The weirdest week

The moon is so beautiful, especially in a dry climate. The sky is clear, the full moon is huge and bright. And that's the problem.

During the week of the full moon, my mood is weird. That's not the problem. The problem is the light. The moon is so damn bright here, sometimes night looks like a different version of day.

I just can't sleep when the moon s mostly intact. I can't. Not with meds, not with a sleep mask and curtains.

At least it goes away fairly quickly.

Priceless

TENS unit, heavy gel heating pad, chardonnay that I'm not supposed to have, pajamas.

Another Friday night in Paradise.


(I got the TENS unit free from the PT office. They found a few in the back of an old cabinet that was being thrown away. Nobody knows how old it is. It's about as analog as analog gets. You have to take the cover off entirely to access the controls. It works, mostly. It's OK for free.)

May has gone all weepy

It was all going downhill quickly before it became apparent. The nerve blocks aren't holding, sleep is a disaster, cognitive deficits are creating spiraling frustration, erratic weather has a way of wreaking havoc on all things mood related, but the nine prescriptions have a way of winding things up and then letting them flame out to a whimper.

Car crying is a symptom but not a problem since I excel at this particular type of multitasking. Lying in bed with tears streaming from the corners of my eyes and into my ears is a discomfort on several levels. Not being able to concentrate long enough to finish a sentence before going onto the next one is easy to chalk up to having too many things going on, except that I don't.

It's not until I stop feeling concerned about what I say or if it bothers anyone that I know I'm dangerously irritable. Tact filters down! Tact filters down! Raise defensive shields! Not that much! Apologize! For what?? I'm just sayin.'

I'm all mixed up. It would appear that I wasn't paying attention because a mixed state has been whacking me on the head for at least two weeks, but I've been too moody to notice. Sometimes I think about a book I had as a child. It's not really read anymore as it was deemed politically incorrect by the department of political correctness. The book was called Little Black Sambo. I suppose if they called him simply Sam and took the hairstyle down a notch, the whole tale would have stood the test of time a little better.

I digress. Of course I do. I'm going a mile a minute while being unable to get my ass off of the couch. All hail the Internet.

Back to Sambo. Sambo is an Indian Boy (probably Tamil) who is shaken down by a group of tigers. They steal his clothes, his shoes, and even his pretty umbrella, but then they fight among themselves and chase each other around a tree so rapidly and for so long, they churn themselves into a puddle of butter. That's a mixed state. You get going with such ferocity, that after awhile, you're unrecognizable (May? Is that you? Are you salted or sweet cream? Would you like to sit in the fridge for a while to sort things out?)

Mostly, though, I cry. I weep. I sob. Hot tears on my face while I shower, the car crying, bedtime crying, talking to the doctor crying, crying a lot crying.

But I'm not depressed. That's entirely different.

Free dessert isn't what I meant

Nobody ever asks me what I want for my birthday--not my mother, not my husband, not even Joanna who sends gifts every year. I know it's ungracious to suggest one is displeased with any gift, but there's something to be said for getting what you want. I mean, I don't ask for anything, in fact I ask that nobody give me anything at all, but I still end up with a few gifts, anyway.

Here is what I want for my birthday:
A large, multi-layer, very beautiful, colorful, delicious birthday cake with generous amounts of icing, preferably butter cream (no fondant) and with lots of rosettes. I believe that cake is really just a delivery vehicle for icing.

Cake, hmmm...chocolate chip or chocolate or vanilla white or vanilla strawberry or, well, does it matter?

There doesn't even have to be a candle on it.

My 30th birthday coincided with moving day. I was being relocated by Time Warner, and leaving my hometown in Pennsylvania for a job outside of New York City. I spent the day instructing the movers and cleaning the house, and then I put the cats in the car and stopped by my parents' house to say goodbye, as they had asked.

My mother forgot I was coming. In fact, she had forgotten it was my birthday (again). She got up from the recliner and took the remaining half of a leftover Entemann's pound cake off the counter. She rummaged in the junk drawer and eventually pulled out a used, lint-covered blue and white striped birthday candle. She stuck the candle in the cake, lit it, and told me to make a wish. She didn't actually offer me any cake--she and my father had already finished dinner and dessert. This was the closest I had come to having a birthday cake in several years, and it was pretty much my last encounter with one.

So, if you see Frank between now and this day next year, tell him to stop buying accessories for my car and just go out to a non-supermarket bakery and buy the most beautiful icing-laden birthday cake he can afford. Candles optional.

...and exhale.

Yet another (trying) lap around the sun.

Whining my way down the birthday path

It’s too cliché to say that life isn’t what we had in mind, but that doesn’t change the reality. When I was younger I had a million plans for my life, but most of them didn’t happen. Some of those ideas are obsolete, some no longer interest me, but others cause me tremendous sadness knowing they are not realistic possibilities anymore.

Having written and then discarded a very long essay about the "have nots" and "not going to haves," it has become clear to me that I can't effectively articulate how and why I feel my life has gone off course. I can say this: The multiple neurological disasters affecting me have made me an erratic and unhappy person. I have no fight, no strength and no energy, but even if I did, I don't have enough enthusiasm to do much of anything. My last big Brain Episode scrubbed my body through with caustic neurotransmitter agents that stripped me of desire and curiosity. Even if I knew what I wanted or how to make things better, I wouldn't be able to remember it long enough to find a pen and paper to make notes.

George Bailey. George Bailey stands on the bridge surrounded by a bitter and cold night. He understands that although he has done valuable work and others are better off as a result, in the end, he hasn't been able to find his own place in the world and he never will. It’s not such a wonderful life. He looks at the icy river swirling below, and then he utters those words, finally admitting what frustration has been pushing into his consciousness for quite some time...

I wish I had never been born.

Am I really supposed to celebrate the fact that I was?

Maybe we can change the focus from "Yipee! You were born," to "Glad you're not dead." Does Dairy Queen make a cake for that?

The bucket list

In precisely one year and 364 days, I will be 50 years old. If I make it that long--heading out early is always up for consideration.

I spent the first half of my adult life eagerly planning all of the things I wanted to do in my lifetime. At some point, that changed to sadly realizing there were many things I would never do in this lifetime. I'm not making excuses, but the combination of bipolar disorder and its surprises plus chronic pain plus lack of money add up to a whole lot of obstacles that I'm sure I can't overcome.

I would like to acknowledge that I got off to a good start.

• At 15, I traveled to Brazil for part of a summer. It was a short-term exchange, so although I stayed with someone else's parents, I wasn't there with my parents and that counts for a lot.


• At 17, I abandoned my train-wreck of a high school experience and went to Chile for a year. I learned that dysfunctional families are a univeersal truth.


• At 23, I interned at the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia. They gave me real work to do and I got to hear my words read on-air every day. I learned that I didn't want a career in network television, after all.


• At 26, I learned to fly hot air balloons, and I kept at it until I was 34.


• I've been to 40 states.


• I flew in an open-cockpit biplane, a Piper Cub, and various other small aircraft, including a free tag along on the air taxi from Erwinna, PA to Philadelphia.


• I made it to Puerto Rico and I went alone. Hiking in the rainforest was stunning.


• I made it to NYC for New Year's Eve. We skipped Times Square and watched the ball drop from our position up town. then we tunred around and faced the opposite direction and watched gorgeous fireworks herald the new year.


• I built a career, helped develop technologies people use every day with their cable television service (on-screen program guide, digital channel lineups, pay-per-view, and video on demand), and officially impressed the CEO of one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. He told me so on a short elevator ride.


• I learned how to properly shift a bicycle and trained myself to ride a minimum of 100 miles a week, alone and without avoiding the really big, scary hills.


• I lived alone successfully and contentedly.


• I learned to drive stick shift.


• I immersed myself in season tickets to the symphony.


• I relocated 1800 miles across the country to a place where I had a job, but no friends or familiar faces. My cats came with me, so that helped.


• At 34, I bought my first new car, and I did it without anyone's help.


• At 35, I learned to ski and I was on the blue runs by the next winter.


• I made a radical career change at 37.


• I earned my master's degree.


• At 38, I made it to Canada. It was my first time off of U.S. soil in 20 years and my last in a decade.


• Six weeks after knee surgery, I rode my bike most of the way up the highest continuous road in the U.S.


• I drove alone from New York to St. Petersburg, FL in a car that was rapidly preparing for its impending death.


• I drove most of the way across the U.S. and back.


• I met lots of celebrities, not that I was planning to.


• I started a sound and sustainable nonprofit organization in 2007. It has advocates nationwide.


• I created a blog, and then another and then two more. I successfully maintain three out of four. The fourth doesn't require much updating.


• In my early 40s, I started to experience the catastrophic dissolution of my mental and emotional health, yet never missed a day of work. I survived this tragedy. Barely.


• At 42, I got married. Finally.


• I got married above the tree line on the Continental Divide, on skis, in a wedding gown.


• I bought a house. My first house. This was very much on my life's to-do list, but I got there about 12 years later than I thought I would.


• I taught myself to make jewelry and frankly, I got very good at it very quickly. My pieces are beautiful.


• I made a good fried, a very good friend, from someone I met on the Internet. We live 800 miles and a couple of states away from each other, but we visit each other about every three months.


• I own four djembe drums and I know how to play them.


• I am learning to play the harmonica. I will succeed eventually, although my progress has been slowed by lithium-induced dry mouth.

So what was it I had hoped to do while all of that was going on? Let's talk about it tomorrow.

The Pelvic Pain Support Group

Oh, forget it. The whole thing was just really discouraging. Everybody feels like crap, they've been struggling toward The Solution for many years, they're overmedicated and out of options, and there's nothing left to do but commiserate.

I'm not so sure that misery loves quite that much company.

Understanding swine flu

The news is full of chatter about swine flu. It could become a pandemic. It's in Mexico. It's traveling. It's awful, awful, they tell us.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, persons contracting this strain of flu can expect to be sick for five-to-seven days with upper respiratory symptoms, fever, body aches, coughing, cold symptoms, and fatigue. If a patient rests and drinks plenty of fluids, maybe works through some Sudoku, a full recovery should be expected.

More than 1,000 people in Mexico have come down with swine flu, and a few cases have been reported in the U.S. So far, no one in the U.S. has died from swine flu; in fact, most were not hospitalized. To put this into perspective, the CDC says that every year an more than six million people in the U.S. get the flu, more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from complications, and about 36,000 people die from the disease each year.

So, what makes swine flu different and what are the chances it will become a pandemic? Swine flu is a strain of influenza type A H1N1 virus. In other words, it's a Type-A flu, which is what most flu strains are. This new strain has a molecular twist: It is composed of avian and swine influenza genes, as reported by the CDC and WHO. The virus travels effectively across porous borders, which raises concerns that a true pandemic pandemonium will erupt soon. The same warning was issued across the U.S. for SARS and bird flu. Given that this strain is a hybrid of avian and swine flu, the chances of a pandemic spreading throughout the U.S., meaning far more cases than the usual 6+million cases of Type A flu seen annually can best be explained with the following graphic:

Facebook and me

It has been just over a week since I joined Facebook. After searching for everyone I know or ever knew, I concluded the following:

• I'm not really friends with most of the people on my friends list
• The best way to find the Facebook help information you need is to Google it.
• Groups suit me better than friends. I joined something like 15-20 groups and pages.
• There is a Facebook page for Adam's Peanut Butter and that is fabulous.
• People seem to believe they are so original, they should start a group for whatever occurs to them. The overwhelming majority of these people start groups before checking to see that there are already 35 other groups with the same name about the same thing started by other original thinkers.
• Actually finding someone from my past usually leaves me with a very melancholy feeling.
• Social networking makes me feel anxious, not happily connected.

I'm going to start my own new groups:

• "Stop talking about the goddamn NFL day in and day out, as if it's the only sport on the planet, especially when it isn't even football season."
• "The NFL draft is not worthy of being the lead story on the evening news."
• "Professional sports are entertainment and therefore should merit no more than three minutes out of an entire newscast, and should only show up in the final five minutes."

May is cranky and sad and should go to bed. As she heads down the creaky hallway, she ponders the questions: How can people claim to love you if they let months or years lapse between calling or taking your calls plus they never even acknowledge your email? Can you love someone about whom you have no interest? Can you miss someone when they're gone if it never occured to you to check if they were still around?

Because it's more fun than wearing the drapes

No, not Scarlett O'Hara's drapes; the Von Trapp family's drapes.

I'm not sure if I should admit this, but Frank and I can recite most of The Sound of Music. We also do this thing where if someone mentions The Sound of Music, we make eye contact, put our arms out and twirl as we sing these words: "The hills are aliiiiive..." And then we go back to doing whatever it was we were doing.

Give it time to load and then enjoy.

There doesn't have to be a reason

I woke up exhausted and cranky.
I felt lonely and isolated.
The sadness and pain all came back with the revitalized memory of they see this as something I'm doing to them instead of as something that's happening to me.
I am reminded that my brain doesn't work as it was designed to, but I'm supposed to keep up regardless.
I can't think, I can't focus, I can't remember, I can't get any work done.
How can I be this tired?

I wept from the time I poured my coffee, then all the way to work, until I stood in front of the parking garage elevator.

I can't really say why.