Sleepy/Creepy

PFLAG: Or, Why Do People Have Meetings At Night of All Ridiculous Times??

2011-11-10T07:38:00.006-06:00

Since we moved back into the area, we've been in search of support groups that have trans members. Transsexualism isn't really something you can talk about to just anyone you meet, and even when you can people usually can't relate. First we tried driving an hour to the nearest city, but it was just too inconvenient. Then we realized there's actually a chapter of PFLAG (an LGBT and allies group) just twenty minutes away.

The first meeting we went to (they're monthly) wasn't terribly exciting, but that might have just been because I slept through it. The meetings take place at night, and I forgot to drink caffeine before we left, so by the time announcements were done and it was time to discuss things, I was out in my chair, dozing on my husband's shoulder. I was really annoyed at myself because the people seemed great and the atmosphere safe and friendly. So this time, I went armed with dark chocolate pieces to keep me awake there after drinking the strongest jasmine tea in the house.

It did sort of work, and it was a meeting that was specifically about trans issues with a speaker who had a transman son, so very relevant to us. I mostly didn't zone out, though I ended up pretty whacked out on excess caffeine and sugar. WHY do people meet at night of all times? Thank God the writer's group we go to is in the middle of the day on the weekend...

Well, at least I didn't miss anything this time. I even spoke up at one point because we were talking about the relationship between sexual orientation and gender identity (they are two very distinct and unrelated things, from my point of view) and people were half-convincing themselves that asexuals (who they didn't even know the word for) and androgynous people must be the same. I know multiple asexuals and most of them identify as female so I stood up for them, which everyone, especially this somewhat creepy counselor guy, seemed to be really interested in. It seems weird to me that a roomful of people who deviate from mainstream sexuality/gender wouldn't know that if they exist, surely other variations on the same theme do also. But, I know I have a really different perspective because I know a randomly and accidentally very diverse group of people.

But I thought the best part was as everyone was leaving, because we got to meet and talk to a bunch of people who were really cool and nice and supportive to each other. We met a transman who's in high school who immediately connected with J, J's mom got to talk with another mom for a long time, and I got randomly pounced on by people. The speaker randomly ran over (like, seriously ran) and hugged me for having married a transman because her son had always had a hard time finding a mate. I thought it was sweet, but mystifying, because I honestly can't figure out why I wouldn't be with a transman/J because we're so well-matched emotionally. Then I realized it probably had to do with the fact that I'm not "out" to these people... they don't know about my disability for the most part, and this woman didn't see me asleep last week. Therefore, they don't know that J actually does way more to take care of me than I have to do for him usually. I guess if he was the only "difficult" one lol, it would be harder for most people to stick around. Instead, I probably am harder to live with, through no fault of my own. I'm so grateful to have J that him being trans and all the difficulties that go with it just don't register most of the time.

We also ended up talking to an older transwoman for awhile until J's mom dragged us out because she could see me starting to sway on my feet. We didn't get home until almost 11, and I spent the next 24 hours recovering. I would say I wish the meetings were more frequent, but if they were I would be screwed. Someone should put a meeting during sane hours, just for me.

Like a Narcoleptic in a Mattress Store

2011-11-07T08:10:00.003-06:00

I may have found the perfect Narcoleptic career: mattress store model! You just fall asleep in the front window, and the people walking by think the mattress you're on will help them sleep. Warning: May Be Mistaken For Mannikin Except for Snoring. XD If only someone would PAY me to sleep...

Well, I was at a mattress store yesterday, and let me tell you, I have never had that much trouble staying vertical in a store before. Just sitting on the cushy new mattresses made me too comfortable to stay awake. My husband was highly amused that he had to continuously poke me every two minutes when it was time to test a different one. It didn't help that it was cloudy outside, approaching sunset, and that I was pretty tired. I'm hoping it's a good sign anyway, that when our new mattress comes I might sleep better on it than I do on our two old-ish twin mattresses on the floor. It may come tonight, which means I could immediately at it to my various sleep experiments of the moment.

I hope it works; I need all the help I can get this time of year...

Happy 5AM, Everyone!!

2011-11-03T07:59:00.004-05:00

I HATE MORNINGS. Especially when I find myself out of bed before the sun rises. I'm fairly certain that this explains why winter is my least favorite season (Coming Soon! Ugh). Not only do I despise the cold, I hate being awake when it's dark out, and in the Midwest that's impossible to avoid for six months out of the year.

Maybe it's because I was afraid of the dark as a child (no wonder, as there were actually monsters in it for me). Or it could have to do with how much harder it is for me to stay awake without natural light helping me. I have my worst nightmares and hallucinations in the dark, and I'm pretty sure natural light is the main reason I can safely nap in the middle of the day. Either way, during the fall I always seem to have a harder time dealing with sleep, and it's that time of year again. I swear over the last week I've had just a couple of hours of non-nightmarish sleep a night while sleeping over 12 hours. So lately I decided I'm shaking this nonsense up. As my latest experiment of many, I tried using caffeine to stay up and my husband as an alarm in the morning in order to shorten my night. So I slept from 10PM (yeah, that's late lol) until around 5:30AM and the condensing did seem to help. I would have been asleep while walking around this morning if I hadn't immediately showered to help me wake up. Aside from being pretty useless for anything other than surfing the internet this morning, it seems to have worked. I only remembered one aggravating dream during my shower and my body feels more rested than usual.

Whether or not my head will clear enough to not mess up everything I touch today, lol, remains to be seen. I may even read this post later and be like, wait, what?

Anyway, I apologize for the lack of any update for so long. I would say I've been busy, but really I've just been surviving lately.

Oh, a disability update: all the paperwork is in and I've had a psych evaluation, so now I'm waiting. The evaluation was pretty comical (Now count backwards from 100 by 3's! and repeat these series of numbers backwards after me! do you ever think of dying? do you ever talk to anyone?). Who knows. We will see.

That Song I Mentioned Once

2011-08-24T18:35:00.003-05:00

I found it! It's by Third Eye Blind, called "Narcolepsy".

Lyrics:
I'm on a train, but there's no one at the helm
And there's a demon in my brain
Who starts to overwhelm whelm whelm whelm whelm
And there it goes, my last chance for peace
You lay me down, but I get no release
And I say I, I try to keep awake
I try to swim beneath
I try to keep awake
But I, I can feel this narcolepsy slide
Into another nightmare
And there's a demon in my head who starts to play
A nightmare tape loop of what went wrong yesterday
And I hold my breath till it's more than I can take
And I close my eyes and dream that I'm awake
I try to keep awake
I try to keep awake
I try to keep awake
But I, I can feel this narcolepsy slide
Into another nightmare
I read dead Russian authors volumes at a time
I write everything down except what's on my mind
Cause my greatest fear is that sucking sound
And then I know that I'll never get back out
And there's a bone in my hand that connects to a drink
In a crowded room where the glasses clink
And I'll buy you a beer and we'll drink it deep
Because that keeps me from falling asleep I said
How'd you like to be alone and drowning
How'd you like to be alone and drowning
How'd you like to be alone and drowning
How'd you like to be alone and drowning
Still I find this narcolepsy slide slide
Into another nightmare
Keep awake, keep awake, keep awake
And I can feel this narcolepsy slide

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG0t2E3qV2U

I really like what she did with this video. Totally fits what happens to me a lot. :D

On Remeron for a Reason

2011-08-23T07:41:00.004-05:00

I don't think I've written a whole lot about Remeron (my anti-depressant) on here. The thing goes somewhat unappreciated, maybe because there isn't anything to complain about. It doesn't give me any side effects so I mostly stopped noticing it was there. Or, maybe, my memory is simply bad enough that I've forgotten I'm on any meds anymore. But every time I manage to run out of it, I realize just how much help it is.

A neurologist several years ago put me on it because I was both depressed (had been for years) and needed extra help getting to sleep (as you all understand). I tried the generic first and it worked awesome. I felt like a new person. I was suddenly able to have hope for the future again and became usefully optimistic. I figured out how to smile. But then the side effects started- my muscles started to hurt. At first I thought I'd just pulled something, until I noticed it was happening to a bunch of muscles and would rotate around and change which ones it affected for no apparent reason. I tried staying on it but by the end of a month I was in constant pain. I felt so good otherwise that my doctor put me on the brand name instead and, just like we were hoping, it worked- no muscle pain, but all the good effects were still there.

When I got off of Xyrem a year ago, I stayed on Remeron, and I was glad I did. I didn't know how glad until the first time I ran out. I switched from the mail order system to picking it up from pharmacies because we kept moving, and with my memory you can imagine what would happen literally every month. I would get down to five tablets and start thinking I should refill it. I'd remember every night since I take it before bed, but forget by the morning. I wouldn't write myself a note until I was down to two, then finally make it to a pharmacy in the middle of nowhere, where they would have the generic or nothing at all and have to order it, and this would always happen to fall on a Friday somehow, so then I would have to wait until Monday and not take it for one or two nights.

The first time this happened, I was expecting to feel depressed. Instead, sleeping just got ten times harder. My dreams got more persistent, intense and disturbing. I did notice a drop in my mood but I was more concerned about the lack of sleep. On a good day I'm petty discombobulated, but without Remeron I get even more out of it and confused.

You would think, with such a big difference, I would learn after the first few times, but no. I keep running out. I think I've remembered twice out of the last ten or so times. I finally (now that we're settled again) switched it back to mail order, three months at a time, so it will no longer be up to my extremely efficient brain. But not in time to avoid it happening again this past weekend, of course. The first night I didn't have any, I just stayed up. My husband and I drank lots of caffeine, ate tons of cookies (Uqi's chocolate chip!!) and watched Stargate Atlantis. Between that and playing cards we managed to stay awake until around 2AM. My ploy sort of worked that night. I got up around 8 or 9 as usual so that I mostly skipped the dreaming phase that gets so much worse without Remeron.

I was feeling pretty smug (though more sleep deprived than usual) when I went to pick up my Remeron yesterday, until they told me that it hadn't come in and they couldn't get it until today. Feeling exasperated with myself for getting in this situation to begin with, I didn't try anything fancy last night, just got in bed and really wished that I hadn't.

I was looking at star charts like in Stargate SG-1 (which we started rewatching yesterday) when somebody came in with some fried chicken in a plastic bag and told me I was supposed to deliver it to this Buddhist monk. Apparently she lived at the top of this really steep hill even though we were supposedly in my extremely flat hometown. Actually it was more like a small mountain, with these crazy round boulders making it up. So I'm really hungry, climbing this weird mountain, sort of light-headed and trying to determine if a) the chicken is gluten-free and b) if it's okay to eat somebody else's lunch. I poke at the chicken and it seems GF so I try a piece. It's not tasty but it isn't poisonous either, so I keep eating it. I get up to this temple on this mountain and deliver the chicken and this monk lady is asking me all these really philosophical questions about stuff. I'm mostly just confused but sort of happy because the stuff she's talking about is interesting, but in the course of that I forget to deliver the chicken and just keep eating it. Then she sends me on my way and I'm wandering around my aunt's house seeing everything she's recently remodeled. Then a bunch of my cousins are there and we're taking my great aunt to see a newly flooded area of the city. It was clearly a highway before, but now the ocean is there, and a couple of highway bridges are acting like piers. We walk out on them, talking, and I'm telling them the whole city is going to be flooded soon.

So, this dream's not too bad, you're probably thinking. Well, then I feel pain in my mouth on the inside of my bottom lip. I get all annoyed thinking it's probably just something I accidentally bit as I was eating all the GF fried chicken. It's bleeding a lot and the blood tastes metallic like blood does. I start trying to find somewhere to spit it out because it tastes disgusting. It starts welling up more and more and gets all over my hands as I try to hold it inside my mouth. I find a dirty sink in an art class and spit the blood out into it, but it keeps coming and the texture turns really globby and clotted. The texture disgusts me even more and I just keep spitting it out, hoping it will stop. It tastes horrible and I feel nauseous.

It slows down a little, thankfully, but it tastes worse and worse, almost like rotting. In the sink, blood is mixed with old acrylic paint that many students have washed off of brushes. It makes a horrible, bloodstained rainbow.

Needless to say, I got up right away and went for the caffeine. I'm never under-appreciating my antidepressant again (until, you know, I forget about this whole thing in the next five minutes).

Confusing the Heck Out of Normal People

2011-08-03T19:13:00.004-05:00

Well, our wedding went great, lots of people showed up and it was generally awesome. (Apparently the disasters stayed in the planning and once we got to Omaha, it was all fine.) Then, for our honeymoon we drove down to visit my hometown and then back up, slowly. All in all, it was a good break from real life, except for all the people thinking my husband is my wife because we hadn't told them about the whole trans thing yet. But we survived and even had a good time, talking or just being for all those hours of driving.

Some time on the last day, as we were heading up Illinois for five hours, we started tallying up everything we have to change our names on. The list ended up somewhat overwhelming. I had changed my last name and J had changed his first and middle via the marriage, and between us, all sorts of IDs, insurance things, and bank accounts were now outdated. So, as soon as we got home and minorly settled (as in, boxes piled everywhere in the downstairs of my in-laws' house instead of in the car and basement) we set out to start the process.

Our first stop was the DMV to update J's drivers' license and get me a non-driver ID to replace mine. The first person we managed to confuse was the information desk guy. We explained how we had changed our names due to marriage and needed new licenses in this state since we had moved. He was like, sure, and then we handed him our shiny marriage certificate. He blinked at it multiple times to make sure he was reading it right. Then he looked at J and back down at the proof that my husband has changed his name from a very feminine name to a male name. He asked us again just to make sure, then shrugged it off and got it set up.

Then desk guy explained that I need proof of residency in the state to get my new license, and I asked if it was the same for a non-driver ID. He said it was and then said quickly, "...but then you won't be able to drive!" And I was like, "yeah." And he was like, "You know you can't keep the license from the previous state if you do that, and you'll give up the right to drive." He went from skeptical to really confused when I said lightly, "yeah, I know." I didn't explain to him that I hadn't driven in two years and if I did, that it would be really dangerous and not worth the energy required anyhow. I mean, I look perfectly normal and I'm only 25.

So with that desk guy, we started our official Body Count, aka how many government officials we had confused so far: Me: 1, J: 1. We decided to keep score because really, how is it not hilarious? Plus, we're interested in who can raise the most eyebrows: the 25-year-old disabled girl or the guy getting a sex change. Who will win??

Next it was getting J's new photo, which I sadly missed because I was in the bathroom, but apparently it was really funny. The guy doing the photos for people was this really outgoing, chatty fellow who looked like somebody's friendly grandfather. Apparently he was super awkward trying to figure out how to address J, who hasn't yet started testosterone (next week!) and has a feminine-looking face, but dresses, talks and acts very male. So I missed that, and didn't get a shot at confusing that guy since I have to wait on my ID until I bring in proof of my address. That made the Body Count J: 2.

We sat and waited until we got called to finish the process, which was done by a strict-sounding and annoyed woman who decided to be suspicious at first rather than confused. She triple-checked that J wanted his whole name changed and was pretty short with us, but it was most likely just the long line. Then we were just waiting on it to get printed out, now with the score as J: 3, Me: 1. Finally, photo dude waves us over to avoid calling out J's new name which obviously weirds him out, lol. Sniggering, we left.

Our other stop of the day was the closest social security office. This time, we only spoke to one person who did both of ours. He was younger than the DMV people, or maybe just less easily ruffled, because when he saw J's old and new names, he only paused for slightly longer than normal in between sentences. We decided that didn't count, though, because it didn't even make him awkward. I got my second score of the day, however, when he asked me for my social security number and it took me ten minutes of close-eyed concentration to come up with this number I know very well and use pretty often. It probably didn't help that I was swaying off balance and speaking really vaguely since I had forgotten to bring a snack and was looking and feeling light-headed. He looked really worried about me and surprised, even after I came up with the number and managed to actually remember my mom's maiden name, etc, without missing a beat. So after those two stops, the score stands as Me: 2, J: 3. I'm optimistic, though, since I haven't gotten a chance at two of the three DMV counter people yet, that I may win. It's not every day a perfectly ordinary-looking young person trades in their right to drive, after all. But who knows. The sex change may win in the end. XD

Wedding Plans: A Disaster Movie

2011-06-21T15:41:00.006-05:00

As I might have mentioned I've been planning (or attempting to plan) my wedding since we decided on a date around November. Since then, the universe has been doing its best to foil everything, to the point where it's seriously getting comical. XD

Well, from the start, as a legally gay couple, we can't have the thing in whatever state. All the states where our families live don't have legal gay marriage, though at least Illinois will recognize it as a civil union after some other state does the dirty work. Not that that does us a lot of good yet. Fortunately, Iowa is allowing it at least for now, much to everyone's surprise. No offense to Iowa, but it isn't the first place you think of when you think of inclusive rights. It's like, the first place you think of when you think of corn fields, pig barns and windmills. But who am I to complain. We even were living there when we started planning, and thought we would be for several years. Plenty of time to get married and enjoy the legitimacy, official status and things like me being on my transman's insurance even before he gets surgery. So we set a date, now only a couple of weeks away, excited to become bound together for life officially.

We had the thing mostly done after a few months when we hit a snag and decided to switch parks because of various constraints on what we could put up and rent at our original park. And, me being me, the lack of bathroom there posed a problem. We had figured out everything else except our hotel and the flowers. So we went down to the area we had chosen (the only place my relatives could easily fly into from Texas) and chose a better park we liked even more. We loved this park; everything about it was perfect. It was private, allowed our dogs, had a great pavilion with the perfect seating, and a deck onto the Missouri River (I have a thing for water). So we booked it, even more excited then before. While there we found a great P.F. Chang's for the rehearsal dinner (a restaurant famous for gluten-free options- If you're a Celiac and like Chinese food, GO THERE). We returned to our home in Iowa, pleased with ourselves.

By then we knew that we were moving back to Wisconsin for an indefinite period of time to live with my fiance's parents again. Both J and the school he was teaching at decided separately that he wouldn't be continuing with them next year. We applied all over the country for a new teaching position, but then everything changed when we realized J is going to go through gender transition this next year. After all, the public school system isn't really the best place to do that. Still, the wedding was on, mostly planned and going to be in Iowa whether we lived there anymore or not because it's the only state in the Midwest where we could do it.

And that was when all the flooding began. You've probably seen it on the news. The Missouri is closing roads and chasing people out of their homes, and because of where our perfect park was, it was the first thing to be underwater. We got an email from the county park people right after the flooding began. Frustrated, we started looking for somewhere else to have it.

It took us awhile to give up on having it outside, then awhile longer to give up having it on the Iowa side of the river. Meanwhile we were moving and I was coming down with mono. Everything was up in the air for awhile. Then J's older brother called us to tell us about a really nice indoor place in Omaha, complete with art gallery and Asian theme, that was full of natural light. We really liked it, and decided it was worth having our wedding ceremony happen across the river from the official paperwork. Relieved, we booked it and agreed to have two ceremonies: one five minute legal one and then one for our guests.

And then I got really sick and went to the doctor to discover that I have mono. I got put on lots of meds and spent the last week in bed, slowly starting to feel human again. Unfortunately, it was basically guaranteed that J caught it from me because we share glasses and other dishes (and make out >.>) all the time. Oh great, we thought. I'm almost through the worst of it and will most likely be totally fine by the wedding, but he's just starting to show fatigue. And that means, unless we're extremely lucky, he's going to be sick on the 9th. As a virus it could last any lengthy of time and all you can do to speed up healing is lie down a lot. But you also never know; he's very healthy most of the time, so fatigue might be all he gets. And because we don't know for sure, we don't want to cancel after all we've done getting the thing planned (not to mention all of our guests having bought their plane tickets).

So we're thinking, okay, so what else could go wrong? Volcanoes? A lightning strike right on the place we chose, instantly vaporizing it? I even put a joke in my mass email about it. Then we start hearing about nuclear reactors getting flooded upriver. Even I didn't see that one coming. Nuclear reactors? Really? So I asked my dad, who has worked in them before, if we should be worried about this because my mother-in-law is freaking out. He says that no, they were able to shut them down and therefore people in the area aren't in any danger. So I'm like, cool. At least my wedding won't give anyone radiation poisoning. (What is with all this?? Right?)

And then I start hearing that they might shut down the Omaha Airport. Now, out of all this stuff, that has the potential to kill it. There are only a few people driving and almost everyone is flying in there, including my parents. At least they've said they will drive if their flight gets rerouted, but the other guests I'm not so sure about. It kills me because at this point, I just want to get the damned thing over with so I can stop messing with it. Honestly, I'm not into weddings. I wanted to elope but J and I decided we would have a ceremony so our families could be there. Also, when it hasn't been legal for very long, it's almost a statement saying, look, we may be two women (so we thought at the time anyway) but we're just a normal couple. And we weren't sure how our extended families would react, so it was a way of including them in the process, allowing them to meet each other, and before it got irritatingly complicated, I was starting to actually look forward to it. J is changing his name when I do so it's also a step in his transition.

In other words, I want this to happen, but the world may not. I don't know which would be worse: changing the date to the fall sometime or just doing it in a closer county without any of my family or friends present. I don't want to wait, I don't want to plan another big thing some other time, and I don't want to have to leave it out of reach of my family. All the choices suck.

Now I'm left to wait and see. What happens with the flooding in the next two weeks will most likely determine its fate. I decided I don't want to cancel it all unless the airport closes because that way, people will get their tickets refunded. I'm afraid that if I cancel it short of that I'm going to regret it. So I might be getting married. Or, the world might continue to pretend to be the movie 2012. Fingers crossed is all I can do.

Me vs. Giant Piles of Stuff Everywhere = Disaster

2011-06-18T17:33:00.003-05:00

Life lesson #1 learned in the past two months: moving four times in two months is a Bad Plan. Let me chart this out for you:

Step 1: Rental house in Iowa to RV park in Minnesota in order to escape sewage leak making us ill (half of houseful of stuff into RV, half into parents' house in Wisconsin). Two humans, two cats, two dogs, six potted plants.

Step 2: After job ends, drive RV back to Wisconsin, thinking we can live in the driveway until we can move into the downstairs of the house (which involves major work because we have to move my in-laws upstairs so we can be downstairs and I can therefore vaguely function in theory without expending all of my energy going up and down stairs).

Step 3: We find out there isn't enough power for air conditioning in the RV, and it's 95. I attempt to live in the RV anyway. but keep having to use the guest room upstairs because my dogs are overheating. The cats had to move inside immediately. Meanwhile, my fiance is driving a friend around the country for an entire week, which means it's me going up and down stairs trying to keep everyone alive and quickly burning out.

Step 4: While living with my dogs in the RV when it finally cools off enough, I find myself getting really sick with cold-like symptoms. My fiance gets back, roadtrip done, and it occurs to me that I feel worst while in the RV, which, because of lack of running water, we haven't been able to clean or empty the tanks of for two weeks. And so we move completely into the upstairs guest room, severely limiting what I can do.

The Result: I only have two or three roundtrips every day on the stairs before I'm unable to muster the energy to go up or down anymore, which means I have to think carefully to plan everything and my fiance has to do almost all the work taking dogs outside or cooking (formerly jobs I was proud I could do). Meanwhile, when we're upstairs the dogs are unhappy and have to be crated because we're living in a maze of box piles and it isn't safe for them to roam. When we're downstairs, the cats stand on the stairs and meow piteously the entire time we aren't up with them until everyone in the house wants to commit kitty murder. The result of this is two constantly stressed out and puking cats, my dachshund having diarrhea and needing no less than four bathroom breaks during the night, which my fiance has to do because I can't go up or down at all at night or I will fall on my face. I keep running out of food because I can't keep track of what we have since I can't go in the kitchen whenever I want to, I can't keep anything clean because a) everyone's throwing up and b) there are piles of laundry everywhere and boxes and everything I need is always on the other goddamned floor. When I'm downstairs, there's access to the outside for dogs so I can actually take care of my dachshund's needs, but there's nowhere for me to lie down. Meanwhile, I'm ill, my fiance is having a tough period and is emotionally a wreck (he hates them more and more as time goes by), we're discussing hormone treatment and arranging lots of doctor's appointments as we're trying to help my mother-in-law very slowly move ten years worth of stuff upstairs while trying to get my father-in-law to at least think about moving the furniture sometime this century, and it's still like everyone except me is dragging their feet. Which, if switching the house around had been my idea, I could understand- I never would have asked to take over the master bedroom because even if I need it, it's their house, they get first dibs, no question from me. But my in-laws, the ones dragging their feet because something is always coming up, were the ones who convinced me that it would be good to live on the first floor, leaving me in this ungodly in-between state. And over all I'm glad they did, because it will make my life possible instead of physically impossible. In theory, even the animals will like it better. If, you know, they can keep any food down for the next month as nothing continues to happen, I keep getting stuck on floors, my fiance has to do everything and I have to try to live in a giant forest of boxes with all of my stuff spread out over three different floors, waiting.

Disability Daily Activities Worksheet- My Answers

2011-05-06T16:20:00.006-05:00

As mentioned in my last post, I've decided to take the long road of applying for disability in order to get insurance and hopefully a small amount of income. I'm still researching the process with my mom's help, so don't have a lot to tell you about it yet, but we found a worksheet that I've filled out explaining my condition. The form itself is copywritten, so I'm just going to copy and paste my answers to the questions to avoid getting in trouble.

So, here's more about my inability to work due to my severe narcolepsy... hopefully it helps someone to relate or understand. If you want the actual form, it's from http://www.disabilityfacts.com .

--------------------------------------------------------------

1. TYPICAL MONTH. Please state how many good, fair, and bad days you have each month. (Consider a month to be 30 continuous days.)

a. Good Days -- days when you do well and complete all living and home care activities.

Total good days a month: 1 or 2

b. Fair Days -- days when you function with serious difficulty and fail to complete some living and home care activities. Total fair days in a month: about 21

c. Bad Days -- days when you function very poorly and fail to complete most living and home care activities. Total bad days a month: 4 or 5

d. In your own words please describe how the bad days and fair days are worse than the good ones.

On a good day, I can be mentally focused on productive activities for much of the day as long as I spend a lot of the day lying down. I will need to take a nap in the middle of the day for ten or twenty minutes and caffeinated tea might be required to keep me going. On fair days, that is, most of the time, I can do maybe one hour of activity before I need to lie down and take a break, and by the afternoon I have to stop all activity for the rest of the day as I’ve run out of energy. On a bad day, walking to another room exhausts me and I can’t do anything besides rest. If I try to push past and do things anyway, I end up bungling them up and needing to spend the entirety of the next day recovering.

e. Are there days when you don't go out because of your health? If yes, how many days a month does your health keep you in?

I stay in most of the time as my partner works and I can’t drive (I choose not to drive a car because I know I’m not awake enough to be a safe driver). In a typical month, I may have the energy to take my dogs on a short walk maybe 5 of the days if I’m lucky. Otherwise I only leave with my partner to run errands, during which I have trouble holding conversations without falling asleep and often leave the thinking and shopping up to J. Without my spouse, I would not feel safe leaving the house due to lack of alertness.

f. Compared with a year ago, are you functioning: Better? Worse? About the same?

I’ve been steadily getting worse for the past four years, after medication stopped working for me, even though I remained on it until a year ago when the side effects made it impossible for me to keep taking it.

2A. Do you have serious difficulty taking care of any personal needs, including the following, due to your medical condition?

Bathing, Shaving, Hair care, Dressing, Eating, Using the toilet, Getting to the toilet

I can manage these fine as long as I pace myself and only do one thing at a time.

Using stairs

Stairs have always been exhausting for me and I’ve learned to avoid them as much as possible. Going up or down just one flight makes me too tired to stand or walk much when I get to the other side. If I am forced to live in a house with stairs (which happens when visiting relatives for short or long term) I end up trapped on one floor, mustering the energy to go up or down only when in dire need (like when I get really hungry or need to go to bed).

Holding onto objects

I can do this fine when feeling my most awake, but the more tired or sleepy I am, the more I drop things that I pick up or knock things over while trying to reach for something. My hand-eye coordination is terrible.

Understanding/following instructions

I have a hard time with this; I usually have to ask for repeats, and sometimes I still forget before I can accomplish the task. Conversations of any kind are frustrating, exhausting and nerve-wracking for me, especially with people who I don’t know well or who don’t know I have narcolepsy.

Making decisions

When given several days or weeks, I’m excellent at making decisions, but any faster than that I panic because my mind works too slowly. I also easily overlook important factors in the decision and usually need to be reminded of them repeatedly. Even seemingly small or unimportant decisions are hard for me to make quickly; they still jamb my brain.

Doing things on time

Having deadlines is difficult for me because I never know when I’m going to have a bad day, so despite my best efforts, when I was in school I would often need extensions on projects. I have had enough trouble completing the work and keeping up on assignments that I have had to drop classes before, and this is one reason I don’t take any classes anymore.

Finishing things

I always finish what I start. The only thing is that it may take twice as long as someone else, sometimes months or years, because I have to pace myself and do a little bit at a time.

Using the telephone

I hate using the phone and my spouse does all of my “business” calls for me. I tend to fall asleep and have trouble keeping up with whomever I’m talking to, or I forget why I was calling in the first place, or I don’t remember a key piece of information. I remember visual information way better than audio, which tends to go in one ear and out the other, even when I’m concentrating. I only make casual phone calls, because my friends and family know about my condition and I don’t feel ashamed or embarrassed because they understand why I fall asleep or stop making sense while talking to them.

Personal business/finance

I can do any of this that doesn’t involve talking to people as long as I choose my more alert moments to do things like pay bills or check online accounts. Something that takes longer, like taxes, really takes my energy and I have to hand it over to my spouse when I get too tired to continue.

Caring for others

My spouse and I have four pets who I care for, though I often need help from J in order to get all of the chores done, and on bad days, he has to do everything and I can only provide companionship for them.

Visiting people, Shopping

During these activities I almost always end up napping (no matter how short an errand), whether leaning on a shopping cart or on my spouse on a friend’s couch. Whenever we shop, we get in and out quickly in order to get me back to where I can lie down. I don’t enjoy shopping with other people because I get tired from standing up and it loses its fun long before my friends get tired. When visiting people, I prefer sitting and talking informally or watching a movie because walking around is too taxing to do for fun.

Getting places

As stated earlier, I don’t drive or feel comfortable leaving my house without my spouse’s assistance. If I lived near a train or subway system I think I could handle that, especially if accompanied, but I don’t currently.

Recreation, Hobbies

I draw cartoons and make nature-themed crafts, but this is another activity that I can do for an hour at the most before I need to lie down and not move for awhile. Otherwise I find myself falling asleep on my sketchbook and making simple mistakes in everything I attempt. Because of this and the other chores I need to do every day, I only get to draw a couple of times a week and often don’t do crafts more than two or three times a month. Even reading a book requires me to be awake enough to resist falling asleep while I’m trying to absorb information and I have to limit my time doing that as well.

Group activities, like church or clubs

I avoid groups because it is hard for me to keep track of one or two people talking, much less more people than that. I have no intention of trying to meet people in this way.

Other activities? Describe:

Driving

I used to drive despite my condition because at first, I didn’t understand how much harder it is for me than others, and then later it was the only option for me before I moved in with my spouse. I can and will drive in an emergency for a short distance, but I don’t feel comfortable in any traffic and am terrified of highways because I can’t make the split-second decisions necessary to stay safe. I lack depth perception because of my constantly sleepy state and therefore find it incredibly difficult to tell distance between myself and other cars. This makes parking nearly impossible because I can’t tell how much space is between parked cars or if I have room to turn into. I don’t feel safe driving at speeds over 25 mph. Additionally, driving takes so much concentration for me to avoid a collision that when I reach my destination I immediately fall asleep and am too exhausted to accomplish what I needed to get there to do.

2B. Do you prepare or serve meals? If so, what meals do you do?

I have Celiac disease and soy intolerance in addition to narcolepsy, and therefore must prepare all of my meals myself or have them prepared by someone who knows how to avoid ingredients that make me ill.

(a) Breakfast. Describe what you do. How many days a month? Every day
I heat up leftovers or make gluten-free toast; if I’m feeling good that day, I might scramble some eggs. I usually try to keep breakfast easy as I’m not fully awake until after I’ve eaten and had caffeinated tea.

(b) Lunch. Describe what you do. How many days a month? Every day
I usually cook a fresh meal for lunch, as that’s my main meal, but on bad days I heat up a safe frozen dinner because I don’t have the energy to stand at the stove for long enough to cook. When I do cook, I usually make something with pasta or rice and vegetables. I’m careful to eat as much fresh food as I can because otherwise I end up feeling even more run down than I would anyway.

(c) Dinner. Describe what you do. How many days a month? Every day
I usually eat leftovers, snack food or something easy and frozen for dinner because I’m not usually hungry enough to cook anything and by the evening I’m almost always out of energy.

(d) Does anyone help with meals?

My spouse helps me cook (or rather, cooks for me) if I’m having a bad day and he is home. He also helps by mostly feeding himself so that I don’t need to worry about always cooking for him.

3. CARING FOR THE PLACE WHERE YOU LIVE.

a. Describe the home care activities you do regularly.

I vacuum, do laundry, wash dishes, keep the house organized, clean the litterbox for the cats and clean up stains and animal messes. I also keep our animals (two dogs and two cats) fed, watered and groomed. I spread these chores out pretty evenly over a week or two in order to get to them all (except feeding the animals, of course!).

b. Describe the home care activities which other people do around the place you live.

My spouse carries laundry for me, especially when stairs are involved, takes the dogs outside for their bathroom breaks, takes care of the yard, fixes things around the house and does anything that takes more energy than I have at the moment it needs to get done. He often picks up the slack when I’m too tired to clean something, feed the dogs or do other chores.

c. Describe any home care activities which need to be done, but do not get done because of your health.

I rarely get around to sweeping the floors or cleaning up after the dogs outside. I used to dust all the time but I never have the energy anymore. Laundry or dishes often build up quite a bit before I get to them.

d. Did you do things in the past that you don't do now due to your health?

I used to walk the dogs at least once a day myself, sometimes twice, but now I rarely am able to even take them around the block and leave their exercise to my spouse. Also, I used to be the only one in charge of feeding them twice a day; now I split that duty with my spouse or turn it over to him entirely.

D. WORK RELATED ACTIVITIES.

Do you have serious difficulty doing any of the following on a sustained basis?

Sitting, Standing, Walking, Crawling

I have trouble remaining awake while sitting and holding my upper body upright for more than maybe ten to fifteen minutes. When standing, I need to lean on something and even then I can only stand comfortably for a few minutes before I need to either move around or sit down. I have fallen asleep standing up, leaning my weight on the nearest wall before. Walking slowly, I can keep going for about ten minutes before I need to sit down. The longest I can stay on my feet at one time is probably half an hour, and that is with significant discomfort and concentrated effort. Crawling, as it requires my whole body, is more exhausting- I even avoid crawling across my bed if I can help it.

Lifting, Carrying, Crouching/squatting, Pushing/pulling with hands/legs, Reaching up, out, down

I can’t physically lift more than a couple of pounds with each hand. Using both arms, I can barely carry my 15 pound dachshund for a few minutes, and that makes me exhausted. I can’t lift much of anything above my head and am easily thrown off balance. I can crouch with one or both hands propping me up, but without them I fall forward. As for pushing and pulling, heavy doors require my full body to open. I have considerable force if I push with both legs. Reaching with my arms, especially down, often unbalances me and causes me to feel like I’m about to fall.

Working productively all day, every day, year round

This has never been possible for me, though I have tried to work part-time. All five of my attempts either ended at a set time, thus saving me from being fired, or I had to quit because I felt I couldn’t complete the tasks assigned me. Even something as simple as making photocopies was extremely stressful for me and I got taken off of that duty because I kept messing things up and getting confused. I tried to tutor English once, but I had to quit before I had been at it very long because I kept falling asleep in the middle of sessions and it was a struggle to keep my clients from realizing this. When sitting, I fall asleep; when standing, I get too fatigued to function after a short period of time. I’m a mess on the phone because of my memory problems and it’s difficult for me to keep track of anything in general. I enjoy cleaning, but it’s so physically demanding that I can’t do it for more than ten minutes at a time, and then it takes me an hour to recover. I can’t focus or concentrate in a reliable way and communicating with other people is frightening and stressful for me. I’ve looked into dog training, working from home and creating art to sell, but I can’t escape the fact that I simply don’t have the energy to sustain any activity long enough to make money doing it or meet any kind of schedule or deadline.

Functioning in bad environments (for example, risky places; environments of heat, cold, or humidity; those with pollutants, fumes, drafts, or irritants like noise or vibration)

I can’t function in these environments because I easily become ill, any distractions to my already limited concentration are disastrous (including any feelings of physical discomfort such as heat and cold), and I’m not alert enough to effectively deal with danger.

Other limitations? Describe:

Because of my gluten and soy intolerance, I find travel difficult as it is hard to find food I can safely eat that is made by anyone other than myself. I must carry safe food with me at all times if I don’t have a kitchen easily available, or locate one of three safe restaurants.

E. Anything else?

Because of all of the above mentioned limitations, I suffer from considerable anxiety when confronted with new situations or new people.

Life Explosion

2011-05-03T14:50:00.004-05:00

Well, life is settling back down again finally. We were able to borrow J's family's RV for this last month he's working at the high school here, and finally got moved into it and out of the hotel. The entire saga had us moving us and our pets no less than seven times in and out of hotels, our broken rental house (which our landlord kept trying to get fixed) and finally into the RV just a few days ago. Our stuff from the house is packed in boxes ready to be moved back to Wisconsin, where we're going to flee as soon as school ends and J is done teaching.

The RV, while crammed full of stuff and animals, at least doesn't smell like sewage and affect my sensitive immune system. It is also less area to keep clean than the house, though the one thing that was nice about the hotel was the fact that I didn't need to clean anything. This was a good thing because I've been completely flattened from exhaustion. Between the stress, parents poking us constantly and needing to keep everyone updated, the lack of fresh food (thank God for GF frozen dinners or I would have been even more screwed), long hours in the car and keeping everyone healthy and safe through the upheaval, it must have been the longest three weeks in existence. Various things forced me to do too much (like my fiance getting really sick for two days, during which I had to take care of him and even drive to Walmart once) and then it would take even longer than it normally would for me to recover.

In the middle of all of this, we had planned months earlier to go visit J's parents over Easter weekend seven hours away in Wisconsin. My parents were even flying up from Texas, as we wanted our parents to get to know each other better (they had only met once at graduation). The afternoon we were going to leave, we found out that the sewage situation was still not fixed when someone came to disinfect the drained basement and discovered new flooding. So we left, hoping to bring the RV back with us after the weekend was over.

Despite us being exhausted and feeling down on life, the visit with our parents went well and I was relieved at how relaxed my parents were. We had good long talks and caught up, my parents got to meet the horses and our big dog, who they had only seen pictures of before, and reunite with my dachshund, who they adore. We drove them around to show them the area and had dinner a couple of times. It was really good.

I don't know if I mentioned it yet, but my fiance got called in to talk to his boss, the principal, a couple of weeks ago in the middle of all this mess, to find out that he's not getting hired back next year. The principal said a few pretty critical things that had my fiance's confidence in his teaching pretty well shot through for awhile. The most aggravating part is that most of the man's argument is based on something one of the administrators messed up and blamed on J. What really got my fiance, though, was the word "unprofessional". He has to be female for work, but gets paralyzed by anxiety and depression if he dresses too female, so he has to go pretty androgynous and we suspect that's part of the principal's problem. The only thing is that J hasn't come out at work and doesn't plan to, and we have no proof of actual discrimination based on J not looking "female enough". It's just a vague suspicion that I have. At any rate, we just want to get out of that town. After the house problems, all the drama at the school and feeling like we can't go out without seeing lots of people who know J as female, we really just wanted to leave anyway.

For the summer we already had plans to return to J's parents' house to help his mom with taking care of the horses and to allow his parents to go on vacation. We've applied all over the country for English teacher positions, but we know we may not get anything for this next year. If we don't, it'll be a long stay with my in-laws again. I would love that except that the stairs there make my life extremely difficult. Honestly, we aren't sure what to do in J's career next. I hear a lot of transpeople have to switch careers in order to get free of their past life as the wrong gender, and in a career as conservative as public school teaching we aren't sure transitioning would be well-accepted. My man is very sensitive about how people think of him and I worry for him. We've been thinking about how to get his birth certificate changed, but that won't fix his reference letters (which refer to him as female), his social security number, or his college transcripts, which are all things schools look at when considering you. Also, the fact that we don't know what state we're going to be in doesn't help us come up with a clear plan of action as every state seems to have a different process for something as seemingly simple as changing your name. It's very bewildering and we aren't sure where to go from here.

Another thing that has us wondering is whether or not I'm going to have health insurance next year after my 26th birthday, when my dad's company stops being willing to cover me. We had thought, as we are getting married in July and assumed we would be in Iowa next year, that I could be on J's insurance which would at least help. But, if we move to any state where gay marriage isn't recognized or at least converted to a civil union (like Illinois), we aren't married anymore and I potentially lose the ability to have health insurance through my spouse. I've finally decided to try to get on disability because we need the income (my parents are still buying all of our food) as well as insurance, but that can take years and multiple rejections. Transitioning to a straight couple might turn out to be faster.

The good news is that (I think) I should have a pretty strong case. I've never been able to work even part-time, and my mom found a form that allows me to really go into detail about what is difficult for me. As soon as I finish it, I'm going to post it here, as I think it's useful for anyone researching narcolepsy, looking for something to relate to, or for anyone to fill out to use with their application. I started it wondering if I'm really "disabled", but by halfway through I realized that was silly. Hopefully, I can convince the government of this fact.

It's too gorgeous a day to not live in an RV. The first truly warm day we've had in awhile, with the sun shining, and despite everything I'm thankful to be here. I'm thankful to be anywhere.

Somehow Surviving a Week of Total Insanity

2011-04-15T14:37:00.002-05:00

Too tired to write... in... sentences...

1) Moved out of house to escape sewage leak and into a Super 8
2) Accomplished above at 10 PM with four animals
3) And with tons of GF frozen food and leftovers
4) Which ran out after 3 days and required me to eat steadily stranger things and rely almost entirely on a loaf of GF bread and lunchmeat from Walmart
5) Checked house every day to drop off laundry and were subjected to the horrible smell increasing until the cleanup people got there finally
6) Watched my fiance come down with horrible flu-like withdrawal symptoms from getting off of his anti-depressant too quickly
7) Nursed fiance back to health over three days while taking care of 4 animals in a hotel, one of which is a dachshund having serious back problems that require extra work
8) Drove to Walmart for emergency supplies and to the house for similar
9) Accomplished the above without crashing into anything despite sleep attacks and being exhausted, not having driven at all in months
10) Moved everyone and everything back into the still slightly off-smelling house to get away from the hotel
11) Had disappointing therapy appointment over the phone
12) Did three loads of laundry and washed giant pile of dishes (using water boiled on the stove because the water heater is still off)
13) Hoping we don't have to move out again while they bleach the basement
14) Called Mom to vent about above and started crying because it's just that insane
15) Now only awake because of blasting Britney Spears

Grandparents' Glass Maze House

2011-04-13T09:25:00.004-05:00

Last night, I was visiting my grandparents at their house in small town Texas. In real life, they have a back room that they basically use to store stuff and when I was little it kind of creeped me out back there. So, of course, for as long as I've been having nightmares, some of them have taken place in there.

In the dream I was having seriously crazy drama with my cousins for awhile when we finally decided to go back into that room. It was dark and we were enjoying creeping each other out. Each time we found a new doorway, we would go through to see what was there. At first, the rooms looked like the rest of the house and formed hallways in an almost maze-like fashion, but then we passed this huge floor-to-ceiling window that looked out on a small courtyard. There was furniture piled outside in the rain with grass growing all around it.

Of course, I was like, "we should go try to get in there!" because my fiance an I have been talking about needing a couch for some time, lol. So then my cousin spots a door leading out there, but it's coming from a different direction, so we start heading that way to see if we can find it.

We emerge from the dark, cramped hallway of dark wood and wallpaper into this giant ballroom with walls and ceiling made out of glass. Looking through the walls, we see other glass rooms receding into the distance in every direction, most of them piled up with old furniture or figurines on shelves. There's a lot of stuff but it's pretty spread out between the rooms, leaving lots of empty floorspace. We spread out individually to see what's around, and I spot the door into the courtyard off to my right. I start heading over there, but I run smack into a glass wall because I'm so focused on what's behind it that I don't see it in time, which makes everybody (including me) laugh.

I look around and find the way around the wall, which happens to be a wheelchair ramp with old hotel brass railings and ugly red patterned carpet. So I run up it and around the wall and reach the glass door.

I look outside and see the courtyard more clearly. Against the wall to my left is the furniture and the small grassy space is otherwise overgrown. The blue couch I was so excited about has a big hole in it and is next to this hilariously 70s chair with a giant light blue and puke orange plaid pattern on it. My cousins have come over and we're laughing at how ugly the chair is.

Suddenly I hear barking and realize that there are three boxers (all of them brown and white) in the yard, two of them chained up next to the door and the third roaming free. My cousin opens the door and starts to step outside and the dogs go nuts. Just then, my grandmother finds us, telling us off for going so far back into the house. She goes out and gives the dogs chunks of steak to quiet them down.

And then I woke up, still wondering if that couch can be repaired.

This Ill Feeling Is No Longer Mysterious

2011-04-11T11:38:00.003-05:00

As I may have mentioned earlier, my fiance and I have been renting a small house in small town Iowa where my fiance is working. When we first moved into this old little house, we had all sorts of problems. It wasn't too surprising, as the place had been vacant for over a year when we moved in. First, there was the plumbing, which took awhile to get fully functional. Then we had to get the water heater fixed, then before winter set in, the furnace needed help. And after that, miraculously, everything worked for several whole months!

Well, then I kept catching what seemed to be random colds. I was sick with three seemingly different things (complete with their own distinct symptoms) one after another and was totally blaming it on the weather. I mean, the Midwest is famous for immune system-wrenching spikes and drops in temperature this time of year, plus there's allergies to take into account. So I figured (especially as this spring is my first living in this area) that I was just allergic to something.

Then J, my fiance, started getting headaches and feeling crappy. He has an extremely sensitive sense of smell and was complaining that the house smelled funny a couple of days ago. I noticed it a little bit, too. This weekend we got back from a field trip to Sioux Falls (our nearest source of sushi and many other delicious GF things), having been gone all day, to discover our hot water wasn't working. It would flow, but it was cold.

Last time we had this problem, the pilot light on the water heater had gone out. So we go down to the basement to check it and--

We find that our basement is flooded with foul-smelling, tepid water. As in sewage. o.O It was six inches deep, and high enough to have triggered the water heater to shut itself off. Thoroughly grossed out, we had to decide what to do. At J's dad's urging (he works on houses) we decided to take all six of us (two humans, two cats and two dogs) to the nearest motel for a couple of days while our landlord sorts it out.

We called around and found somewhere that would take all of us in last night, and we are so glad we did. J's dad told us that if you can smell it at all, the gases can be making you sick, and I'm now sure that they were. I'm really glad that we're now all out of danger. I already feel so much better after a night of fresh air. I think it was affecting me a lot more than I realized, however faint the strange smell had seemed.

We stopped in to grab a couple of things we forgot in our haste to leave last night, and I ran in to the house myself for about two minutes. That was enough to make me feel sick again until I had been breathing fresh air for awhile. I'm not going back in there at all until the sewage is gone and the basement is bleached.

Well, we'd been saying we needed a vacation, right? XD Not quite what we had in mind...

I Must Be Insane

2011-03-26T15:27:00.004-05:00

Oh Wait! I AM!

Well, I've been thinking a lot about this idea for over a year. It may be some crazy dream that won't happen, or else maybe I can end up contributing to the world, I don't know. I don't pretend that this is going to necessarily work out. But it's something I feel that I have to do.

I'm tired of going into the health section of bookstores and finding nothing about Narcolepsy or what it's like to experience this illness. I'm tired of keeping my feelings and thoughts in a small corner of the internet where only a small audience can find them, afraid to give this link to too many people I actually know. I'm also tired of "not contributing financially" to my family and getting crap for it. And so, for better or worse, I'm going to attempt something outrageous. I'm going to write a book.

I'm under no illusions about instant fame (HA) or even my slim chances of ever finding someone to publish such a thing. I make no promises, except that I'm going to write this thing and if no one else will have it, at the very least I can put it online somewhere and link you, my mysteriously interested small audience.

I have hope that I can get something interesting down because this has been stewing in the back of my mind for a year, and suddenly it's taken a sort of feverish hold on me. So there it is: my new project. A book about Narcolepsy.

Who the heck knows why my brain has grabbed onto this. All I know is that I know better than to ask. I'll just go with it, and see what happens.

The Gender Therapist Adventure

2011-03-24T09:55:00.003-05:00

A couple of entries ago, I explained how my girlfriend discovered the root cause of her depression problems (being trans) and will now be referred to using male pronouns or the initial J. Well, we've talked about it a lot, thought a lot, discussed and considered what to do about it. The whole time, he's been experimenting with wearing male clothing when not at work and so far seems to be doing a lot better. We decided, having read a lot of advice online, that maybe we should look for a gender therapist.

Various trans-oriented resource sites stress the importance of getting a therapist who specifically specializes in gender issues. Apparently, if you get one who doesn't, they're a lot less likely to understand your life issues if you're a transperson. Depression and body issues for transpeople are very different than most therapists are trained to deal with. So after finding this type of advice all over the internet, we decided that if we wanted to work on J's depression with professional help, a gender therapist was the way to go.

So we searched and (unsurprisingly) found that there aren't any in Iowa and the closest one that looked promising is in the Twin Cities, three and a half hours away. And so we made an appointment two weeks ago, J took off work, and we figured that even if it was a disaster or unhelpful, at least we would be near the closest Whole Foods for an afternoon. Yesterday arrived and we threw the dogs in the car in the morning, made sure our cats had extra food, grabbed some Larabars and started driving.

The weather was pretty terrible. It was windy and snow-raining and foggy and the roads were really wet. As we got farther north, the mix turned into snow, which started to show up piled everywhere. Our appointment had been rescheduled for later in the day, 3 PM, and we were glad because it took awhile to get there and the roads in St. Paul were pretty bad. To top it off, we kept getting lost because our maps weren't as helpful as we had hoped. We ate at Whole Foods (sushi!) and rushed through the store to pick up a few things (gluten-free PIE!), running out of time.

We got lost again between Whole Foods and the therapist's office, but we made it there at exactly 3. We rushed upstairs. The office was dark- not a good sign. It was only then when we looked at our messages that we found out that the therapist had called us hours before to tell us she couldn't make it. She was snowed in at her house. We were both pretty frustrated and annoyed. I mean, if we could make it to her office from three hours away and navigate the snowy streets in my dinky little Saturn (which doesn't even have anti-lock brakes), surely she could get there that late in the day from half an hour away.

So we left her a message back and headed back to my car, feeling disappointed. J is probably going to have job interviews that will require him to take days off soon, so we can't really do it again. This therapist won't take appointments at all on the weekend, and we don't really want drive that far again anyway, especially when she already didn't show up once. To console ourselves, we backtracked to a Borders we saw while we were lost, which was plastered with Store Closing sale signs, and went on a cheap book spree. Then the dogs were looking bored, so we took them to a Petsmart and they thought that was pretty interesting. We were feeling like at least the trip hadn't been a total waste.

We had picked up a few fliers in the dark and empty (but mysteriously unlocked) therapist's office. One of them was advertising a trans support group that happened to be meeting on Wednesday evenings. We decided to go, since we had nothing to lose. I mean, our main objective in going to the therapist was to talk to somebody about this. Someone who knew about it, understood, and that was detached from our family, and might know more about it than we do now. We figured we should at least try it out.

After getting lost two more times, getting stuck in the snow and having my narcoleptic self at the wheel while we extracted our car, which resulted in me driving in deep and slushy snow for a few blocks around lots of stuck parked cars, we found the right building. There were only two other people there- apparently a slow night- but they were very friendly and sympathetic. We felt so much better after talking to them for awhile and we got tons of really good information. The best thing about it was just feeling less alone. Being trans and dealing with trans problems is so incredibly isolating. Even when people are supportive, they can't quite understand if they're too far removed from these experiences, and most of the people we know we're a bit afraid to tell because we don't know how they will react. We walked out of there feeling so much better, with lots of fliers and resources and access to an entire community of people in The Cities, and even a binder to try out. My fiance had the biggest smile on his face all the way home.

Night fell as we found our way back to 35. The drive home was long, but we spent the whole way talking and singing and laughing, with our dogs asleep in the back.

Bring On the Ice Cream

2011-03-18T12:37:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I know there's some pretty weird stuff I've been blogging about lately, related to narcolepsy and not. But this latest suspicion of mine really takes the (GF and soy-free) cake.

So we all grew up knowing two things about ice cream: it's delicious, and it's bad for you. I mean, frozen cream with massive amounts of sugar in it seems to be, according to common sense, bad for you, right? I mean, it's basically sugary fat. Can you get more unhealthy, really? Or so I thought...

For four years or so I was quite underweight, thanks to Xyrem and a complete lack of interest in cooking (a killer when you're on a special diet). My lowest weight was 92 lbs, and though I am a small person, I was around 20 lbs too light. I could feel it. My bones were sticking out and I was cold all the time because I had no fat whatsoever. I felt physically weak. I had a hard time finding small enough bras for awhile, and I was wearing size 0 jeans (which were a little loose). Many people say they'd kill for that, but I felt horrible. I felt so unhealthy. I had no energy, which, when you already have narcolepsy to contend with, basically made life impossible. I felt like one of those skeletons that show up all the time in my dreams, crumpled up on the couch.

Finally I had a falling out with my neurologist because I was sick of being a stick figure, and the Xyrem had mostly stopped getting me sleep anyway. So I stopped taking it and slowly started to recover the weight I needed. I immediately felt better, learned how to cook (what a difference an appetite makes), and started eating a ton of really healthy, homemade food every day. I'm sure the story would have been different if I'd started eating junk food or even GF frozen dinners like I had before, but on all the veggies I gained weight back slowly and flesh started showing up in areas where it was needed. A year later, you couldn't see my hip bones anymore and I actually had curves again. Soon after, I leveled out at around 107 lbs and felt so much healthier and stronger. Even so, I felt cold a lot of the time and like I needed a little bit more meat on my bones. I mean, winter in Iowa really kind of requires extra padding.

Around that time I started noticing how often I was craving cheese. I've always really liked cheese, but I had started putting it on everything. My fiance didn't mind; he loves cheese too, the more the better. Since our diet contains mostly vegetables, fruit and occasionally fish or chicken, I kind of figured I was craving dairy since it's got a lot of protein in it. I didn't worry too much about it and kept piling on the cheese. And then I started craving cheese and ice cream. I hadn't had ice cream in over a year; I tend to avoid sugar products because once you stop eating them, small amounts make you anxious and kind of crazy. But this craving was pretty over the top. So I got a little carton of Haagen-Dazs to see how it went. I like that brand because it's pure ice cream, none of this modified-food-starch-whatever-chemicals nonsense, and you can tell because it tastes insanely good, like real food. Plus a lot of the flavors are gluten-free, and actually gluten-free- no contamination at all. The same goes for soy. Some flavors have it, but only where necessary, and as long as I read to label I haven't had a problem.

So I thought, okay, it's just for a treat this week. But the craving kept up, and suddenly I was gaining weight again. I went from 107 to 113 in a week and the only difference was the ice cream. Alarmed, I stopped buying it. I've heard it's easy to get overweight if you have narcolepsy, so I'm wary. After a week without any in the freezer, I dropped back down to 107, and realized I was suddenly cold all the time again. Okay... was my body telling me that ice cream is good for it? That it needed ice cream to round out my healthy diet? o.O To have enough body heat?

So this turns my idea of health food upside own. I find myself thinking, maybe it isn't that some foods are always bad or always good for you. Maybe being healthy is about paying attention to what your particular body needs, watching how you feel. Maybe it isn't all so clear-cut. The rest of life isn't, so why would food be? Our bodies are amazing, beautifully constructed, and complex. Maybe you can't just rely on other people's advice, even that of the experts. Maybe you have to listen. The more I listen to my body, the more interesting things I discover.

I don't know what's weirder- my body legitimately needing ice cream to maintain the proper weight or the irony of something cold ultimately making me warmer. Now I keep some in the freezer all the time and pay attention to my intuition. If my body says it wants ice cream, I eat some and feel better. If I feel I don't need it then I avoid it. Now that the weather is slowly warming up I've been needing it less. I don't have to think it through. I just have to pay attention.

TRANSformation

2011-03-09T13:22:00.003-06:00

I stopped writing, not because there hasn't been lot on my mind or because narcolepsy is leaving me alone, but rather because there's been a shift of my priorities for the last month or so. There's nothing like someone you love going through a lot to take you away from thinking about your own problems.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned on here that my girlfriend, who I'm going to refer to as J, has had depression problems for most of her life. Since I moved in with her a year ago I've been working on helping her figure out the root causes of it, since I've also had it most of my life and have found my own fairly effective ways of dealing with it. Basically I'm there for her to talk to about anything, and I bother J to talk and write through things she's feeling. So far it's seemed to open up a new world of thinking about herself for her and she's discovered many things about her identity since we started. The latest of these discoveries surprised us both and turned our mental worlds upside down, while at the same time not changing a single thing about J or our relationship.

It started a month ago when we had been talking about sexuality. It's a weird issue for both of us. On the surface we are defined as a lesbian couple, but neither of us feels comfortable calling us that. Our gender roles are very clear-cut- she brings home the bacon and I cook and clean. It's almost maniacally traditional, which seems weird because neither of us have very traditional value systems. We had been talking about it on the weekend, and then J took our big dog for a walk, and when she came back she had this sort of shell-shocked expression on her face. When I asked her what it was, she said simply, "I think... I'm a dude."

We stood there and looked at each other. I felt like I was seeing her for the first time as a whole cascade of ideas fell into place. The transformation in my head went something like this:

OH!!!
unfounded depression --> gender dysphoria
gay couple --> straight couple
masculine "quirks" --> male personality
weird about clothing --> accidentally cross-dressing
girlyness --> overcompensating
bisexual --> wants to have male body + is straight
uncomfortable at work --> forced to playact being a woman
hates her body for some unknown reason --> IN THE WRONG BODY
Does this change how I feel about her? --> NO.

And then I really looked at her face, imagined her with short hair and told her I thought that she could pass as male if she wanted to. And started laughing and gave her a hug. I was/am so proud of her for figuring out the missing piece. She says that the realization for her came with a massive sense of relief.

We were both brain-crashed for the next week processing this. It wasn't that anything was different between us, or even about J. We just kept thinking of more ways in which it explains everything that either of us have been wondering about her. We're still coming up with things and it's been a month.

We found a great transsexual resources forum, Laura's Playground, and it's been a really good source of information since neither of us knew much about being trans before this. We decided to go look for clothes and got a bunch of things from the men's department for J. I've gone shopping with her for women's clothing a lot, and she was always dissatisfied while trying things on. She might find one thing that she could stand (and that fit well) out of ten things. The first time J tried on a guy's flannel shirt, she was smiling, it fit her, and it seemed essentially her somehow. I also cut her very long hair into a short and fairly androngynous style and it looked and felt much better to her.

At this point I'm going to switch pronouns on you, because saying "she" and "her" is driving me nuts. But I wanted to make it clear that I'm still engaged to my soulmate, the same one as before, and that I haven't switched people on you, it's just that my "girl" became my "man". Though "became" isn't the right word at all.

J has a gender therapist appointment for two weeks from today, and I'm going with him to provide moral support. I've been his unofficial therapist over the last year, and I seem to have done a reasonable job, but transpeople have unique challenges to face internally and externally and I feel out of my depth. So we'll see how that goes. J says he doesn't plan to start hormone treatment or get surgery, but if he changes his mind I'm supportive. I figure it's my job as the woman here to make sure he's taken care of. :) I've been doing that all along anyway... I think J's hoping they'll scan his brain to see if it's structurally almost male.

So the whole thing adds a new dimension to the interestingness of our life together. At least I'm not the only unusual one anymore. I don't know if I'd call us even though. It's hard to beat me, the hallucinating sleep contradiction, even with a man's brain in a female body. XD I'll just call us odd instead.

Therapy Cat vs. Tornado Movie Shoot Hospital

2011-02-08T17:52:00.005-06:00

Well, the past couple of weeks my nightmares have been getting a lot worse again, but at least I have lots of furry moral support.

Last night it was tornadoes. I was a passenger in my mom's car, driving down the highway towards the beach in the area where I grew up. My mom was driving us to a hospital where she was going for work and I had tagged along. As we drove, the cloudy sky darkened menacingly, the deep grey clouds heavy and wet. It began to pour. We were almost there- I could see across the flat, grassy fields to the hospital complex, its windows lit up against the blackened sky. My mom cursed at the rain. On the horizon I saw one of the cloudy masses dip down to connect with the ground, swirling chaotically.

We sped into the parking garage of the hospital, and then suddenly we were in a big, well-lit open lobby surrounded by glass windows. The place was pretty empty, which made sense to me, because I now knew we were there to help shoot a movie. We power-walked through a dim hallway into what looked like an office. A bunch of people with cameras and boom mics and who looked like actors were hanging around there. There was an old golden retriever and a French bulldog who was wearing a frilly pink collar, apparently also ready for a part in the movie.

As the crew was setting things up, I looked out of the window and watched the heavy rain streak down the glass against the dark night. I leaned over to look straight down, and saw a small tornado headed right for the building we were in, about to take out the structure below us. I started shouting and yelling for all the people to run for the door at the opposite end of the suddenly large room.

I grabbed my mom's hand and we got through the crowded doorway, running in the group away from that side of the floor. I was terrified. I was pretty sure we were going to die.

We ran past a long wall of windows that faced one of the other buildings in the complex. As I watched, still running, the building folded in on itself and crashed to the ground in a pile of rubble, sheetrock dust rising, showing its insides. It looked straight out of 9/11 footage. I was scared and upset. We reached, suddenly, a giant open area that looked like a multi-level shopping mall, packed with people. We skidded to a stop, trying to figure out which way to go- four hallways split off. But suddenly, a deathly fire glow came shooting out of three of them, and everyone in there started screaming. We turned into the fourth hallway, which looked like it was underground. It turned into the hallways in a Japanese subway station.

I began to have hope that we might escape. And then, quite suddenly, I wasn't running for my life anymore, but blinking up at the ceiling of my bedroom.

Over the past week, as the dreams have gotten especially bad, one of our cats has started sleeping right next to me, leaning on me as if to offer comfort, as if she knows I need a hug. Normally, she's quite an elusive character and sometimes you can go all day without seeing her. Also, if you get up to go to the bathroom, she'll jump up from the bed as if offended, tail-twitching, and stalk off to the other room for the rest of the night. But this past week, instead she stays by me. She'll wait until I come back and get under the covers again, and then snuggle up close as soon as I'm comfortable.

I know she's doing it on purpose. In college, one of my housemates was having a really hard time, and this cat was always in her room next to her when she was home. The cat would sleep on top of her at night. It helped a lot. Now I think she's offering me the same favor.

Living with my girlfriend helps me a lot, even though she's a hard sleeper, because just having someone next to me makes me feel less afraid when I wake up in the night. Having our cat right against me is like getting a hug just when I need it. As soon as I wake up, she'll turn to look at me with sleepy eyes, whether or not I've moved yet, as if to ask, "Are you okay?"

Thank God for kitties. <3

Modern Day Werewolf

2011-02-05T10:31:00.003-06:00

All of my life I've felt like a wild animal in a cage, pacing around the walls, looking for the reason why. As a child I did everything I could to be anything other than a human. I was a dog, every species of dinosaur I knew, a wolf, a lion, even a cat if my playmates insisted on playing house instead of some more interesting adventure game. I refused to be human. Anything felt more right than that.

When I hit my teens the feeling became even more insistent. I had grown out of pretend games, but I felt like my real life was one. The people directing my life wanted only the best for me, but they didn't allow me to shine through all their plans for me. I felt lost. I didn't know who I was- only that I wasn't anywhere near who my parents wanted me to be, and I didn't know how to proceed.

The feeling of disconnection only grew. I was tired. So much more tired than seemed reasonable, or allowed. Every day in high school I was wrung out, and keeping up my grades took so much of my focus that I had literally no extra minute for things that might repair my soul. I felt broken. I felt wrong.

A lot of teens seem to feel bad about their physical body. Some of them stop eating, some find other ways to physically harm themselves. I did neither. Instead I would imagine what I wished my physical form would be. I would concentrate on having a bushy tail and pointed ears. I could practically feel a muzzle coming out of my face. An invisible and intangible coating of fur would cover me. And this began to happen when I wasn't concentrating, even when I didn't want it to. Against my will, my fingers began to fold over whenever I was relaxed, becoming the closest thing to a paw that a human hand can. I would lie down to take a nap and wake up on my side, "paws" stretched out, knees bent, shoulders crammed as close to each other as physically possible, draped over the furniture like some sort of Great Dane.

At first, the way my imagination took the concept and ran freaked me out, but it felt so right- so much more "me" than when I was upright, pretending to be a normal human being. I had recently discovered the internet (as it was relatively new, lol) and got brave enough one day to search the word "werewolf". What I found changed my life and my feelings about myself.

It turned out it wasn't just me, that lots of other people (though obviously still a small minority) had similar sensations of feeling not human. And they weren't all teens, either- many of them were older. The term to describe this unique kind of body dysphoria is "therianthropy", and those who experience it call themselves therians. Many of the sensations described, such as the feeling of "phantom" limbs (for example, a tail), sudden shifts in your perception of your mental image (known as a "mental shift") and the feeling of being in the wrong body were all things that had already become very familiar to me by happening to me on a regular basis.

On the advice of other therians, I began to research animals, trying to figure out what I was. Many of us, for reasons unknown, are some species of wolf, though there are plenty of other types, too (big cats are also common). I still remember the shock I felt the first time I saw a photo of a Mexican Wolf. I had been startling myself for years passing by mirrors- it used to really spook me to see a human face staring back at me, and I would have a moment of who is that? The second this photo loaded, it was like I was looking in a real mirror for the first time. As a matter of fact, the exact photo in question is now my profile picture on this blog. It looks more like me than anything I've ever seen. Just like most people feel recognition seeing a photo of their own face, I only feel that recognition when I see my wolf self. This is the main reason I draw myself as a wolf- to do otherwise would be like drawing somebody else.

As my sense of being a wolf has persisted over the years, I've encountered plenty of theories as to why. As a teen on various forums I found that many of my fellow therians believed that they were whatever species in a past life and the feelings of being that species had carried over. Another popular theory was that they had the soul of a non-human animal and it had- either by mistake or by design- been inserted into a human body instead. Raised an atheist with two scientist parents, neither of those theories particularly appealed to me. If we are reincarnated animals, why the bias towards certain powerful forms? If I don't believe in a higher power who spends a lot of time inserting souls into bodies, then how can I believe that he or she made a mistake? And so I've come up with my own ideas, based on my own worldview. I used to think of therianthropy as some sort of psychological disorder and assumed that the wiring in my head was somewhat wrong. Having given up the pessimism inherent in that theory, however, I've begun to think of it as more of a result of many factors. The sense of unreality I sometimes get (as well as the mental haze I lived in for most of ten years) I know now to be caused by narcolepsy. My desire to connect with other species, and the way this was denied me for most of my life, probably also contributes, as does my extremely vivid imagination. I've always been an artist and a caretaker by nature, and have felt a bit out of place with our society's expectations of me, making it difficult for me to relate to what a human is "supposed" to be. Plus, I don't feel that it's a huge jump behaviorally from human to wolf. We have similar social structures, hunting tactics, basic needs, and complex emotional lives. I think it's fairly common to see ourselves in wolves- so why couldn't I see a wolf in myself?

It may seem out there, but all I know is that ever since acknowledging this side of me I've felt much closer to who I am. I still get my "paw hands" all the time and feel like I have wolf ears on top of my head. Fortunately, my fiancee thinks it's adorable, and my friends have always accepted it as a weird me-quirk (one of them happens to be a Siberian tiger therian). While my parents and other family members have never directly found out, I doubt any of them would be in the least bit surprised. If you know me, you know I'm wolfish, whether I've told you about it or not.

Memorable Hallucinations Caused By Narcolepsy

2011-02-04T09:17:00.003-06:00

I recently typed up a couple of my more interesting hallucinations in sort-of story format and figured it would be helpful to post them here. I remember doing a flurry of internet research before I was diagnosed, trying to find out if what I was experiencing could be termed "hallucinations", and literally all I could find were schizophrenia-related ones. Because of the lack of information on hallucinations (or, rather, anything) caused by Narcolepsy, I began to be worried I might have schizophrenia. More proof that self-diagnosis via the internet is a bad idea sometimes. XD

So, here are a couple of mine, in the hopes that the next generation of people looking for this information might actually find something useful.

----------------------

I am in between, floating, when it happens.

It takes me completely off guard when it does. After all, all I was doing was lying perfectly still, waiting- letting my thoughts wander, watching faint images. The beginning of a dream had begun to form; something light-hearted about looking up at the sun from underwater, and a ghostly flying horse. Though my dream was beginning all on its own, I was still very involved in the process of trying to let go of my awareness. Prying my consciousness away from its moorings. This took a lot of effort for me and I had no inkling that this strange in-between state was unnatural.

I was focused on being completely relaxed and still. Calm--

Suddenly, from behind my head a hand shoots out, the fingers clamping down over my mouth, stifling my scream before it can begin. Pure terror and adrenaline shoot through me, putting me into instant panic. I struggle with everything I've got, desperate to escape. But the hand is extremely solid, strong and real; it doesn't so much as twitch or tighten, almost as if it was made of rock.

It is in that instant that I realize that every muscle in my body is frozen. I am struggling as hard as I can and nothing is moving. I'm helpless. I try harder, desperation growing--

My eyes open on my dark bedroom. Thoroughly freaked out, I jump up into a sitting position and whirl to face the wall. There is no one there. No hand. And there is not enough space for a whole human being to fit. I'm shaking as I reach for my lamp. I am alone after all.

------------------------

In the dream, I'm eating brownies. The bites are chewy and sweet and I can feel them sticking to my teeth and gums. They're so chocolatey and delicious that I can't stop eating them, even though my teeth begin to hurt. As I chew one piece, I encounter something hard all of a sudden. I pull it out of my mouth to see what it is. My hands are sticky and covered in chocolate.

As I examine my find, I realize it is a tooth. I feel my teeth with my tongue and sure enough, there is a space where it was. In real life this would have freaked me out, but in my dream I think it's cool. I can feel the space and my tongue is exploring the crevices of it. The feeling is fascinating.

Experimentally, I begin pushing on other teeth with my tongue, and several more come loose, still attached only by a vein each. I push them and play with them with my tongue, feeling the craggy surface of the bottom of each tooth. I push too hard and the veins begin to break, loosing the teeth into my mouth. I feel pain at the moment each breaks. Suddenly I remember that these are my adult teeth and no more will grow in. I begin to panic, wondering how much damage I've done, as my mouth feels literally filled with loose teeth. Moving my mouth causes a grating sound inside my head from all the loose teeth rubbing against each other.

My mouth hurts badly now and tastes of blood. I run over to a round mirror on the wall and open my mouth. A handful of teeth fall out and rattle as they land in the sink. The sink, my mouth and my hands are thick with blood, and it runs down my face.

And then I am awake, looking at the ceiling of my bedroom, with a lingering pain and the remembrance of the taste of blood in my mouth. The first thing I do is reach up to feel my teeth with my hand. All of them are still there. I go look in the mirror right away, just to make sure.

25 Is The New 60

2011-01-26T13:54:00.003-06:00

Yesterday it got up to the twenties and I was so incredibly happy. It's a sad day when the native Texan is happy to see 20 degrees F. I took our big dog on a long walk that completely flattened me because I kept walking instead of coming back inside. I had to take advantage of not freezing to death in five minutes.

Last week it was cold, and it was a hard week. The dogs had been getting really bored. I was playing with them a lot on Wednesday while my fiancee was at work, throwing squeaky toys and getting cute videos of them. My dachshund got really riled up. He seemed fine, if a little bit extra bratty, but he's got a lot of personality for a little guy so I didn't think much of it.

Then he started throwing up. I'll spare you the details, but it was very very strange. The texture and smell were really off. He also went to the bathroom in the house, like he couldn't hold it. And he went from overly-boisterous to really quiet and curled in on himself. He looked really miserable. I got worried; I thought maybe he'd eaten something off the floor. My girlfriend called the vet and luckily he could meet us at the office (by then it was after hours).

Usually it takes me a good ten minutes to bundle up enough to go outside, especially when it's below zero like it was that night. But I wasn't going to take up precious time with my dog so miserable; I was scared for his life. I threw on a jacket and my double hats, leaving gloves, scarf and warm under layers behind, and ran out with him to the car.

I was in pain by the time I reached it. My face, neck and hands felt like they were going to come off, then went numb. By the time we had driven the five minutes to the vet's office, I was shaking and my teeth were chattering. Lesson learned: at least grab the gloves, you moron!

We were glad we took him in- he has a slipped disk, which is super-common in dachshunds. He was in a lot of pain (hence the vomiting), but it wasn't a serious case; he won't even need surgery, he's just on pain pills and stuck in his crate for two weeks. He got a shot that helped him feel much better that night.

On the way home, I was even colder. The temperature had dropped while we were inside the vet's office, I still had not nearly enough on, and I was crying the whole way home from relief. He was going to be okay; I wasn't going to lose my best friend, my little micro-manager, my first dog. The tears froze to my face on the way into the house. I sat by the fire and shivered and cradled my dog in my arms with a cold pack pressed against his back.

It took me two days to recover from the fear and cold shock and relief I had felt so overwhelmingly that night. I was worn out completely for days, and it was made more difficult by all the new things I needed to do to help my dog recover- special feedings, carrying him outside and back in, not letting him walk; the cold pack and then its replacement, the heating pad.

Sure enough, he improved drastically that first 48 hours. He's still healing fine, though he thinks being stuck in his crate is lame. A couple of days ago, the weeks of below zero ended at least temporarily. My dog can actually have time to go to the bathroom without getting too cold even under three sweaters and a windbreaker! Yesterday he got to smell in the yard for the first time since his back got hurt, and his brother, our big dog, has been getting good walks again.

I want it to be March, but that always happens to me in Midwestern January. We Southerners have this weird conception that below zero windchill is completely overrated. No idea where we would get such a crazy idea. Maybe someday we'll live somewhere sane...

My Narcolepsy Themed Art

2011-01-14T09:14:00.015-06:00

Or, "Wolfies and Demons". :D

I got a comment from a fellow artist requesting that I post some art, and as I have been halfway planning to do this for some time, I figure, why not now? A lot of my art is quite relevant to this blog, as I'm constantly drawing things about my dreams and daily experiences with Narcolepsy, and those are the pieces I'm posting here. I find expressing the insanity and frustrations of my illness is a great way to cope. Also, the more humorously I express my feelings, the better I come to feel about the entire thing.

One thing that you have to know before you look at my art is that I'm an anthro or "furry" artist. That means I draw very character-driven art, and that my characters are half-human, half-animals. Furry art is pretty different from the mainstream, so I feel I have to explain it a little. Most furry artists have a "fursona," or furry character that represents themselves, and I am no exception. I almost always draw myself as a wolf person or werewolf (hence my blog pseudonym, "Wolfie"). My art is also quite cartoony, as per furry tradition, though not always as I also have quite a bit of classical training.

Also, you will see the signature along the bottom of each piece is blocked out. This is purely protective of my identity as I always put my real name there after scanning in my work. However, I want this blog to remain anonymous and separate from my other online identities for privacy reasons.

So, without further ado!

About the meds:

These two are both about Xyrem, and feeling like a nutcase for being on something so strong. I'm glad that these don't apply anymore, since I'm happy for now with just the Remeron.

About the Demon:

In addition to having a little wolf character who represents me, I also have a frightening demonic character who represents Narcolepsy itself. I heard a song once that had the line "like demons playing movies in my head" or something similar, and though I still can't find the song again, it made a big impression on me. I think that line is the best description I've found of what I experience when my brain throws dream/nightmare/hallucinations at me. And so, this is the demon who plays movies in my head.

Here's one of my more humorous drawings, of the demon kicking me in the butt. XD

In addition to frightening nightmares, I also have some pretty sweet vivid dreams that I like, so in this cg painting I was trying to express the interplay between the good dreams and bad. The white wolf-creature is a personification of the good things about my dreams, and is battling the nightmare-demon.

I've also been making dreamcatchers for a very long time (early attempts at preventative measures, lol), and this one I made with the above painting in mind:

The inner circle is about good dreams, and includes perfect weaving, pretty little trinkets (including a bell to represent sound), and shiny white ribbon. The outer circle is about nightmares, with uneven weaving and black leather, also interwoven with strange little objects. The hanging part incorporates both dirty bones and pristine white fluffy feathers, to show the intertwining of beautiful and disturbing that regularly shows up in my dreams.

Images From Actual Dreams I've Had:

I saw this dreamcatcher hanging in a room (well, my bedroom, actually) that was dripping with pipes covered in moss. When I woke up I jotted down the design, then actually made it to the best of my ability.

I dream about human skeletons a lot, which is unfortunate because I have a silly phobia of them. I don't know if the phobia of skeleton images came before or after dreaming about stumbling across them in my dreams, but weirdly, they seem to be everywhere in my dreamscapes. Whatever it means, I was excited to take an anatomy class a year or two ago and learn how to draw them so that I could a) attempt to overcome my fear and b) actually record some images from dreams that included them.

This piece is a combination of all the hallucinations I could remember having in high school in my old bedroom. It's actually a pretty clear pen drawing, but I like this blurry photograph of it more- it makes it more disturbing. :D And thus gives it more the feel that I wanted.

I also have some really cool beautiful dreams, from which single images have stood out so much that I've felt inspired.

The Baku:

And lastly, I recently discovered this awesome Japanese folklore creature that eats nightmares. I painted him on a piece of wood because I thought he was really cool, and, let's face it, I need all the help I can get, right? XD

The verse is from a song ("Darkness, Darkness" by Solas) and reads:

Darkness, darkness, be my pillow
Take my hand and let me sleep
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your deep

And so, there you are. I have other pieces, but I figure this is long enough as it is. I'm sure there will be more later.

Why Soy Is Not For Me

2011-01-04T09:09:00.002-06:00

I'm sure I've written about my soy intolerance before, but having a distinct lack of brain these days, I have no memory of the entry whatsoever. But, as soy is continuously making life irritating (or in my case, freaked out anxious) for me, I figure it's safe to repeat my feelings on the subject.

I got up this morning feeling much better and less gunky. The cold is mostly gone, and because of the lack of headache and the renewed ability to breathe, I actually slept pretty well last night. Aside from multiple dreams about almost drowning, that is, but what's new? So I woke up feeling (for me) refreshed and like I might be able to walk the dogs or clean the floors today- both things that really need to be done. I had a little bit of caffeine in my tea to get me going as usual, a smaller amount since my normal energy level is on its way to being restored.

My girlfriend is also almost recovered from the cold today, so she made breakfast for us both, an experiment with new hot cereal. She put flax and chia seeds in it and a little honey and rice milk. It tasted pretty good, but I didn't eat much of it because there wasn't a lot in the pan, and after the fact I can say I'm really glad.

Since I accidentally became mostly Buddhist (see previous entries), I've been paying lots of attention to my own body and emotional states. I feel like by intentionally watching myself, I notice when I'm being a jerk or neurotic or getting excessively angry, and because I can see it as it's happening I can change course before I do any real damage. This comes in handy when you have a mental or even physical problem in your body because you know right when you run out of energy, or you can see past anxiety and find its cause, and possibly find relief.

Well, as soon as I finished my little bowl of the cereal, my heart sped up and I got tense. My thoughts derailed into a roller coaster of "OMG I HAVE ALL THIS STUFF TO DO AAAAAAAAHHHH!!!" and my shoulders were like a rock. It took me a minute to make the connection, but it was pretty obvious, as this is exactly what always happens the minute I eat even traces of soy. Honestly, I've never met anyone else with this reaction to soy, but it's listed as one of the eight major allergens, so it must do something to a lot of other people. You can imagine how nuts I was going between when soy began to have this effect on me and when I figured out the cause: for most of a year I was constantly freaking out (I got diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder by a therapist I was seeing) and finding ten other things to blame it on. Anxiety can be caused by so many things, including just life and stress, that it's hard to pin down. And it wears you out so bad, which sucks when you already have a much lower energy level than most of the people around you. At the time, taking Xyrem was also not helping the situation.

As a usually pretty relaxed person, the reaction I have to soy is pretty extreme, so I can usually tell as I'm eating whatever it is. The pain I get from eating gluten happens similarly quickly, which is nice because it means these days I rarely eat a lot of either substance before figuring out I need to stop. But as someone who has to avoid both gluten and soy, it's tough. At least half of the new tasty-looking things I find labeled gluten-free at the grocery store turn out to have soy in them. Before I could cook very well, it was murder. You find delicious-looking cookies only to see that lovely "CONTAINS: SOY" on the back, and anything containing chocolate you can forget.

I have to say, life is much easier since the required allergen labeling came into effect. Wheat and soy both have to be declared really obviously on the label, and it's handy. It used to be I would get something that looked perfectly safe and try it, and have to have one or both types of reaction before knowing it "may contain traces". Since the labels changed I've seen a huge decrease in how often I have gluten or soy reactions, and at least nowadays it's usually my fault for misreading the label.

And, because I know the suspense is killing you, yes, it seems the chia seed came from a "facility that also processes products containing soy", which explains it nicely. Time to go raid the fridge for a better breakfast...

The F. Family Traveling Circus

2011-01-03T11:24:00.007-06:00

For Thanksgiving, we had driven seven hours to my girlfriend's parents' house in Wisconsin to visit them and our horses. We brought our dogs and cats with us and it worked out really great. Getting out of Iowa was awesome and the animals were really well-behaved for the drive and the visit and all seemed happy for the adventuring. We had a relaxing four days or whatever it was and were sad to leave. So we figured, why not do the same thing again for Christmas? And since it's much easier to fly down to my relatives in Texas from there than it is from middle of nowhere, Iowa (three hours from the nearest airport with direct flights to our destination), why not visit my parents, too? Our animals could stay in Wisconsin and be cared for by people we trust who had taken care of them before and we'd get to see my family, too.

So it sounded a bit intense, but fun, and let's face it- adventuring outside of our small town for two weeks seemed appealing. Then we found out our mutual best friend and former college roommate, who is at least as much family as the rest of these people, was going to be visiting St. Paul around when we planned to leave for our trip. So naturally we decided to go visit her and her parents for a night or two on the way after they agreed to hosting us and our two cats and two dogs. We had been missing her like crazy.

And so, last Tuesday after my girlfriend got off work, we all piled into the car. It took longer than we had intended to get going because it takes a lot of stuff to sustain two humans on special diets, two cats and two dogs for ridiculous amounts of driving and when they are going to be away from home for almost two weeks straight. We left about an hour later than we had been hoping, but at least it was still light out and we still had a good chance of making it to our first stop for dinner.

Three and a half hours later, we got into St. Paul, tired but not completely exhausted. Having been to this specific house many times each, we just called to double-check the exit off the highway, which was the right one in fact. But after that we passed our turn, then turned the wrong way in an attempt to double back, which landed us on snowy and icy roads going the wrong direction. We dodged a couple of careening vehicles, called our friend back for help getting back to her neighborhood, and spent an hour finding our way there. All the way, our cat was letting us know that he had had enough of this nonsense, and we were stressed out so our dogs were whining. To this rather aggravating chorus, we finally found where we were going, hungry, exhausted and ready to get out of the car.

We had a really good time visiting our friend. The dogs stayed in the laundry room, which we baby-gated off to prevent allergy attacks. They were left to themselves for most of the two nights except for two walks and one bathroom break a day, and of course, being fed. All in all they didn't seem to mind- they were very polite and mostly quiet. My dachshund was a little frustrated by being separated from his humans (he's a clingy little guy), but both dogs seemed to just sleep. The cats were shut into the bedroom we were all sharing and hanging out in to keep them separated from the somewhat antisocial cat of the house, but they did very well also and got plenty of attention. Mostly it was a quiet visit with lots of resting (good for both of us). We caught up, cooked GF lasagna and finished a puzzle.

After our second night it was time to go and make our way to Wisconsin just ahead of a storm. Otherwise we might have stayed longer, it was so nice and relaxing. I took advantage of being in civilization to get three packages of grocery store sushi and that kept me fed for the six hour drive. Even so, we were all exhausted (and bored) by the time we made it to my girlfriend's parents' house. Just sitting in the car tires me out pretty thoroughly (I don't drive at all anymore) and both dogs were whining at the end. Friday (our more vocal cat) was meowing indignantly along with them. It was at that point we decided "Traveling Circus" was a pretty good description of our trip so far.

We spent Christmas there, with a house full of people: six humans, three cats, five dogs, four horses and the miniature donkey. My girl's rather talkative brother and his girlfriend were there and we spent a lot of time with them and the parents. I met more of her family at a Christmas Eve party and (mostly) managed to retain who was related to whom for the evening at least. I also got way more exercise than I'm used to, between walking our dogs around the property and riding horses. I'm still working on just balancing and staying upright on a horse, but for me that's a difficult task, takes lots of concentration, and is therefore draining. I did well and was really proud of myself, but in hindsight it might have been better to save at least some of that energy.

Her family does Christmas a lot more than mine does- there was shopping, gifts (I got lots, which surprised me) and eating lots of meals together. My future mother-in-law is a good cook and mostly eats gluten-free anyway, so she knows how to make safe food and we let her keep us fed. Even though I've been pretty happy to cook lately, it was a nice break to have someone else in charge of it for once. But she doesn't cook quite as many fresh vegetables as we've been eating, or as insanely healthy. That was probably the beginning of us feeling exhausted and sapped of energy, between the food and the constant socializing.

By the day after Christmas and time for our flight south, we were both really tired. Her dad was nice enough to drive us to the airport, almost two hours away, which we were very grateful for. Our flight was delayed an hour but we didn't really mind. Neither of us was able to nap on the three-hour flight, so we were still really tired when we got there. My dad picked us up, so we talked to him all the way back to my parents' house, and then my grandparents were there, so by the time we went to bed that night we were both asleep at the table (me less obviously because I'm way better at faking). We way overate the enchiladas, and the next day there was a party with a bunch of my relatives and a big turkey dinner, so we stayed full of protein-rich, mostly vegetableless and sugar-containing food. My mom had made my two all-time favorite desserts- cheese cake and pumpkin pie- which I was not going to resist. They were delicious, but a far cry from the healthy diet we had been maintaining at home (we hadn't had any but tiny amounts of cane sugar in more than a month before the trip started). During the next two days we saw four of my friends at various meals (at restaurants, so again with the less strict diet), I had a gluten reaction to contaminated fudge, accidentally drank soy-containing tea (someone please explain to me why there needs to be SOY in TEA for Gods' sake), and didn't get a ton of sleep because of the loud city noise outside.

And so, by the time it was approaching New Year's Eve and we were waiting at the airport to fly back up, we both felt like we'd been run over by a steamroller. Of course, that was when storms were delaying everything coming through O'Hare and our flight ended up being delayed for three hours. Eventually we got back after a windy and foggy landing, her dad came and got us, and we collapsed in her parents' guest room at like seven in the evening.

The next day we spent collapsed in a state of no energy. I retrained the dogs (after they had destroyed a few things out of boredom and acquired a couple of other naughty habits from being without my strict rules for several days), convinced the cats that we were not abandoning them forever and ever, and mostly just attempted to recover. Neither of us had it in us to cook, so we ate frozen food, which didn't really help our energy levels. And the next day we packed the car, stuffing it completely with all of our presents, and drove all seven hours back to Iowa.

We chased the sunset for around an hour, and reached our town just as full dark came on. We both caffeinated in order to stay awake long enough to get everyone and everything inside. Then we slept. Yesterday we both woke up sick, our weakened state inviting a cold in. She went to get food because we had nothing in the fridge and we knew that was the key. We cooked three different really healthy vegetable dishes and ate way more than usual, and felt better afterward.

We're still recovering. It was a crazy trip, but it was great to see everyone. The more I'm away from most of my people, the more I realize how important it is to keep in touch with them. Plus, sometimes you have to leave for awhile to understand how nice it is to have your own place somewhere isolated and quiet. Boy are we glad to be back.

What's This?? A Social Life or Something?

2010-12-20T08:15:00.006-06:00

I hung out with/talked to two non-family people this weekend. Human people! o.O Woah... This may seem to some like a low-key, boring weekend if you're used to partying, or are in college. The thing is, ever since I found out what was making me sick and started having to cope with treatment and my special needs (as opposed to simply shoving through pretending to be normal), I've become more and more of a recluse. In high school I was constantly sick to my stomach and automatic-behavioring my way through everything including hanging out with my friends. Then my first year of college I found out about Celiac's. Explaining my special diet to everyone around me sucked. When you tell people who haven't heard of it before and explain the key points to them, they inevitably say one of about five completely moronic things:

1. Oh my gosh, how terrible!! D: Your life is so hard!! (Like I need to hear that from some schmuck who doesn't know me or my life at all...)
2. Did you say you can't eat meat? (Having misheard "wheat" XD)
3. I can't believe you can actually cut all that out of your diet!! I could never do that!!! (Trust me, if gluten caused you physical pain, you wouldn't have a hard time letting it go.)
4. If you eat a cookie, that means you could die??? (XD It's not an allergy like those people in the news who are killed by traces of peanuts.)
5. Oh! I know what you mean!! I have a minor allergy to -insert random food item here- and can only eat five cups of it before my scalp itches minorly!! I usually just ignore it though. :D (Oh yeah- obviously you know what a life-changing diet is like. XD)

After a couple of years of this, I just plain got tired of explaining it. So I just stopped telling people and stuck to friends who already knew and had lived with me through the changes. It didn't help that by that time, I also knew I had Narcolepsy and was on Xyrem, which has its own life changes that go with it. For those years I had to go to bed at a consistent time every night (otherwise my stomach and alertness were completely messed up the next day and sometimes the day after as well). This meant no surprise staying up, which is really tough on someone college-aged when most serious talking and socializing happens at night. It also caused generalized anxiety in me at the higher dose I was on, which, believe me, doesn't help in social situations. Those combined with culture shock after returning to America from Japan kept me completely isolated for my last year of college.

Luckily, returning to my hometown after graduation meant I had old friends who required no explaining nearby. A lower dose of Xyrem also helped me gain somewhat of a social life back, plus getting on a much-needed antidepressant for the first time in my life. I still kept to myself at art classes and in public and avoided explaining either illness as much as I could. Slowly I developed a better strategy than launching into a detailed explanation at a moment's provocation or avoiding the subject completely- instead I compromised by explaining one symptom at a time on a need-to-know basis. For example, when invited to eat with someone I would make it clear I needed to be the one to choose the restaurant or food choice. When falling asleep in class I would explain to other students that I was tired and needed a nap. So in this way as people came to know me, they came to know my needs and quirks, and slowly understood I wasn't normal.

And so nowadays I find it much easier to meet new people and talk to them. It also helps to have my girlfriend's support- I feel more protected, less exposed, in social situations. This weekend we had one of her coworkers over for lunch (we cooked, so there wasn't a problem there) and chatted for about four hours. It was great. We all had pretty good funny stories to share, and I even got to nap for half an hour in the middle without having to kick her out first. :) We also had a long, in-depth conversation on the phone with a chaplain who might officiate our wedding this summer. That was exhausting for me, because he wanted to get to know us and make sure that we really are ready to be married, and so asked pretty in-depth questions. He was really nice, though, and didn't pry for details about my illnesses. I know two new people (with one over the phone rather than in person XD) aren't most people's idea of a social life, but it was a pretty big leap for us since we just moved here and haven't had much opportunity to make local friends. So that is exciting. Maybe by the summer we'll have three friends or something, lol. 8D

RV Living

2010-12-15T11:40:00.004-06:00

Want a new way to save energy? Try downsizing your floor space. :D

Before we relocated for my girlfriend's job in August, we were living at her parents' place, a lovely two story house with a pretty large upstairs that we had completely to ourselves. When I moved in, I put myself in charge of keeping the two large bedrooms, connecting bathroom, two walk-in closets, stairs and loft area clean. Being a genetic neat-freak who actually enjoys things like sweeping and dusting made this part of my life fun rather than a chore, so most of the time I didn't actually mind. That doesn't mean it wasn't a challenge however- we had two dogs and two cats upstairs with us, constantly shedding hair, plus my girlfriend who is like a tornado on the weekends. She likes to collect her things in what we refer to as "chaos piles", and anything within ten feet of one is in danger of getting sucked into the vortex, to disappear for days or weeks until I have time to go in and put things away. So while cleaning that place was fun, it wasn't easy, and sometimes it would get nasty if I was sick or busy or just plain tired for a couple of days in a row.

Then, in the span of a week, the whole situation changed. She interviewed and got an offer a week before the school year was going to start and we found ourselves scrambling, trying to find someplace to live in a state neither of us had ever even directly visited, in a small town with nothing posted online. We ended up borrowing the family RV and living at a campground for the first month while we looked for a place to rent via word of mouth. We took the dogs with us but had to leave the cats in the care of the in-laws for lack of space.

I have to admit I was skeptical of the whole RV thing at first. After all, the last experience I had had with an RV was camping on the beach with grandparents when I was little in a very cramped, old and only partially functional one (if I remember correctly, the shower didn't work at all). But this thing was pretty fancy, with a separate bedroom, a pretty nice little kitchen and comfortable furniture. And I came to appreciate the lack of space- I got so much more art and relaxing done, simply because I had hardly anything I was supposed to keep clean. Because of the close quarters I got to know my girlfriend's dog a lot better and we really developed a bond. The dogs also liked the campground because there was always so much to smell, and walks were positive challenges for both of them because of other dogs and children. I gained so much confidence walking them there. It was so easy to just go outside with only three stairs instead of a whole flight in my way.

It was pretty interesting to watch our neighbors come and go, even after just a night sometimes. I thought having so many people parked so close would be harrowing, but instead it was just fun to watch their interactions. Everyone was really relaxed for the most part- after all, they were on vacation- and just having a good time. There were a couple of boisterous weekends around Labor Day that were a bit much, but expected. Once I even saw an RV hotel. o.O I didn't even know those existed. It was like a bus and had a bus full of people inside it.

I also really liked having a ridiculously tiny kitchen. I didn't have to walk to get to anything, lol- you just reach up and there it is. And I loved the fact that we could easily open the place up- it was mostly windows- and we were practically outside. In August the weather was right up my alley, even though in September it got a tad chilly sometimes, but the RV's air conitioning and heating worked really well and quickly. Another advantage to small living spaces.

Even so, we were all getting ready for a change when the time came to move out. The weather was turning chilly and the campground was going to close for the year by the time we had arranged to rent our house. The dogs played victory fetch in our new large living room and celebrated having a yard all their own to claim. We humans were excited by the prospect of having the ability to actually fit a whole meal's worth of pots on the stove at once. A couple of months after we moved in, my in-laws came to visit and brought the cats with them, so our family was reunited. And I do like our house. Sometimes, though, I miss the RV (like when the entire house needs vacuuming XD), and I would live in one again without hesitation.

Because You Asked...

2010-12-10T12:44:00.003-06:00

Now I think it's time that I give y'all an update on my health, since (you know) that's the purpose of this blog, lol :P. And a lot has changed since my long hiatus began.

So, before we moved in August (or, indeed, even knew we would be moving so soon), I went to a new doctor on the outskirts of Chicago. I picked her, for the most part, because she is female and I have a long history of older, male doctors who I've had pretty serious communication issues with. That stipulation didn't give me a lot of neurologists within two hours to choose from, and she was the only one who seemed to have Narcolepsy on her resume. Indeed, she did seem to listen to me and understood my need to get off of Xyrem. She was a little skeptical that I would be alright without trying stimulants, but agreed I should get off of Xyrem first and see how it went. So she told me I could just stop taking it, and that it would wear off pretty fast, which seemed a little contradictory to what I've heard. We agreed I should stay on Remeron because of my family and personal history of depression and the fact that it should aid my sleep as well.

So I left the appointment pretty happy with what I'd learned, but not terribly attached to this particular neurologist. Which is probably good, now that I live a day's drive from there anyway.

I got off of Xyrem several days after the appointment, and I was really glad that I did. Even now that I'm not really sleeping I don't regret it. My stomach was instantly doing a happy victory dance. I could immediately eat breakfast again, not having to wait until the nausea wore off late in the morning before putting anything in there. I could eat anything (gluten-free/soy-free) that I wanted, whenever I wanted. I could feel hunger again before getting really fuzzy headed or dizzy. In short it is awesome. I can eat again!!!!!!

In two months I went from ten pounds underweight (with my hip bones prominent and ribs visible) to having a little bit of a tummy and the proper curves. I went from a size 2 to a size 6. It's not the numbers that I care about so much though- it's the fact that I feel healthy again. My body feels like it actually has some substance to it. I feel like I'm the right weight now, and it's been years since I felt this good physically. I have to be careful, now, though- I don't want to keep on climbing until it's unhealthy, and that takes some work on my part because increased appetite is a side effect of Remeron that I definitely feel. I'm careful to control how much I eat at once and I limit how much snacking I'm allowed to do between meals. I actually usually just eat one large meal a day because with our healthy, vegetable-rich diet, more than that is too much. I eat a small breakfast, a large lunch, and a snack for dinner. I'm finding that this works really well for me and my girlfriend, too.

So, that's the good news. The bad news is that I'm not sleeping- as you might expect. I used to write down my dreams, but now I have too many to bother. The other day I jerked awake, full of terror at 2 AM, because I heard an excruciatingly loud and frightened scream right next to my ear. I haven't had much in the way of sleep paralysis, which is good if mysterious. Mostly it's just been the dreams. I've had tornado dreams, dog training dreams, beautiful scenery dreams, Harry Potter meets Stargate Atlantis dreams, car crash dreams, even a dream in which I was bicycling along a partially submerged wall through a field of swimming pools. It goes on and on and I wake up to find that it's still 3 something. I go back under, and then it's maybe 4 something. Eventually at like 7 I give up, which has me ready for bed the next night at about 8. I've mostly been sleeping in long naps on the couch in the mid-afternoon with my cat asleep on my stomach, and I'm pretty sure that's the only reason I'm (more or less) conscious the rest of the time.

When we had just moved I was walking the dogs at least once during the day while my fiancee is teaching, and sometimes twice, but as I've been steadily going down in energy level I might be able to do it once if I'm lucky. I'm also pretty frustrated at the fact that I have so much art I want to do but it happens slowly and in short stretches if at all. This is even more maddening because we're so low on money and there isn't anything I can do to contribute directly. The real world is just too demanding for me to keep up. We're doing fine because we have two sets of parents helping us in various ways. It should be better next year when my girlfriend is working full time at the school rather than the current part time (we have reason to hope), but for now we run out of our own funds before the month is out and have no way of saving up for the future. It's hard for me to watch that knowing that I can't earn any extra; I can barely take care of the chores that I enjoy doing and keep the place reasonably clean. I know that my most important job is taking care of the family (two cats, two dogs and the girl) and that even on my worst days I'm a huge help in that regard. I try to remember that and to know that I'm contributing a lot just by existing (our especially needy cat thinks so, too).

But I have to say my symptoms aren't as bad as they used to be in high school before I was diagnosed. I think the Remeron is definitely part of it, but also it's the lack of stress in my life now- the lack of unreasonable expectations. I do what I physically can and for once, it's enough. In fact, it's appreciated greatly by everybody. And to be honest I'm not in any hurry to try adding other meds. My stomach has in some way rejected everything else I've tried, including other antidepressants, Nuvigil, Provigil, and Ritalin. And I like my new-found ability to eat food, thank you very much. :D

Welcome to the Middle of Nowhere, USA

2010-12-09T08:49:00.006-06:00

I may have said when we were living in Wisconsin that we were living in the middle of nowhere. At the time, compared to my hometown of Houston, I was right. There were several sizable towns nearby, but my inlaws' house was in the middle of farm fields on a big slab of land. In Houston, going around the block was the shortest walk I would take with my dog, while in Wisconsin it meant my girlfriend taking the dogs out for hardcore exercise (a distance of over 3 miles, which would take nearly two hours for them to walk). It took quite a bit of driving to get to any form of civilization and there were days when you might see ten cars on the way. In Houston there's traffic getting out of the driveway, and I could walk to three separate shopping centers if I had the energy.

That was all before we moved to Iowa. No offense meant to the state or its people, but it seriously must be one of the least populated states. This place defines "the middle of nowhere". Some things about this are awesome. For example, there are way more small businesses here, run by families rather than huge faceless corporations (with Walmart as the main exception). The local pharmacy isn't a chain store, the grocery store is employee owned, and there are lots of cool little thrift, antique and gift shops around, including a little coop. There's also a cool little main street, like many small Midwestern towns have, with the old architecture and so forth. The downside is that there's a lot you can't get within two hours of here (the nearest city is about that far away). Our big dog is allergic to most grains, and there is literally no grain-free dog food being sold within a hundred miles; we have to order it online. Now that it's winter, there are fewer than ten vegetables at the grocery store, and most of them are usually sad-looking. We're lucky if we can find three that are fresh every time we go and we're starting to get tired of the same ones. Whole Foods? What's Whole Foods?? This also means no sushi for me; I doubt the people here have even tried sushi, and they're all blindingly white anyway, so not exactly about to start a sushi restaurant.

That's another thing; I thought Wisconsin had a lack of racial diversity. My girl had her kids (the high schoolers she's teaching English for) make video projects about themselves at the beginning of the year, and I watched them with her to help her grade them. Seriously, these kids all look the same. They all have exactly the same skin tone and their hair comes in two colors. o.O I was getting them all confused within five minutes. But having grown up in a city where whites are the minority number-wise, it doesn't surprise me that it's difficult to understand such a white town. There's exactly one Asian girl, and she's half. My girlfriend is also finding this a little bit trying at times. She's been teaching To Kill A Mockingbird, and the kids are mostly ignorant about racism and are sometimes actually racist. Most of them have never even met a black person. Luckily we're white ourselves so it isn't something that gets directly in our way.

Though I'm sure we're causing enough chatter among the townsfolk anyway, being lesbians. Like all small towns, everyone knows everyone else, and there seems to be a pretty conservative undercurrent. My girlfriend hears about it more working at the school. She hasn't come out to her kids (though her co-workers do know about us) so they don't hide their homophobic comments around her. Two of the other teachers are also a lesbian couple, though they're older than us, and the kids make all sorts of comments about them. Naturally, she tries to educate them about tolerance, but it's pretty clear that their parents are just as close-minded and are passing it all on to their kids. Fortunately, the principal and several of the other teachers are openly supportive of us and really nice about it, and our sexuality hasn't compromised her job in any way (her boss has said that he hopes she'll stay on next year, and be with them for a long time).

For the most part, we've met a lot of really nice people here. One thing I like about it is that there's a thriving art community. The landscape itself is beautiful no matter the time of year, so it's not surprising that so many painters and ceramicists live in the area. We've gone on several weekend outings to studios and seen some really terrific work, including teapots, stained glass and several varieties of landscape paintings. I've made a couple of friends, and even gotten a drawing lesson from a local painter. It's awesome talking to people who have the same passion as you do for something and can look at your work with fresh eyes.

Right now it's a classic winter landscape outside with the snow building itself up. I'm having a lot less trouble adjusting to the cold weather this year because my body was allowed to adjust gradually throughout the fall. This place is beautiful, and we enjoy having our own place, and getting some income that isn't from parents, though we are still relying on them, too. We have a neat little house that is (more or less) functioning now (that's another story), we have our cats with us and our dogs, we have each other.

How Many Narcoleptics Does It Take To Do Interior Decorating?

2010-12-03T10:14:00.003-06:00

Hi again! It's been ages, I know. But before I launch into The Life Summary Of Stuff, I feel like I should explain the title.

You'd think I learned from the whole lightbulb experience, but what can we say. My girlfriend (now fiancee) and I have a rented house now, and me being my artistic self, I always want it to look interestingly decorated. Her being her, she gets tired of having the furniture the same all the time and has tons of fun finding new ways to rearrange everything as often as possible, which then gets me rearranging everything on the walls to match.

Most of the time I manage just fine with tacks: I have unframed paintings on canvases that can just sit on them, and lots of dreamcatchers that tacks are perfect for. But every so often I do have something more complicated than that.

And so, I find myself precariously perched on a stool and an armchair, swaying dangerously, trying to hold up a framed drawing to the wall to see where I should put in the nail. Of course it's the kind of frame that has a little notch in the middle of the back that you are expected to (somehow) fit over a nail in exactly the right way so that the thing doesn't fall off on you. I figure out where I need to put in the nail, which I have ready in an attempt to only have to get up on the stool once (a somewhat dangerous operation in which I have to arrange feet and weight properly), so I go ahead and put it in. Now somewhat tired from holding up a hammer over my head, I sit that down and get the frame. I hold it over my head, which is difficult because it's heavy, and attempt to peer into the space between it and the wall in order to carefully slide the slot over it, which is pretty hard without depth perception- I can't tell where anything is unless it's right in line with the angle I'm looking at it. I try this about ten separate times, only to have the frame slide off each time. By now my arm hurts. Then it occurs to me that I probably nailed the nail in too far so it doesn't catch on the frame like it's supposed to, so I pull it out more and keep trying. Several minutes later I realize the nail itself is too small- it isn't going to stick out far enough. So I get down (now exhausted and sore) and go get a bigger nail.

This time it works as soon as I get the nail in, fortunately, because it's all I can do to hold up the hammer and the painting each one more time. Sometimes I can be pretty silly about wanting to finish something in one sitting...

So the answer is, one Narcoleptic, but you'd think she'd learn to take a nap in the middle.

Well, a lot has happened since I was here last. My girlfriend got hired for a part-time high school teaching post in middle of nowhere, Iowa. She drove out on a Thursday (it was seven hours away), got interviewed on Friday, was given the offer at the interview, which she accepted, then drove back that afternoon, knowing she was starting a week later. And then insanity ensued, eventually ending up with us here the day before she was to start inservice days, in a borrowed RV with our two dogs, living at a campground until we could locate someplace to rent.

Several months later, it's all settled down, just like the snow, which is currently blanketing everything and looking spectacular. Part of my reason for leaving this blog was that I ran out of stories for the time, but now I have a whole bunch lined up again. So I'm not going to spoil them all in one post. :D I'm doing fine, though, better in some ways then others. Overall life is good.

Stay tuned... XD

My (ex-)Neurologist Is a Jerkface

2010-07-22T18:28:00.002-05:00

So, like I said, I got an appointment with a new neurologist for August. My girlfriend, being awesome and helpful, agreed to call my old neurologist's office and tell them, plus find out how we could get my records- we agreed we want our own copy in addition to giving them to the new doctor. So several weeks ago, she did this for me. The receptionist was helpful and wrote it all in my file, but told us that I would have to come in person to pick up the records, which I was halfway expecting. We asked if my mom could come in and get them (since she is, you know, in the right state and we aren't), and we were told that she couldn't since I'm over 18. Several weeks later we were going to fly down to get my car and more of my stuff and to visit anyway, so we figured we could come get the records then.

So the several weeks passed. Then, the night before we were leaving to fly down, I find a message on my phone saying that I need to schedule an appointment with him. I was like, no way in hell, thank you very much. I have good reasons to be moving on. When I told my mom about it she got really annoyed. Apparently family members can pick up medical records if they have a signed note, and she volunteered so I wouldn't have to go to his office again. We were also angry because it seemed that he wasn't going to renew my prescriptions, which I just needed for one more month before my appointment with the new doctor. But once it became clear that I wasn't going to come in to be bullied by him again, he approved my prescriptions after all. Which is a good thing because most of the point in going to the new neurologist is to get off of Xyrem safely. Doctors... can't live with 'em...

Meanwhile, we had a good but exhausting visit to my hometown, and then a very long drive back up here. We've mostly recovered and I'm feeling much more moved in. :) I'm hitting new lows in energy level, but what's new. I just hope the neurologist I'm seeing in August is an improvement over the last one. (Not hard to do.)

Creepy Nights

2010-06-28T10:19:00.003-05:00

I've officially started having nightmares again... I think it's three nights in a row now. At least there has only been one each night so far. I can remember a time when it was every night, all night, and I'm hoping it won't come to that.

I was in one of the upstairs bedrooms of where I'm living now, and the layout was more or less accurate (not a good sign). I couldn't sleep, so I got up and was walking around the room. I started to get scared because the other bedroom (on the other side of the bathroom) was pitch black and I kept hearing creepy noises. Eventually I went in the bathroom to peer in the other room, and saw minotaurs and a werewolf with glowing red eyes, beckoning me. I ran back into our room, totally freaked out. The creatures followed me and stood in the bathroom, staring. I wanted my girlfriend to wake up and reassure me, but she was so asleep that shaking her didn't work.

In another, I was in the same upstairs, only our bedroom was huge- three or four times the size it really is- so that my lamp didn't even begin to reach the corners. Again, I had gotten up to go to the bathroom. I was extremely creeped out because I kept seeing twisted monsters and rotting dead things in the corners, all staring at me. I figured I was hallucinating, so I went into the bathroom (now the one from our college apartment) and started splashing water on my face. It didn't really help- I was still seeing creepy things twitching and moving around every time I passed a patch of darkness. So I hurried back to bed, with my eyelids trying to close the whole way. I sat up in bed and just waited, and turned on the overhead light. After awhile my girlfriend woke up and I talked to her for a minute. Then she got up and started moving around and put on some really creepy music. I asked her to turn it off because it was making me more freaked out, but she didn't seem to hear me. Then our other college roommate was there, talking about how awesome the music was (which is funny, because she hates creepy music ten times more than I do). Eventually they took it downstairs and I tried to go back to sleep, but I could still hear the music a little because the room suddenly had a balcony over the living room.

And then last night it was tornados. For some reason I've always had lots of tornado dreams. This time I was at my grandparents' house, only of course it was suddenly three stories instead of one and had sliding glass doors, because that makes sense, and there were stairs everywhere. I basically spent the entire dream trying to corral our two dogs into a safe downstairs bedroom as multiple tornados came within inches of various parts of the house without actually doing anything. The dogs were constantly getting away from me and ending up in the backyard, or next to windows with a tornado on the other side of them, or dancing circles around me as I got more and more exhausted trying to capture them. Or the room I was taking them would suddenly sprout glass doors or giant windows, and I would get really scared that it wasn't safe, and suddenly there would be three tornados outside coming closer. Meanwhile my grandparents and girlfriend were going on like we weren't all about to be torn to pieces, standing around chatting or making lunch, lol.

Unfortunately Familiar

2010-06-24T10:51:00.003-05:00

And the Xyrem Not Really Working Anymore Saga continues.

Four years ago I got diagnosed with Narcolepsy and put on Xyrem, and it fixed pretty much everything for me. It did what it's supposed to and knocked me out every night, and I got more and more awake as the dose was slowly raised. I felt like I got to experience life again for the first time in six years- colors were brighter, I could see in 3D again, my sense of taste was back. It seemed like a miracle, which it was really. And it continued to work for three years, with the occasional dose changes and eventually adding Remeron. But I guess my body is finally saying no. About a year ago I started a steady drop in energy level that resulted in serious life changes for me. And as that's been happening, once-familiar symptoms are putting in an appearance. My dreams are getting steadily more disturbing. I keep waking up in the night more and more and not being able to go back to sleep, despite feeling extremely drugged from the Xyrem. Random hallucinations have been punctuating my dreams; it was happening maybe a few times a year, and now it's multiple times a month. My mind's eye is getting much busier during the day, distracting me with full-fledged dreams when I'm trying to do something else, like form coherent sentences when talking to people. Meanwhile, my stomach is getting more annoyed with the Xyrem again- I've been nauseated and anxious in the mornings, and that used to just happen on higher doses of Xyrem.

Even so, I've been reluctant to get off of it. I know it's still working a little bit and honestly, I'm afraid. I remember what life was like the summer before I was diagnosed. In a lot of ways my living situation is vastly improved- I have really supportive people who I'm living with who want to help me and respect my desire to be distant from doctors. No one is expecting me to be the next amazing careerperson. I'm sleeping next to someone else now, which also helps- waking up in pure terror with no one there was horrible. But on the other hand, I know what my brain can throw at me, and I'm not sure I'm ready. But maybe I never will be, and at least my blog will get more interesting, lol.

So I've decided it's time to get off of Xyrem. My girlfriend's mom helped me out by finding a sleep neurologist in the area and I've got an appointment for August. She and my girlfriend are planning on coming with me as moral support and backup. So we'll see how it goes. At least, once I'm off of it, I'll be quite a bit less worried about paying for it. So in a way, the timing is nice. And my stomach will be doing a victory dance, I'm sure. We'll see how this plays out, and if I have to get on something else. I'm hoping to at least test life without drugs and see if I can do it. It's time to give my stomach a break.

Accidental Buddhist

2010-06-13T11:53:00.005-05:00

It might have been coming to terms with Narcolepsy that did it, or maybe moving to the country. It might have been partly a result of living in Tokyo for ten months during a time when I was feeling very vulnerable and looking for a new direction. It might have been various books I read out of my girlfriend's library when I was trying to figure out how to deal with life away from my parents making me plan everything. But one thing is certain: it snuck up on me.

I started out stressed out about the future. Like, really stressed out-- how was I going to make it in the real world, being so tired I can't see straight? How was I going to afford health insurance and my medication? Was I ever going to move out of my parents' house? During that time, part of me was annoyed at how stressed out I was. I would yell at my dog and feel terrible, but if I didn't yell it got pent up. I was also an anxious mess in a lot of ways, because there were no easy answers to my questions. I was more or less trapped. I didn't know what to do with myself. Then I found that my parents leaving for two weeks allowed me to relax a bit, and it felt right. I tried to carry it over to when they returned, but it was impossible. The tv was always blaring; someone was always complaining about work. The city outside was so loud that being in our tiny yard wasn't restful. Everything was too fast-paced for me and so even running errands was something that was supposed to be rushed. Only then, I would be back home again, still with nowhere to escape the tension.

I did find one place I could go to relax: I would take my dog to the park. The main areas were usually crowded and I'd end up having to talk to people, but there was a Japanese garden that had quiet benches where my dog and I could sit and soak up the trees and grass and sunshine. It was heavenly, but I had to drive there, so by the time we got home again I was a tense mess. There was nowhere like that within walking distance of my house.

Then I had an incredibly huge stroke of luck and found out that my best friend was, in fact, in love with me, too. So I left that place and came here, to the middle of nowhere, to live with my girlfriend and her parents. This place is not perfect, of course. It gets very cold here and there are stairs between me and the dogs and the outside world. But it was this place that taught me how to be still and quiet and relaxed. Here, I can step outside and come across no one who I don't know well- no pressure. The background noise is the sound of birds, ground squirrels, and horses, plus very distant traffic. Here you can really listen. It's the perfect place for meditating- though it took me awhile to figure out that's what I was doing.

Living here, life is determined by what the animals need- our dogs, cats, horses and donkey have various chores attached to them that happen throughout the day. Animals live firmly in the present and it rubs off on you as you care for them. It certainly rubbed off on me. So I ended up not planning my day out. Instead, I wait and see how I feel and what needs to be done, and then I do what feels right. I went from the "tomorrow at 2 PM" mentality to the "maybe we'll do it on Thursday" mentality, if that makes sense. And as I became more firmly rooted in the present, the past and future began to bother me less. I started to recognize their importance without attaching so much fear to them. I started to think calmly about what needed to happen that specific day instead of freaking out about how I'm going to be feeling in ten years. I'm still slowly thinking over what I'm going to do about health insurance when I'm no longer covered by my parents, but it's far enough away that I'm not afraid when I think about it- I'm just calm and thoughtful and able to think clearly.

And this is how I ended up accidentally a Buddhist.

Japanese Deli Angel Wings Movie Date

2010-06-02T10:16:00.003-05:00

Last night I had a pretty vivid but mixed-up dream. It started out that I was in some kind of deli that was part of a college and I was sitting at a table by myself, waiting for my mom to come back with her food (I wasn't eating there). As I was sitting there, I was observing the other people interacting at the other tables. It was like a scene from my hometown because of the diversity- I was one of the only white people there. One little girl saw me eavesdropping and grinned at me, and I grinned back. Then there was a lot of bustle right next to my table- several families were passing it to get to the counter- and I overheard them speaking in Japanese even though most of them weren't Japanese. When one of them bumped me on accident I said "excuse me" to them in polite Japanese without thinking. One of the women started asking me something and we had a brief conversation about how I could speak it. After that, they moved away, and I spotted someone I knew in elementary school who I hadn't spoken to in a long time, so I went over and sat down at her table.

She told me at length about what she was doing on her computer and complained about how her professors kept trying to get her to turn it into a career when she was pretty sure she didn't want to do whatever it was for a living, and we had a good heart-to-heart about life. After that, I think she took me to a lab to show me what she was working on, and she turned into a different friend I had in high school, and her project turned out to be this incredibly cool angel costume that had mechanical wings you could actually use. It was really really cool. It had chain mail and armor that you used to secure it to yourself. After that I think we went to see a movie (now with the elementary friend again), and the movie got a little jumbled up with the rest of the dream. Who I was kept switching around and sometimes I was in it and sometimes commenting on it. The movie was about a girl (A) falling in love with another girl (B). When A tells B, B freaks out and runs away and gets engaged to a guy who happens to ask her at that exact time, and it ends with A hoping B will change her mind. The me who was watching it was pretty disappointed in the ending because it seemed like it was going to work out and be happy and then it turned depressing. At the same time, though, I was happy about the way the movie portrayed A, as a completely normal girl who happened to not be straight.

That was about when I woke up, feeling confused and tired and wondering what on earth it all means.

Not Moving After All

2010-05-17T09:53:00.001-05:00

After lots and lots of fanagling, endless planning and unplanning, and generally trying to make things work, we've realized the best thing for us to do is to put off moving for awhile. On the one hand, this made us both feel much better immediately. We really do need more time and more money before moving becomes practical. My girlfriend went from tense and worried to smiling and laughing within about ten minutes of making the decision, which is really, really good to see. We had been worrying over this problem for over a week since finding out that we were mistaken about how much my parents are willing to help us financially, and it was taking a toll on both of us. I also relaxed quite a bit. And I should mention that it was mostly my idea that maybe we should stay here before I go on. After all, I do like it here. I enjoy the lack of people in the middle of nowhere. I adore having all of our animals, especially the horses, closeby. I have a wonderful relationship with my future mother-in-law; I can actually talk to her about things that make sense to both of us, because mentally we're from the same planet (and I can't say the same about my own parents). She pays attention to us and helps out in a way that isn't at all intrusive. I love the property that we have out here, with a creek for my dachshund to get muddy in, trees to climb, fields to stroll in and explore with our big dog. And the countryside around here is beautiful.

But it has its problems, too, like any place. It's difficult to get good fruit, even after winter is over. It's still a bit chilly for me and I have to wear layers, which I hate. There might end up being one month of the year when I'm comfortable outside without confining my body in sweatshirts and feeling mummified by fabric. The house has stairs, which are getting harder for me to deal with, and the dogs downstairs don't get along with ours, making everything really complicated when trying to put them outside. And intellectually I do know there will be a few cons to any place we ever live, especially with my physical problems. But I did have my hopes up. I was so excited to be going home, to take my girlfriend (who means everything to me) back to where I grew up. I'm incredibly homesick, which is something that I didn't figure out until I realized that we weren't going there this summer. I went from stressed out to really depressed in that same ten minutes.

Part of it is that I miss my family and friends there. But mostly I miss the place. When I'm there, I feel so connected to the land. I'm not sure how to describe what I mean without sounding a little crazy. It's like there are roots growing down out of my shoes, through the asphalt, down into the earth. Every species of wildflower feels like a part of me; every azalea bush, magnolia tree, taloe, oak. The ocean is always there in the back of my mind, comforting me, whether or not I ever find time or means to go to the beach. Even the power lines and pigeons and smog are old friends. The people are my people; they have my accent and various amounts of Spanish and skin of many different colors. These are the things I miss the most— daily life things, existence things.

We are still planning to live there at some point. Maybe in December, if we can afford it, missing most of the winter here. And I'm hoping we can visit this summer for a week or two. In the meantime I'm going to try to wrench myself away from thinking about what might have been and try to go back to enjoying living here. But it does smart a little.

Parental Misunderstandings

2010-05-10T10:44:00.004-05:00

A month ago exactly, we flew down to my hometown to visit my parents, go to a job fair in the hopes of improving my girlfriend's chances of getting a full-time teaching position, and to look at a promising apartment. The trip went really well. My parents were extremely supportive about our back-up plan for my girlfriend to work part time jobs, like substitute teaching or teaching karate, if she doesn't get hired to one of the positions she applied to. My mom went so far as to say they could help us with rent until the school year started and we had income. Feeling pretty good about things as a result of my parents being so supportive, we went ahead and agreed to go for the apartment. My mom wanted to pay our deposit and first month's rent because her dad did that for her when she first moved out, and we figured we were set and asked her to go ahead and sent them the deposit. We sent in our application shortly thereafter and proceeded to get really excited because we really, really like that apartment.

Last week I got an email from my mom saying that they were really worried about us being able to afford the apartment. I got pretty alarmed because I know my parents and when they say they're worried about something it generally means that they're really freaking out, and that usually doesn't bode well. So we talked to them on skype over the weekend. My dad kept talking about it like we were being irresponsible for moving in before we would be sure my girlfriend will have a job, and that part-time work wasn't good enough as back up. We explained everything again, exactly the same way we had before. Our plans were exactly the same as a month ago, when my parents seemed to like them, only now they seemed to disapprove. It was especially frightening because my dad seemed to have switched from offering to help us by allowing us to take on our own expenses slowly one thing at a time as we can afford them, to wanting us to be completely on our own as soon as we move. Our plan to take the apartment was dependent on that help- otherwise we wouldn't have said we would take it.

Now we're very confused and unsure what to do. We thought we had a plan that everyone had agreed on, and we thought we had financial support that we may not have after all. We don't want to give up our apartment if there's any chance we'll be able to afford it, but my parents are trying hard to convince us to move back into their house, which is insane. There's no way we would fit and it has twice the stairs as even this house, plus a list of about ten other reasons why there's no way it would work. Our conversation on Saturday ended in a kind of stalemate because we were caught completely off-guard. Now I'm thinking I'd better call them this week and clarify exactly what help they are willing to give us so we can figure out what on earth we're going to do. The problem is that I'm kind of chickening out. I want to know what happened, but I don't want to sound like I'm accusing them of flip-flopping or misleading us. I'm thinking I'll take the angle of we totally misunderstood and that's why we thought everything was fine. But it will be challenging not to sound like an especially cushy rug has been ripped out from under me, leaving me incredibly confused.

Part of me wonders if we did just misunderstand, or if my parents thought that my girlfriend has money saved up, or if they thought I meant moral support and not financial help. It's a very dicey situation and I'm worried about misstepping and making them angry. I love them and I don't want that, but at the same time I'm feeling a little betrayed. It would be different if I hadn't perceived, from things they said, that they were going to help us a lot. I mean, it's not like when I've thought about moving out in the past I expected them to pay all of my bills. But to offer help and then accuse us of being irresponsible... that kind of hurts.

On top of all of that, I'm not sure what we'll do if they are going to cut us loose as soon as we move. We don't have any money saved up; my girlfriend's student teaching takes up all of her time and doesn't pay her anything, and she's using a family fund to pay for her teaching license. My parents are paying for our food and my dachshund's needs and my medication. Most of my girlfriend's money from previous part-time jobs has been used up by now (a lot of it on necessities for her animals- it isn't like she's wasting it). I'm getting more exhausted every week and have completely given up driving because it's dangerous. I have the energy for art occasionally, but not in a way that could result in any kind of steady income, especially between now and July, when we were planning to move. Maybe I could help out if I get feeling better later this year, which is possible, but we can't count on that.

So I really need to call them and talk to them. I may put it off a little bit because I'm not sure how to approach this without making them angry or more worried (which is just as bad). We'll see what happens, but the whole thing is giving me one heck of a headache.

Corpse Ghost New Apartment Foster Family

2010-04-20T10:17:00.003-05:00

It's been awhile since the last time I didn't have some sort of vivid dream interrupting my sleep, but last night was crazy.

The first one was a nightmare. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before now that dead bodies, especially rotting ones, seriously freak me out- it's like some bizarre phobia I have. In this dream I was still living with my parents, indefinitely, with no hope of moving out, which was an awful feeling I had for the year and a half after college. That feeling made the dream that much worse. So my parents had just moved into a different new house and I had come with them. It was a bit of an improvement- there was more space for me and my room had better lighting. Everything was kind of weird though. The walls were all painted red and had East Asian style details- including a really cool dragon statue attached to the wall between two rooms. The layout was very confusing and didn't make sense, so I kept getting lost even though it was a small house. In the middle of it there was a tiny courtyard with a young tree and a small patch of grass where my dachshund could do his business. At first I really like it out there- a small enclosed bit of the outdoors where I could be outside without being in public. I started spending more and more time out there and thinking this house really wasn't so bad. That's when the visions started- it felt exactly how it does when I'm hallucinating while asleep (which I'm sure I was), only inside the dream it would happen when I was awake and I would have to stop and wait for it to finish before I could see anything again. The flashes of images would come as I entered the courtyard. I started to get really scared because I realized a ghost was sending me memories and I suspected there was a body buried in the courtyard. The patch of grassy area was exactly the right size, and my dog liked to sniff it a lot- it was hard to get him to leave. This totally freaked me out because of my phobia. I started to avoid the courtyard and take my dog to a park instead. This worked for awhile until he started to dig tunnels. I would turn my back for a second and he would disappear underground and it would take yelling to get him to come back out. It's kind of hilarious because the tunnels were perfectly round, as if made by a giant worm, even though it was a dog supposedly digging them. Meanwhile, as the visions started getting stronger, my fears were confirmed- the ghost wanted me to dig up the body so that its murderer could be found, and I kept telling it that I couldn't because I was terrified. It started to get angrier and angrier and my terror got overpowering. I was afraid to let the dog go anywhere near the courtyard now that he was digging so much. It was getting harder to come up with excuses to my parents and they started to wonder what was going on. The dream ended with me trying to get ready to leave to go somewhere with my parents while having a vision showing me the rotting bones while I kept having to run outside and grab my dog because he had somehow escaped out there and was digging. I started to panic and that woke me up.

In the next dream I had, my girlfriend and I had just reached our new apartment with all of our stuff- in the dream we didn't have dogs- and were figuring out where to put our furniture. Our apartment had one room and was a really strange layout- there was a fireplace and chimney in the middle, and so many cabinets on the walls it was hard to figure out where to put furniture. We were really happy to be there and enjoying figuring it out though. I looked out the window at the view- it was really high up over a city at night- and it was amazing so I walked over to the sliding glass doors to see how the porch was. It was a tiny porch with really flimsy-looking railing. I made the mistake of looking down over it to discover we were about 100 floors up. I got serious vertigo and a stab of fear. That's what woke me up.

The last dream was interesting- I was a teenage boy (lol) who was meeting his foster parents for the first time. They were a really nice couple with a very strange house and really cool furniture. The man was big and gangly and bald, and really sweet. His wife was short and incredibly smart and had flowing reddish-brown hair. They were very welcoming and my thoughts (as the kid) were that this really might not be so bad. The house was really weird- there were windows (without glass) in the inside walls, including my bedroom, so even if I locked the door I didn't really have privacy- but neither did anybody else. The bathrooms were both really bizarre; one of them had a giant marble tub raised up in it, with a toilet literally hidden underneath a lid next to it. The other bathroom had two toilets and two sinks randomly without stalls or anything- just in the middle of the room. The main room of the house had random stairs everywhere and was a crazy shape- the walls were at weird angles and were varying sizes. The place was filled with ornately carved furniture from all over the world. I spent awhile admiring everything. There was a glass case full of shiny little statues and a mobile made of origami cranes, several really old-looking round tables, and tons of chairs (no two were the same). I ate dinner with my new parents and several of their relatives and then went to bed watching the tv in my bedroom. That's when I woke up. What a night.

Totally Drained

2010-04-13T14:11:00.004-05:00

What a crazy weekend. My girlfriend and I flew to my home state of Texas so she could go to a job fair for teachers there. I don't know if I've mentioned on here (since I've been neglecting my blog horribly) that we've decided to move there in July. We made that decision based on a number of things, including the fact that if we stayed up north for another winter I might freeze into a human popsicle, but also because she's ready for somewhere new and different to live. And my hometown has the advantage of lots of connections (I have a huge extended family), parental support, and lots of school districts for her to apply to. So far we've found one summer school and five full time job openings there and she's applied to all of them. We were a little worried about when we could start apartment hunting since we may not know if she's hired until the summer, until we looked things up and crunched some numbers and realized that actually she could support us by being a substitute teacher if she doesn't get any of the other jobs. We would still rather for sure be okay, however, so we went down for the job fair, figuring it might give her an edge on her first choice full time position.

We left on Friday and said goodbye to our cats, dogs and horses. My girlfriend's mom looked after them while we were gone. The trip there went fine and we got to catch up with my parents (who I hadn't seen since January). It was really, really good to see them. On Saturday my girlfriend went to the job fair, which was pretty intimidating but went well. Apparently it was packed with people. She left her resume with a bunch of schools, even though only one in that district was hiring for English, so if something opens up they might remember her.

Right after that we went to look at an apartment complex that we found online. It's affordable but really nice and has great outdoor spaces for the dogs- and us- to enjoy. We liked it a lot and found out they had the perfect apartment available. It's exactly the right size for us and the perfect layout- it even has a well-lit space for my art desk. Plus it's on the ground floor, which was important because stairs are exhausting for me. They only allow two pets, which at first made me unhappy. But my girlfriend made the point that our cats could stay with her mom until our third college roommate could take them. She's their favorite person on the planet, and loves cats more than anything. So I think it will work out. The more I think about it, the more I realize that being in charge of two cats and two dogs during the day has been pretty exhausting. As much as I love them, I think our friend could take better care of our cats, leaving me with more energy to enjoy being with the dogs. The apartment has been put on hold for us and we're filling out the application tonight. It's very exciting and takes a load of my mind that we have someplace to live lined up.

After that we went and visited one of my high school friends briefly, then went out to dinner with my parents. By the time we got back to their house we were both flattened. Even though I slept in during the job fair, I still way overdid it on Saturday. But it was worth it for how much we got to do and it was our only day there after all.

On Sunday I woke up with no energy whatsoever. My mom drove us to the airport in the morning. I spent the wait for our flight in a total daze, and my girlfriend wasn't any better off- she had eaten something at the restaurant that bothered her stomach and felt nasty the whole way home. Even after sitting on the plane and napping for most of the three hour flight, I was so tired I was having trouble putting one foot in front of the other when we got off the plane. Then, to make things even better, we got lost looking for the train. It took most of a Starbucks tea to wake me up enough just to walk. Eventually we found the train. I slept. We got on a bus to the parking lot where our car was. When we finally reached it we still had over another hour of driving to do to get to the middle of nowhere where we live. My girlfriend needed caffeine in order to drive because she was so tired. We made it back after a stop at the grocery store (since we had no food at home). The dogs were in the front yard and very happy to see us. We went to bed early.

Yesterday I didn't feel any better. I was so tired I couldn't do any cleaning- I just read a book all day, or slept. I didn't feel up to doing the stairs, but my girlfriend's mom helped me by putting the dogs outside. I fell asleep on the table several times. The cats didn't mind; they were very clingy because they were happy I was back. I stayed upstairs all day.

Today I'm definitely still recovering. I've been able to do some cleaning, though, and I haven't been falling asleep when I'm concentrating on staying awake. I can do the stairs again, just not quite as much as usual. I'm looking forward to living somewhere without stairs. Hopefully I'll be back to my normal amount of lack of energy tomorrow.

A Poetry Phase? You've Got To Be Kidding Me

2010-04-08T18:00:00.007-05:00

Apparently I'm going through a poetry writing phase. Of all things to happen to me, this is really, really weird. I'm pretty much used to my brain throwing weird stuff at me at this point, but a poetry phase tops it all. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

I have a very staunch history of hating poetry, starting in the eighth grade when I was completely traumatized during an entire poetry unit. My English teacher made us analyze and write poetry until I was totally sick of it, and I was terrible at it which didn't help. It was horrible- I wrote so many obviously sucky poems, with no idea how to come up with anything better, and the worst (and now, most amusing) part was our final project. We had to write several poems and write five paragraph essays analyzing them. I have very amusing memories of going over to my best friend's house right before it was due and trying very hard to come up with something that you could concievably write five paragraphs about. What I ended up with was (something like) the following:

I hate homework,
It's not any fun,
I hate homework,
I can't get it done.

And then I proceeded to write five paragraphs (very short ones, mind you), throwing in as many devices from my list as I could possibly pretend were there in an attempt to not fail the unit. And I got a pretty crappy grade, but it was kind of impressive it wasn't any worse and believe me, it wasn't from lack of trying.

Ever since I've had a sort of automatic "UGH!" reaction any time anyone says the word "poetry". I didn't go near it again until my senior year of high school, when I finally had a good English teacher. I was still beyond me, however- I failed multiple essays because I completely missed the point of whatever we were supposed to analyze. So to me, poetry has always been something to avoid at all costs. Not something for me to be writing out of the blue- all the time.

It may have been about a month ago when it started trying to seep out of me. I was writing a note to my girlfriend and thought it would be funny to make up a poem from our notoriously emo black cat's point of view. So I wrote a ridiculous-on-purpose angsty cat poem. The next day I thought it would be funny for our other cat to write something, and ended up writing something from our big dog about our little dog, too. It seemed like a pretty funny joke. But I'd started creating a monster without realizing it yet.

My girlfriend, being the biggest English nerd on the planet, has a bunch of books about writing and how to get started with it. We started reading one and doing the activities as something amusing to do in the evenings to relax. So one night the activity was to write for ten minutes about anything and not be bound by any rules other than the time limit. You were just supposed to follow your stream of thought and see where it would go. My girlfriend ended up with a pretty long and complete short story that, once started in that ten minutes, consumed the rest of her spring break because it was so desperate to get on paper. I ended up with poetry. The first couple sucked a lot- even I could tell that. But then, once I got going, it got pretty cool. It shouldn't surprise anyone that it ended up mostly about narcolepsy and occasionally about horrible creepy things. Go figure.

And I haven't been able to stop since then. At least a couple come out every day, mostly about whatever is going on at the time- our animals, food, or things I have trouble with because I have narcolepsy. I'm still pretty weirded out by the whole poetry thing, but who knows... I might as well go with it.

Here are the ones I have so far that I actually like. Feel free to criticize- I have no idea what's actually good and what actually kind of sucks, though I'm finding I can usually tell when something really sucks. I'll spare y'all those. Oh, and they don't have titles, and they're all one stanza (apparently), so the spaces separate different ones- don't read it as one thing. And lastly, I officially apologize to anyone who hates poetry as much as I (usually) do, lol.

About narcolepsy:

I'm sleepy
Thoughts drifting
On an open-window-breeze
Flowing gently back and forth
A breath of a storm
Something dark lurks, waiting
As my consciousness drifts, helpless
Airy, feathered
The hidden monster
Deep teeth
Ready to spring and consume
To drown
In fear
In dreams
Tail lashing
Forked tongue lashing
Striking without warning
From floating comes sinking
Sucking
Down into depths
Feeling like oceans
Cold clinging
No escape

Words
Come flowing
Tripping, dripping
Dipping into my memory
Searching
For meaning
Hidden
Under rocks
Behind bushes
Inside streams
Among fish
Fishing for words
Encased in ice
In little huts on a lonely lake
In winter
Not my season for words

Cracks
In my head
Thoughts slip through
Unbidden, fall away
Dissolve
Become nothing
Are lost.
Searching,
I cannot recall them.
They are gone.
But perhaps
There will be new thoughts
And that is enough.

Life:

Waiting, impatiently
Aroma wafting my way
I fidget, lick lips
Hungry for trying the latest
Concoction
Sitting, bored, writing
To pass the time
Until it is cool
And tongue is not burned
Mysterious orange sauce

Sleeping cats
Rise and fall
Of fuzzy chest
Fluffy tail
Dark ear
Together a yin yang
A balance
Light and Dark
Male and Female
Entwined in peace
Asleep
In their forms
You can see Love

Other stuff:

Shard of wood burning
Intense blue
So yellow it's white
Edges
Glowing within
Like those eyes

Thunder screaming
Shouting its words
Raining its tears
Choking the sky
The ground, the earth
Nourishing, hunting
Crying
Booming
Crashes against ears
Of all shapes and sizes
Paralyzing
Drowning
Loving
Holding
Rain

So there you have it. Weird poetry from me! And there will probably be more. Be afraid! Be very afraid...

Vampire Attack Technology Fair

2010-04-05T10:31:00.004-05:00

I've been dreaming a lot lately, but it's been pretty fragmented. Most of the dreams I've had the past couple of weeks could be reduced to one or two lines. But last night was different- back to the usual intense, vivid experience.

I've been reading a fantasy novel about vampires sneaking up on people, so my first dream isn't really a surprise. It started out really fun, actually- I was one of the vampires and I had cool powers and I was running around feeding on people. I could see perfectly in the dark, suddenly appear or disappear and run really fast. I was also pretty high-ranking, so I had a couple other vampires under my command. I could manipulate them any way I wanted. That part was entertaining because I knew I was dreaming, so I knew I wasn't actually hurting anyone. Then I woke up from that dream. I was in the bedroom of my old house- the one I grew up in and where most of my nightmares take place. I sat up in my bed, thinking about the cool dream I just had. Suddenly I realized my leg hurt really, really bad and felt wet. It was literally throbbing with pain. I pulled off my pajama pants and looked. Right in the inside of my thigh was two round holes, bleeding profusely. The blood was intensely vivid red. It hurt so bad and I was terrified. I knew vampires didn't exist and I had only been dreaming, so I concluded that someone had seen me reading a novel about vampires and decided to sneak into my room and stab me while I was asleep (much more plausible, right?). So I started peering out my large windows, trying to make sure no one was out there, waiting for me to go to sleep again. I couldn't see anything, so I tried closing the blinds so they at least wouldn't be able to see me. Of course it wasn't working and I was having a hard time with my vision all of a sudden. I groped around trying to make sure I was still alone in the room, lashing out if I saw movement in case someone was about to grab me. Evidently I was the only one in the house, so I couldn't call for help. I got very scared until my neck froze up and struggling to move it woke me up into reality.

After being held for awhile and another dose of Xyrem, I did get back to sleep. This time I had a much more entertaining and fun dream. I was at some sort of technology fair where people were playing with trampolines that were video games. You would bounce and push different parts of the trampoline with your feet and hands and it would light up in different colors. Some trampolines had maps on them and you could bounce from place to place to score points. Many of my friends and relatives were there, from my dad to high school friends to people I barely knew in college. I spent most of the time playing with the games and being surprisingly not self conscious for being in so large a crowd. After that we went to a cafeteria for lunch and I realized I didn't have any food with me. Luckily I managed to locate quesadillas that happened to be gluten-free and a sandwich I could take the bread off of and just eat the inside. In real life contamination issues probably would have gotten me, but in the dream it turned out fine and I was proud of myself for being so social and adaptable. And I want one of those trampolines lol.

Grocery Store Fiasco

2010-03-12T10:06:00.003-06:00

I had a very amusing dream last night. Not amusing in a ha-ha-funny kind of way; more like amusing in an oh-that-just-figures kind of way.

I had just arrived at one of the local grocery stores after being in a class apparently, and I was completely exhausted. I felt like I was going to fall over, so I was holding onto the cart for dear life. As I grabbed the few things I had come to get, my eyelids kept closing and then I would wake up suddenly, still clutching the cart, with no idea how much time had passed or what I had been doing. This was happening more and more and I was beginning to feel panicked, so I took my cart over to check out, figuring I'd better just get home. I put my purchases on the belt and was looking at them. I blinked and examined a box of tea more closely to find that it was clearly labeled "soy tea" (I'm sensitive to gluten and soy and can't eat them in any amount without feeling awful). I shrugged and figured my girlfriend would drink it, but then I noticed that it had "now with meat!!" written on the front (my girlfriend is a vegetarian). So I told the cashier that I didn't want the tea and she took it out for me. I looked back at the things I was buying and suddenly spotted some chicken kabobs that were clearly breaded. I took those out and examined everything else, but kept finding things neither of us could eat. Then after awhile it was time to pay, and the total was $10.45 (cheap haha). I pulled out my wallet but couldn't find my card- I was having a really hard time focusing and every time I dug in there things changed around and I found somewhere else to check, but it wasn't anywhere. So I got out my cash- I had two tens and two ones, and my mind was moving so slowly that I couldn't figure out what to give the cashier. By now I was explaining to her how tired I was and that I was sorry this was taking so long and generally feeling like a total moron. She was pretty nice about it, but I could see that she thought I was really strange. I gave her the two ones, but then realized that wasn't it, so I just handed her all of my cash and she gave me change. Then I ran out of there.

There was a time jump and I was at the vet's office instead of going home. I was still so exhausted I was having trouble walking straight and reading the signs telling me where to go. The place looked way more like a hospital than a vet's office- it was huge. Eventually I found where my girlfriend was with our dachshund. The vet was saying they needed to do an x-ray of his liver, but apparently this involved poking a scope around inside it to feel the lump that was next to it better. It literally made no sense and I was just really worried about my dog. I woke up before anything else happened and grossed out my girlfriend with the meat-and-soy tea thing, hahaha.

Soapy Arm Neon Barn Night Picnic

2010-03-02T09:54:00.004-06:00

I've intentionally slept in for a couple of days in a row now. On Monday this worked really well and I felt great- way more refreshed than if I'd gotten up when I normally do. I think I needed the extra sleep after having a busy day on Sunday, plus recovering from being sick last week. So I figured I'd try it again today. Well, it didn't exactly go as I was hoping. I basically just ended up dreaming like crazy.

In one dream, I was in my grandparents' house using their bathtub (only it was the one that was there when I was little- they've since remodeled). I had hurt my arm- I couldn't move it and it hurt, so I'm assuming I had broken it- riding my bicycle the wrong direction down a busy street. As I recalled this, the dream took me there, and I dreamed about dodging cars and looking for someone I was supposed to be following, for some reason into oncoming traffic. Suddenly I jerked back into the bathtub, where I was sitting in extremely soapy water while fully clothed, trying to clean my broken arm for some reason. It was really slimy soap and I could feel it soaked through my jeans. I dipped my arm into it and slipped- I fell forward suddenly and got a face-full of soap. I shut my eyes but it went in my nose and mouth and I couldn't breathe for a minute. I sat up carefully and tried to rinse off my face, but I was using my really soapy hands so I just made it worse instead. Then I fell forward again. I don't remember anything else from that one. I could literally feel the sliminess and wetness of the soapy water, though.

Another dream had me visiting various cousins who I haven't seen in awhile. One of them was living in this gigantic house with a crazy barn in the yard. The barn was like a house by itself- completely finished on the inside and painted in totally crazy neon colors. The rooms/stalls were huge and my cousin was telling me that she was planning on raising massive numbers of cats in them. There wasn't any furniture and so everything we said echoed loudly. I don't remember much more about that dream except that I was telling another cousin about some memories that I had, only they were actually dreams I've had before- some of them years ago. In the dream I was convinced they had been real. In a way it was cool because there were several I hadn't thought about in years.

In my last dream I was driving around with my girlfriend through a dark wooded area on a little road at night. We were on a date and had brought a picnic and were looking for someplace to set it up. We kept passing other couples sitting in all of the good spots, some of them up in trees. Eventually we ended up at a house that was on the side of the road- it looked like it belonged in a suburb, not the middle of the woods, and it had a floodlight that lit it and the driveway with a stark yellowish light. She wanted to go up and knock to see if we could have our picnic on the owner's land, but I was worried and didn't want to. She knocked and no one was there, so instead we found a patch of moonlight down the road and ate our picnic in the car.

Itching to Clean

2010-02-25T17:33:00.003-06:00

Well, the double cold ended up looking more like the flu- we were both feeling pretty awful for four days each. My girlfriend didn't go back to work until yesterday (she was still recovering even then) and I was still feeling really miserable. Today was my last day of feeling sick I think, or at least the first day I've really felt like I was starting to recover. Mostly today I was just wiped out. I thought I was exhausted before, but getting sick has given me a new perspective on things. I didn't venture down the stairs for several days, and when I did it this morning- to take Noodle outside to go to the bathroom- it completely flattened me. By the afternoon I felt better, and then the challenge was to avoid doing too much. With both of us out of commission since last weekend started, and with four pets up here in addition to us, things have gotten pretty filthy. My girlfriend recovered first, but she's had a lot to do with work, tutoring and pets; besides that she's really not the cleaning type. Now, my girlfriend and I are agreed on one thing- I'm a little bit crazy. I love cleaning. It's not that I'm obsessive about it being clean all the time or something, though if I'm honest with myself I may have inherited a little of that from my dad (who is a total neatfreak). It's more just something that gives me satisfaction, that I enjoy doing and that I think is fun. Yes, I think sweeping is really entertaining, lol. So today it was pretty difficult to keep myself in check. There's a nice layer of fur on the floor everywhere and the surfaces have food gunk or crumbs on them from having our food near us. Things- like books, DVDs, and empty kleenex boxes, have been migrating around the upstairs. I even found an uneaten clementine in a bag somewhere, forgotten because we didn't bring it when we went into the other room a couple days ago. So I let myself move a few things around and sweep a tiny bit in the worst room. I did a few dishes and cleaned a couple of counters and felt much better about life. I was careful, though, and tired quickly as expected. I think I'll end up doing a lot tomorrow- hopefully feeling even better than I did today- and I can start to get caught up. Did I mention the laundry? We've got about six loads at this point, since we were sick when we usually do it.

And here's a dream I've been meaning to record. I got up in the night to take more Xyrem and go use the bathroom. I was at the house I grew up in, which for some reason didn't tip me off- I was convinced it was real life. I get to the bathroom to find that, once again, the toilet is obviously not working. I sigh and decide I'd better use the other bathroom, so I head in that direction. I reach out and open the door. Bright light shines on me and suddenly I see that there's this teenage girl standing on the inside of the door, looking straight at me with this huge smile on her face. I jump about a foot in the air since I wasn't expecting anyone, especially somebody I'd never seen before, to be in there. She starts laughing and I try to laugh it off but I'm pretty creeped out by the whole thing. Her grin is so big that it's stretching her face unnaturally. I figured out it was a dream at that point, and instead of searching for a bathroom I started trying to figure out how to wake up. I just wandered around the house hoping to snap out of it, figuring I would feel different if I actually woke up. Which I did after awhile, very confused about which house I was in, but also quite relieved.

The Double Cold

2010-02-22T15:28:00.003-06:00

Last week my girlfriend had a series of epiphanies about herself and teaching and the difficulties she was having in the classroom, which resulted in her feeling much better about life by the time Friday came along. Friday was an inservice day, so she had to show up but didn't have to teach. Instead she spent the day in activities with other teachers, who kept offering her various kinds of sugary food. Neither of us eats much sugar these days- she cooks us super-healthy gluten-free, soy-free, vegetarian dishes every night. So we're both completely unused to sugar and react to it pretty strongly. She only took enough to be polite, but by the time she got home she was feeling pretty awful. That night she started to get a sore throat. We aren't sure if it was connected to the sugar or the walk we took that evening, or if she just caught it from students and would have gotten sick anyway.

She was feeling pretty bad on Saturday while we were running errands, and by the time we got back I had started to feel a little bit under the weather myself. Usually one of us is sick at a time, but by Sunday morning we were a very sad and stuffy couple of people. We've been basically stumbling around ever since, taking care of whatever is needed either together or one at a time, but mostly lying around trying not to get too bored. She stayed home today and I'm glad. Besides wanting her to feel better, it's nice to have company, even when the company is almost as stuffy and gunky as you are. We both have fevers, though mine is worse at this point. We figure she's almost done while I started a little later so I still have awhile of feeling nasty ahead of me. The poor dogs haven't had a walk in days and the place is getting a little gross since the cleaning one- me- has been out of commission. We were surviving on leftovers but tonight she'll have to come up with something. I've decided one at a time is much easier to deal with, even though it's admittedly kind of nice to not suffer alone.

Old World Community Center

2010-02-11T10:59:00.003-06:00

I had a pretty good night last night until about the middle of my third dose. Then it was crazy dream time.

I think it started off with me standing on the sidewalk next to a quiet city street. It was a pretty typical neighborhood with street lamps and small houses that looked like they were old but well-kept. I walked down the street and turned toward a small apartment building. Up a flight of stairs and down a hallway that was also a balcony I pulled out my key, unlocked a door and went in. My roommate was there- only she wasn't anything like any roommate I've had in real life. She was this artist woman in her 50s who was pretty sick but still smoking cigarettes anyway. She had the living room of our apartment as her art studio. There were paintings and paint and rags and brushes and sculpting stuff lying around everywhere. I was apparently quite a bit younger than I am in real life and she had taken me in. It was interesting because I wasn't really into art at all, it was just something this roommate did.

She had an exhibition of her work at this fancy building and we were there for the next part of the dream. I ran around exploring because the building was really cool. It looked like it had been decorated in England in the 1700s or something, and there was crazy detailed wallpaper, gilded details on the walls and ceiling, and all the wood was dark and old-looking. It had been a manor house at one point and was now converted into a community center of sorts. There were several auditoriums with things going on the same night as the exhibition, including a lecture on autism and a fancy opera. I tried to stand in the back of both to watch for awhile, but you needed a ticket and I didn't have any money, so I just ended up wandering hallways and admiring the decoration.

After awhile it was getting late and my roommate wasn't done with her art event, so I went to the bathrooms and found luxurious bathtubs and showers with lots of plush towels. I decided I might as well take a shower there, and I was mostly done and just drying off when I heard my dachshund barking outside the bathroom. Pretty sure he was getting into trouble, I grabbed a big towel, wrapped it around me and ran out of the bathroom. He was being all bossy at one of the visitors who had come in the door, so I went to grab him. He tried to run away and turned into a very old man, who fell over as I tried to catch his ankle. People were watching us now and I was explaining how it was actually my dog and this was his tactic for avoiding getting in trouble when I woke up. Talk about strange.

Dog Wars

2010-02-05T14:48:00.009-06:00

Life with four dogs in the house is definitely an adventure.

I know I've mentioned before that we have two dogs who live with us upstairs- a fluffy hotdog dog who moved in here with me (referred to in this post as Noodle) and a great big puppy who I've been referring to as Fang, who is generally big and goofy and was adopted by my girlfriend a couple of months ago. Noodle and Fang get along just fine, especially now that Noodle is over his fear issues and Fang is feeling more part of the family through our efforts of the past several weeks. If only there was only an upstairs to the house, but no, downstairs with my girlfriend's parents live no less than two more dogs: a massive but sweet-natured dog who weighs as much as I do (Hero) and a little, fuzzy teddy bear dog, his faithful Sidekick.

When Fang came to live in the house (before I did), my girlfriend and her mom tried (carefully) to introduce Fang to Hero. They met on leash a couple of times without too much drama, but then during the last attempt, ended up in a fight. No one was too physically damaged, fortunately. But ever since, Hero and Fang have not gotten along. No one wants another fight, so Hero and Sidekick have to be put in the back room anytime Fang needs to go outside (and therefore pass through the downstairs). It used to be just Hero who would be put away, until Sidekick tried to attack Fang seemingly unprovoked by anything other than the fact that he witnessed the earlier fight and wanted to support his Hero. So now both of them have to be lured into the back room with treats to be temporarily shut in. Any time Hero and Sidekick smell Fang being led through their downstairs territory, they let it be known what they think of the situation, as loudly as possible. As a matter of fact, Hero and Sidekick have been getting louder and louder in general since Fang came to live upstairs.

Another thing is that big dogs have a lot of energy, and gigantic puppies especially require a lot of walking. Fang came to my girlfriend (rescued from being tied out in a barn with only occasional food and water) completely untrained. She has a natural gift for getting animals to do what she wants, and has no trouble getting horses to listen to her, much less a naturally submissive dog. So he heels very well and is good on leash. The problem is that he's still a puppy, and he's big and strong and constantly wants to wrestle. Therefore, walking him is a physically demanding job. I haven't tried, but I'm pretty much positive it isn't something I should attempt. I learned my lesson during my very short-lived attempt to volunteer at my local shelter by walking the big dogs. I'm not very strong on a good day and run out of energy quickly. So this is why my girlfriend was the only one walking Fang since he got here a couple of months ago.

My girlfriend has carpal tunnel, which occasionally flares up at the least convenient times possible and renders her hands more or less useless. When she started her student teaching a few weeks ago, she was already having some problems which stress made ten times worse. It culminated in her staying home, completely drugged on pain medication, for two days last week. This was a bit difficult from the dog angle because poor Fang couldn't get any of his usual walks without my girlfriend's mom doing it for us. She doesn't have the same health problems I do, but hers also render her tired and weak a lot of the time, so it wasn't an arrangement that could last. We ended up pretty much convinced that we were going to have to find him a new home if walking him was too hard on my girlfriend's hands. We both got very sad about it because things were going so well with Noodle and Fang's relationship, plus Fang's relationship with me was getting stronger every day.

My girlfriend's mom got a good idea to try to come up with a way to walk the dogs without using hands. She got us a bungee cord, which didn't work, but we modified the idea. It took some fiddling, but we managed to rig a belt with two leashes so that my girlfriend can actually walk both Noodle and Fang at the same time without using her hands at all. She turns slightly to give corrections, and there is a dog on either side of her so that she can correct one without confusing the other. We were so relieved when we found a solution because both of us love Fang to death and didn't want to give him up.

So now the challenge we have is to try to smooth out the relationship between Fang and Hero, at least to the point of less barking and no more marking of territory (which Hero has done in the house since Fang moved in, more often at first but still occasionally now). Having watched a ton of Dog Whisperer episodes, I'm trying to get my girlfriend to walk Hero and Fang together because she's the natural leader of the household and I think that will help. She wants to work with Hero by himself first to remind him who's boss which is totally the first thing to do. I wish I could do it, being the one with time and functional hands, but I can't physically control a 60-pound dog on leash, much less one 60-pound dog and one that weighs just slightly less than I do, at the same time and when they may want to fight each other. So we're waiting until her hands recover a bit more. They are already a lot better this week- thanks to the belt contraption and me being her typist- so hopefully we can start working towards peace between the two packs of the house sometime soon.

Six-Armed Demon Movie

2010-02-03T20:11:00.004-06:00

I had a freaky nightmare a couple nights ago, complete with hallucination. I had completely forgotten to turn the lamp next to my bed on. Well, I won't be forgetting that again any time soon, at least.

The dream was about me accidentally seeing an ad for a horror film and then freaking myself out over it. I was at my grandparents' house, and it was late at night. I was watching tv because someone else had turned it on and I couldn't figure out how to turn it off. I needed to be asleep and I was exhausted. I was also totally alone in the house and kept hearing the occasional creepy noise in another room, so I was already kind of freaked out before the ad came on. It was for this new movie that was about a demon. He looked like a little boy with pointy ears and teeth and he had six arms that ended in long sharp nails. He could scuttle across the walls and melt in and out of them. It seriously creeped me out to the point where I kept imagining him being right behind me, which happens in real life if I get too creeped out by something on tv or in a movie. Only in the dream it was more real- and half the time he was actually there for a second before suddenly disappearing. Then, in real life, my alarm went off and I opened my eyes, to see an image of the boy demon's face inches above mine. I jumped because it scared me and the image dissolved and blew away, exactly how it would if it had been made out of sand and the wind came. It was so bizarre it took me a minute to realize I had been hallucinating. I sat up and turned on lights and clung to my girlfriend for a minute and it was awhile before I dared to go back to sleep.

General Imploding

2010-01-26T17:27:00.004-06:00

Well, today was... one of those days.

It started out with an especially sticky dream. It was pointless drama with various friends from the past, and it was basically frustrating and lonely and very vivid. I remember I could tell it was a dream by the end, but it took me a long time to escape. I tried thinking about waking up. I tried to open my eyes. I tried waving my arms around. I tried changing the setting of the dream because that usually wakes me up right away, but instead the setting just changed. I started to panic a little and wonder if it wasn't really a dream because I was having so much trouble getting out of it. Finally I decided if I fell off of something, I would probably wake up the second I would have hit the ground in my dream. So I climbed a bookcase and deliberately fell off. The stab of fear as I was falling did in fact jar me enough. I sat up, suddenly in the real world again. I had a nasty headache and the inside of my head felt like it was still glued to the dream. My eyelids kept trying to close and I was still half asleep. I got up feeling like I was tired enough to go straight back to bed.

Thinking didn't work particularly well. I quickly realized I couldn't retain information. Now, I'm really lucky. This didn't get me in too much trouble. I don't have kids to try to keep up with or a job to completely mess up when I'm way out of it. I just have pets.

The timing was pretty unfortunate for a bad day though. My girlfriend started her student teaching yesterday, so it was only my second day holding down the fort and the animals haven't quite figured it all out yet. Especially the big dog, who I'm going to start referring to as Fang because his canines stick out over his lower lip when he's upside down and in play mode, making him look hilarious. He's one, and definitely still a puppy, even if he is a 60+ pound puppy. Now, you might imagine I wasn't the one to fall madly in love with his rather large, fanged face lol, given the fact that I can barely carry my 15 pound dachshund down the stairs. Dogs are very much into physical contact and I know from my own little dog that it works way better to enforce the rules by gentle pushing. Of course, with him it's a breeze. His legs are super short and he's so small that despite my lack of physical strength I can still put him in a sit or lay down position if he won't do it on command. With Fang it's different because it takes literally my whole body to pull him an inch and I seriously can't put him in a sit.

So knowing this, I was a little intimidated by him at first. After all, the only dog I've ever actually trained is maybe a foot off the ground. Because of my unsure state of mind we were mutually distrustful for awhile, though we've been working on it and our relationship has improved a lot.

Well, today my girlfriend forgot to feed him before she left in the morning, but it took me awhile to figure this out. This was a difficult situation because he's only recently started taking food from me (and we have to feed him by hand because he gets overprotective otherwise as a result of his hungry past). I eventually got a message from her and tried to feed him, but he wouldn't eat and was generally depressed. I got pretty upset, because I'm extra sensitive and weepy when I'm feeling especially crappy. When she called me to check up I must have sounded pretty bad because she came home for lunch, took care of the fang-face and even heated lunch up for me. And I spent the rest of the day in bed watching movies while she was at work.

Days like today are frustrating because I literally can't accomplish anything. I'm so completely brain-dead that daily life decisions become difficult. All I can do is hope I sleep better tonight and thank my lucky stars that my life situation is so incredible and allows for a day of just resting.

High Rise Dog Crash

2010-01-25T08:49:00.004-06:00

Last night was full of vivid and crazy but mostly not disturbing dreams. The one I remember was pretty interesting. I was living in an apartment in a high rise on a narrow street in downtown somewhere. I was sitting at a desk in my mostly dark room, and it was night outside my street-facing windows- I was high up, so you could see a spectacular night skyline out there. I was working on things on my laptop. I was getting frustrated because I was trying to set up a business site for my artwork, but I kept running into strange problems, like buttons I was supposed to push randomly disappearing and forms I was supposed to fill out not making any sense whatsoever. I finally thought I had it working, and I was uploading art to it when I looked out the window and saw a small dog leap off of someone else's rooftop right across the street and right in through my windows, smashing a small part of them. The dog was surprised and very angry, and immediately lashed out at my leg. It was a little, springy, ferocious dog with a long nose. I immediately stood up and turned dog whisperer, haha. The dog sat down and stopped attacking me. Thinking fast I grabbed some treats out of the cabinet and we started practicing sit and stay and lie down, which the dog figured out really fast. I knew I just needed to stall until the owner came to pick him up, as I assumed they would do soon since they saw which window the dog jumped into. We had fun doing that, and then we worked on manners a little bit. Suddenly I spotted this huge, red worm on my table- it looked and felt like it was made of jello, but it was definitely alive. I grabbed it with one hand and threw it out into my backyard that I suddenly had, and my hand got all slimy in the process. I offered my slimy hand to the dog, figuring it would gain me points. The dog was a little too eager and bit my hand, but I didn't have time to survey the damage because the owner- and haughty young woman, who didn't even apologize- came in and picked him up. She looked surprised at how calmly he was lying on the floor when she came in. She took him away, and just then two of my friends came in. It was weird because they were both totally made up and didn't look or act quite like any of my actual friends. I told them what had happened and then looked down at my hand to find that my left thumb was chopped off, very cleanly, at the first joint. There was no blood and it looked like something out of a cartoon- a wobbly circle in the center that was white like it was the bone, inside a pink circle inside a thin circle where the skin was. At that point I totally realized it was a dream, and talked to my friends about it and how dreams can be really weird, and then I totally regrew it on the spot. Then we were suddenly at one of the friends' houses at a classy party and I was trying to explain narcolepsy to people because they kept asking me what I'm doing for my career and I didn't feel like making something up. And then I woke up.

No More Nuvigil

2010-01-21T09:52:00.003-06:00

I had planned to keep taking a half pill of Nuvigil every morning until I was running out of samples, and then report to my doctor. Well, that's been my plan three times now, and I keep running into stomach problems and stopping it after a few days. Last time it was nausea that got me. To be fair, it might have gone away after awhile. I know the headaches and the drugged wonkiness would have, so it wasn't those that I was worried about. It was just that after three days I had absolutey no appetite and literally couldn't stomach eating anything.

This time I wasn't nauseated, but the lack of appetite was still there. It came on faster than last time, and I've had stomach cramps, especially at night. Besides that, yesterday was pretty crazy- I was either so awake I was restless and antsy or so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open, and the two states would transition pretty suddenly. I'm guessing that would probably have settled out over time though. The past two nights have been similarly nuts- I'd find myself suddenly awake in some random part of the night, then get pulled straight into vivid dreams again, maybe sleep soundly for awhile and then be wide awake for a minute or two again. Which also may have settled out eventually. But it's the lack of appetite that convinced me that Nuvigil isn't a good idea for my stomach. I spent over a year with no appetite on a higher dose of Xyrem and I refuse to deal with that long term again. I have no urge to be back under a hundred pounds because I hate all food and have to force myself to eat. Not healthy.

I'm not sure what my doctor is going to say about this. He keeps suggesting meds to help keep me awake, which of course I need, but every time something gives me a side effect and I stop taking it he gets a little frustrated. He wants me to try things for long enough to make sure the side effect won't go away, or that it won't be worth dealing with to have the benefits of the medication. Which is perfectly reasonable. But I'm kind of through putting the experiment ahead of my present well-being, if that makes sense. In other words, I suppose I would rather feel okay now than go through a lot of feeling crappy in order to feel slightly better- or maybe just the same or worse- later. Who knows, maybe it's just a phase. Or maybe it's my own way of growing up.

Dreams and Drugs

2010-01-19T16:51:00.002-06:00

Yeah, I've been officially neglecting my blog again, which is fine because I'm actually pretty busy and very happy at the moment. Plus I have plenty of new things to talk about when I do find the time.

My Narcolepsy has pretty much been the same as when I left my parents' house to come live with my girlfriend. Having someone next to me while I'm sleeping has been extremely comforting for me, but besides that I'm still dreaming a lot- like, constantly and very vividly. I had an interesting and kind of fun one last week in which I was this velociraptor who was staying in a motel, lol. It was a perfectly ordinary motel room, and apparently I was this really nice and gentlemanly male velociraptor who had been hired as a kind of guard by the guy who ran the motel. I was wandering around, waiting because I knew of a couple of younger and much less polite velociraptors who were going to come try to eat people who were staying there. I was warning people and encouraging them to stay inside until I had chased off the intruders. I was a little nervous, but did my best to reassure people. They were pretty nice to me and I managed to win them over with my good manners, hahaha. So eventually the other velociraptors showed up, and I totally scared them off really easily and then wondered why I had been so nervous.

Then, yesterday maybe, I woke up from this really weird dream in which I had been watching a series of bad tv movies, lol. Of course I was halfway watching them and complaining about how bad the script was and halfway actually in them, wandering around or being the main character. The last movie is the one I really remember- it started with a teenager with a backpack, wandering towards a city following this ditch along a highway. And then it cut to this really bizarre place where I was wandering. It was a tunnel that was partially underwater, and the walls were made of totem poles that were carved and painted as faces with red, white and black paint. The faces were moving and contorting on their own, and I knew that they were all actually my own people just pretending to be totem poles and that I could turn into one and blend in if I wanted to. Then I saw the teenage boy with the backpack coming towards me, where there was a bench. He was flailing and waving his arms and muttering and it kind of scared me, so I leaned into a blank spot in the wall and turned into a totem pole so he wouldn't see me. He sat down on the bench, still muttering and looking crazy, until a couple of people who I knew were from an enemy tribe came and persuaded him to leave with them. I got worried because I figured that wouldn't be a good thing, so as soon as they left I jumped out of the wall and ran to find help. And then I woke up.

Besides dreaming a lot, I've been pretty sleepy. As usual. So I decided I'd better try Nuvigil again now that I'm basically settled in here for awhile. I took half a pill this morning, and I have been more awake. I've also been a little wonky and my stomach isn't thrilled, but it hasn't completely revolted yet. And I have a minor headache again, which is pretty much the same as a couple weeks ago when I tried it. I think I have enough to take the half pill for more than a week, and then I'll know more and can call my doctor and report. We'll see how it goes this time. In the mean time I'm going to continue to enjoy life.

Hitting Pause

2010-01-01T10:19:00.002-06:00

Well, I know I said I was going to keep taking Nuvigil, but I couldn't bring myself to take it yesterday morning. For one thing, I was so nauseated that I wasn't sure it would stay down. For another, I'd been having steadily worsening stomach cramps since I started it and therefore no appetite, which is not something I enjoy. But let's face it, it was the cookies that were the last straw. It was my birthday and my mom had made cookies for me (gluten and soy-free, of course, but still quite tasty), and I knew I would have no urge to eat even one if I took Nuvigil. And so I didn't, and sure enough I was getting hungry again by the middle of the day. I got to eat two cookies and so I think it was worth it.

That's not to say that I'm giving up on Nuvigil just yet. Someone left me a very helpful comment on my last entry, saying that at least two of the problems it was causing me went away for her after awhile. Which is very encouraging. I was definitely beginning to feel sleepy again even a couple of hours after not taking Nuvigil, and it's a strange thing: you don't realize how easy life is without the constant urge to sleep until it is gone, but then it's so easy to take for granted.

So I'm going to take my samples with me tomorrow and most likely try again soon. Just not on my birthday, or before having to get up early to travel.

Nuvigil Adventures Again

2009-12-30T09:28:00.006-06:00

On Monday I went back to my neurologist, which I had been putting off. I wanted a break from having my medications tweaked this way and that, added and subtracted, and the resulting side effects. So I scheduled my appointment for as late as I could while still making it before my next move across the country, this time to be with my girlfriend. My doctor didn't particularly appreciate that, which I really can't blame him for. I come in doing the worst I have in the last year and a half, to announce that I'm leaving and no, can't come back in two weeks for him to mess with my medications some more. He's a good guy and it's obviously frustrating when he can't help me as much as he wants to.

I talked to him about my growing anxiety problem, and he said we could try a different antidepressant instead of Remeron, which isn't really designed to control anxiety, but that would come later. After the appointment I felt really dumb- or rather, really amused with myself, because the anxiety went away as soon as I walked out of there. Apparently I was anxious about the appointment, and thinking of it as an OMG Anxiety Problem!! just made it worse. This happens to me just infrequently enough that I forget to watch for it, lol. I'm going to keep an eye on it, but I suspect I'll have less issues once the move is complete and my quality of life is improved just by being with my girlfriend.

I also talked to my doctor about how exhausted I've been and the fact that I haven't been sleeping very well. I mean, my standards are pretty low, but dreaming for half the night with all this disturbing crap is really a bit much. We talked about Nuvigil again, and I decided to try a different sample pack instead of the one that gave me a gluten reaction. So I got that. He said we could try Adderal if I react to Nuvigil again, but he can't prescribe it across state lines so it would have to wait until the summer. And you know, that's fine with me.

So I started the Nuvigil again yesterday. So far the results are mixed. I had more energy yesterday and I didn't have a gluten reaction. I had a bad headache for awhile- not surprising as that's the main side effect people tend to have. It made me a little bit wonky. Like, I was kind of spaced out in a drugged sort of way. This is also something I tend to do when starting a new medication, so it's not a big deal. It might go away if I give it a chance. I was hopeful by the time I went to sleep.

Last night I was nauseated every time I took Xyrem, but it didn't keep me up. I slept very deeply for most of the night and only dreamed (comparatively) a little in the last third of the night.

I had moved into this dorm/office- complete with both desks and bunkbeds- and I was unsure as to how I'd ended up there in the first place. I had gone to visit someone there, maybe, and had somehow ended up working there and getting my own bunk. I didn't mind so much; it was an interesting place and the other people there were also students at the art institute. Our group's job was to work on this magazine. Everyone was really nice and it seemed fun, but it took me awhile to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. There were clues everywhere, right in front of my face, but I can be pretty slow sometimes. The magazine was called Freism, complete with this fancy logo, and I have no idea what it was about exactly. There were seven people assigned to work on it each year, and I had been hired because the seventh person had stopped showing up. There was a heirarchy, which I eventually figured out because it was posted on the wall, with the rankings as chess pieces. My job was to draw anything they needed for the magazine. I don't think any of us were getting paid, or else it just wasn't important. It seemed to be a volunteer position. The office was pretty cool. The bunkbeds were brightly colored like they were for kids, and there was art everywhere, hanging on walls and piled on the desks, which were arranged near each other so we could socialize while working. It was all very laid back and I didn't do much of anything other than chat with people and make up a new story. The story was about an angel and one of my characters that usually represents me falling in love with him. I don't really remember it now, except that I had wings too. I was telling the people in the office about it while we sat next to the giant wall of windows on one side that looked out on this huge and awesome oak tree. And after that, the second in command guy wanted me to draw something to show what I could do. All I had was this gigantic black marker and he wanted me to draw a machine that would convert moon rocks into gold coins, so I did. It wasn't too bad even though I kept messing up, lol.

I woke up really nauseated. It was after ten before I braved breakfast, which turned out okay because I needed to take my dog to the vet to get a health certificate for our flight and his appointment was at lunchtime. I took Nuvigil again after breakfast. The nausea went away but now my stomach is unhappy. I'm also still feeling really spaced out. I'm a little bit suspicious because it could be brain fog, which is a symptom of a gluten reaction, but I can't be sure yet. Luckily everything is pretty much arranged for our flight, so the ability to think isn't too important for a few days. So basically I'm still on the fence on this one. I need to see what happens tomorrow. If there is a tiny amount of gluten I'll start to react more and more if I keep taking it, so I'll know about it pretty soon. If not I'll have to see if the spaciness goes away, and decide about the headaches. We'll see.

Who the Heck Knows

2009-12-27T20:48:00.003-06:00

So tomorrow will be interesting. I'm going back to my neurologist after a couple of months of lack of communication. I'm not sure that he'll be happy to hear about how I'm doing at this point. Mainly I have even less energy than the last time I talked to him, but over the past month I've also been getting steadily more anxious and even a little depressed again. This makes me annoyed (and will probably also annoy my doctor) because I haven't changed anything. Okay, so I tried raising the Xyrem by the smallest possible increment briefly about a month ago when I was desperate for a couple of nights of sleep, but it didn't work- the side effects came back and I lowered it right back down to where it's been for probably the last six months. My Remeron is the same. I never experimented with Ritalin again (like he wanted me to) because it made me depressed that one day I tried it and I don't mess around with depression. My life has improved drastically since the last time I saw him now that I'm not stressed out trying to take four hour classes all the time, plus of course no longer being single and lonely helps. But I'm still more exhausted than ever, dreaming more than I had since I started Xyrem and on top of that have mood issues coming back for no apparent reason. Story of my life.

I'm not sure what he'll want my to do this time, if anything, because I've tried most things at this point. I suppose I could try harder at the stimulants. We'll see. It's just frustrating to be the bearer of bad news.

Art College Dorm Friends

2009-12-23T09:45:00.000-06:00

More dreams. This time apparently more convincing. o.O

I was just moving in to this house to live with a group of other students from my art college, only they were all people I didn't know. We were exploring the small house, unpacking our things and joking around. Everyone seemed pretty nice. There were at least six of us, pretty much evenly divided between male and female though the numbers changed a little throughout the dream. A couple of people cooked dinner and made it gluten-free for me, which went fine. It was spaghetti and meatballs. We ate it while we watched this really dumb movie and people were making plans to go to another movie after dinner. It was getting late and I wasn't sure I should go, since I was exhausted and getting sleepy. I finished my dinner and looked around at everyone else, seated at two tables in our living room, which had no other furniture. I spotted one of the people who had cooked it. She looked a lot like one of my high school friends, even though she was supposedly a different person. She had seemed really nice so I thought I should get her attention (she was sitting at the other table) so maybe we could talk instead of going to the movie. As I watched, she started falling asleep sitting there, and I was interested to know if she had Narcolepsy too. I finally managed to signal her and so after dinner when everyone left, we ended up sitting in one of the bedrooms, talking. I kept trying to start my explanation of Narcolepsy because I really wanted to know if she had it, but she kept taking the conversation in some other direction every time I had an opportunity. Like, she asked me if I drank and I told her no, I can't because of my medication. But then she completely changed the subject to her stories and characters, which was really cool because we had that in common, so I gave up and figured I'd just end up explaining it all later. We were sitting on the floor, leaning over this sheet of notebook paper on which she had written the names of places in a world she had invented, and I was trying to pronounce them. I was happy because I had a new friend. And then I suddenly found myself in my bed, awake. I was really confused because I had been so positive I had actually been talking to this new friend. It took me a moment to figure out it was a dream.

Department Store Dog Whisperer

2009-12-21T08:54:00.003-06:00

I had an interesting dream last night. I was with my mom at some department store in the changing rooms and I had my dog with me, only he was about half the size he actually is (therefore, tiny). I kept losing him in all the stalls. Luckily no one else was in there so I could go wherever I needed to to find him. When I did find him, we got in the car and drove over to my grandparents' house. My grandmother was there with this half-some-kind-of-terrier, half-dachshund that she had just gotten. He was way over-excited and pulling her down the street and when I tried to make suggestions she would brush them off. She needed to go somewhere, so my mom and I agreed to dogsit.

Then somehow we were in this fancy RV with nice furniture and everything, and we had my dog inside and my grandma's outside because he was going kind of crazy. I started to complain to my mom about owners who don't get their dogs enough exercise, and eventually decided to go see if I could tire out the crazy dog and calm him down.

It was so totally right out of Dog Whisperer, lol. I came outside all calmly and slowly claimed the entire yard while the dog went from barking at me and freaking out to calming down. Eventually I got him to sit, which was hard because he hadn't learned the command yet. And then I brought him outside. My tiny dog was sound asleep on the couch, and I was grateful because he's usually terrified of dogs. He didn't even twitch as I put the terrier mix on the couch, where he fell asleep right away. I watched them awhile and wondered if I was going to be able to control him in front of my grandmother since she belonged to him, and was contemplating how he did look a bit like a dachshund when he was asleep, when I woke up. Man it would be cool to have those mad skills in real life, hahaha.

More Creepy Nonsense

2009-12-12T10:52:00.003-06:00

Last night was kind of nuts. Then again, I've been getting more or less the same amount of nonsense every night this week.

I'll start out with my first of three doses of Xyrem. I'll fall asleep, not dream a damn thing and then wake up to my alarm for dose number two. Then I'll fall asleep again, only this time I'll dream something I don't recall much of later so that it seems like I did still get some actual sleep during this chunk of time, even if I dreamed a little. Then I usually wake up pretty confused to find that my alarm went off half an hour ago and I didn't hear a thing. Then it's down with dose number three, and that's when the nonsense happens. Every night this week it's been crazy, visual, complicated dreams that I'm positive at the time are real. They're part cool, part interesting, and usually part disturbing or creepy. Last night was no exception.

I only remember the very end now, but I know there was a lot more before it. I was sitting at a table with my high school history teacher, coloring something with crayons while we watched DVDs on this old television. The room was very plain and kind of dark. We watched something I liked first, but then it turned into this educational thing about dead bodies. It got stuck on the menu with all these pictures of corpses, and the music was really creepy. Everything kept repeating and I was trying to not look at it, but I couldn't tell my history teacher about my rotting things phobia because I was embarrassed. Eventually she took it out and then we were watching a documentary about the history of Middle Earth (This isn't too surprising as I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan, and have read everything Tolkien wrote multiple times). Most of it was from The Silmarillion, and then my dreams began to twist the stories into new stories, and insert my original characters into them. It was pretty epic and detailed and visually intense. It reached the end of a tale in which everyone died, and suddenly I woke up and realized it had been a dream. That's cool, I thought, as I sat up in my old bedroom- the one in the house we moved out of almost two years ago. I was on my bed, trying to shake off the remains of the dream, and I realized my girlfriend was sitting on the edge of the bed, talking to my mom who was sitting on the floor. My dog came over and licked my hand and I was startled to see that he had shrunk. He was suddenly small enough that I could pick him up with one hand. I think I asked my girlfriend about it, and she acted like it was normal for dogs to shrink randomly, so I figured it was no big deal. Meanwhile, the two white yorkies from my last dream were running around and yapping.

At that point I realized my mouth really hurt. I touched it with my finger and there was blood on it. I realized I had left my nightguard (I don't have one in real life, I just know people that do) on and for some reason this explained the blood. I pulled it out, but it was stuck on my teeth, and my mouth started bleeding more and more. I discovered a lot of black string was also caught in my teeth, but pulling it out just caused more pain and bleeding. I started to panic and ran into the tiny bathroom attached to my room, where I had to hunch over uncomfortably to look in the mirror, because for some reason the ceiling was slanted and low. I looked in the mirror and saw blood dripping out of my mouth, the nightguard half in and black string stuck all in my teeth. I started trying to get them out gently, and to rinse my mouth with some water. The sink was filthy and disgusting, covered in this slimy, leftover food. I was so frightened by my loss of blood that I stood there trying to rinse out my mouth anyway.

And then I actually woke up. It was really hard to shake off the dream. I went into the bathroom, straightaway, just to make sure I wasn't bleeding. Of course everything was fine, but sometimes you just have to check. I slapped my face with cold water and felt a little bit more in the here and now. It wasn't until I had some caffeine with breakfast before I really felt like part of reality.

Fort Hotel Dog Drama

2009-12-10T10:53:00.003-06:00

Last night I was freaking out about travel and dog drama to my girlfriend, so how my dreams turned out really didn't surprise me.

I was on a trip with my two college roommates (one of them being the girlfriend I'm always gushing over) and our hotel was basically a bunch of forts made out of sheets and clothespins over chairs and tables in this giant mall food court, complete with escalators, food (gluteny poisonous food) and random shopping. It was seriously random. I had woken up late and we were supposed to go on some tour of somewhere, and I was rushing trying to get ready, but I was so exhausted I could hardly move and I couldn't find any clothes besides my pajamas. I asked my non-girlfriend roommate if she had seen my stuff anywhere, but she hadn't, and she was busy sewing a quilt so she couldn't help me. My girlfriend had run off somewhere and I had no idea when she would get back, and I was kind of worried she wouldn't get back in time for us to leave.

Then I was at this really frilly, fancy house in the guest room, and the person I was apparently staying with had two little white yorkies. They were quite well behaved even though they had a lot of energy, and I was trying to get my dog to relax around them. Of course he was completely traumatized and scared and he kept hiding behind the frilly white curtains or under the poofy pink bed. I ended up telling the yorkies to calm down and just sit next to him, and eventually he showed signs of getting over it.

Suddenly I was at this stadium, and the three dogs were on leash. I was trying to get us through all these crowds of people headed for their seats, and I was with this really big extended family with a ton of kids, so we had to move slowly. My dog was done freaking out, and now I was trying to get him to stop yanking the leash around while also keeping the yorkies in check, and trying to hold a conversation with various family members in Spanish. As we walked, we passed a bunch of small but deep pools of very clear water just randomly in holes in the sidewalk. My dog jumped in and started swimming, and I was all excited because he was having a really good time. Eventually we got near our seats and I asked the family to hold the dogs for me while I ran into the bathroom, because I knew I would need to go before whatever we were going to watch started. There was a lot of confusion around the dogs because I didn't remember that much Spanish and we were still sorting it out when I woke up.

Suicide Party Mansion Exploring

2009-12-09T09:37:00.004-06:00

Last night I was at this reunion of sorts in a dark, dingy house. A lot of my middle school friends who I hadn't seen in a really long time were there. The party eventually turned into a sleepover, and I kept trying to catch up with people but I was constantly falling asleep and having trouble participating. At one point, one of the people at the sleepover shot himself and committed suicide, and it was really disturbing. There was blood everywhere. Everyone was shocked and scared. We started looking through his backpack, trying to figure out why he had done it.

Then the setting changed from this dingy house to my grandparents' backyard, where the party was still going on only now it was a roleplay game involving my cousins. We each had a different anime character we were supposed to be portraying, but it was difficult because I didn't really get who I was supposed to be. My cousin had made up his own character, and everyone was making fun of him because he was being all emo. It was pretty funny actually. I decided to follow him around instead of trying to be part of the game anymore, because we hadn't talked in awhile. So we ended up walking around this pretty fantastical yard, with waterfalls and rocks to climb on and secret passages between all these fences. It turned into us avoiding the other people, and then we went inside the house, which turned out to actually be my house.

Apparently when my parents moved, they had moved to this mansion. Like, literally. The place was insanely huge and had endlesss staircases and hallways. My cousin wanted to show me this extra suite of rooms he had discovered that had a balcony outside, down this back staircase that was carpeted. It was funny because the inside of the mansion looked exactly like my real house, it just had like ten times more rooms. I was thinking about how crazy my parents had been to move the three of us into a mansion that could easily house about fifty people, and my cousin explained that he knew someone who was talking to my parents about turning half of the house into a hotel. Oh, I thought, that makes sense. Anyway, we explored for awhile, finding a huge living room full of fancy old world furniture, a patio with a koi pond just outside, and a large cafeteria full of people eating lunch. I then got this awesome idea to move my room into one of the more secluded parts of the house, and to see if I could move in next to a patio with backyard access because I figured my dog would like that. Then I woke up, amused.

Moving Halfway Across the Country Again

2009-12-08T17:09:00.004-06:00

Alright, so I've totally been neglecting this blog lately. The main reason is that my life is once again rearranging itself. Definitely in a good way. My girlfriend got home fine, but we both started pining pretty badly the second she had to leave, which led to planning a trip for me to visit her, which then turned into me taking my dog and moving up north for the winter until she finishes getting certified and can move down here. Yes, me moving up north. For the winter. XD

I spent three years of college up in Minnesota, and being a native Texan it made a pretty big impression on me. At first it was pretty frightening, as winter came in November (instead of maybe pretending to show up in January) and the temperature dropped from "chilly" (65) to "freezing" (45), then bypassed "#$%@ing cold" (20) and kept right on dropping until it was hitting those pesky negative numbers that my poor Texan self had never even heard of before. Every one of those three winters had me wondering, around April when you'd think some hint of spring would have shown itself already and instead the ice and snow was barely even thinking of starting to melt, what the hell am I doing here??

It was hard. Having grown up with school canceled if the temperature hit freezing (like once every five years lol), walking to class buried in layer upon layer of clothing and still feeling like my face was going to fall off in the negative degree windchill was not fun. After awhile I did get used to some things: I learned to appreciate snow and layering, and I loved walking outside to see a world worthy of Christmas postcards every day. I started to refer to 50 degrees as "nice", especially in the spring, and there was something amazing in the total silence and stillness in a frozen landscape. That said, a winter in the Midwest still daunts me. I'll be somewhere slightly warmer (in theory) than where I was. I also have the accumulated knowledge of my three years behind me, if I turn out to have retained it, that is. But it's going to be worth it to be with my girlfriend.

It should work out well, because it means we can start our exchange of life skills that will make both of our lives better: she cooks, and I keep her life organized and clean. That sounds like an awesome deal to me, because I'll do anything to not have to cook (which she really enjoys, the crazy person), and she could really use some help with organization, the one thing I'm really good at besides drawing. She constantly loses things, the poor girl. Anyway, I'm pretty psyched. And it'll mean not having to drive anymore, thank god, because she'll do the driving when we need to go somewhere. That by itself is worth moving halfway across the country.

Thank God For My Girl... And The Caffeine

2009-11-30T19:35:00.004-06:00

I had an amazing visit with my girlfriend this weekend. It was fantastic to see her and we had a great time. She's the only person who has ever really understood me and been okay with my limitations and challenges. We spent a lot of time curled up on the couch, watching movies, because I'm so tired. We did take my dog to the park one day, which totally flattened me for that day and the next, but she was very helpful and loving and understanding about my lack of energy. This is especially impressive because of the fact that she's high energy by anyone's standards.

On Sunday we went to the nearest bookstore. I sat down in the cafe with my caffeine fix and read dog magazines while she ran around looking at books. She came back every so often to check up on me, and it kept us both entertained without draining me. I think once she moves here (a torturous six months from now) we'll do that more often.

Of course she had to go home though, and it hit me pretty hard. As soon as she left this morning I hit the couch and turned on the tv to keep my mind off of it. I already miss her a lot. I probably would have just spent all day pining if I hadn't figured out I was feeling depressed. Instead caffeine saved me again and I'm feeling much better. Talking to her when she gets home will also help. I'm shocked and amazed when I think about how lucky I am to have someone who cares so much.

Not to mention she's a really good cook. I got leftovers for lunch. :D

School and Dogs

2009-11-24T19:30:00.003-06:00

I survived another day of class and driving, and went ahead and filled out the form to withdraw from the school. My photography instructor, who is also my head of department (or Head of House, as I like to think of it, haha) knows I'm leaving because of my health and he brought me the form and explained that he'll turn it in and I don't really have to do anything else. I really really appreciated it, because now it's taken care of and when my class ends I'm done. He said he's sorry to see me go, and I am too. I've really had fun with this animation stuff, and I still think it would be the career for me if I could hold down a job.

I decided today that I will try to go back in the fall. I'm moving out of my parents' house and into an apartment with my girlfriend this summer, and so that gives me three quarters to recover and move and possibly feel better. If fall comes around again and I'm still too tired to do much I won't start again, but if I feel up to it I would like to. It's been really fun, as much as I've complained occasionally. XD

In other news, my girlfriend fell in love with a dog. I had a lot of worries at first which we've gone through and discussed, but let's face it, one look at pictures of this dog's face and I was sold. XD Seriously though, we had agreed on adding a second dog to our family of two humans, two ridiculously adorable cats and a fluffy dachshund, we just weren't originally thinking of adding the second dog for a couple of years. We all know how that goes, though, lol. We're both suckers and animal people, so it really was inevitable. I'm excited. He does sound perfect, and I figure, if I managed to train my dog I'm really not worried about a more mild-mannered one. So life is good, and my girlfriend is coming to visit tomorrow, so my guess is that it'll be next week before I post again. YAY.

Middle School Stress Out

2009-11-24T07:31:00.005-06:00

Most of my dream was about middle school. It was actually some sort of weird combination of my actual middle school experience and the art college I'm about to stop attending. I had five normal subjects, plus a homeroom class that was apparently a fashion class that was preparing us to be models (probably because I was watching America's Next Top Model the other day). I was sitting in my various classes, trying to figure out how many classes I could drop because I was really overwhelmed, but the year was really close to over so it was hard to decide- I didn't want to take algebra again later, and in English there was just one project left and I thought it was going to be fun- an essay about your imaginary friends and a self portrait (hahaha). Basically I had way too much to do but there was no good way to slow down. I hated homeroom because it was really hard for me- I had to conjure various weird fashion clothing out of thin air and onto myself, plus find makeup and glitter and jewelry that matched to have on my face, and all in front of the class. I thought my costume that day wasn't too bad, but I wasn't very happy with it and thought the class was pretty pointless. Oh yeah, and it was full of people from my art college, haha. I was pretty sad thinking about leaving and not getting to see them anymore, which obviously has a basis in real life.

After struggling to find a way to drop things while also trying to concentrate in math and English, it was finally lunchtime. I grabbed my stuff and followed one of my real middle school friends into the bathroom. I was tired and hungry and really wanted lunch, so of course everything started to go wrong. First, this guy from my elementary school ran into my friend and knocked her over while we were putting all of our stuff down on the floor (we each had about five different bags, and one of mine was a koala backpack for some reason o.O). My friend started crying and I ran over and hugged her, and it took her awhile to calm down. Meanwhile, the entire bathroom got really busy, and then there kept being things wrong with the toilets (as always happens to me when I dream about bathrooms). It took us what seemed like forever to get to our usual lunch spot, which was apparently in the school's carpeted ballroom (because that makes sense). Our other friends were there- high school friends this time- and it turned out to be after school and we were waiting for calls from our parents. I pulled all of my homework out, still trying to figure out how I was going to survive until the end of the semester. Another one of my friends was really grumpy because she'd gotten a B on something, which is funny because it's so her, and the friend who had gotten knocked down was just really quiet and unhappy. Pretty soon I realized I should start packing up to take all of my stuff home, still no closer to figuring out what I was going to do about having too many classes.

I started shoving things into my massive backpack, and as I did more things would form on the floor, so that there was always one more pencil, or folder, or sheet of paper to stow away. After awhile the items got sillier- tiny stubby pencils, or a fistful of rubberbands, or marti gras necklaces in Christmas colors. I woke up while I was still packing.

I feel like there was another dream in the middle of all of that in which my girlfriend and her new dog were at my grandparents' house, trying to introduce him to my dog, only I drifted off and had a dream about a house in a puzzle I'm working on. But I don't remember anything else about that.

Good Decisions

2009-11-21T10:01:00.004-06:00

Well, my latest attempt to raise my Xyrem dose has (not surprisingly) backfired. I only raised it one little increment on one of the three doses, and it did help me sleep for about a week. But then I got my usual side effects back- anxiety and lack of appetite- and had to lower it again. It's made me uptight and tense, so it was a relief to wake up this morning feeling a little bit back to normal. I'm pretty cheerful today.

I'm so glad that I went ahead and dropped two of my classes. I've had a chance to rest and after a couple of weeks of falling behind I'm actually ahead in my one remaining class. I'm also no longer finding it hard to keep things clean, I have the energy to make myself food again and I haven't missed a single walk with my dog. Since regaining the energy to take care of my daily life was the point of dropping classes, I think it's been worth it.

At the same time, as I get ready to leave the school, I've been a little sad about it. I've had a good time there and learned a lot of very useful information. Part of me does want to finish this degree, but I know it doesn't make sense practically. Last March, I was taking four intense classes- two of them with the hardest drawing instructor in the school- and easily taking the stairs up to the fifth floor almost every day. Yesterday I went to school to sort through some photos and print some things out. I was there for maybe two hours- more like one and a half- and I needed a nap by the end. One of the elevators was broken, so it was a long wait for the other one. I took the stairs up to the fifth floor for the first time in months. It took all that I had- I leaned heavily on the handrail and went very slowly. It really impressed on me how much worse I've gotten, and I have no way of knowing when I'm going to get feeling better. That's why I need to leave the school, because I just don't have the energy anymore.

I wish I could say for sure that I'll be coming back. But the reality is that it could be years before I'm really able to, and by then life might have taken me somewhere else. Or it could be just one quarter that I'm gone, who knows. We'll just have to see.

Anger Management

2009-11-20T10:28:00.003-06:00

I don't look particularly threatening. I mean, I'm a short and skinny person who looks about 14 despite being about ten years older, who has a fondness for animated movies and likes to belt out Backstreet Boys lyrics while driving along in her car. I have a nice collection of stuffed animals for God's sake, and the silliest looking little dog ever. I've been described as cute in multiple languages, and adorable, and people I don't know are constantly asking me what grade I'm in.

So you would think I would be more or less harmless, but that just means you haven't seen me when I get angry.

It doesn't happen very often. Most of the time I take things in stride, or else get upset rather than angry. The result of this, though, is that it slowly builds up, so that when I do explode I don't see it coming. It seriously seems to me, after the fact, that it comes up suddenly out of nowhere and the anger just takes over. I start shouting and throwing things, and storming around and kicking the furniture. It's a little frightening for me because I'm used to being in control of myself, avoiding any and all conflict by just not saying anything, but then I turn into this total monster for a good five minutes every couple of months.

Most of the time it doesn't effect anyone else. I keep it hidden, try to contain it, to get out later when I'm alone and can throw my sandals at the dresser or rip pieces of paper into tiny shreds. But two days ago I was talking to my girlfriend on the phone when it happened, and I lost control of myself again. I think it flared up around her because we're so close, and I feel safe around her almost like I'm alone, if that makes sense. I'm very, very lucky that she didn't dump me then and there. There is no excuse for my behavior. Plenty of reasons, but none of them justify the hurt I inflicted with my outburst. Part of it was definitely related to frustration with my parents at the moment. Part of it was probably being hungry, or exhausted, or the fact that my dad came home early without warning that day, interrupting my peace and quiet. It had to do with my girlfriend recounting her bad day, and me being upset that her day was bad too. But whatever the reasons for it, it was wrong and I hurt the person I love the most.

I've always made excuses for it, because I do have a lot of good reasons to be angry, not the least of which is having a misunderstood medical condition that makes me look like an idiot a lot of the time. I've had shouting matches with my parents before that hurt everyone involved, so it isn't a new issue. But now is the time to find a better outlet, or at least gain enough control over my emotions to not hurt someone else. For one thing, I'm planning on figuring out how to spot the buildup before the explosion- that way I give myself time to get away from anyone else before I let it all out. I also need to find a way to let it out more frequently in smaller amounts, because I think that would make my life better anyway- tucking it all away can't be good for me. I'm glad, to a certain extent, that something happened to bring the whole thing into perspective, even though it sucked. Now at least I can work on it.

Lunchbox Cult

2009-11-19T08:58:00.004-06:00

I had a pretty disturbing dream last night. It was basically about me joining a cult. I don't really remember how it started; I think it was my girlfriend who took me to this meeting in a high school classroom where this really charismatic cult leader guy was trying to recruit people. We were really late, so I didn't get most of what they were talking about, but I figured it was probably all fake anyway. We ended up staying after a few minutes to talk to the leader guy, who I thought at the time was pretty sketchy. It was a little bit weird.

We went home and I was talking to my girlfriend on the phone (apparently we lived in seperate places) when I got a call from the cult leader, inviting me to a meeting at the high school late that night. This time I went without my girlfriend.

We were all sitting in a classroom, crammed into high school desks, with the leader writing diagrams on the blackboard. At first I thought the whole thing was pretty weird, but then we all got these gift bags with really random stuff in them that apparently had to do with the cult, like robes we were supposed to wear and a complicated set of lunchboxes with compartments for everything. I thought this was really cool, apparently, and decided to at least give the cult a chance (you know me, easily swayed by... fancy lunchboxes? XD).

Then he went on to talk about the various beliefs the cult had, including this method of talking to spirits and ghosts, which it turned out I was really good at. The information all seemed to be disjointed and not make any sense, but somehow I understood it and I was thoroughly convinced. By the end of the meeting I was feeling really weird- really happy, but kind of drugged, and I couldn't for the life of me remember if he had given us anything to eat or drink. I was having trouble understanding a survey one of the higher up people was trying to give me about the meeting. I paid seven dollars to join the cult, in cash, in the form of a $4 bill, a $2 bill and a $1 bill. Then I woke up, vaguely disturbed. o.O

Interesting Stairs House

2009-11-14T17:51:00.003-06:00

Last night I had a dream about an interesting house, and it was funny because it relates completely to stuff I've been thinking about.

It started out that I was at this tiny theater to watch a musical that one of my close friends (who I needed to email in real life) was directing. I sat down and it started, with a couple of characters emerging suddenly from behind a tree that had at first looked like it was painted onto the background. I thought this was really clever, but then the play turned out to be pretty bad, and most of the audience left. I ended up talking to my friend instead and telling her everything I had planned to email her about.

Then the dream changed and I was walking around this massive house with my dad. He was helping me apartment hunt so I could have some good options to show my girlfriend when she came to visit. The place had a lot of stairs, which I had reservations about, but it was pretty cool all the same. You entered the front doors, which were massive, dark carved wooden double doors, and there was a small entry room with a closet and a flight of stairs going up, with a beautiful carved wooden banister and aged but gleaming wooden steps. Up those stairs was a small sitting room, like a miniature living room, with more stairs going up. On the next landing there were two hallways going left and right. One hallway had the master bedroom and no less than four other bedrooms, obviously intended for kids by the paint colors, all off the hallway and right next to each other, sharing one bathroom. I thought at the time that this setup was pretty weird, with the parents and kids right on top of each other. This floor was carpeted in a soft blue-green carpet.

Down the other hallway was a tiny office space and a closed door. When I opened this door, I found myself looking into a massively gigantic room. It was carpeted like the bedrooms and looked identical, except that it was multiple thousand square feet by itself. The ceiling was pretty standard height but the room continued on so far that it was difficult to make out the opposite wall. I remember wondering what on earth you would use a room that big for.

Back on the landing, I went up another flight of stairs to find a couple more office-like spaces, with wood floors this time. Up more stairs took me to the top floor of the house. It was massive. There was a huge kitchen behind metal doors, looking like it belonged in a restaurant with steel countertops and huge amounts of workspace, plus a big walk-in freezer. Next to the kitchen was a small area with a few tables next to the stairs. Through another door was a massive room like the interior of a restaurant, with tons of tables set with napkins, silverware, candles and even menus. Beyond that I could see an empty area like a ballroom. The carpet up here was a rich shade of red and the whole place looked pretty classy.

I followed my dad back down to the front door, exhausted from climbing the stairs and seriously wondering why I was considering this house. I really liked it and thought it was cool, though I was trying to figure out what on earth we were going to use the restaurant and random huge room for. Plus I knew I didn't want a kitchen upstairs from my bedroom like in my parents' house. I resolved to discuss it with my girlfriend and then suddenly woke up, really amused.

I'm already feeling physically better and I only just dropped classes yesterday, so I'm sure now that I did the right thing. Plus my parents have agreed, more or less, to give me space on the health stuff. We'll see how long that lasts.

Dropping

2009-11-13T14:52:00.003-06:00

Today I went up to my school and dropped two of my three classes. I was stressed out all morning, dreading it. It was pretty quick and easy, but I still feel really guilty about it for some reason.

It's not that I think I'm not doing the right thing. I already feel a lot less stressed out knowing that I just have one class to keep up with now. It really was too much and there's no doubt about that. It's just hard for me to let go sometimes, especially when I'm doing well in a class despite everything. Plus I'm a little worried I'm going to get crap for it or something, which is silly because I do have the best reasons ever.

I still have to sort out not coming back next quarter, but fortunately it turns out I can do it any time between now and the end of the quarter. That gives me a little bit more time to recover before I tackle the next hurdle.

I have been talking to my parents about it, and they reacted more or less exactly how I predicted, with my mom freaking out and resistant at first, but then getting it after a lot of explanation, and my dad taking it in stride. My parental drama now has to do with how worried they are about the state of my health.

It's not surprising. I mean, they really care about me and sincerely want me to feel better, and I do appreciate that- a lot. But it can be stifling- they want to direct everything, and get more involved than I really want them to be. Part of it probably comes from living with them still. Right now I'm just trying to get myself a little bit of space, and do some recovering before I go back to my neurologist. My parents wanted me to make an appointment as soon as possible, but I think that's rushing things. I want to see what effect, if any, not having classes to get to and get through and stress out about has on my health first. I really think I'll get feeling better in the next couple of weeks without doctor intervention. Also, I need my slightly raised Xyrem dose to settle out so I can tell if it helps or my side effects come back. Basically they want to rush over there and start interrogating my doctor about how we're going to fix me, and I just want to coast along and see how I feel. I think my parents still have this idea of a healthy me that may never actually happen. I have Narcolepsy, and I know that I may always have this interfering with my life. I'm okay with that at this point- I'm beginning to accept the idea of making the most of the situation instead of trying to live as if I don't have a chronic condition. I think my parents aren't quite there yet.

I'm really really grateful for their support and how much they care. But I'm also glad that my girlfriend agrees with me and supports my view of the situation. I might have mentioned that I have the best person in the universe as my girlfriend, so it's thoroughly unfair to compare my parents to her. It does mean that in the future life will most likely involve less freaking out, at least about this stuff, which is something I'm very happy about.

Forest Exploring Ceremony

2009-11-11T10:25:00.003-06:00

I had the coolest dream last night. It was set at my grandparents' house- I was there with two of my cousins and we were younger- maybe 13 or 14. The backyard was this vast forest that was dark and dense and generally awesome. It was filled with hundreds of twisty, fantastical trees that looked like they belonged in Disney's Tarzan. It was cool and wet and the forest floor was mostly mud and moss.

I was inside, getting ready for an expedition into the forest. My mission was to hunt for these glowing rocks and when I found one, to leave a token of some kind there. You could see the glow from a certain distance, so it was going to take a lot of walking. The whole thing was some sort of coming of age ceremony, and I had an elaborate costume made out of sticks, leaves and mud. I went into the kitchen (which actually looked like the kitchen at my old house) and was searching around for provisions to take with me. My expedition was going to take me all day and I needed to have enough food. I found a box of gluten-free granola bars in a cabinet and thought that would be perfect. Then I found an instant breakfast sandwich wrapped in foil- the box said it was self-cooking, you just put the foil in the sun and it would be ready to eat. That sounds perfect, I thought. I packed that in my small backpack. Just then, my grandmother called me and my cousins into another room. I don't remember what it was exactly but one of my cousins had done something against the rules. I was exasperated because I was ready to leave and go on my fun adventure and I didn't want such a pointless distraction.

I feel like there were a couple more delays before I actually got out there, but I had just started to explore (now with a couple of other cousins) when I woke up.

Well, at least the extra Xyrem is improving my dreams, even if I'm still not getting enough deep sleep.

Going Domestic

2009-11-10T19:51:00.005-06:00

It's finally time to reveal my latest life plan. To be honest, it surprises me a bit. But then again, life is surprising and it likes to change your path in ways you never expected. I suppose that's something I've been learning through my last eight attempts at planning the future, lol.

As you know if you've been reading about my life for some reason, my Narcolepsy has been really kicking my ass lately. For over a year I've been working on an Animation degree at the local art institute, but as my energy level has been plummeting the last couple of months I've been rethinking things. I dropped from four classes to three two quarters ago out of necessity and now I'm struggling to stay afloat with just the three (and they're easier). When I started this degree (my second bachelor's) a year ago, my intention was to use it to get a full time studio job because the field of animation is just such a good fit for me personality-wise. If I were going to work full time, that would be the job for me. And I've really enjoyed my classes, don't get me wrong. It's been a blast and I've learned a ton about a lot of art-related fields, as well as some useful practical skills. But things have changed. I've gone downhill far enough to really put full time work out of reach. For awhile I just assumed I would switch to trying to work part time eventually, but right now that, too, has become unrealistic. So there goes the main reason I was pursuing another degree.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to realize that taking these classes has begun to interfere with taking care of myself. While I'm still enjoying them, I've been really stressed out because I'm barely keeping up with the work. Having a class on a day tends to kill it- by the time I drive over there, try to concentrate for four hours and drive home, that's my entire day's worth of energy gone. I'm finding it difficult to keep things clean around the house or cook something other than a frozen dinner on those days. Most of my class days- three days a week- my dog doesn't get his second walk. And basically I'm tired of skimping on the important dog and health aspects of my life in order to finish an extra degree.

But there is the really good addition to my life right now, namely the fact that I'm dating my best friend in the world, who actually gets all of this stuff. We're planning to move in together over the summer, and her take on the situation was that as she's going to be busy and full-time employed with a steady job that's likely to always be in demand, she can support me financially. I could take care of the animals and the apartment and help her to stay organized (which she desperately needs help with), and run the errands and work on my art, and that will be my full-time job. I think this idea is brilliant because for once I feel like it's something I could actually physically manage, even with Narcolepsy breathing down my neck. It also aligns more closely with my own personal values than any hypothetical careers I've tried to come up with in the past. Taking care of her and our environment and pets sounds wonderful to me. And you know, if I start feeling better I can always add more. If my art becomes something good I could pursue that, maybe even make some money on the side, but I wouldn't be in the predicament of needing to produce it fast enough to support myself. Also, I can be on her health insurance, which solves that looming problem.

I'm anticipating some resistance from the parents on this latest occupation idea, however. I tried to feel my mom out on the idea of not finishing my Animation degree, and she has the opinion that if I'm not in school or working this means I'm going to be bored or unhappy. Now, this makes sense, because that's how she would feel without school or a job, which is why she's worked right through periods of her own bad health. But I think I'll be fine. I'm pretty zen. I can slow down and actually be happier that way.

I think my dad will be resistant just because he really likes making money, has a ton of energy, and has trouble seeing things from other points of view. I had a really good conversation with him last week about how my health is right now, so I'm hopeful he'll understand that aspect of it. But he's always had this image of successful career-woman me in his head that I've been bumping up against my entire life.

What I think is interesting about this situation is that if I had a serious boyfriend instead of a serious girlfriend no one would so much as blink- this is Texas after all. And if it was fifty years ago this novel, out-there idea of being my spouse's housewife would have been a given. But it is here and it is now, and this will be interesting.

Old House Exploration Sleepover

2009-11-10T09:11:00.004-06:00

Yesterday I got fed up with not sleeping very well and raised my first dose of Xyrem slightly, hoping that even if my stomach rebelled I would at least get more sleep for a few days. I did sleep better and had a couple really interesting dreams.

It started out that it was dark outside and I decided to take my dog out into the yard to use the bathroom before going to bed. I put his leash on for some reason and opened the door, and found myself in this fanastical Japanese garden. It was really cool- it had a curved wooden plank bridge over this little stream that had big waves in it, and there was a lot of wild-looking plants everywhere. I crossed the bridge and it was suddenly the middle of the afternoon, and I realized I was actually in the backyard of my old house. It was how I remembered it being as a child, before we did any landscaping, and everything was exactly how it was at that time. I ran around exploring it and just really happy to be back there.

Then I went inside the house and was exploring in there, and it kept changing into different dream variations on that house- everything from how it was laid out last week in my dream with the huge computers to some variations on it I hadn't dreamed about in years. I found some really neat stuff in my room, though I don't remember the specifics now. As I walked into the living room I instead found myself in this mall. Apparently my parents had started a mall out of our living room and as business grew they had built on to the front of the house. It was pretty crowded and they were selling some pretty random things. It was a bunch of tables loaded with piles of boxes of stuff for sale, a lot of it candy or little knickknacks. I spotted some stairs and started going up to see what was above.

There turned out to be floors and floors on this building, which had turned into an adobe style thing- all the walls were smooth and brown. Every so often the stairs would end in another room of merchandise, and in one of them was a pile of candy bars that were labeled "gluten" in large letters, which I thought was hilarious at the time. I kept running into food I couldn't eat while I was exploring, but I didn't really mind because I having fun seeing what all was there.

After that dream I had another one in which I started out in a class my best friend was teaching, and I don't remember much about it except that it somehow turned into a sleepover with my high school friends on a boat where I was taking pictures for my photography class with the fancy camera. I was trying to get nice portraits of people but it was like 3 AM and I was really tired.

Overall I think it's an improvement as I'm feeling better rested this morning. It was also nice having a night without frustration or disturbing aspects to my dreams.

A Good Cry

2009-11-06T19:46:00.003-06:00

Sometimes you just need a good cry.

Every time I've tried to talk to anyone about my health lately I've ended up in tears before I can even really say anything. I'm in a pretty bad place with Narcolepsy right now. I've been going downhill for months and my neurologist is basically out of ideas, which makes me feel pretty helpless. I'm having more and more trouble doing the work for my increasingly fewer classes and I'm sleeping worse as the nights go on. I feel like I'm fighting an uphill battle and losing ground every day. To say I'm scared would be an understatement.

At the same time my life is changing for the better. I've been able to make plans to move out of my parents house (which I was seriously worried I would still be living in at the age of 35) to start a life with my girlfriend (who we have already established is the best person ever). It's such a wonderful emotional thing, and my health is such a terrible emotional thing that between the two I've felt like I've been on an emotional rollercoaster all day.

I talked to my mom this morning and my dad when he got home from work. Both parents are ecstatic about the plans and worried about the health. I had a heart to heart with my dad on the way home from dinner about how bad my Narcolepsy is getting and how helpless I feel in the face of it. When we got home he gave me the tightest hug in a long time and told me he loves me. I was already crying, but I lost it even more because I'm so damned lucky to have the parents that I have. I headed straight for the shower and cried my eyes out for awhile. I actually let all my feelings about my health come out for once; most of the time I shove the panic down and try to ignore it, to pretend like I can handle this.

My inner therapist is telling me that I need to learn to accept the lack of control. I think that's one of the major things I can learn from this illness... that I need to let things happen sometimes instead of getting caught up in frustration and disappointment when I can't change how I feel. But I'm so not there yet. At least the people around me are the best people in the world, and because of that I know everything will turn out okay.

I Already Forgot My Clever Title For This Entry

2009-11-06T09:34:00.004-06:00

I've been having a pretty trippy week. I'm still doing a lot more intense dreaming than usual and it's taking its toll on my energy level.

Yesterday I woke up from a really bloody and gorey dream in which I was this girl in a family that was heavily involved in organized crime. I didn't look anything like me; I had very dark hair and so did the rest of my dream family. A lot of them were these big burly thugs like you see in movies. I forget what the latest crime plot was, but most of the dream took place at this party that was outside in a rural, forested place. It was daylight but overcast and a little spooky. At one point I discovered that there was an undercover FBI agent at the party and decided (for reasons I don't remember) to help him out. I was terrified of my brothers finding out what I was doing. Someone figured out who the agent was and I was helping him escape; we were being chased and I had to lead him through the back of our sprawling, mansion-like house. There was lots of gunfire and blood and the whole thing was pretty disturbing, but he got away and I hid in a bathroom so no one would know I had been involved.

I actually had some energy to start with yesterday, which was good because photographing stuff takes it out of me. I got my first photo idea all set up when my memory card claimed to be out of space, which made no sense because I was careful to delete everything off of it last time I was downloading things. I ended up having to go buy another one.

Leaving the house always lays me out, but there's an office supply place really close to my neighborhood so I figured if I just went there they would have it. Wrong. I drove over there to find that they didn't have anything like what I needed and by the time I got back (all of five minutes later) I was so exhausted I had to lay down.

I figured a nap and some lunch would give me the energy I needed to go to the slightly further away office supply place. Well, by the time I got back from there (and a quick grocery stop because I had discovered when I tried to make lunch that I was almost completely out of food) it was 2 PM and I was pretty much dead in the water.

I was determined to get some homework done, so I took a couple of shots in my room. Then I dragged myself upstairs and spent the rest of the day on the couch or in bed. That's the earliest I've crashed in awhile.

And today I don't feel much better. I was reading Harry Potter again last night and dreamed that I was Harry and had to hide from Voldemort, who could suddenly read my mind, so if I made the mistake of thinking about where I was he would appear and I would have to escape over and over. I ended up some really weird places, like a carnival with giant brightly colored rides, a small log cabin in the woods, a big theater in a high school, etc etc, with various other characters mixed in. At least it wasn't particularly disturbing.

Here's to hoping that today isn't a repeat of yesterday, even though I'm already dragging...

The Best Girl in the Entire World

2009-11-04T20:37:00.002-06:00

I'm not sure where to start on this one, because there's so much history and depth and communication and plain old sappy love involved. So I think I'll settle for the simple explaination: I found a girl.

We've been best friends since we met five years ago at Carleton. Over the years we've been through a lot together and we've grown very attached to each other. We have never really had secrets from each other- she's always been the one person I could tell everything to. Not even every crazy little detail of the inner workings of my messed up brain have scared her off, which is impressive. We have always shared a very deep bond.

During our senior year at Carleton we realized we were completely in love with each other. The timing was unfortunate and a lot of stress and depression (on both sides) eventually caused it all to crash. Since then our feelings toward each other never went away. We got over ourselves and our close friendship continued after graduation, though we were both afraid of broaching the subject again. Despite living across the country from each other we actually kept up communication so well that our relationship got even stronger over the past year.

A month ago we decided we might as well be officially dating again since we were practically dating already anyway, haha. And since then we've both been so much happier about life. I can't even begin to describe how much I love her and I'll spare you the ridiculous amount of sappiness that could fill about eight entries on here, easily. I'll just say that life is good, my girlfriend is awesome, and leave it at that.

Getting Exercise

2009-11-02T16:29:00.005-06:00

Today I had a day pretty much off from class things, having been especially responsible about getting things done last week (or it might have been the caffeine, haha). So when I got up this morning I decided to catch up on some cleaning. When I'm as focused on getting through college (again) as I've had to be lately with my health going downhill, things fall by the wayside around my part of the house. I'm only responsible for my small bedroom and the downstairs bathroom but it still has to get pretty bad before I do anything about it. Now, we are talking about my grew-up-with-a-total-neatfreak version of bad, so I'm sure there are many worse bathrooms out there. But it was seriously starting to bother me. Besides that, dust has been building up in my room again so I figured I would tackle that afterwards.

I figured I'd just do my cleaning in the morning, so after I ate breakfast I got out all the bathroom cleaning stuff to drag back downstairs. Then I got to work. It took me awhile because I had to figure it out- it had been awhile since I'd done more than the vanity and with my terrible memory I had forgotten exactly how to clean everything. By the time I finished the bathroom was gleaming and I was overdue for a nap. I decided to take the dog outside first.

I got out there to find myself facing another accidental nap on the porch and just went straight back inside. I took an hour-long nap and was still tired after that. I definitely abandoned the idea of dusting.

I tend to forget how much cleaning takes it out of me. If you think about it though, if you're doing a good job it is pretty serious exercise, though it isn't valued as such. It does involve a whole lot of moving around, getting down on your knees and using muscles you aren't really used to using. I can remember countless times pre-diagnosis when I would try to do just a little bit of cleaning and end up completely flattened. I used to be very confused as to why it was so exhausting. Sweeping especially kills me- all that standing up nonsense. How dare I think about walking around like that, moving my arms, haha. It's too much physical work, so I leave it to my dad. At least these days I usually remember to save the cleaning I do have to do for days when I don't have anything else.

Festive Music

2009-10-31T19:25:00.003-05:00

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. Something about getting to dress up like an animal and having it be not weird, most likely. It's been several years since my last trick-or-treating expedition- I eventually admitted to having grown out of it, and when you can't eat the candy anymore (because there's soy or gluten in pretty much all of it) it kind of loses its purpose.

The other side of Halloween- the horror film, blood and gore, scary music, dead rotting people side- has never been something I've enjoyed. I think it has to do with the fact that these things tend to show up in my dreams, which are creepy enough to begin with without any encouragement, thanks. I could write horror films by simply recording my nightmares back before Xyrem. Also, being afraid has never been something I enjoy, even though I know people who actually like it. The weirdos.

All this week I've been watching tv- with all the horror movie previews- and I've ended up coming across the usual stupid fake skeletons in people's yards a lot. At the same time I've been sleeping steadily worse every night this week. So of course last night there were creepy rotting people all the heck over my dreams, and I kept brushing up against them on accident and feeling them- at one point I was swimming in an inky black cave that was completely underwater, and they were all over the floor, and there was a current in there that kept me from easily swimming out. It was a tiny part of a whole lot of complete nonsense that lasted all night, and besides that mostly wasn't creepy. But I woke up dead tired because I had spent all night in REMland instead of getting actual rest. I didn't dare try to sleep in because I knew it would just be more crazy dreams, so I ended up taking a nap right after breakfast instead. It took caffeine to get me through my class okay.

So I get to my class in the afternoon. It's Introduction to Audio, so it's basically about music. So of course our instructor thinks it would be really awesome to play us some creepy music so we can talk about what makes it creepy.

As soon as he announced this I started to tense up. The last time I got talked into watching a horror movie it was the music that really kicked my ass. I was creeped out for months after that. So even without the visual I knew I was pretty much screwed. Still, it didn't occur to me to just leave. I can be stubborn about these things in kind of a bad way.

From the first note of squealy, screechy music I was totally freaked out. And as I was expecting, even after it was turned off, it kept playing in my head. On the way home I blasted bad pop music, but when I got home and turned off the car it was back, screeching away in my brain where I couldn't escape from it. It took lots of happy music and watching Kung Fu Panda to finally get it out of there. So I went upstairs, feeling the inner peace and totally doing fine again.

I'm sitting next to the tv (with it off) eating dinner when my dad comes home and sits down. He turns on the tv, and there's the music again, in a stupid preview for yet another new horror flick. I ask him to mute it. He doesn't hear me. I ask him again. I finally yelled, and he heard me and muted it, looking like I was totally weird for being that insistent. And then he ends up watching this spoof horror movie- probably one of the Scary Movies- and it has the same damn music. I was so out of there. I grabbed my dog and ran for it. When I got downstairs I was shaking.

I decided I needed out of the house. So I got my dog leashed up and we went for a walk. As soon as we got outside I felt better. It's a cool, clear evening, and the moon is beautiful tonight. Walking down the street, looking up at it, I remembered why I like Halloween so much. There's nothing quite like walking around after dark under such a nice moon.

College Visit Car Trouble

2009-10-30T09:14:00.003-05:00

Last night I was on a roadtrip. I had driven to another city to visit a college for some reason. I had just gotten finished with whatever it was I was supposed to do there and was completely exhausted. I was also hungry, so as I got in my car (it was exactly my real car for once) I decided I was going to go find a grocery store and get something to eat back at my hotel. I thought I had seen a grocery store on my way to the college so I thought I would try that.

I was having some weird driving issues. For one thing, my brake wasn't working as well as it usually does, so I had to be really careful. As I navigated the large and busy parking lot, I kept almost scraping cars when I turned around them, but then I would just get by without touching. It was pretty nerve-wracking, but I got to an exit and was just congratulating myself on not hitting anything when the car pulling into the same entrance misjudged and scraped into me. I heard this horrible scraping sound and my car shook. I sighed, put my car in park and got out.

The guy was actually really nice. He looked a lot like (but not exactly) one of the people who works at Petco and chats a lot while I'm checking out. I went rummaging around for paper to get his insurance information written down.

I was feeling pretty light-headed and confused because I was so tired and hungry. I looked at the cars. From what I had experienced inside the car, I thought I would just have a scrape along the side, but instead it was quite different. The front of his car had somehow smashed the back of mine, though it wasn't bad enough that I couldn't still drive it. His car looked really bad though. Pretty quickly a couple of people came to tow away his car and we moved out of the way by sitting down at this table that was randomly in the parking lot for some reason. This part of the dream got really frustrating because all I was trying to do was write down the man's information, but I would write his name only to lose track of my stack of papers and then not be able to find it again, or I would be trying to write his phone number and it would turn into crazy symbols so that I couldn't read it, or I would write something down and the wind would blow the paper off the table, and when I picked it up it would be blank.

I was convinced it was just me being confused and tired. I seriously didn't figure out that I was dreaming because I was too busy being worried that I wouldn't get the important information down. I told the man (and his father, who was suddenly there randomly) that I was hungry and that was why I was having so much trouble, and they started offering me various gluten-containing things which of course I had to refuse. Finally the man just wrote it all down for me and handed me the paper. I thanked him and went back to my car.

It was gone. Apparently it had been towed with the other car. I sat down on the grass, and out of nowhere my grandparents showed up. I explained to them what had happened and got in their truck, and we were on the way to the grocery store when I woke up. And was very surprised (and relieved) to find that it hadn't really happened.

Professional Porch Napping

2009-10-27T20:40:00.003-05:00

This morning I actually slept okay for the first time in awhile. I had a cool dream in which I was travelling around inside a vast dormlike place via subway trains and buses, hanging out with two of my close high school friends. It occasionally made itself frustrating, but for the most part was a good dream. And after that I actually slept as far as I could tell when I woke up later than usual, feeling somewhat refreshed (or at least less run over than the rest of the week).

So I figured, since we were going to have a substitute in my class today and therefore it would most likely be shorter than usual, that today wouldn't be so bad. Maybe I could get away with two naps instead of like five, and by the time 7 PM came around I wouldn't be ready to keel over and give up on that staying awake nonsense.

Well, driving to class actually wasn't that hard for once, as I felt like I could pay attention without having to focus every ounce of brainpower on it. Class was fine for about the first half hour, and sleeping during the twenty minute break did help, though I got weird looks from my classmates again. But by the end of the three hour class I was pretty dead. Driving home was difficult and when I had finally pulled up safely into our driveway I just sat in my car for a few minutes, summoning the energy to open the door and get out.

I decided it would be a good idea to let my dog out into the yard for a few minutes and then take a good solid nap. My body decided, however, that that wasn't going to be soon enough. And I ended up falling asleep sitting on the front porch. It was at least ten minutes of nap and it was definitely not planned. I was aware for most of it, so it's not like I was completely out, but that was my first accidental nap in awhile. Though I still think it's kind of funny (add that to my entertaining list of strange places I've taken a nap) it really just highlights the trend I've been experiencing lately. The not so great for any future plans I might have trend.

At this point I'm starting to doubt everything I had thought about before- about how animation is really something that would suit me as a career. It's not that I don't like it or that I'm not good at it, but it requires energy. Which I don't have. And I really don't know what to do about this as my lack of energy seems to be getting alarmingly worse. My doctor is out of medications to add at this point, after the Ritalin made me depressed, and I'm pretty sure he's as frustrated as I am with the situation. We can't increase the Xyrem either; we tried and my side effects came back, and besides that my stomach can't really handle it anyway.

So right now I'm in a pretty angsty state of mind. I keep having to cut back on my daily activities in order to avoid completely flattening myself for days at a time, but every time I think I'm done cutting stuff out of my life I end up having to cancel more. I'm sick to death of being in this house, but leaving it takes more energy than I have to spare most of the time. I keep trying to decide what to do with my life, but everything I want to do takes more energy than I have, so I find myself stuck without plans at all. I just don't know what I'm going to do.

New Job Garage Art Frilly Reunion

2009-10-26T08:20:00.003-05:00

Weird dreams this morning. o.O

In one dream I was working for this company that apparently helped people edit their papers. It was a kind of fancy looking office and we all had to wear suits. All the furniture was shiny polished hardwood. A client would come in and check in at this library desk, and then the receptionist would send them back to one of our editing cubicles.

It was apparently my first day on the job and my first ever client turned out to be an acquaintance from high school, only in the dream I thought I knew her from Japan. I was relieved to have someone I knew because that way I wouldn't have to be all formal and nervous. We talked for awhile and she gave me a research paper for grad school to edit. It wasn't that hard but I was starting to get sleepy sitting in my comfy armchair. I started to move around, finding excuses to stand up because I needed to wake up again. Unfortunately this strategy backfired and I got really tired and started having trouble pretending I was fine.

The next dream I had took place at my house except that it was still my senior year of college. Our garage was the Carleton ceramics studio, and if you went into the actual house it was nothing but twisting hallways with these framed bold graphic poster-sized drawings hanging neatly on both walls. Apparently I had just finished my senior comps project and was pulling it out to look at everything in the garage. The last person to be in there had left a slide projector and a lamp across the street in a park for some reason, and I was annoyed because it could have easily been stolen. I took both back into the garage but left the garage door open because even though it was foggy outside there would be better light in there that way. I had laid out all of my work on a table and was looking at it. It didn't look great, because the glaze had come out kind of weird and not how I'd planned, but I figured it would work anyway. I had lots of different sizes of dinosaurs and other animals, and the really big ones had lots of detail. The lighting in there was pretty bad and kept getting worse until it occured to me to turn on the light. At one point a giant ceramic owl fell from the rafters and half-smashed on the floor, and I was relieved that it had missed the table and hadn't broken any of my art. People kept coming in and looking at my stuff or just randomly wandering in and out, and one of them was a friend I had in elementary school who I haven't spoken to in many years, only in the dream I apparently still knew her pretty well because we were discussing art stuff. We got onto the subject of making jewelry and she showed me a couple of rediculously impressive little metal pendants she had found somewhere. One of them was shaped like a tiny domed building, and if you opened the little door and looked inside there were tiny metal people dancing (literally moving) under a tiny chandelier. The whole thing was made of gold and on a gold chain.

That dream melded into another one in which I was at a family reunion showing off the little metal building. My grandparents and cousins were all there and we were sitting in chairs around the edge of a small square bedroom with a big fancy bed in the middle. Everything from the curtains to the carpet to the fluffy comforter were pink and frilly. No one thought it was weird to be in there, lol. I mostly listened in on conversations for awhile but people kept talking about things I didn't really understand. Eventually I decided to go home. I was walking around and saying goodbye to everyone when I woke up.

Every Time is Naptime!

2009-10-25T15:43:00.005-05:00

Well, the day after my failed Ritalin experiment was awesome. It was like night and day, haha. I still had my usual amount of no energy, but it was so much better than the day before that I felt like I was doing great. I'm really glad the depression wore off so fast. It was also nice because the weather was awesome for my photography homework.

A couple of days later, though, and I'm back to the every time is naptime routine. On Friday my mom was home, and since she had lots of errands to run I went with her. It worked out really well, actually, because we would chat about stuff as she drove, then when we got somewhere she left me in the car to nap while she went in. So I didn't get too tired and so got a lot done, haha. There were a couple of parking lots where I felt kind of self-conscious sleeping. I mean, it's not like we were in a bad part of town or something, but it is kind of weird to be napping in your car, especially when you're pretty obviously over the age of 10. Luckily I've now officially mastered the ability to nap while still aware of my surroundings, so it wasn't unsafe. I bet I confused some random passersby, though, haha.

Speaking of confusing people, lol, last week in my photography class another student kept questioning me on why I take naps during every break. That class is pretty intense, so in order to get through the entire four hours without missing half the information I have to put my head down when I can. He kept questioning until I finally just told him that I'm really tired all the time. I don't like pulling out the word Narcolepsy. Either people think it's something it's not or they've never heard of it. I know I'm not helping to educate people and spread the word, but it's a pretty personal thing to me and I'd really rather not spread it around that I have this disabling illness. It's like, too much information to people I don't know. Plus there's the fact that I'm just too damn tired to explain all this crap. So I brush them off instead and let them wonder why I'm constantly napping.

Today I've taken two significant naps (more than five minutes, haha) already, but I think it's time for one more. Otherwise walking the dog will turn into napping while walking the dog, which is probably something that I should avoid.

And That Would Be a No

2009-10-22T15:26:00.003-05:00

I took Ritalin this morning, and at first it seemed like it was going to work. I was more awake, but then I got really really tired. As in worse than the usual Narcolepsy thing. I've been on the couch all day, dead tired, a little depressed and completely lacking motivation to try to do anything. I was excited about doing my photography homework this morning, but now I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen today, which is bad because if it rains tomorrow I could end up with hardly anything to turn in.

Mainly I'm just really frustrated. I planned carefully this week just in case something like this happened so I could still get by anyway, but it still sucks when the experiment doesn't work out, the small amount of hope you had allowed to build up gets dashed and you're back to square one. I'm definitely not taking this tomorrow, and I'll probably just call my doctor on Monday and see if he'll prescribe a different one. Then Thursday can be another experiment. I wonder if any of them will end up working out.

Oh well. Back to the endless napping.

Photography Homework

2009-10-22T09:09:00.003-05:00

Last night I dreamed I was working on my photography assignment. I really do have one to do over the next two days, and yeterday I was having trouble thinking of things to photograph because I used most of my good ideas up last week, haha. But in my dream I was having no trouble coming up with lots of crazy but awesome ideas. I kept waking up enough to jot suggestions down in my notes. In the dream I got so preoccupied by setting up cool ideas that it got dark before I had time to actually photograph anything. Plus people kept getting in my way. A friend I haven't spoken to in awhile was at my house, trying to do a puzzle with her eyes closed. She wouldn't even open her eyes while I was trying to get around the giant table she was working on. My dad kept following me around distracting me by asking me to do other things. There were a bunch of other people wandering around too. It was a pretty interesting dream, and when I woke up I jotted down a couple more ideas for my homework. Then I looked at the list. It was hilarious because half of the stuff involved parts of the house in the dream that don't exist in real life. I can't get on this house's roof, for example, and we definitely don't have a waterfall in our front yard, even though that would be awesome. There were still some ideas I can use though, if it stops raining. It was also nice to have such a coherent dream again as they've been disjointed lately.

Today I'm starting Ritalin. We'll see how that goes.

Even More Drugs!!

2009-10-19T10:33:00.002-05:00

I haven't been sleeping very well for about a week now. I had three or four mornings in a row where I woke up paralyzed after almost-nightmares, which had not been happening more than once every month or two before. After going back to sleep it's been whacky dreams and then I wake up early, feeling exhausted. Yesterday morning I was feeling okay- I actually slept some after my third dose- but by the afternoon I was more exhausted than I've been since the failed Nuvigil experiment. And this morning I'm way out of it and zoning out.

So I called my doctor. He wants me to try Adderal or Ritalin as a last resort of sorts since I'm really struggling to stay awake at this point, even though they could make me lose weight- which would be a very bad thing for me. But we've both decided that it's worth a try at this point since I can't take Nuvigil. I'm having a really hard time keeping up with my classes, which don't even have that much work.

So it's more drugs for me. I wanted to go pick whichever one he gives me up at the local pharmacy, but apparently you either have to pick them up from the sleep center or have them mailed to your house. I decided I'd rather wait a couple days for it to arrive here than drive for half an hour to pick it up. Yes, I am that tired.

In the meantime I just have to hang in there and try to get everything done. I really like my digital photography class, but it's hard because going around with a camera and snapping pictures from all sorts of angles is really exhausting. I managed to do this last assignment around my house, which was lucky because I only had the camera for a day and had to rest a lot. I'm a little worried that this week I'll have to go farther afield. At least nothing this quarter is really difficult so far.

Saturday Class

2009-10-17T09:43:00.002-05:00

Last night I dreamed about going to class today. Oddly enough, this quarter I really do have a class on Saturday, and it's no mystery why I dreamed about it because I've been dreading it all week. It's not that the class is all that bad. It's just Saturday. I mean, come on. I ended up stuck with it because I forgot to register until after the good times were taken.

In the dream I was sitting in class and getting very annoyed at the instructor. In real life he's very pompous and it's difficult not to roll my eyes at him, so this kind of made sense. So I got this fluffy blanket out of my backpack and put it over my head. Then I got out my ipod and was listening to the usual bad pop music. I also somehow had a cup of hot tea I was sipping. No one around me seemed to notice, even when I started singing along loudly, hahaha. Eventually I decided to poke my head out and see what was going on.

The prof was writing something in code on the board. Apparently he had just explained what it meant, but I hadn't been paying attention and had missed that part. He started calling on random people to answer questions that I didn't even understand. He called on me and I felt pretty guilty for getting distracted and not being able to answer. Then I woke up into another dream in which I told all these people about the dream I just had, lol.

It was pretty funny because even when I don't really like a class I always pay attention and get as much out of it as possible, even on a Saturday, and I definitely don't sing loudly in class. XD

The Earrings Saga

2009-10-16T09:02:00.004-05:00

Just over six weeks ago I got my ears pierced. This was a pretty big feat for me because I have a pretty serious needle phobia. I survived the first piercing and was really proud of myself for not fleeing in terror (which I was definitely in danger of doing at the time). I figured that I had gotten through the worst part and the rest of this would be easy.

Well, the first six weeks passed and I was pretty excited to be able to change out my earrings. On Monday I decided to go ahead and do it in the morning. Before I knew it it was half an hour later, my feet really hurt (how dare I stand up for half an hour!) and my fingers were all sore from gripping the metal backs of the earrings, which were showing no sign of budging. My arms were even sore from holding my hands up, haha. I gave up for the day.

Several days and several attempts later I was seriously wondering if I was stuck with these earrings for the rest of my life. I started talking to friends about it and found out that I probably needed someone to help me. With my only friends in town really busy and both parents away on business I pretty much had to wait. I kept at it anyway though.

Yesterday morning I finally got them out. I was really happy that I had managed to do it all by myself. I got a new pair that looked easy enough to put in and then I found out that the worst was not, in fact, anywhere near over yet.

It was terrifying. I could get one earring halfway in, but I couldn't find the hole in the back. I had no way of seeing it. The scary part was that the digging around in my ear I had to do while trying to find the hole felt way too much like a needle to me. I ended up having a panic attack right there in my bathroom. I refused to give up, which admittedly was pretty impressive at the time, but it ended up just making me feel worse because it just wasn't going to be possible without help. I got really good advice to use neosporin on the earring to dull the pain, but that wasn't until after my disastrous first try to get it in.

I was panicky all day. I was concious of the fact that if I didn't get the new ones in before I went to bed the holes would start to heal shut overnight and all of this would be for nothing, because after how frightened I had been I was pretty sure I wouldn't have the courage to get them pierced a second time.

Luckily my mom got home last night and agreed to help. I ended up on the floor (because when I was standing up I felt like I was going to faint), crying because I was afraid, with my mom leaning over my ear trying to find the hole. It didn't hurt because of the neosporin- it just felt like a needle and I didn't like it. I managed to stay still and finally it went through. Thank god for moms.

I've decided these are staying in for awhile, haha. I'm proud of myself for going through with this though, and I hear that the first time always sucks. And as scared as I was I think next time will be better, and that this will help me to eventually overcome my phobia. Take that, needles!

Really Weird Night

2009-10-14T09:44:00.004-05:00

Wow, last night was bizarre. And I'm still feeling it. o.O

The first two doses went just fine. I slept deeply with no dreams. At the end of the second dose I overslept my alarm by like half an hour, which has happened without anything weird before. But last night I had an interesting hallucination.

I woke up in my dark room and looked around. There was a ladder leaning up against my bookshelf, which made perfect sense to me at the time- I remembered needing to change a lightbulb yesterday and leaving it in my room so I could hang a couple of pictures up today. Then, suddenly, a bag of really tall golf clubs fell on me. It was startling because I hadn't seen them at all until they were falling towards me, and they were very long. When they fell against my arm they were really cold and smooth and it hurt a little. I sat up and leaned them back up against the ladder, suddenly remembering that they had been in the closet with it and that's why I had to bring them into my room, too. I decided to get up and go to the bathroom before going back to sleep.

When I stood up my door was open, and there was a cold white light coming in from the skylight over the entryway. I looked up at it as I came out of my room and started freaking out because it was snowing. I was really excited and ran to the front door to look out.

I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, but I could see there was a thin blanket of really fine snow over the grass. I was very impressed. I watched the small flakes fall for a few minutes until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore.

As I walked into the bathroom I suddenly knew that I was in a hallucination. Then I felt hands grabbing my arms and hands and I couldn't move. I fought the paralysis until it went away and I could sit up and turn my lamp on. I was suddenly back in my room, with no ladder (I didn't actually do anything with a ladder yesterday) or golf clubs (my parents have never had anything even vaguely resembling golf clubs, haha). I went to the bathroom without passing any skylights and it certainly wasn't snowing- it snows lightly here maybe once every couple of years, and certainly not in October. I was pretty creeped out by the dark corners, but I figured leaving my light on would help me sleep the rest of the morning.

Unfortunately I was wrong. I took my last dose and read a book until I figured it was safe to go back to sleep, only to get plunged right back into serious REMland. I had dream after vivid dream, and every time I woke up I fought paralysis. I went through three different half-dream, half-hallucinations that way. In the dreams I had all of my senses so it felt almost like real life. I would wake up to find my eyelids closing again of their own accord despite my light being on, and then in an instant I was back to dreaming. At least one dream was Harry Potter related (not surprising as I'm rereading those), and in another one I was on a football team (which is hilarious because I'm the biggest wimp ever). I woke up late and got up to avoid going right back under again, and I'm still fighting my eyelids after being up for half an hour. I'm thinking I need caffeine this morning.

I figure it might be food related. I did try a couple new things yesterday. Hmmm.

Flying Solo

2009-10-12T21:32:00.003-05:00

So today was my first day with no parents around. I'd like to say that it went well... except that it didn't.

Well, okay, so I didn't crash the car yet or anything. I still have all of my limbs intact even if they tend to have a mind of their own. The house is also, in fact, not burned down. So far so good?

I had a short class today, and I planned on going to the grocery store because- and this is a pretty good reason- I was literally out of food. And I can't exactly head for the Taco Bell, haha. So I decided yesterday that I would just go after my class.

After class I wasn't too tired because of a couple of strategic naps. So far so good, I thought as I drove out of the parking garage. But that's pretty much where that thought ended. First off, it started raining pretty hard. And then I managed to turn too early and had to backtrack. When I did get to the grocery store it was pouring and it was busy so I couldn't even park nearer the door. I got to the line with my food and realized I had forgotten something, so I ran down an aisle to get it. Big mistake. The running was the last straw. When I got back to the cashier I was completely drained. I didn't even run very far or fast, but it was still too much. The guy tried to make conversation while he was checking me out, but I just brushed him off and leaned on the counter and tried to muster the energy to get out to my car.

Of course while I was in there it had started raining even harder. I got soaked loading up my groceries. I sat down in the driver's seat and shut my eyes for a minute. But I knew I had groceries and even though it was raining it was hot, so I had to get everything home.

When I pulled up in my driveway I found that my dad had left his car in the garage, meaning I would have to unload everything in the rain. It was coming down harder than ever now that I really needed it to stop. I got wet and so did everything else, and my car alarm kept going off because it thought I had accidentally left the trunk open when actually I just had to carry each bag one at a time with both hands just to lift it at all. I pulled the bags into the house and shut the door. I leaned against the wall to catch my breath.

One of the things I really hate about this house is the fact that the kitchen is upstairs. I hate stairs. I dragged my three bags over to the stairwell and looked up.

I seriously felt like I was in The Lord of the Rings, during that part in Fellowship where Frodo is looking down the road and they use that really creepy camera thing where it's backing up and focusing at the same time, and the path looks really ominous. I looked up those stairs and wondered what I had been thinking, doing my grocery trip with no one to help me. Between the driving and class and shopping and driving... I wasn't sure if I had it in me to carry them that one last stage.

I ended up doing it both hands, one bag and a couple steps at a time. I'm going to pay for this tomorrow, but I was damned if I was going to let anything melt after getting it through all that rain. Then I spent the rest of the day on the couch recovering. I'll still be feeling this tomorrow, but at least I now have food.

Back to... Normal

2009-10-12T11:04:00.003-05:00

After my bad reaction to Nuvigil, it took me a couple of days to get back to normal. It was interesting because I was still more awake than usual even the second day I was off of it. But of course it couldn't last, and now I'm back to dragging myself through even the easiest chores.

Luckily this quarter it looks like my classes won't have difficult homework. It all seems like it'll be pretty easy to accomplish, and even with all the resting I might be able to do a good job on my assignments. That said, I'm a little worried about the next short while because both parents will be gone on seperate trips.

Looking back a couple of months I think it's pretty funny how much my attitude towards my parents leaving has changed. Every little thing when they were home used to bug me. As I've been feeling worse, though, I've been relying on them a lot more. Since driving has gotten more nerve-wracking I've been avoiding it by hitching rides with a parent to run errands, or asking one to get me something while they're at whatever store anyway. Also, both of them being gone means all the little chores around the house become things I have to remember to do. And when I'm this damned tired every little extra thing is a problem- every extra step is. When I was doing better over the summer, I was really happy to have the house to myself. Now I think I'd rather have them around, not just for the errands, but because I'm feeling so lousy that I don't leave the house very much anymore. And it's pretty lonely with no one around, because as much as I like my dog he doesn't talk much.

My neurologist said the only thing left for me to try (in an attempt to keep me awake) are stimulants. We haven't tried them before now because weight loss can be a side effect, and that would be really bad for me. I'm still underweight even though I've finally gained back a few pounds. I'm starting to think it might be worth doing, however. And I have a feeling that this time next week I will have gotten fed up and called him back.

Fancy World Traveller

2009-10-11T08:53:00.003-05:00

For most of this week my dreams have been so mixed up and nonsensical that I haven't been able to make enough sense out of them to record them. But last night was back to clear and interesting.

It started out in Japan where I was visiting my host mom and we decided to go shopping. We went to this store that had a variety of things. There was a lot of jewelry and clothing but also lots of kid's toys. At one point I was looking at these rainbow-colored puzzle pieces that you had to try and make a cube out of, only I couldn't get them to fit together and it was really difficult- they would change shape as I picked them up. I looked around at the earrings and the dinosaur toys and then at the clothes a little bit, and was excited about the fact that the blouses were small enough to actually fit me (I have trouble finding clothes that fit me here in the States because of how small I am, and in real life Japan it really was easier). I wasn't sure if there was a dressing room though, so I settled on a couple of dinosaurs and a necklace or something.

After that it turned out I needed to get dressed up for something. Now I was in a mall, but my closet was in this room off to the side where I could change. I had some really crazy clothes and was having trouble putting together anything that matched. I was getting pretty frustrated because I would put on one thing and it would turn into something completely different as I put it on, so that I would end up not matching again. I somehow didn't catch onto this for awhile though and just kept at it. Finally someone came in to help me (whoever I was with; maybe my mom?) and she had found someone to do my hair and make up. And after that I totally looked like a movie star, which I thought was pretty weird and not me but I figured it was just for this big event I was going to.

I actually don't remember what happened next, just that after awhile I ended up in an icy field with my parents, crossing it carefully because there were those concrete blocks they put at the end of parking spaces lying everywhere, only instead of concrete they were made of ice. It turned out to be a memorial of a war with the blocks symbolizing something. After awhile it turned out we had crossed over the sea into China and were right on the edge of Shanghai.

It was pretty cool because it looked like a Chinese watercolor painting of a rural landscape. My parents explained that they had wanted to show me Shanghai because they really liked going there on their trip over the summer (which is true). We went down a hill into an alley that looked like it belonged in Europe with medieval stone buildings really close together. It was after dark and I was kind of scared, but my mom started talking to the locals in Chinese (which she really is learning, though she was way more advanced in the dream) and sorted out where we should go. I was a little worried because I suddenly realized I didn't have any of my medication with me, and I didn't know where I would find something that I could eat. At the same time I was glad to be there though, because I felt that if it had been up to me I would have been too cautious about these things to visit China in the first place. And I was really glad to be there and learn something.

Gothic Room Creepy Mirror Faces

2009-10-07T08:42:00.003-05:00

It had been so long since the last time I had a gluten reaction (I'm ridiculously careful with my food) I forgot that gluten can actually give me nightmares despite the Xyrem. It wasn't so bad compared to my pre-Xyrem dreams but it was still pretty creepy.

In my dream I woke up in my current room to take my next dose of Xyrem, only it didn't look exactly like my real bedroom. There was a giant pile of stuffed animals on one whole wall and they were all lined up in a way that they were staring straight at me. None of them looked friendly. I got up to go to the bathroom, but it was really hard to keep my eyes open because I was sleepy and it was hard to see where I was going. When I got in the bathroom and looked in the mirror, my face looked really creepy and skull-like. I started to make different faces and it all just looked really scary- like in the mirror my grin would get unnaturally large until it was coming off of my face, and various parts of my face would stretch around unnaturally. I could feel it too- it didn't hurt but I could literally feel my mouth stretching out and the muscles migrating around.

After that I got sidetracked doing something else. I think I was trying to get dressed up for something, only I couldn't find what I was looking for. My room was really gothic. There were skulls on everything and there were a lot of little silver statues. I kept looking at the stuffed animals and their eyes would follow me as I moved around the room. I think there was some sort of plot for the next part of the dream involving my mom or something, but I don't remember. I just remember towards the end of the dream I was back in the bathroom making creepy faces again and scaring myself so that I started to get paralyzed. It never really took hold though, and I woke up suddenly and left the light on after that.

Today I feel like someone stabbed the inside of my entire digestive tract over and over. So I'm going to call my neurologist and tell him that Nuvigil is a no.

A Bad Experiment

2009-10-06T20:04:00.003-05:00

Well, at least now we know that Nuvigil is officially not gluten free.

For most of the day I was awake, which made my life much easier. Unfortunately I was also having a gluten reaction. In the morning right after taking it I was so brain fogged that I couldn't think. It's hard to describe because it isn't the same brain haziness that I have anyway with Narcolepsy. It's less about losing track of things and more about just not having any thoughts in my head at all. And if I have to make a decision I can do it, but it takes a really long time to get any thoughts into my head. So that was fun this morning. I spent a good solid ten minutes trying to decide what I was going to eat for lunch when it was really kind of obvious.

After that came the stomach cramps. Ouch. That lasted most of the afternoon. After lunch my brain was mostly working again, which was good because I had a class. It looks like it'll be really good, actually, but it was long- it went all the way until 5. I ended up driving home in traffic, awake but dead tired. If I thought I was tired before the Nuvigil, I had just forgotten what a gluten reaction is like on top of the Narcolepsy. It completely floored me. I came home and headed straight for the couch and it kind of messed up and switched around my evening routine.

So my digestive system officially says no. Which is unfortunate because my brain wants to say yes. Halfing the pills took away the hyperness and heart rate issues and being awake was awesome. If my stomach could handle it it could open up a lot of possibilities for me.

My latest idea is to look into the latest Celiac disease treatment and see when it comes out- it's a pill that theoretically allows you to eat gluten without a reaction. Last I heard it was in clinical trials. Personally I'm not putting any money on the makers of Nuvigil deciding to suddenly care and change the fillers, though I guess I'll keep writing to them anyway. And in the meantime, it's back to the old daily dragging myself through life.

Kind of Bummed

2009-10-05T21:16:00.004-05:00

Well, I called my doctor today and sure enough he wants me to start at a lower dose by cutting the pills in half for the first week. That's fine by me, and hopefully I won't have stomach issues. I totally realized that I've been a little depressed for a couple days ever since I stopped the Nuvigil, and now I'm wondering if that's not a sign of gluten being in it. I guess I'll find out this week if I react to it or if stopping it suddenly was what threw me out of whack. I should probably just call them and find out if it has gluten, but I figure if I try it again instead at least I'll get to be awake for a day or two before it catches up with me. I'm so damned sick of being this tired that I'd rather brave gluten than play it safe.

I'm also kind of bummed because my back up plan of moving to Canada looks like it's not going to work. First of all, you have to prove you can support yourself for at least six months, which I can't even do here- otherwise I would have a job and not have my impending health insurance problem to begin with. But even more troubling is the fact that they do examine your health when you apply for a visa and they won't let you in if you would cost their health insurance system a whole lot of money. Which I'm pretty sure I would. I'm not going to discount the possibility completely, but it isn't looking promising. So it's back to coming up with some other creative solution to my problem.