Shadow Muse

This is liable to be jumbled and not really coherent, because it was hewn out of a much longer piece, but I've spent three days trying to clean it up enough to post, and I don't think I can do much more with it without starting over, so here it is.

So, about that Feministe post about respectful language I mentioned the other day. In the comments were some interesting discussions of mental illness. I'm going to take on a few of these over the course of a few entries and talk about some things I don't see talked about very often.

The first comment we are going to look at is by Sophonisba and says:

"It is a damaging and persistent myth that particular types of mental illness come with built-in compensations in the form of increased creativity, intelligence, and connections with god knows what all. . . . It is true that a lot of unhappy or ill people are smart or creative or both. But this doesn’t mean that the goodness or badness of depression or schizophrenia becomes all a matter of perspective."

When a person happens to fit that creative-yet-mad profile – and sometimes even when they don't – the magical madman trope gets trotted out as evidence that It's Not All That Bad, Really. It doesn't matter what our illness has stolen from us, we are Special.

While it works like that for some people, for a lot of us it does not. Even those of us who do have such "gifts" can't always control when they come and go. Perpetuating the myth of the gifted madman does no favors for those of us who reap few benefits from our madness. Yet people continue to pass it down, even other mentally ill people.

Essentially functional but still mentally ill folks may attribute their ability to function to their creative efforts, and in turn attribute their creativity to their illness, but it is entirely possible that it's the other way around.

Their madness informs their creative work on a deep level, a level that might seem inaccessible to sane people – or less-functional mentally ill people – thus fostering the idea that it is their madness that makes them so extraordinary. And while that may be true in some cases, it's not true in all. If it were, all mentally ill people would be gifted in proportion to their relative level of craziness, which is clearly not the case.

In not-very-functional people the cycle of creativity is often arrested before it can begin. Mental illness causes lack of creativity by making it impossible to do anything. It becomes impossible to unblock creativity or resume normal functioning until the illness is naturally abating.

If a person's creative life resumes in a rush and they suddenly feel better, they are likely to attribute their improvement to increased creativity even if that is not the case. This is a natural mistake. The moment one turns the corner and becomes potentially able to make a recovery is invisible. Actions are not invisible. It is often the first action taken after recovery becomes possible that is mistaken for the cause of the recovery itself.

Someone on my f-list – I am so sorry, but I don't remember who it was –called this the "make the bed moment." You try every day to get up and make the bed, and you fail because you are depressed. But one day, you say "Fuck this!" and even though you really don't want to, even though you still feel depressed, you make that bed. And after that, things get easier.

It's tempting to say that you got better because you made the bed – and there is some virtue in faking it until you make it, depending on what you are faking and what kind of illness you are dealing with. But for those with severe problems, the fact that making the bed doesn't actually help, or the fact that they cannot even try to make the bed, is symptomatic of their illness.

There are always going to be people who can consistently make that fucking bed. Does that mean that making the bed – faking it – will always resolve depression? No! Any person who suffers chronic pain – emotional or physical – has good days and bad days. Yet even on bad days, the mentally ill are expected to live up to the example set by an ill but high-functioning person on a good day.

Do the challenges associated with any illness, disability, or obstacle, cause people to grow stronger? Absolutely, yes, they do. But as Sophonisba so astutely points out, "this is a good thing about human beings, not a good thing about disabilities," and she is absolutely right.

And it is not simply a matter of choosing to look at it otherwise.

"The insistence that whether a thing is good or bad depends on how you look at it will give a lot of us nasty reminders of being told that we can be happy if we work at it. That being happy is a matter of seeing the bright side of things, not focusing on the negative."

"I believe in the right of all people to self-define and to be the ultimate authorities on their own lives, but I do not believe that we experience pain as pain, misery as misery, and powerlessness as powerlessness merely because we have been 'trained' to do so."

A poorly-comprehended yet fundamental feature of mental illnesses is just how little control those of us who suffer from them actually have. By and large it is not possible to think one's way out of depression: the inability to do so is a critical part of what defines it as an illness necessitating treatment.

Yes, there are behavioral techniques that will help put the brakes on the out-of-control train of our psyches, but those techniques require major overhauls to our most fundamental thought processes and patient self-evaluation and observation, often over the course of several years.

It is far more complicated than just looking on the bright side.

The pain that we experience is real pain. The misery is real misery. The powerlessness is real powerlessness.

Calling us "gifted" does nothing to offset that, even if we really are gifted. Insisting that it should be enough, or insisting that if we just managed to look at it right, all the bad would turn to good and it would all stop hurting, is cruel.

I have had people tell me they envy my bipolar disorder because they wish they had what I have. They mean the creativity, of course.

The insomnia, the suffocating depression, the inability to care for myself financially and sometimes even physically, the suicidal ideation, and – currently – the complete dearth of creative output are not, of course, what they imagine coming with the territory. But they do. I deal with the bad parts of this nearly every day. The good parts don't manifest nearly as often.

I'm not lucky to be this way. This is not a gift. My creativity does not offset the pain I experience. I have known completely uncreative people, not bipolar, who are happier than I will ever be. They don't seem to miss the creativity they do not have.

I absolutely miss the sanity I haven't got.

I suppose what I am saying here a lot of you know already. But I don't hear this talked about that much. "Lighten up, snap out of it," is advice given to mentally ill people all the time, even by other mentally ill people, and we all know it's shitty advice. Yet people persist in offering it.

The idea that we are all gifted, that our madness is somehow elevating, is an attractive but ultimately flawed idea. Just like the advice to "lighten up," it ultimately denies the mentally ill person's ability to define their experience honestly, on their own terms, and indicates a fundamental disregard for the mentally ill person's perception of their own madness – another persistent problem.

Those two things, the ability of each of us to decide what our condition means and how it affects us, are absolutely fundamental to a humane understanding of mental illness – fundamental to an understanding of the mentally ill as human beings, first and foremost.

Thanks to farrandy and bat_cheva, I can has dead possum in a bukkit.

OMG ceiling cat is watching me macerate!

The whole lycanthropy/bipolar thing is something I talk about a lot, and I am going to be talking about it more this week, so while I am preparing that stuff, I want to ask you all to help out.

If someone was newly diagnosed with a mental illness -- specifically, they've been diagnosed as bipolar, but this stuff is going to be relevant for a lot of other conditions, too -- or their loved one was, what advice would you give them?

What resources have been helpful to you? Online, real-life, etc.

Read any good books about it?

Have any insight about being a caregiver, or about being bipolar and being in a relationship? Or hey, let's not exclude folks, so how about people who are not in a relationship, and maybe want to be, or maybe don't?

This is your chance to tell everyone what made a difference for you, or what you learned about the hard way, or what you should have done differently. This is your chance to help. Go for it!

There is a really thought-provoking entry over at Feministe about disability and respectful language.

As I will discuss in an upcoming post, I don't think that the post perfectly applies to mental illness of any kind, but I think she raises some good points about language, the comments are pretty interesting, and it dovetailed nicely with something I have been thinking about lately, which is what to call my bipolar disorder.

I've been thinking about words, and what they mean to me.

Disorder – something that should be corrected if possible. More than a mere disadvantage, it is something that is wrong.

Condition – a very neutral word, possibly implying a difference from the norm or a challenge, but little else. Has great value in that it allows one to define a thing almost completely without reference to any other thing or state of being.

Illness – often something that it is possible to recover from, and so recovery is often expected. Has no benefits, and causes only harm. Probably contagious.

Mental Illness – not often something one recovers from. Incapacitating. Isolating. Requires treatment, which often does not work. Probably worsens progressively. Contributes to erratic or dangerous behavior. Poorly understood.

Disease – something that could be progressive or fatal, and does not necessarily have a cure. Has no benefits, and causes only harm. Maybe contagious. Not really applicable to being bipolar, though.

Disability – something that significantly renders the subject physically or mentally unable to function in a way that society views as normal. Probably not contagious, probably congenital.

Affliction – something universally understood to be bad in just about every way possible, pretty much like a curse. Something undesirable in every regard. Possibly a punishment, or something viewed as a punishment.

These are all problematic words, in their own way. Some of these definitions have clearly been influenced by the cultural notions of health and ability that surround me and which I did not, until pretty recently, question very deeply.

Some of these labels imply that it is possible for the individual to be some other way. As in, "illness" implies that there is a state of wellness that differs from the subject's current state.

Some, like "disorder" or "disabled" imply deviation from some "ordered" or "able" norm, and so, while I might find them accurate descriptors of my own condition, I find them problematic on a political level because they would put me in a place our culture regards as "below" others.

So I can't quite figure out which of the above words works for me. This is partly why I enjoy my lycanthropy metaphor, because as a totally mythical trope it rather neatly sidesteps the need for such a nuts-and-bolts category. I am leaning toward "condition," with "mental illness" thrown in when I want to step away from the metaphor, or when I am pointing out that it fucking sucks to be bipolar.

I've been looking at how other people define their issues, most of them people with more experience at it than me. And mostly, from what I can tell, people's preferences vary tremendously. There is no set word, no one inoffensive way, to bring this sort of thing up or discuss it.

So, because I do plan on talking about this stuff in the future, I want to make it clear that while everyone ought to watch their language when referring to other people in general or specifically, I don't take issue if someone who has a disorder, condition, disease, disability, or affliction, wants to call it a disorder, condition, disease, disability, or affliction when referring to themselves. I think we all ought to be able to define ourselves however we want. A word that is neutral to me may be positive to you. A word that offends you may delight me. And a word that we both agree upon may lie heavily on someone else's shoulders.

But if we don't call it something, discussion becomes impossible. There's only so much vaguing-up of language one can be expected to do. Eventually, you have to give it a label and categorize it, because if you don't give it some sort of handle and squish it into some sort of shape, you just can't talk about it, and if you can't talk about it, it's impossible to get anywhere.

So I am going to ask for your good faith, going forward.

It is damnably hard to write about my own experiences and thought processes in such a way that makes it obvious that my choice of words is just that – a choice of words. I try to be very careful how I describe things in general or as they apply to others.

I am aware that my main frame of reference for this sort of thing is still one of privilege, that I am still using the language of and falling into the thought patterns of, for lack of a better word, the abled. That is, I am working from within a cultural and personal framework that gets very little input from anything but sane, healthy, able-bodied people. This has its own pitfalls – such a culture clearly does not include me, and yet I'm trying to use that paradigm to frame my own life . . . an effort surely doomed to failure.

So, yeah, I probably fail at tact and inclusivity more often than I realize when referring to others, and I don't mind having it pointed out politely when I do.

But whatever word I use to describe myself is in no way meant to be construed as a hard and fast label, or as the only label I believe to be acceptable. It is not my way of trying to tell people what to call themselves, any more than my use of "people" in this sentence is my way of saying that nobody should call themselves "individuals" or "humans."

It's just what I am using to describe how I see myself at that moment in time. No more.

So my uterus has decided to try to throw me off the warpath by abruptly ceasing all hostilities. It stopped bleeding on Monday, like someone had switched off a faucet.* And you know, while I am glad to no longer be gushing blood from unauthorized regions, I am not backing down. You don't get to fuck with me like that and not pay for it. And I want to make sure this never happens again.

The plan right now, as much as I do not want to do this, is to keep my appointment so that I can ask the doctor to find out what was causing it. Not that I expect he will find anything, since it's, you know, completely fucking stopped, but at least I can discuss the problem with him and get him to agree to see me ASAP when it next occurs.

And who knows? Maybe he'll get lucky and find some fibroids or something, and then I will have something to put down on the eviction notice.

Overall I am just fed up with this fucking passive-aggressive pile of mystery meat. It keeps trying to fuck up my life, and somehow it keeps getting away with it. I am sick of its crap. I may not have it out, but I am certainly going to find out what the best options are, and I will punish appropriately.

I'm offering this in the spirit of . . . well . . . of not wanting to play catch-up later on, really. I'm not asking for help. So, no unsolicited advice, please. We've covered this one. I've been dealing with this since I was sixteen. I have been reading about it voraciously for half my life. Whatever treatment you have discovered? I know about it.

* I know you are all just fascinated, but the truth is that unless I write shit down, I forget it, and I need to remember the date I quit gushing blood.

Bones smell sort of like sesame seeds taste. Trufax.

Fuck the progesterone. I am just going to have to find someone who understands that the whole problem here is apparently that I am female and that dumping more female hormones into my body is not a solution.

I called seven numbers yesterday trying to get hold of bat_cheva's doctor, who is a really, really fucking good doctor. I finally found a clinic he works out of. The catch is, it's a Planned Parenthood. I hate those bastards with the white-hot fury of a thousand flaming wolverines.*

I emphasized to the receptionist that I wanted to see this particular doctor, and she assured me that he is pretty much the only doctor who works out of that clinic. It was nice of her to say that, even if I doubt it is true. I am going to physically visit the clinic and speak to someone there to make sure that I was given facts, not more lies.

I will be perfectly happy to go as long as he is the doctor I see, but I am going with a list of demands prepared, and nobody is touching me but him. They can handle my pee. I will let them do that.

So I have an appointment for the middle of next month sometime, subject to change based on his surgery schedule.

None too soon, as the list of things I have bled on continues to grow. (Toilet inside and out, toilet seat top and bottom, toilet paper spindle and spindle holder, toilet paper rolls, bathtub inside and out, inner shower curtain, a towel, several washcloths, my socks, my shoes, my jeans, my underwear, myself, the carpet, the sink, and the bottle of H2O2.)

AND NOW THAT I HAVE HORRIFIED YOU WITH TMI.**

I have new cat bones from grygon. I think I have a whole rear foot/leg assembly, all of the large bones from both fore and hind limbs, most of the lumbar and thoracic vertebrae, a goodly number of ribs, and a whole crapload of tiny toe bones. And I do mean tiny. Fingernail-clipping sized.

What is especially exciting is that these bones came from a young animal. On the long bones, the epiphyses have not yet fused to the bone shafts, so the rounded ends of the bones are separate, and at the end of the bone shafts are these beautiful almost tooth-like projections that fit into corresponding hollows in the epiphyses themselves. It's so amazing!

I realize that doesn't sound that exciting, but trust me, it is really cool. So seriously amazingly wonderfully cool. Ask Sargon, I was in my studio moaning "Look at this calcaneum! Trabecular bone! The PATELLAR SESAMOID!"

I am working on getting pictures, but my new camera has a learning curve. I'm finally figuring it out
and getting some satisfactory results.

More later. Right now, Heroes and foods. We are watching Season 1, and so far it is pretty good.

* For those of you who missed the story, it's here. I don't care how long ago that was, it was a fucking evil thing to do. I approve of Planned Parenthood's dedication to reproductive freedom, but in this state, I would sooner turn over my gynecological care to a scary alcoholic bum with an icepick.

** I would apologize, but I think it's important to remind you lot from time to time just who you are reading.

I need to clear these out of my working file, so . . . some quotes from conversations between Sargon and I. Some older, some recent. None are gaming related. We just talk like this.

"Fiend! Leave my pants out of your twisted vendetta!"

"Stop sniffing at that . . . head!"

"Oh, Fishy, you're so cu—DON'T SCRAPE YOUR EYE-BOOGERS OFF ON ME!"

"What do you get when you mix horrible and adorable? Fi—OW!"

"Yeah! Yeah! I am totally carving a pentagram into that goat!"

"It's too bad movies can't actually be, you know, killed." (Re: The Scarlet Letter)

"How fresh do you think that slime is, anyway?"

"Awesomite: it's made of ROCK."

"Pants! Pants are runcible!"

"It'll be easy. Totally easy. Like taking pants from a baby."

"Dr. Frankenstein really needs to simplify his monsterbation ritual."

"Frankenstein's just afraid his creation will show up to exercise his droit de monsteur."

I have to say that so far, of the progesterone side effects, I much prefer the dizziness and disorientation to the fits of uncontrollable rage.

My hands feel really far away, and my forehead feels older than the rest of me. I mean, I could look forward to this.

I think I will call my doctor, because this is awesome, but probably not what he intended. And I am still a gore-spewing superhero, so the drug is fail.

RAAAAAAAAAAH!

I got a lot of good links sent to me this week, but I am really tired, so rather than trying to get each thing into its own entry with intelligent commentary, I will simply post links and leave it to you to supply the intelligence.

First up, this woman talks about her experience with domestic violence, and what it means to walk away from something like that, and while it's obviously really hard for her I think that she does a great job. Really slick videos can only go so far, I think. I think that very rehearsed and polished talk can sometimes fail where something less perfect but very raw slips right in. I think we have really hit the point where we have to start telling our individual stories to the world, and deciding for ourselves what they mean. So, to that end, I was asked to pass this along, and I shall.



It's not a new link, but I want to chase the preceding video with this link to copperwise's 2008 entry about why women don't just leave. I still love you for that one, babe.

On the heels of last week's discussions of men and rape, yeloson has something valuable to say. So, here, a voice from a man to men: If you didn't do it, what did you do to stop it?

Those interested in feminism and moviemaking, or feminism and pop culture, or feminism and the arts, might want to go read this entry. I am not familiar with the work of the woman whose letter is quoted in that entry, but she says some really interesting things about women and the movie industry.

After years of learning, practicing, and teaching, after years of query letters, phone calls, meetings, film markets, panels, classes, LA trips, networking, more networking, even more networking, my scripts – those ones that this market reader liked better than the 150 scripts she read that summer – those scripts sit on a shelf. After years of trying and falling and getting up and trying, something finally dawned on me: maybe I’m not the most unlucky bastard that ever lived. Maybe I’m female.

There is no petition to draft. There is no policy to fight. Yet, of the 250 top-grossing films in any given year, 6% are directed by women; of the 50 top-grossing movies each year, roughly 5 star or focus on women. In 80 years of Oscar history, with roughly 250 directors receiving a nomination for best director, 3 nominations went to female directors. No woman director ever received an Oscar.

It would be so much easier if someone would just flat out say it: “You’re not a director. You’re a girl."

I am outta here for the weekend. The new drugs and so forth are sort of kicking my ass. It will be worth it if they work, but it's too soon to tell, so I'm just spending lots of time resting with the cats.

Have a good weekend, everyone. Don't forget about the solstice!

This is really cool, and for a good kitteh cause.

So, onceupon's kitty Saturday needed surgery so she wouldn't lose her eye, and while she is recovering really well, the surgery was a financial hit. It would've been fine, but then, like a lot of wonderful folks, Marianne lost her job.

In a show of great generosity, the lovely bronxelf_ag001 made this beautiful egg and offered it up for auction.



That is a chicken egg, no lie. It's 22k gold leaf and a faux tortoiseshell finish. I love the idea, it is so seriously cool.

Bidding for egg and stand is open in comments to this entry, so go check it out.

Because it would not be fair to post this without including a kitty pic, this is Saturday. Those who know me well are aware that tortie is one of my favorite kitty flavors.



Bidding is here, and because a lot of folks can't spare the bid price onceupon is also taking donations directly, to help defray expenses.

If you can't bid, you can still help spread the word. It only takes a minute, and the art is really cool. I'm agog at how the hell did she do that without the egg imploding?! People are so cool.

I love my doctor.

I hate the medical profession in general, but after years and years, I finally found a guy who says stuff like "For God's sake, go tell Michelle to keep away from those prostates!" And then, when I appear to be in an unhappy mood, brings me actual prostate exam training models for me to play with while he crunches my numbers. He is awesome. I cracked him and his new student up several times, and gave them a brief swearing demonstration.

Anyway.

We have a partial answer on the bleeding front, with the caveat that he can't tell shit for certain unless he's looking in there.

My thyroid levels were pretty fucked, so the dosage goes up again. Apparently low thyroid hormone levels can cause "menstrual irregularities." Our best guess, based on his training and my data, is that it's either a bleeding fibroid, or some overexcited arteries in my uterus that haven't figured out that the endometrial tissue is gone and they can stop bleeding any time now.

I have something that will help the latter, so we will see. It's 12 days of progesterone. Not my idea of a happy fun time, but it's strictly temporary. He agreed with me about the badness of birth control pills for someone with type II bipolar disorder. I told him I would consult with an experienced GYN on that one. Which is the whole idea here, to sort of help me limp through until I can see someone formally once my insurance has settled down and have them Deal With It in an appropriately final manner.

If this doesn't work to stop the fountain of gore, we'll try something else.

I agreed to put the (expensive) labwork off until we see if this actually helps anything. If it doesn't, we'll get into the numbers and start looking for possibilities at my follow-up in five weeks. It's looking more and more, though, like a problem that's going to take a really good GYN to solve. I have some names, so I'm ready to go as soon as I know what the insurance landscape looks like.

On the bright side, the CBC I had them run came back in the gold, so I am not anemic at all right now. This is nothing short of shocking, but I didn't think I had quite gotten there yet. I have not been eating ice, and my fingernails are still strong and don't have any white spots or weird bends. Those are the two things I get before anything else.

And I requested a tetanus shot, which seems like a good idea what with me moving shit around and playing with dirty metal and dead things. I don't think tetanus is likely, but this way I don't have to worry about it at all. I was expecting it to hurt like hell, but I felt literally no pain. Why did this shit hurt so bad when I was a kid?

So, best outcome possible, I think. I went into the clinic a wreck, actually teared up a little in the exam room, though I pulled my shit together before anyone saw. I came out feeling really a lot better and laughing my ass off. Then the guy behind me at checkout saw my Alamo shirt and we got to talking history, and that was nice. I forget that human contact can sometimes be rewarding.

I'm sort of embarrassed about getting weepy even though nobody saw, but it did highlight that I am more upset about this than I thought. Not on the level of "I am afeared my life is in danger," but on the level of "I don't know what to do next." Makes sense. Anger and frustration are more likely to make me cry than being sad, and this has been really frustrating and angry-making. I am very, very used to being in control of my own medical care, and I almost never go in to see a doctor without some idea of what is wrong and what I want. I don't like writing doctors blank checks like that. Yeah, it's their job to figure shit out, but I am way smarter about me than anyone else, so I rule out what I can before I go in, and it's been a really great tactic so far. So far, I have not been wrong.

Having no answers really frustrates me. I'm sort of fumbling around in the dark, and that was evidently really upsetting me. I need to take that into account, and I haven't been. I thought I was okay, because this time I have zero fear of this killing me.

At least I'm doing something and even if it's not the right thing, the failure is one more piece of data, and that's useful. Action helps.

And my doctor is an awesome guy who draws funny diagrams of "Our mortal enemy, The Uterus."

Just for my own reference, I'm putting the numbers I have back here:

( Cut for extreme medical tedium. )

A few weeks ago while emptying out an old jewelry box, I found a ring I haven't seen in years. A nice little knotwork thing with some runes. Pleased, I cleaned it up and put it on.

Last Monday, I realized that I'd lost it. I wasn't used to wearing it again yet, so I didn't notice right away when it fell off my finger. I checked around the bed and in the shower drain and in the couch cushions and all the other places that seemed reasonable. No dice. Well, actually, I found some dice, but not the ring.

Yesterday during the writers' meeting, I looked down into my drink and THERE IT WAS.

I stared dumbfounded for a moment before realizing it must have fallen off my hand while I was digging for ice in the ice bucket, which is what I do at night rather than using the noisy auto-dispenser in the fridge door, because the dispenser scares the cats and might wake Sargon up. It sat there all week and finally got spit back into my cup.

I am very glad I didn't have the icemaker set for chipped ice, or something would've broken.

That has to be the most unlikely story I have about losing something and then finding it again.

So, I hand it over to youall for some lighthearted fluff. What's the strangest place you've ever found something that was lost?

So I'm up late last night typing, and something moves next to me. I look over to my left and this is what I see.



Fish was snuggling up to Tazendra. This picture was taken after I reached for the camera, which woke Tazendra up. Shortly after this, she realized what Fish was doing, got up, hissed noisily, and left. But it was adorable while it lasted.

Astute viewers will note that Fish has put on just a little bit of weight.

Because I need to close tabs, and because I will be saying stuff soon that pertains to the subject, have some links. I got many of them from sihaya09 and she got them originally from coffeeandink, so thanks to both.

From cereta comes On Rape and Men. I really can't sum this one up. It's very good.

In a spinoff post, rachelmanija talks about things a lot of men seem to think about rape. Really good and difficult to read comments here and here, talking about what reporting a rape really involves, and why the argument that women will ever so readily bring legal action against a man for a rape that never happened is basically really fucking offensive bullshit.

And nestra makes a really amazing post here, about how saying you don't know any rape victims is not a very smart thing to say. (And in my own words, I have to say, when I hear someone say this, I cringe. Utterances like that do not exactly make people feel like they can trust you with such information.)

Here is a really good post by khalinche about harassment on the street and what that is like to live with every fucking day, and there is a good thread headed by cos here about the different ways in which men and women perceive such interactions, and why.

I would also like to point out that cos does just about the finest job I have ever seen of saying "That is not what my experience is like," and instead of using that to derail or dismiss, uses that to spark useful discussion about the subject at hand: how women perceive harassment, and why. Commenters take note: this is how it is done. Don't change the fucking subject.

These are all varying degrees of hard to read, or sad, or depressing. But I think that they need to be heard. There is too much silence about this stuff. Even I hesitate posting about it because I get sick of seeing the same stupid shit in comments. I'll try to be less cowardly about that from now on.

I am leaving comments unscreened. That said, this journal is not the place for derailing, or sniping. I'm evaluating where I stand on debate vs. creating a friendly space. So be excellent to each other.

Holy crap, y'all. The entryway is all but finished. A couple of touchups and it's done.



What a pain.

The area immediately to the left of the fireplace brickwork (on the right side) is textured knockdown plaster.

As you can see from the reflection, the wall on the left, and the area around the front door, is smooth.

This was a problem, and the reason it's taken me so long to decide what to do with it. Wallpaper it? Paint it a solid color? Try to texture it ourselves? None of those sounded appealing.

After I did the studio doors, though, and saw how great they looked, I knew I could use the same technique on the smooth wall to roughly approximate what I was doing on the textured areas.

It was an amazing pain in the butt.

Remember, I'm using these little floofy fur Poofy Pad things, which are awesome and make quick work of large areas. It is still a 5-step process.

Apply the 3 base paint colors in large splotches, filling a 2 x 3 foot area.
Blend edges of splotches and feather into last painted areas.
Use wadded wet rag to create irregular pattern in technique called "ragging off."
Take paint-covered Poof and lightly pounce tiny little speckles over the whole area.
Take dry Poof and work the whole area over, smoothing out the speckles and softening the rag effect.
Get on ladder, start at top of wall again.

I could have cut the time required by a good half to a third if I had A) used the same company's ragging tool and B) started with a colored background, like I did in the studio, but I didn't do that in the rest of the room, so I couldn't do it here without fouling it all up.

I did a pretty good job of getting the smooth and textured areas to match. The only complaint I have about this area of wall relative to the rest of the room is that without really thinking about it, I used smaller color splotches than I did on the textured walls, and that was a mistake I did not notice until it was far too late to correct it. I carried on so at least the smooth areas match one another. Live and learn.

I am sure I will redo the room someday, a thousand years from now, and fix everything about it I don't like, but right now I am content enough with it to leave it be and not complain about it. I am happy, in other words.

Now, someday, I am going to paint a big old pirate map on that smooth wall. Tell me that wouldn't be the coolest thing ever!

I have gotten a rash of friendings all of a sudden. This normally only happens after I have made some sort of major entry, which I haven't for a while.

I suspect it's due to LJ's current Writer's Block question which ends with "What is your favorite LJ rant." I think people are surfing in on links to that old bloody vagina rant. By which I mean the first chronological rant about bloody vaginas, not a rant about old and bloody vaginas.

Anyway. New people.

Welcome! Because not everyone is an obsessive userinfo-reader like I am, have these links:

Things I assume you know about me.

General rules by which we try to abide.

In other news, sanctioned bloodletting has occurred. I caught the nurse in the office right as she came in from lunch, and to my happy surprise she signed me up for exactly the tests I asked for without giving me crap. They are running a complete battery of all four thyroid hormone tests, and one complete blood count with differential. I am pleased by this.

Sorry about my warp-spasm yesterday. It came on top of a whole load of shit I was juggling, and it was just like, goddammit, something else I fucked up. I'm so wonderful.

I am still really pissed at myself, but not in a destructive way, just in the way that ensures I will remember what I did, and won't fuck up again. I believe really firmly in being a strong advocate for yourself and in taking charge of one's own medical care. I mean, seriously, would you want anyone else doing it? That is one of many things I do not miss about being a child. Anyway, it's obviously going to be hard to take care of yourself if you forget to do shit on time.

I finished half the relevant entryway wall, and am going to go out presently and start on the second half. Then I will clean up the painting crap, dust, vacuum, and collect all the trash. And I am going to do it all while thinking about putting Ben Barnes in a collar and spanking his ass.

Because I can.

Arrrgh.

I have a doctor's appointment to discuss my bloodwork next Tuesday.

I have not given the blood for the bloodwork yet BECAUSE I FORGOT LIKE A MORON and now it will probably not be ready in time. Maybe I can get them to do the CBC w/diff posthaste, so I will at least be able to tell if I am anemic yet from all of this BLEEDING.

I will go anyway to discuss the Seroquel stuff and get new prescriptions and ask his opinion about the uterus of doom, but I sort of would really like to know if I need to change my prescriptions before I leave, because getting information out of the black hole that is the doctor's office is almost impossible.

Adding to the fun, I have to finish the entryway tomorrow because the writers' meeting is Friday, here, and I can't exactly leave painting stuff scattered around and a wall half-finished. I guess I do half of it tonight, instead. Great.

I fought like hell to get that appointment, and what good is it going to do me, exactly? Christ, I am such a tosky floop. I blame stress, and that is completely understandable, but it doesn't make me feel any better for forgetting something so fucking important. I realize I'm being a drama queen, but . . . fuck. What is wrong with me?

Naamah, you dumb shit. PUT A CALENDAR UP ALREADY.

I meant to post about this earlier.

Kitty halp post comes with pictures of a wet kitty! A black kitty!

celticmistress, who is a veritable kitty magnet, actually had an outdoor stray she was feeding sneak into her house like a ninja and beg to be taken care of.

Now, Isis has a home with some other nice people all lined up, but she needs a vet trip and a spay first, and everyone involved, including me, is pretty much broke.

If you can halp, email celticmistress at her username at gmail.com, or comment on any of the Isis entries. She doesn't have paypal, but other arrangements can be made.

Amanda Marcotte writes a piece for RH Reality Check about the training manual she obtained from "pro-life" group Justice For All. Link here.

The link to the actual parts of the manual she scanned is here. It is one of the most disturbing things I've ever read in my life. I strongly, strongly recommend you read as much of it as you can stand to read, and you need to link this far and wide. People need to understand the lies these people are being fed, and which they spew in turn.

This is the manual used to train protesters in how to debate, derail, and blame. It trains them to sound compassionate, yet you will note the complete lack of compassion there, the focus on hiding one's actual opinions until such time as you have derailed the other person and forced them into a corner. It is raddled with straw-man arguments, blatant falsehoods, misogyny, and self-righteousness. This manual admits things that anti-choicers always deny; the truths we know because we live them, but which they try to cover up with lies atop lies. It is a veritable tour guide to their twisted worldview.

Horrifying.

We signed up for COBRA coverage. Thrilling, I know. It is not costing as much as we had feared, but it is all in one lump, back-due to the date of termination, so that's not real fun.

I have a doctor's appointment for the 16th at 3:00. Don't you all let me forget.

I don't really expect he will know what to do as -- despite having ten children -- ladybits are not his area of expertise, but it's amazing the amount of comfort that comes with knowing I will be able to dump this into someone else's lap for even ten minutes and say "fix this."*

It would feel better if I knew that he wasn't double-booked on top of double-booked. I have a lingering fear I will get bumped. Yes, it has happened. It's a mess, y'all.

This is not to give the impression that I am okay with what is going on. I am not okay at all. I am really worried – not even about bleeding to death from my snizz. I mean, I'm used to that. It's old meme, uterus. Old meme. I'm worried about Medicine, worried that nobody will agree to help me, or that they will take too long and I will become sicker and/or will go crazy, that they will try to help but it will not work or will make things worse. I'm afraid, in short, of suffering a lot more.

It's really sad when there's unauthorized exsanguination going on in your pants and your main worry is that the people who are supposed to help you fix that little problem are, in fact, the bad guys. I've been fucked over before, so I'm not laboring under the happy illusion that these are helpful or well-meaning people I will be dealing with. Even the best doctor I've ever had is inaccessible nine tenths of the time, and even the best doctor in the world can have staff members who are incompetent. I put up with it because finding someone who will listen to me is rare. Dr. C could be wholly unqualified and I would probably still go to him because he treats me like a human being.

But that is as much as I am going to say about it because people I know are going through far worse, and complaining thus is simply unseemly. I just wanted to say, I'm getting help, but I'm still plenty freaked out.

Went to the old house today to throw shit out. I don't know how long I lasted. Not long. I had to bail, which I feel bad about. The downstairs room has been marinating in rainwater, of course, so the smell was awful, and I kept finding vermin, which kept freaking me out. I don't mean furry vermin, either. Whatever my flaws, I don't fear mice. I mean beetles and slugs and suchlike. (Shut up. It's not fear, it's full-body revulsion.) Then I got a faceful of hair and dust and sort of freaked out because my hands were already so filthy there was no way to get it off get it off get it off. The old place has no running water, and there were no paper towels or anything. Ugh.

I have to go back tomorrow (with water and washcloths for my face) and go through a bunch of stuff to see what I want to keep and what I want to pitch. Not fun. I don't do nostalgia. Finding birthday cards my mom gave me, letters from people I really miss and can't find, my grandmother's jewelry, childhood photos, pictures of me when I was all skinny and belly-dancery, that kind of shit. That's brutal, man. I would throw it all away because it hurts to look at it, but that would be so dumb, because in ten years I'll be glad I have it. So it goes back into a box and gets hidden away. A much better solution.

Just so things are not epic in their suck, I will say that I wrapped up two gaming characters this week. Okay, that's not actually happy. But the gaming was fun: vampire Don Juans and teenage pseudo-supervillainesses. What is happy is moving on to the next character. If a "paladin" in RPG parlance is a badass fighter who derives special powers from divine favor, what would it be like if you had a blood-drinking lioness for a patron goddess?

I think it would be like that fight between Hector and Achilles in Troy, only at the end Achilles would turn into a butched-up Smilodon, tear his way into the city, and make the streets run red with blood. And they would be bad guys, of course. Not Trojans, who didn't really do anything but have gates that opened the wrong fucking way. But you get the idea. Epic carnage and bloodshed, and prehistoric mammals!

I will miss Sam and Meg, though. Fun characters. I always say "Yeah, we'll get back to them," but this doesn't usually happen. (That is not a criticism, just an observation.)

There. That's a completely boring and mundane me-type update. I am going to go fool around with stuff in my studio and hope that inspiration strikes me on the two commissions I have been stuck on for over a year. Yeah. It's that bad. If this continues much longer, I'm going to have to give the money back and then some and declare myself closed for the forseeable future, because this shit is unacceptable, and if I can't be reliable I need to find something else to do.

* That's what doctors are for. Belay the medical advice unless I ask for it, like I did here. Thank you all for helping with that.

I had a good day. I got to see friends briefly, hung out with my dad, gamed with Sargon, had ice cream. It was a nice birthday.

Sargon got me some Blu-Ray movies, including the Underworld trilogy* and the Kingdom of Heaven director's cut.** He also got me a new digital camera, a Sony PowerShot. It's very, very nice and I am crazy grateful. I am going to try it out tomorrow on the massive pile of crap my dad foisted off on me.

He gave me some fossils, some neat pieces of driftwood, some found glass bottles including vet-med bottles and an empty perfume bottle with a lotus on the side, some bones, and . . . uhh . . . I accidentally came home with a bunch of his teeth. No, his teeth. Really. They were in a bottle that I accidentally packed with the others. Anyway, pictures forthcoming. My wonder cabinet, let me show you it.

Thank you to everyone for the presents, both virtual (LJ lets you buy people llamas; this is awesome) and material. Thank you most of all for the well-wishes and kind thoughts. Things have sucked, and it's nice to know that other people disapprove of that as much as I do.

Right now, I am going to go watch TV and draw saber-toothed cats.

* Hey, (bat_cheva, just say when/if you want to come watch Rise of the Lycans; I will happily hold off).

** Which is a completely different movie from the butchered theatrical version, and you really ought to give it a chance if you haven't already.

Hey, I figure you all have better experience with anemia caused by *ahem* pernicious blood loss than the online medical BS sites, so I thought I would ask you:

Is persistent queasiness or mild nausea associated with this kind of anemia for you? I have had a shitty appetite for a couple of weeks now, and now I just feel slightly ill 2/3 of the time. Not like I'm going to hwarf, but like if I ate something, it wouldn't sit well, you know? Food hasn't been disagreeing with me, though. Not much more than usual.

Please don't hesitate to say no, you don't get queasy. I'm needing to differentiate this from something going on with my meds or the onset of seasonal allergies, so honesty is appreciated.

Also, no, you don't have to tell me to see my doctor. I still want to hear what you have to say, since I can't get to my doctor for a few days at least. And I have no idea where to start with the laundry list of shit that is not going well.

Also, my cats are so goddamn cute, you have no idea. Pics soon.

A lot of people are suggesting donating to Planned Parenthood in the wake of Dr. Tiller's assassination.

This is worthy, and I'm not saying don't donate to them. However, please, all of you, be advised that not all Planned Parenthoods provide abortion services. Many only provide referrals.

If your goal is to support abortion providers directly, please find out who your local abortion providers are.

Wichita abortion provider Dr. George Tiller shot dead while walking into church.

White male suspect is at large, driving a powder-blue late 90's Ford Taurus with license plate 225-BAB. Details here.

He had previously been shot and survived, his clinic burned down, his life and his medical practice threatened, and somehow he survived, only to be gunned down going into church. He was one of the few late-term abortion providers in the country.

Culture of "life." Pro-"life." "Life" is sacred.

I love literal version videos. This is the best one I have yet seen.



Normally I don't post wacky videos here unless they're mine, but exceptional lolarity gets exceptional treatment. This has some of the best clever lyrics for a literal version I've seen.

My hands are shaking and my throat and stomach hurt I was laughing so hard.

Thanks to ellen_kushner.