Monday, April 28, 2014

My Baby's Got A Poopy Diaper



Health update, I guess.  (about 11 minutes in to get to the title track)

I am far healthier than I was just two years ago.  This was not an instant change, even after my stroke.  It took some time.  I've gained some weight back.  I seem to be constantly wavering in my weight like I did before... adding/dropping 10-15 pounds from week to week, but basically staying near 320.  One week my weak leg circulation will kick in, then I lose some weight for whatever reason, and the next week I'll be okay.  My blood pressure seems to be on the high side of good, but still in the Goldilocks zone.  I haven't had another seizure since that one in Dorothy Lane Market, after which I started to be militant in taking my Keppra pills.

My medical bills are nearly paid off.  Within a year I'll be able to be out of credit card debt again, which will be good, then I can look into buying a condo.

One important health update.  I no longer have poo-poo undies.





I thought I was just a fat slob, and that's what caused it.  Well, I am a fat slob, but I thought the fat part was why I always had bacon strips.  Most of my adult life I've had this problem.  I could use half-a-roll and still wake up in the morning with skidmarks.

No.  It was not because I was fat.  It was hemorrhoids. 

I should have had it looked at a long time ago.  I mean, the blood was a clue.  It was a regular occurrence, but occasionally there was some in my stool.  I chalked it up to drinking.  But no, it was hems.  Or rather, one hem, according to my doctor.  That's why I had the colonoscopy.  Granted, I should have done it earlier, given my uncle died from colon cancer and the blood.  I just was too scared about the possibility that my blood wasn't from drinking.

I don't know what the doctor did, but to know I've had this problem all my life and could have had it gone with a simple procedure embarrasses me.  I remember when Ex first moved in, he wanted to do my laundry, and I wouldn't let him, because poo-poo undies.  Like, he wasn't going to find that out anyway, living with me.

(That's how I knew he was going to leave me.  I did my own laundry, but if I did mine first, he'd take my clothes out and hang them up; then one day he made a point of letting my clean laundry sit next to the TV, not touching it.  That was pretty depressing to sit there and look at that basket and have it judge me, but I left it for a few days hoping he'd do them, show me that he still cared and wasn't going to dump me... sounds stupid.   Was stupid.)

Basically, the colonoscopy was the best thing to come out of my stroke.  I can finally wear white undies again.  And I don't have to worry about where my Burt's Bee's Wax has been.



Monday, April 21, 2014

Addicted to your aftertaste.

Needless to say, I didn't have a great Easter weekend. 

Of course I don't find anything special about Easter or have any great Easter memories as a kid.  My little brother had a pet rabbit, so I tend to think of them as little shit machines rather than as adorable bunnies.  So Leo running off was more of a concern than the holiday weekend.

(Easter is also one of those useless holidays because everybody is basically closed, and if you don't plan ahead you're fucked.)

Once Leo was found my Easter weekend mainly involved waiting on a text that never came for a date that I knew I'd get stood up on (third time now), playing Titanfall, sleeping, and killing ants.  And occasionally very worrying dreams.  I have some weird stuff going through my head.  One thing is obviously some kind of Hero Complex.  While it's not quite lucid dreaming, I find myself with superhuman abilities... but usually fail in my goals.  A recent one involved Ex.  I was still in Boston in this dream, and Ex had been physically hurt somehow.  I needed to get him to a hospital, which should have been easy, you can't turn around in Boston without your ass hitting a hospital.  No matter how hard I tried, carrying Dale in my arms, I couldn't find one.  Then I noticed that I had not paid attention, and that we'd been hit with a flash snow-storm (which are freaky things).  Ex's face was covered in snow and hail.  I brushed it off him and checked his eyes to make sure they weren't frozen.  Then he said something that snapped me out of the dream, awake.  I remember what he said  but it doesn't matter.

Those kind of rescue mission type dreams are pretty common.  They are frustrating because I have a specific goal, somebody to protect, but I never do a good job of it.

Another dream becoming more common is the "Have I had another stroke" dream.  I think the nature of how the stroke felt... or didn't feel, I guess... is what causes this one.  The one I had last night, I was obviously in a high tech hospital.  White surfaces, clean rooms.  I stumble out of bed and almost lose my balance, which was just like when I had the stroke.  I manage to keep my balance, stumbling into a room filled with white desks and I sit at one.  A red haired older man is sitting across from me, on the desk between is what looks like a Wii-mote with just one  red button on it.  In the same way that you know what's going on in a dream without being told, I knew what this was.  The red button would cure me of the stroke, at the cost of a stranger's life... meaning, the red-head.  The guy starts to explain it to me anyway, "Remember, if you push that button..."

That's as far as he got.  BOOM.  Button pushed.  It would have been funny if I hadn't felt so vicious doing it.  He slumps over in midsentence.  Then something else happened and I woke up. 

Disturbing.

I've got something new to listen to to get to sleep, too:  Good Omens, read by Stephen Briggs.  It's been forever since I've dived into this book, and the audio version is top notch.

Gotta work now.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Words with friends

Usually I start out a post with a red herring, which is to say, something unrelated to the topic and then halfway through talking about that I pull the rug out and do the gotcha, showing that it is totally related and the reader is stupid for not realizing this.  This is not an uncommon method of writing, and it can be pretty effective if utilized correctly.  Kind of like when you drop from a monologue to a single sentence to make a point.

Because anything isolated is stronger.

See?  That makes no sense but it works.  So does the red herring opening.  Get the reader invested in one topic, then throw the monkey wrench in and get to your real point.  The effect this causes is to catch the reader off-guard, because then it's easier to make him question beliefs he or she may have held, and sway them to your side, or at least get them to acknowledge that there is in fact another side that they haven't considered.

I only mention this now because I could not think of a good red herring to open this post with, since I didn't have a central theme to it, and perhaps explaining the red herring introduction would make the rest of my post more interesting.

It probably won't.

(Did you see what I did just then?)

I saw an Instagram that referenced a very obscure, well for me anyway, song that I heard after a series of unfortunate events a couple of years ago, which strangely resulted from attempting to retrieve my Wonderfalls DVDs from my brother.  Wonderfalls is one of my favorite shows of all time, not only because it introduced me to the incredible Tracie Thoms (the lady version of Samuel L. Jackson motherfucker) but also because the fans made me feel like part of something bigger.  When Fox said they'd release the whole series on DVD, we rejoiced, as if we'd won something... the truth is, Fox had already finished producing most of the series, so why not finish the last two eps and try to make some money with a DVD release.  And they did.

A song from the show spoke to me.  I researched the song and found it on another TV show's soundtrack.  Listened to that soundtrack, found a song by another artist I liked, researched them, and that's what the Instagram photo was referencing.  Convoluted but true.

I guess I've lost the weight, somehow, that I'd put back on (fifteen pounds?  maybe twenty) because my left leg is no longer fluffing up during the day.  My left shoe no longer hurts.  I guess I haven't been eating properly, but I can't blame that on anti-depressants now.

I'd read that near-beer, which is made with hops, is a good natural sedative.  I've tried having a couple before bed... just made me get up and pee in the middle of the night.  BAH.

Something I've wanted to harp on is confirmation bias.  This is what allows Fox News viewers to believe the nonsense shit that network broadcasts... because they already believe it, but now that somebody else is saying it out loud, well it must be true!  It also allows somebody to believe an obvious falsehood if the false thing means they're not to blame.  Hey, sorry your school district's funds got rescinded, but I can't vote in your county's elections, although the Senator I sent to Congress is the one who took those funds away, but hey, not my fault.

It's easy to say that only one side of an argument is wrong and only one is right.  But that's rarely true.  Everybody has confirmation bias, but most of us tend to ignore it when we're the ones perpetrating it. 

Ah.  I was going to make a bigger point but it's time to shower and go to work.  I wonder how the chicken is doing in Stanton.