Archive for May, 2010

SO. I’m stoned. Stoned out of my fucking mind. The doctor increased my Topamax and TRIPLED my Neurontin, and man, I am feeling the love, if you get my drift.

Yesterday, I sat around the house staring at walls. It was more interesting than you’d have thought. Walls, they can be fascinating on the right drugs. They can be downright scintillating.

I have nothing of merit to say, but in the interest of getting some comments flowing and also in the interest of giving me something to write about next week, I thought I would open the floor for some questions. Do you have any? I will answer them, in exhaustive detail and as humorously as possible.

Hit me up in the comments, kids. It’s a proven fact that people who comment have more orgasms.

It’s true.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend.

I had a neurologist appointment this morning, so my mother kindly took an hour off of work to drive me.

I felt sort of shitty as we sat in the waiting room, but it was eighty-five degrees out, so I didn’t think much of it. What I was thinking about was the fact that my mother was hissing “Your boobs are hanging out!” every forty seconds or so.

I have big boobs. I was wearing a tank top. It happens. Truthfully, I could not possibly give less of a shit whether the entire neurologist’s office was ogling my tits. I was there to get my disability paperwork and find out whether he was going to increase my seizure meds.

I was called into the office by the nurse and weighed (lost six pounds) and asked to sit on the exam table so that I could have my blood pressure taken.

It was 140 over 90, which is shockingly high for me. I normally hover somewhere around the 90 over 50 range, and I told the nurse this.

“I don’t feel well,” I said. “I feel sort of dizzy.”

“Did you eat?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, and then everything went black.

Apparently I had a seizure right then and there and bashed my head against the doctor’s fine little blood pressure monitor. I woke up to the nurse, holding my thighs so that I wouldn’t slide off of the exam table, asking me if I could hear her. They had called the doctor in while it was happening, and I guess he saw the whole damn thing.

Shit.

Obviously I got my seizure meds increased. And my paperwork filled out. He filled it out on the fly, even attaching copies of exam notes. I think I scared the shit out of him.

I feel like utter crap, but in retrospect, it’s probably one of the best things that could have happened. At least now he knows what the hell I’m talking about.

In other news, I am going to help my neighbor finish moving today.

That’s all the news that’s fit to spit.

Happy Wednesday.

So yesterday Norton brought his kids over for a visit, and I was roughly as nervous as if I had been asked to entertain the Obamas.

Y’all know how I am about Other People’s Children. I tolerate them. I frequently house them, feed them, and let them camp out in my yard; still, I do not exactly love them, particularly if they are little monsters, and these kids are two and four, so I have to admit I was worried about the little monster factor.

When Norton talks about his kids they seem great, but every parent talk about their kids as if they have rainbows shooting out of their precious little hineys, so I have to admit I took all of this with the proverbial grain of salt.

I cleaned up the yard a bit and washed off all of the outdoor toys, of which we have a little slide, a little car, a wagon, balls of every size, a hippity hop, and basically everything that would make my yard attractive to the under-five set, including a swing set. My yard attracts every kid in the neighborhood for good reason – we have Kiddie Crack.

Norton showed up with the kids in the late afternoon, and I have to admit that they are some seriously good-looking children. So good-looking, in fact, that it made my uterus hurt. The two-year-old toddled up my front steps and smiled at me, eyes as big as dinner plates, and I was pretty much a goner.

The four-year-old was cute and funny and sat at my dining room table discussing his favorite color and his favorite number and his invisible dog Larry and also won me over pretty damned quickly. I don’t know whether these kids were just acting pristine for company fresh from naps or whether they are usually that good, but I was impressed.

I showed them the cats and the hamster, and there was no grabbing or pulling of tails or shrieking, and that impressed me too.

We all went outside to play, along with the J-Man (and the kid from down the street, who I of course have had the entire weekend), and they were funny and fun and well-behaved. I got caught up in a rollicking game of freeze tag that lasted a solid hour, and it was actually a pretty good time. (I almost died from actually getting up off of my fat ass and running, but it was fun.)

The J-Man is notoriously great with little kids. He always likes having them around and is patient and very good with them. I sometimes suspect he likes to play with them more than he likes playing with kids his own age. For this reason I have him volunteering to be a helper at the school’s Vacation Bible School this summer, where he will be a teacher’s aide with the little-kid classes.

Anyway, we had a good time. I was charmed. I didn’t expect to be, but I was.

Norton is a good dad. It says a lot about him, watching him with his kids.

In other news, we painted the bathroom this weekend, and GOD, ISN’T THAT EXCITING??

I KNOW.

I’m so sick of revamping this house.

You have no idea.

This week I have another neurologist appointment, in which I am supposed to pick up a ten-page form that he is supposed to have filled out for me for disability. I have twenty bucks that says he fills out exactly one page before giving up.

How was your weekend?

What is the dumbest thing you can do when you have four slipped discs?

Oh, I don’t know, maybe haul around heavy boxes of books, and then drag heavy bookcases through the basement by yourself?

I could have waited until my dad got here with the truck, but no, I had to be a big badass and have the bookcases all ready to rock and roll at the foot of the stairs when he arrived to take them to the new house.

At least I didn’t haul them up the stairs by myself.

I considered it, though.

Because I am a dumbass.

Now half the bookcases and J.’s new twin bed are at the new house, along with what we have been hauling there every week in my mom’s car.

Melinda told me yesterday that this is the slowest move in history, and yes, it is. We’re moving, one fucking lamp at a time.

It’s maddening, but we’re getting the job done.

There are a lot of repairs that still have to be done. For instance, whoever wired the Trance House was most definitely on the crack. Half of the outlets don’t work. You can’t use the microwave when the coffee pot is on, and you can’t use the hair dryer when any other electrical appliance is running.

It’s so charming.

We also still have to paint the kitchen, the J-Man’s room, and the back hallway. I am looking forward to painting the kitchen about as much as I looked forward to my stepbrother sitting on my head and farting. I HATE painting cabinets. What a pain in the ass.

This also means that we are going to have to paint over my painstakingly applied, hand-painted border, done free-hand. It features little red flowers on green vines and is super cute, and I hate to paint over it.

(Here is where I would insert a photo, if I could find the wire to my damned camera.)

Anyway, there’s a lot going on. The J-Man’s new school wants exhaustive proof of residency, which I obviously do not have yet, and this is going to make registering him a little difficult. They also want mortage statements and utility bills, which are all still going to be in my stepdad’s name, so I’m wondering if they are still going to think we’re the sort of people who are just trying to finagle our kid into a better school district by lying.

I’m not sure what to do about this.

In other news, our elderly neighbors moved yesterday. These are the folks that used to take me to the doctor frequently, and were people I spent a whole lot of time with. They had dinners with us, I went over there for morning coffee a lot to chat, and they were very like a third set of grandparents for me.

Diana, who is eighty, still mows her own lawn and works on her own house, and did most of the packing and moving with help from her kids. She’s a powerhouse much in the same vein as my mother – the type that never slows down, the woman that can do anything and everything.

The J-Man used to call her after I’d had seizures, before he was old enough to deal with them on his own, and I would wake up to her soothing voice and a cold cloth on my forehead. It was a nice way to wake up.

John is a few years older and is struggling with prostate cancer. He loves to tell stories about his many interesting jobs, among them a schoolteacher, a fighter pilot in the Air Force, and a cop.

Yesterday I stopped in to say goodbye and John was having a rough day, so much so that he barely spoke. He looked puffy and pale, and sat in the kitchen with a blanket over his lap. I am worried for him, but at the same time I’m glad they’re moving to a quiet retirement community out of the neighborhood which has seen so many bad changes over their lifetime.

I’m going to miss them so.

Happy Wednesday.

So it’s time for my once-every-few-years disability review, or as I like to call it, “Is You Still All Fucked Up?”

I is.

The last time I went to the eye doctor I gave him the requisite ten pages of paperwork to fill out, ten pages of paperwork that is due tomorrow, with the understanding that he would fill it out and mail it back to me.

“No problem,” he intoned. “I do this all the time.”

What I got back in the mail on Saturday were the very shoddy results of my eye tests and ten pages of blank paperwork.

Doh. I guess he figured that the test results spoke for themselves.

I called today to get an extension and was given one week to have another doctor fill the shit out, so I picked my neurologist; because although he is generally useless, he has the nicest staff, and they will probably have to do the damned thing anyway.

I’ve been calling all morning so that I can fax the shit over, to no avail. Nobody from the office is calling me back. The nurse left me a short message early this morning asking me why I needed a refill on my Vicodin, which is sort of like asking why I need caffeine or oxygen. I have four slipped discs, lady. I need Vicodin like you need your ugly Crocs.

The Social Security caseworker did a brief phone interview with me to ascertain whether I was still screwed up enough to still be receiving disability, and by the time I got through with her I think she was convinced I should be lying down with a cold rag on my face in a dark room somewhere.

“So let me get this straight. You have… seizures, migraines, fibromyalgia, slipped discs, legal blindness, and… gastroparesis?”

“Yeah.”

I always want to scream that it isn’t as bad as it sounds. I mean, it sucks, don’t get me wrong, but it’s liveable. It’s just not really so workable.

“And how does this affect your day-to-day life?”

“Well… how DOESN’T it?”

Ask a stupid question…

Anyway, I am hoping to God I can get this paperwork properly completed in a week, because if I don’t, they will cut off my disability without so much as a second glance. This is the way it works, and I hope my doctor gets that.

It’s making me more than a little nervous.

In other news, tomorrow is Norton’s birthday. I bought him a few little things, and am going to take him out to dinner/sex him up like a crazed freak.

Right.

In still other news, one thing you never want to see as a pet owner is your beloved little animal dragging its ass along the carpet.

That is exactly what I happened to come across yesterday afternoon while traipsing through the dining room. There was Skittles the cat, zooming across the carpet as if her ass was on fire.

Great.

I ran toward her, picked her up, and immediately inspected her hiney. There, amidst a tangle of black fur, was what could best be described as a large dingleberry.

My beloved cat had a shitball.

GAH.

I ran to get a wet paper towel as the cat squirmed and flipped out and yowled, angry at being inspected so rudely, and I removed said offensive item from her butt as she howled.

She hid from me for the rest of the day.

This happens from time to time with long-haired cats, and I don’t know how to avoid it. Clip the hair around their rears? Ass-shaving? Whatever the case, I think it is best performed by a vet or groomer if I don’t want my hand bitten off. The cat, she does not appreciate anyone touching her ass.

There is my gross story for the day. Your welcome.

Happy Monday.

Do you want to know how stupid I am? This is how stupid:

I have an MRI of my brain scheduled for this afternoon, so last night I figured I would remove my nose ring. Metal + MRIs = no-no.

I wasn’t quite sure as to how to go about this task, because I have a rather thick, I think 12- or 10-gauge, steel ring in there. It does not bend easily.

I grabbed a couple of pairs of pliers, assuming that this would be the easiest way to go about my task, and headed for the bathroom, judiciously ignoring the cheers of my rotten family as they whooped and hollered. (They are not fans of my pretty little piercing.)

I looked in the bathroom mirror and grasped one side with one pair of pliers, and then grasped the other side with the other pair, and then squeezed. Then I attempted to twist the ring out of shape.

It didn’t budge.

Apparently the people who craft these piercing rings are not fucking around.

I tried again, to no avail.

The third time, I really put my back into it and twisted with all my might, and then one of the pairs of pliers slipped off of the ring, skating across my face to stab me directly beneath my good eye.

I now have a medium-sized cut and a hole underneath my eye.

I will not repeat the string of swears that escaped from my delicate little lips, but let’s just say that my child, who was two rooms over, was traumatized.

Seriously traumatized.

I gave up at that point, as the blood dripped down my face, and figured that either they could cut the damned thing off with a bolt cutter at the MRI facility or just leave it in, since it is so firmly implanted that the MRI magnet has no chance of pulling it out.

Kids, if you have to have a piercing removed, go to a professional who has professional tools.

Don’t try this at home.

Thank you.

Happy Thursday.

Seriously, if you don’t like people, don’t work with the public.

I’ve had several jobs in which I worked closely with people at large, and I can safely say that I was never an asshole, not even when I was premenstrual or pregnant, not even when I was dealing with the kind of people who make one’s ears bleed and one’s teeth ache, not even when I was in my early twenties and was frequently hung over and really just wanted to be at home, asleep, in bed.

Why? Because I generally like people, and because my momma taught me not to be an asshole.

This week I have been treated like shit by two different people that work in public service, and both instances pissed me off so badly I am considering Writing Angry Letters. (OOH, I know! I’m so tough!)

The first was my local pharmacist, who is generally a rude motherfucker to begin with. He has the kind of sour face that scares babies.

I called because I was almost out of my seizure medication and needed a refill. Now, I know that the wheels of my neurologist’s office move rather slowly, so I asked whether he might be able to float me a couple of pills, should my doctor be unable to call in a refill before I was out of the medication.

And yes, I am aware that half of this was my fault for not calling earlier. STILL, I should have been treated with a little common courtesy.

“I will send a fax, they’ll get it by morning,” he huffed angrily.
“I know, but-”
“I’LL SEND THE FAX.”

Then the asshole hung up on me.

I called back and calmly explained through gritted teeth (and a smile, always a smile) that generally it takes a few days for my doctor to get moving on such things, and I apologized profusely for not calling sooner. I asked again whether it might be possible to get a few pills should the refill not come through.

“I AM SENDING THE FAX. YOUR DOCTOR WILL GET IT IN THE MORNING.”

He hung up on me again.

AGAIN.

By this time I was livid.

I wound up calling the doctor’s office and explaining my predicament and they did indeed get my refill in order, so a happy ending worked out; but damn, never have I been treated so rudely by someone who is supposed to be helpful.

Yesterday I had an appointment for an MRI of my brain, because my last visual exam was extremely wonky. The J-Man got sick, so I had to cancel.

I called the MRI facility and was berated for a full twenty minutes by some sort of technician or receptionist who informed me that their time is valuable and that their slots are scheduled with the utmost importance, and that I basically was pond scum who had no concern for other people’s work schedules.

Well, la-di-freakin’-da.

Did I not mention that my kid was sick? Would you like me to bring my vomiting child in with me??

I was floored.

I understand that people have bad days. I, too, have bad days. I would occasionally like to rip the face off of another human being. It would probably give me great pleasure to verbally take down a person here and there. Maybe it would take a load off of my mind. Maybe I wouldn’t need therapy, and maybe I would be a much less stressed-out person. Still, I don’t do it, because it’s fucking rude.

Manners are becoming obsolete, and I hate it.

Don’t even get me started on my kid’s generation. They have a dearth of manners that frightens me to no freaking end. By the time these kids are old enough for public service, we’re never going to hear a “please” or a “thank you” again.

Gah.

This rant was brought to you by Walgreens and the local Ghetto Hospital.

Thank you, and have a PLEASANT day.

By the way, my friend Jane is having surgery for breast cancer today. While she is going to be totally fine and is totally going to kick cancer square in its big, fat ass, it would mean a lot to me if you could send up a prayer or some good thoughts, if you’re not the praying kind. She’s an awesome lady and deserves every bit of good mojo that is out there.

Happy Tuesday.

So Norton made it through a Trance Family holiday mostly intact – slightly bored, I believe, but mostly intact. His mother couldn’t make it, so it was just us, my family, and my friend V.

Norton is kind of a quiet guy, and we are all big talkers. BIG talkers. I knew as soon as my stepdad found out that Norton was in the National Guard and was a fellow serviceman to his country, all bets were off. When he discovered that they were both Air Force men and Bears fans, Norton had made a friend for life.

The stepdad was no problem, and neither was my mother, who already liked him. We had some good Mexican food and chatted it up throughout the meal.

Then my friend V. showed up. Now V. will talk the paint off of a car, and if you put the two of us together in a room, we will A) drink a twelve-pack of beer, B) smoke two packs of cigarettes (which I did NOT this time, thankyaverymuch), and C) ignore everyone else in the room due to our incessant talking.

Norton watched, listened, and laughed, but he was probably horrified by half the shit coming out of our mouths, I’m thinking.

V. and I are sometimes not very nice people. I believe “crass” is the word I am looking for.

Also, I was drinking some beers; because as I have said before, I rarely, if ever, seize while drinking, and I really didn’t want to fall out on Mother’s Day. Plus, I like beer.

So things were a little raucous, if you will. A little loud, a little talky, and I could not help but wonder what was going through Norton’s head.

Probably something like, “Get me the hell out of here.”

He did tell me later on that he had a good time but was a bit bothered by the smoke (my mom, my stepdad, and V. all smoke). So perhaps in the future I will be bitchy and force everyone to smoke outside or in the basement.

They should anyway, really.

Norton was supposed to take me for a brain MRI this morning, but the J-Man is at home puking again, probably due to a serious overconsumption of tacos rather than anything viral. Therefore I’m going on Thursday.

My last vision exam was for serious shit, so they are worried that my funky little brain is doing something odd again.

It never ends, I swear.

In other news, the J-Man and the kid from down the street are friends again after a somewhat serious fight in which J. got put in a headlock and CHOKED. J. actually bit the offending child in order to weasel his way out of the move, and when I saw the bruises on his neck, I was all for that bite. Jesus.

The standoff lasted for two weeks, yes, two kid-from-down-the-street-free weeks in which I did not have to hear his sonorous whine, but in the end I felt badly about the whole thing and called the damn kid’s mother and said, “Hey, our kids be fightin’, let’s squash it.”

So now the kid from down the street is back in full effect and going to the Summerbash with us.

Sigh.

Hopefully he will smell fairly non-offensive for the car trip down. That’s ALL I ask. That, and no more physical fighting, ever again.

In still other news, I ate too much on Mother’s Day and have a mild tummyache. How are YOU?

Happy Mother’s Day to all you great moms, great moms-to-be, wanna-be great moms, and people with great moms.

Have a splendiferous day.

I spent the night at Norton’s on Thursday.

You may all insert jokes *here*.

Anyway, I had a blast. I didn’t get much sleep, BECAUSE THERE WAS A HAIL STORM, you dirty minded mofos; and consequently I was dying the next morning when I realized that Norton owns neither a coffeepot nor caffeinated tea.

How can one live like that? I seriously think he is a pod person.

We spent the day together, which was really nice, and he even serenaded me on the piano, which was… interesting. Not to knock the man’s mad singing/piano skillz.

I played the piano for him as well, rather suckily, since I haven’t touched the thing in two years, but I played nonetheless.

Tomorrow at Chez Trance we are having a Mother’s Day dinner, and I invited Norton since he doesn’t have his kids. Well, apparently his mother will be in town, so I ended up inviting her, too.

Y’all, I am Nervous. Seriously, seriously nervous. While I am extremely good with parents and generally make an outstanding impression, still in the back of my head I realize that I am disabled and can consequently be seen as something less than a great catch. Therefore mothers may look upon me as a little bit of a liability, or at least this is what my brain tells me.

I’ve been cleaning the house all morning, and I invited my friend V., who will thankfully talk a lot and provide comic relief. Also in attendance will be my stepdad, who will no doubt be watching Sportcenter and swearing at the TV; and probably my dad, who tends to show up on holidays and rap for us all.

She is probably going to think that we are a bunch of crackpots, I’m sure.

Gah.

Hopefully we will all make a reasonably good impression.

In other news, I would never in my life have imagined that you’d have to clean up after a freaking hamster more than you’d have to clean up after three cats. Everywhere I go there are little seeds, seeds that have been spewed out from the hamster ball. It’s making me insane.

Anyone want a particularly fat rodent? Free to good home.

Happy Saturday.