Monthly Archives: December 2009

Mom week, tired

It is good that my mom and I are getting along. But I find I am exhausted and worn out. Part of it is that I just don’t get the juice of energy I get from hanging out with friends. Part of it is that it is hard work between us. We both want to do things right and to fully understand the other and clearly explain our positions. And that takes a lot of work. It has been easy with others but I wonder how much of that is them just letting things slide when I keep poking at things. My mom and I both poke.

I think I am getting an understanding of just how hard it is to be around me sometimes.

I want things to be clear and want it enough to work hard at it. For awhile I only wanted to deal with people who were willing to do the same work. Lately I have different levels to choose from. I still want it all but can be told where to set the dial so that people don’t get overloaded. I figure in the future as I learn more and have more practice, I will be able to read the situation and people well enough to be able to set the dial on my own. Or I won’t care as much all the time to have the clarity of understanding and connection that I want now.

Having my mom tell me the things I do and that I insist on that makes it hard to have friends and then give me advice on how to change is not something I need or want from her. Especially since she doesn’t have that many friends. Also something I have a fear of is becoming like her and naturally following a similar path as she the one has carved out for herself. I am different from her but there are a lot of similarities that could lead to the same places and I very much do not want to live like she does. It gives her what she considers important but she has not been able to do or keep the things I consider important. There is the underlying fear that I won’t have the ability to keep those things either (like gainful employment, stability, a group of friends, my health, the ability/skill to take care of myself and accomplish what I want in America).

I managed to recognize what was going on and stop her before she got very far down the list of advice. What is funny is that what I catch her doing seems to have nothing to do with what her intention is. If I stop her and ask her why she is doing something, I get an answer that doesn’t seem to be related to what I just stopped her from doing/saying. She has a very different brain process than I do for all our similarities. This might be why it is so tiring to be with her. And I am sure some of it is having my defenses on alert all day long for two and a half days.

Finally feeling better

Around 3pm this afternoon, I felt better. I could breath, I had a full voice, no coughing. For all of 5 minutes. Then everything came back. I slept some more and then ate and seem do be better. Yay!

I am missing the Solstice I wanted to go to. If I felt this way even 12 hours earlier, I would know I could go. I am still unsure of it now. A shower and some trips to the dumpster with this weeks piles O’ trash should tell me just how well.

Sinuses clear, I can breathe deeply although there is some crud still in there. It doesn’t automatically get caught when I breathe. I have this idea I have my voice back completely but that is probably from “talking” online with radar. If I have been able to communicate, sometimes I forget what form it was in. It all falls under talking to me. :)

While I am not all better, I feel like I am actually getting better. It was feeling like there was no progress before and I was stuck there endlessly.

Sick update for those watching at home

Still Sick.
Still not King.

Sleeping seems to make things better. Given my weird ways of dealing with things, sleeping happens best during the day, leaving me awake and bored during the dark hours of the night/morning. Not that it matters since I didn’t have much contact with anyone during the daylight hours either.

More boiling pots of water for increased humidity. I like it humid. I wonder what my gas bill will be for this month.

Food and liquid have been consumed. While I am doing doing what is “best” for a situation like this, I am doing what is needed as what is best didn’t seem to be working and I was spending a lot of energy fighting it rather than going with the flow.

I think tonight is Solstice and I have been planning on going thinking I would be better in time. Since it is about having a vigil until the sun comes up, my flipped schedule is a good thing and I have been planning on that as well. I hope I can still do it and that I am better enough to do it without spreading germs everywhere I go. It sort of feels like my allergies have taken the ball and run with it. I itch, nose, ears just like I do when I have a bad allergy day. A cold shouldn’t cause those symptoms. I might actually be ok and be worrying myself into being sick. That is a definite possibility. :)

I will get out and about before I head out to make sure I am able to do so. A test run, it will probably include taking trash out. Which might be why I keep going to sleep instead. :)

A light has dawned on my attitude about being sick

It just dawned on me why I have such trouble being sick. I feel like crap and I can’t tell the difference between ‘I feel lousy and it will get better with time’ and ‘I feel lousy and I am going to die (or some variation there of)’. I swing between the two extremes and get so lost. I alternate between doing a good job of taking care of myself to just giving up.

And I have it in my mind that being sick clears up after a couple of days. I swear that is the way it used to be and I feel should be.

Still sick

I managed to sleep some from sometime after 1pm to sometime before 1am. It was a good thing. I did a lot of sweating out which I think was good for me. I felt like I had turned a corner. Coughing actually was productive, I could breath deeply. I am getting better right? All I had to do was stop eating and drinking and fall asleep in boredom.

It isn’t going as planned. I drank a shake to get nutrients into me and it is still hard to do. I just don’t want to swallow. It doesn’t hurt or anything. It seems more like trying to feed a baby that keeps closing its mouth when the spoon comes near. Just don’t wanna.

I got pans of water heating again putting steam into the air. Managed to get the humidity from 63% to 70%. Would like 85% again but then I have to spend a lot of time/energy watching the pans. I had one pan heating for tea and turned it off because it was ready when I still had the shake to drink. It is now cold again and I am no closer to being interested in drinking anything.

I am panting after getting off the couch to get to the pans to check on them and refill as needed and getting back to the couch. I feel exhausted. I don’t know if I am really that weak, or if it is the trouble breathing and I am interpreting it as weak, or if it is that I am very focused on it and therefore not comparing it realistically to other times when I have the same level of strength. I am sure I am fine and ok and such, I just don’t know how to interpret my information. Am I near an edge of actually not doing well and needing some sort of help, or am I just being whiny?

Normally, if someone is asking this sort of question, it is a sign they really are not doing well. Me, I just pride myself in being honest with myself and so I ask the question to see what my answer would be. I just watched something where a guy got hit on the head and kept telling people he was fine and then falling and passing out. Seeing this, I understand why people don’t listen to an injured person when they say they are ok. But this isn’t me. I own up to what is wrong with me. I usually own up long before there is a real problem. I am not a tough guy to just take the pain and keep going, I am not full of pride that would be dented if I admitted that I was hurt, I am not a polite person that plays down things to make others more comfortable. I am a screaming sensitive whiny child when it comes to injury and pain. If I say I am ok, then I am well into the realm of ok.

I hate it when people question my assessment of how I am doing like I wouldn’t be honest and ask for help if I needed it. It really really bugs me. I know why it bugs me but do not know why it bugs me as much as it does. When I need help, I ask for it. My mom, not knowing when I was just complaining/whining or if I actually was hurt, used to ask me if I needed to go to the hospital. When I was really in trouble or didn’t know how to deal with whatever I had to deal with, I have no problem saying Yes, take me to the hospital. I don’t mind being asked the question. I do mind people not listening to the answer. I am actually happy to be asked the question because 1) it means someone is concerned about me and cares enough to ask, 2) it is an outside question and sometimes it is easier to get a real answer then if it was just an internal question. The part that drives me nuts is when I answer and the person doesn’t believe me and treats me like I don’t know what I am talking about. That and the insistence that their ideas about what is wrong with me are better than my ideas and ways of dealing with it.

I don’t want to be one of those people that say they are ok when they are not. This is why, while I know that right now I really am ok, I do wonder if I am near the edge of not ok and should I worry. I had a shake (Glucerna nutrient shake thing) sometime Friday am. Before that I was asleep. I just had another shake an hour or so ago. That is all I have consumed in terms of food. I have had a couple swallows of water. Logically this is not enough and a very bad thing. But I don’t want to eat and I don’t want to drink and I feel better about not doing so. Maybe this is like a fast. People are fine fasting for a few days and things are cleaned out. Me, I have this idea I will die if I don’t eat in a day. Maybe I don’t need to worry about it and just let my body do what it wants. If I get too worried about not eating, then maybe I will want to eat.

My inner Drama Queen

I am owning up to my inner drama queen. I was thinking about making a post about how I haven’t been sleeping well and I should load myself up on sugar so I can drop into a sugar coma and sleep this sickness off. This isn’t the drama part. I really wanted to add a closing line of “I should probably turn off the water steaming on the stove first.”

It just itched to be included. I see it as funny and I think it is. But I can also recognize that it could and probably would concern a few people. I think I might even get my knickers in a twist if I didn’t hear something about it. Humor back would have been fine because it at least was acknowledged.

I realize I post a number of things about my life that could concern people. Some of it concerns me as well. Part of the reason I post it is because I want to force myself not to hide from it. I want to be called on it. Another side of me is annoyed when people do poke me about things because I know I can take care of myself. This side has been calming down lately for which I am grateful. I think I know I can take care of myself but I don’t want to have to. I want to know that people care and are concerned for me.

I have this great quality, I don’t care overly much if in general people like me or not. I am not to everyone’s taste and I am good with that. People that like me, yay! People that don’t like me, yay! because they will leave me alone and avoid me and if they don’t like me, I usually don’t like them either.

One of my major defense mechanisms is of being convinced that people will get tired of me or change their opinion of me and become one of the ones that doesn’t lake me anymore and leave. If I really like someone, I find myself making it easy for them to disentangle themselves from me. This gets in the way of close connections and I am trying to learn new ways of dealing with this.

One of the outgrowth of this defense mechanism is that I need reassurance that people like me, that they want me around, that they can handle me. I am still convinced I wear people out and they can’t deal with me and run away (too much evidence that I can’t get details for support this), so I don’t dare let my old standby defenses go. Which I think leads me to being more of a Drama Queen. Putting things in that are meant to get people to react so that I know they still care and are still there.

Add to that the fact that I have very large emotional reactions that I am learning to actually allow myself to have and work through and I look even more like a Drama Queen. It is my understanding that I have chased off someone else with this quirk of mine.

I could just do what I need to do to fall asleep in a moist air environment. I have some electronics to clean up and find places for that aren’t right next to where I sleep. But I have no motivation for that. I seem to need to stick a needle into myself by going public to push me to do something I know I should do anyway.

La..dee..da..da. Self insight can be such a delight. *le sigh*

On the other hand, I am much more even keel and calm and rational on a lot of things Drama Queens are known for blowing up on that I hope it all evens out.

I still want to know the ex-girlfriend stories told about me and ex-employee stories. I would love to know how I look from the outside and be able to compare that to the crazy ex-girlfriend stories I get from others.

I am sick

I figured I shouldn’t say anything about how I have managed not to get sick with all the bad sleep and bad eating habits I have been doing lately. Let alone being under a lot of stress right before con and running at full tilt during con. I managed to avoid the con crud and everything following it.

Well, I started mentioning my escape last week and my luck ended. I have a cold. Garden variety, plain normal cold. Lots of fluid, lots of rest, avoid smoke, keep head elevated. It is starting in the lungs and I am guessing it will work its way to my sinuses and then a scratchy/sore throat. Guess it is hard for me to do things in a normal order.

I had a very busy weekend, putting out a lot of energy. I haven’t been sleeping well the last few days and I suspect that is why it is hitting me now. And here I thought it was a good sign that I wasn’t doing the drugged oversleep thing.

Part of me wishes I had someone to pamper me and make me soup and provide lots of steam for me to lounge in and refill my tea cup (scones would be nice). Another part of me thinks that someone else around would bug the living daylights out of me and realizes that having things done my way on my time schedule the way I want it is not something that works in this reality. Also, I would feel like I have a big favor to pay back.

Now comes the question, should I cancel going to AZ tomorrow? If it was something I was looking forward to and would have fun, then I would overcome whatever and go. But it is family stress, a lot of money and I am sure it will make me sicker due to the travel. I would have expected this cold after that trip, not before. And I am concerned about contaminating the family. Yeah, that’s it.

Family Translator

You know the plan things and the pieces of the puzzle just not fitting right feeling. My dad called, seems that is going on for him now with my brother. My brother is being all wishy washy with his schedule and dad is feeling like all the plans and effort he has put into the gathering is getting wasted. I am currently poking said brother about what he really wants rather than what his reactions to my dad are.

I feel I should have a title of Family Translator. I can understand my mom, my dad, and my brother. My dad and brother can talk ok most of the time. My brother and my mom have issues most of the time. I try hard not to have my dad and my mom talk ever. I will say I am unsure at my ability to talk with my brother. I don’t get as much of a chance and his feedback is spotty. He is the one in the family that hides information. I am the one that spills everything everywhere. I realize this talent of mine is of the awesome variety. It is the result of having such a hard time dealing with everyone everywhere growing up. I am trying to heal that part of me but I also own that this skill does grow out of that experience.

Dad made no sounds about helping with my travel expenses (ok honestly covering my travel). He has in the past so this is new for him. Not sure why the change. It could be because he has seen me very recently. It could be because of our dust up when we did see each other recently (but it feels like it was in place before that). It could be because he and I talk regularly and he isn’t as desperate to interact with me.

Part of me is sad that I won’t be on a train for 24 hours each way. Part of me is so happy I won’t be stuck on a train for 24 hours both ways (actually the leg out includes 3 hours on a bus, ick).

This means that I have a lot more time to fill up at home. And a lot more room to maneuver.

The current plans I have is the Unofficial Steampunk day at Dickens Dec 13th. I am actually going to try to make it at the beginning part of the fair instead of squeaking in at the end. I want to see Postcards. And there are singers at Sal’s I want to see. Guess I can spend my train money of London food.

I still feel like crap but not as bad as before. The headache did not get worse (lights aren’t as bothersome) and has actually gone down some. I still need to eat and my body hates me right now. I am still pissy but not as much as before.

Feeling ick

I am feeling more and more defensive and like I need to protect myself and really there isn’t a reason. Just as I sit and think the more it moves in like a fog and takes over my attitude and my brain.

My head is starting to hurt, the eyes are doing the on/off again dizzys, the neighbor is playing annoying music. I have screwed up my sleep schedule and I think it is catching up to me. I probably need to eat but I don’t know what. I don’t want what I have in the house, green bean chicken or chicken chow fun sound almost good but require me to spend money I “shouldn’t” and to get dressed to go outside. I have a hankering for Chevys sweet corn tamolito but I don’t want to go alone. Olive Garden has been on my list of places I want to hit but it is so North and another no one to go with. And of course there is the money “shouldn’t” issue.

I have been avoiding dealing with the family gathering. My brother is graduating with his PhD (he gets a lot more letters after his name than I do) Dec 19th. My dad is getting a condo in Pinetop AZ for the week before and I am invited. My brother told me that my dad mentioned that he wasn’t going to pay for everything (such great communication we have in our family). I have looked at the train schedules and found some that will work but are in the order of $400+ round trip. Which is fine if my dad is willing to pay for it, but not if he isn’t. Give how we last left each other, I have some sore spots related to him. And this is probably the root of my current state of ick. Options I thought I had are not working out like I thought they would and things are a lot less than optimal. I have been putting off dealing with this because I didn’t want to put the energy into it and to make things work will require yet more energy.

Some of my EEEEvil plans look like they will turn belly up. On one hand, Yay! less volunteering. On the other it is frustrating to plot and plan in your head and find out the landscape doesn’t match the map you have. And they were neat ideas as well.

I have thrown a lot of lines out there for contact with people and while I have gotten some tugs in response, there is silence from other quarters. And some of those need to connect so I can have the layout and maps for other ideas I have in staging. So I might have to throw some of those ideas away as well. A few of them don’t have backup plans.

Other things are up in the air. I feel like I have put energy into a lines of dominoes and I have a few choice spot where there is suppose to be connections that will let everything fall into place and those connections aren’t working out smoothly. It feels like I am going to have to punt and just work on each line individually and that not only feels like a waste but it feels like more energy than I can put together to get the different lines.

My groceries are still left out from yesterday. Frozen food and fridge food too. It is cold enough in here to not mind the fridge food (it isn’t like it is milk or anything) and the frozen food has been dubbed fridge food by me and ignored.

Instead of things flowing freely in that magic way I have, it is starting to feel like I am pushing uphill and against resistance. And I just want to quit. Quit everything. Just hide under the covers some more but I know it will make me feel worse.

I think this is the after affects of all the stuff that has come up and flowed out of me the last few days. There isn’t anymore of the concentrated good stuff so the crap is getting sucked up and out too.

I took some pain meds to try and stave off the headache before it takes over my entire head. I am pissy that it has been 10 minutes and it doesn’t seem to have done anything. I think if things aren’t exactly as I want them, I am going to be pissy about it. Which is not very useful.

Because my brother’s graduation is so close to Xmas, it is causing trouble with transportation. I would happily travel on the 24th but that would leave me at my brother’s for 6 days and there isn’t a room for me. My mom comes to town Dec 29th and I have to deal with that as well. These things are making me feel crunched for time to get things planned and put into play. I am beginning to feel like I am going to just say F^$k it and blow it off.

I HATE THE F#*(%$*%$# HOLIDAYS! I HATE THEM I HATE THEM I HATE THEM. I can’t even ignore them unless I crawl into a cave and pull a rock to black the entrance.

(hmmm, I didn’t start this post that bad off. I hadn’t realized my dislike for the holiday’s affect on the world around me had been building out of sight. Guess it is about time it showed up.)