in an infinity feed-back loop that I must find a way to break out of.  So putting sleep ahead of everything else tonight seems like the reasonable thing to do and even tho I'm feeling far from reasonable I'm going to give it my best shot.

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