Beep's Purple Blog

 I have got to go to bed.  Have an MD appt in LA and also want to see my family.  Please send healing thoughts and prayers for my sis.  She is in a lot of pain and has to have neck surgery.  

I wanted to go to bed earlier, but caffeine among a lot of pills helped to treat my migraine enough so I could get home from my neuro today.  The problem with a LOT of caffeine is that I have to wait for it to wear off before I can sleep.  I haven't had a nasty migraine like that one in awhile, but I am probably getting too much sun just doing errands n stuff...during a heat wave I probably should just go ahead and BE a night person!

But not when appts are during the day :)

There is a lot of bad economic news; I'm not even going to list it now.  But there is also a CA budget protest tomorrow.  I like to see somebody doing something.  Hand-wringing makes me nervous.  I wish I could go since I'll even be right there but the weather looks unfavorable for photosensitive lupus patients: sunny and hot!

My head STILL hurts but pain I can live with.   Ok maybe the people who encounter me can't.  I do see their point.  But I can't drive when doped and there is a shortage of drivers and public transportation around here.

It's the other symptoms which really try my patience.  Nausea, dizziness and that left eye blackout thing...way over the top.  Just stop already.

SLEEP!  

 dburr  and I have been at Anime Expo 2009.  We had a great time and got to see friends we don't get to see often. It was a physical challenge for me as usual, but I got by with the help and the incredible patience of dburr and our friends.

We are on the train now, which will connect with an Amtrak bus.

I have to thank msgeek for getting us to the train on time.  She had to fight to get a disabled cart paged for us (we had waited over 1/2 hour and kept being told someone would come for us right away.)  I heard her telling some idiot that our train was IN and we needed a cart NOW.  She was right; in fact the train had to be held for us.  

Incidentally, although we don't live too far from Neverland, we ended up leaving the vicinity of where the Michael Jackson tribute will be just as it people are starting to line up.  AX was right across the street from the Staples Center!  I am glad we got out in time because massive crowds are way too difficult for me to navigate.

 I had a lot of things I'd hoped to do today but have spent most of it in involuntary sleep.  I keep getting up only to fall asleep again without planning to do so.  So frustrating.

I know I must be very tired from yesterday's travel.  But I do not regret the many sacrifices I had to make (including running up a credit card balance which scares me as much as the national debt probably scares our nation's creditors) to go to Rhode Island for the past week.  

Among many other wonderful things, I got to visit the life I had chosen.  I didn't get to lead that life but it was so wonderful to even visit it for a short time.  I miss New England and I always will; it was where I had planned to live when I thought I would have a lot more choices for my life than I ended up having.  

At this point, fresh from another brush with a period of time where just continuing to breathe was a major effort, I'm so grateful for even a glimmer of so much I once took for granted.  It is nice to know that I made good choices!  that I would have loved to have attended the college of my choice with a healthy body and thus the potential for a great deal of learning and achievement.  I would have been very happy with my job at the college after graduation becoming full-time and providing me with the benefit of continuing my education affordably.  I would have missed my family in California but been near family in Rhode Island.  In my naivety and gullibility, I even thought I then had a boyfriend who loved me and a relationship that meant a lot to both of us.  Perhaps had I not been so sick...been physically and financially attractive and independent...even that illusion would have been the truth.

So I didn't make a huge life mistake, after all.  I was just not aware that I was standing on the edge of the precipice of terrible health problems, and in the end couldn't help falling off and going down.  I did not waste opportunities.  My mom worked very hard so I would have the opportunity for a good education and a good life following it, but I chose wisely; what happened next was not my fault.  I worked hard in high school despite undiagnosed illness.  Where I would have gone from there would have made me very happy and there was no way for me to know that I simply had no chance of grabbing that particular brass ring.  Basically I'm trying to let a huge burden of guilt finally go flying away on an ocean breeze.  I love when the weather where I live here in CA is not "onshore flow" "Santa Ana conditions" etc., courting wildfires.  It is foggy today, and a lot of people don't like that, but I do.

Someone once told me guilt is a poison...and sometimes I think they are right.  It certainly is a weight I don't want to carry any more.  I would rather close my eyes and allow myself small fantasies of what my life could have been.  It's nice to dream of New England as it appears in the autumn or in the spring while I am actually stuck in bed.  In my mind I surrounded by spring flowers right now instead of the laundry on the floor I can't yet get up to do.  I love my imaginary world.

I have been told some interesting things, sometimes, about God.  That belief in God is a crutch.  That talking to God is like talking to an imaginary friend.  I ask myself: what if this is true? What if God isn't there, but I need Him, so I invent Him? What if my feeling that He is there to comfort me when no one else is...is just an illusion I use to get through life?

Well. The irony for me is that my need for my imaginary friend is so great that I really don't care if He is imaginary.  I know I need a friend.  I know I can't go on all alone.  I know I need to feel like someone really cares enough to want me to share everything, be it good news or bad.  And I know my life is a bit too challenging for many human beings to want to be around, even though I personally think that in many ways I am so lucky (I REALLY would not want to be eating worms in a primitive setting without access to safe drinking water...I guess we all have our nightmares...I feel so privileged when I am safe and warm and mostly comfortable and clean.)

I like old buildings where I can sense the flow of time and all the souls who passed through there before me and know that I am just one more and others will follow.  I like green trees and grass, beautiful flowers, and God.  I'm happy I can see lovely things from far away through car windows, even if I don't have the strength to walk to them, and take pictures of them with a cheap camera if that is all I have with me.  I'm ok with finding ways to experience life's beauty and wonder within severe limitations if that is the best I can do.  

I also know that I'm not exactly everyone's cup of tea.  Every once in awhile I remember some words from a truly brilliant wordsmith, my former best friend from my teen and young adult years, who left my life with no goodbye in the year I was the most physically ill...I had to track her down to make sure she was ok and thus finally find out that she *meant* to disappear from my address book...because she was sick of me having mostly only bad news to share at that time in my life.  She said she was "tired of being a foul-weather friend."

So I cherish those who are willing to be more than fair-weather friends, and in hard times God has been my anchor even during really bad periods when most of the humans I thought cared about me deserted what they perceived to be a sinking ship.

Really beautiful churches...cheer me up.  Oddly, the buildings themselves do so, often more than anything a priest or minister has to say.  Buildings have been a bit stronger for me to lean on than human beings, in my personal experience.  Also, they never say anything irritating or hurtful...or make me get up in the morning when I don't feel well to go listen to them ;)

 I was up at 6 am (6 am EDT that is) so I'm kind of not all that awake :)  but I am very grateful to have had such a nice time while away and to have made it home safely :)

 I'll be on two of them today, heading west.

Someone please keep the light on for me; it's going to be a long day! :)

 Check it out ! :)  While the television clip is still available online, that is :)

I love being back in RI.  It is where I chose to go to school and where I planned to live.

My body had other plans, unfortunately.

My sis and her hubby for the free plane tickets !
My mom for coming back east with me and paying for hotel/car rental which is why I get to stay in RI till Thursday (we are having a wonderful time seeing our family.  Both of my parents came from Rhode Island, btw)
dburr  for taking care of me while I was so desperately ill

I would have missed the reunion (again) if not for them...  !

 This is the first chance I've had to post.  Getting ready in time to travel turned out to be incredibly hectic and challenging :) We got in very late Thursday night (mom flew with me; she is visiting family while I am on the Brown campus) and then the next day was Friday and the reunion went into full swing :)

I am having a truly wonderful time here.  I don't have words to express how happy I am!!!

Oh ok, I don't want to see the credit card bill when I go home, especially for the $$$ last-minute expenses I had to suck up due to having got so sick and needing all kinds of stuff I had not planned on, but even if it's ten years to pay it off it's still worth it!  Too bad it will probably take that, but that's a disability income for you.  They don't even give you enough for food and clothing, let alone shelter and medical, but that's totally another story.  I didn't even ask for $500 (which would bring my credit card payments down to something more reasonable) from the 55 million donated to Brown today ;)  Btw I'm really glad they got the money; the economic crisis has hurt universities, too.

Anyway.  I didn't really plan on waiting till my 25th to go to a reunion!

I had no money of my own for my 5th (I did some trial work periods under the SSI program, before I knew I was still really sick, but didn't start that work until a year later than that reunion year.)  There was no one who felt like paying for me to go :)  

I was very ill at the time of the 10th.

 I had high hopes for the 20th but that was a year of 3D (dire, dramatic, dangerous) poverty.

So when dburr  got caught in the net of the Great Layoffs of '08, from which we have not yet economically recovered, that really threatened our plans to go to this one...in the end we couldn't afford it.  AND I was very sick again to boot.  I admit I was terribly disappointed...because I felt the 25th was an important one, and also I wondered if I would ever get to go to one...

So I'm enjoying the miracle, very much!

Tomorrow is the commencement procession so I can't even think of sleeping in.  I'll have to post more later!  And answer my email etc.  If I can' connectivity is terrible.

Good nite from the Eastern time zone!

 

I'm looking forward to it, after the latest fire here at home.

 

 I was contemplating some health information before I got on the freeway for the long drive home.  These are weird photos because I didn't have the $ or physical strength to park the car and walk around, so you get what I snapped at red lights when I felt like it.  Heh.

 I woke up a bit too late to see the swearing-in, but I thought I would be catching the replays later in the day.  I saw President Bush boarding the plane in real-time after I had showered, blood tested, medicated for all of my diagnoses, eaten a permitted breakfast, weighed myself per cardiologists instructions, etc.  I used to be someone who could get out of bed and be ready to leave the house in 15 minutes; now I need an hour.

I had to drive to Santa Barbara today because I had an appointment at the foot clinic.  Unfortunately having a couple of major diseases didn't exempt me from the stupid ones.   I inherited grandma's ingrown toenails, and they have to have an in-office surgical procedure bimonthly.  Unfortunately Medicare increased the amount of time I have to wait until I can go back, and my nails grow faster than Medicare, so I suffer terribly anywhere from 7 to 14 days before I can have another appointmnent.  With Raynaud's phenomenon and diabetes and immunosuppression this isn't the best thing to leave untreated, but I can't do my own foot surgery, so I have to keep the appointment on the glorious day the bean counters let me do what is needed to walk without agonizing pain.  

I thought I would go down and then come back and go to an inaugural party here I RSVPd for through MoveOn.  I should probably stop RSVPing for anything through MoveOn because to date something has always prevented me actually attending the event every time I do.  And I wonder why I haven't been making new friends in recent years.  Sigh.

Anyway, for once, I didn't have a medical crisis.  Or at least not a full-blown one.  At the doc's I learned my blood pressure is way too high, and since my blood work comes with a number that says I am at extreme risk for seizure or stroke, I decided to rest and eat something (I was not hungry but I am now on a schedule, just like babies.)  

When I was ready to go I headed towards Goleta which is where I had dropped dburr off to spend time with friends, but when I called him I learned he was downtown.  I really didn't want to go all the way downtown in traffic at rush hour in twilight but I also didn't want to wait an hour for the bus to bring him to me so I went to pick him up.

On the way, I was in bad traffic (locals: upper State St. near that plaza where the Four Winds restaurant is except I was at the other end of the plaza) when traffic stopped suddenly; it had been stop and go for a bit now so I didn't know that actually the car in front of the one that was in front of me had waved someone with a truck who was making a left turn through to make the turn in front of her.  But what I saw on the right (I was heading south of course)  was a bicyclist suddenly having the truck turning in front of him.  I could only see the back of him, but I saw that he stopped with a jolt and a quick backwards motion--so I knew he was hit.  I then saw him crumple to the pavement.

The man in the car in front of me stopped and got out (yes traffic became truly horrendous at this point as he blocked the lane and so did I) and was talking on his cell phone; I hoped he was calling 911 because the bluetooth in my car suddenly had a moody moment and didn't dail it.  There were already some folks on the scene making first aid assessments as well.  So I decided to get my own car out of the street and help keep traffic moving and reduce the risk of a second accident.   But because I thought I might have been the only one to actually see the impact (lucky me--I now get to see it over and over again because it was horrible and my brain will not stop replaying it) I thought I had better stick around for the police report.  I went around the scene and then turned right and parked in the lot.  By the time I walked up the parking lot back to the scene the paramedics from the fire station down the street were already there, so no more first aid was necessary.

I heard them asking the victim about his asthma inhaler and if he was breathing ok.  They seemed to conclude that he was.  I wondered at that point if asthma meds contain enough steroids so that a patient would need supplementation to prevent an adrenal crisis in a trauma.  That's the kind of thing  I would think of, after all the catastrophes in my life.  I don't need to ask my docs while I am also taking steroids for lupus since in my case the answer is yes please monitor for adrenal crisis but I wondered about people who only had asthma and were otherwise healthy.  That was what I thought while I really could hear better than I could see.  

When I got close enough to the scene to stand where the other witness was standing, the one who had seen the truck make the turn but did not see the bicyclist get hit (although he heard it), I could see the victim and I don't really want to say much more except that although he was conscious it was still pretty horrible.  There was blood and the paramedics were trying to find his teeth on the blacktop.

A man came who seemed like he might be the representative of the man who had driven the truck; he wanted the names and addresses of the witnesses.  I told him my report wouldn't be so helpful to him but I gave him my contact info anyway.  All I'm going to be able to swear to is that I saw the side of the truck collide with the bicyclist.  

It took awhile before the police arrived to take our licenses and statements.  My hands got Raynaud's cold and haven't warmed up yet.  I got a blood sugar headache.  I still had to go farther to get dburr and then 75 miles to home.  And stop at the pharmacy.  Where my thyroid med still hasn't had the prescription renewed and they had to give me loaners (well they gave dburr loaners for me; I could not bear going inside for a whopping fluorescent light dose at that point.  

I'm home now.  And I'm going to watch the inauguration.  Thank you, You Tube.

Moral of the story:  always go to the party instead of to the scene of an accident.

I could still drop in, but I'm really tired.  And I wonder what the old blood pressure is now.  And believe it or not, I have to go to Los Angeles tomorrow for a follow-up for the medical study I am in which gave me Rituxan last year.  I'm in the "B cell group."  Unlike some of my friends, I don't have insurance that would pay for a steroid-saving biological agent, even though I've managed to get almost every bad steroid side effect.  I am not about to pay for $5000 injections myself, either.

 Some of you asked me to post when he got in.  He had a good time at AnimeLA.  He says it has grown tremendously!

 Very very thick fog in places...the kind where you don't know if someone is anywhere around you, or not.  And the drivers at 2:00 am + on what is now technically New Year's Day are just so special.

But I am happy to be safe at home now.  And grateful.


Happy New Year, everyone !

I am going to spend my New Year's Day on: laundry! :)

(I need clean clothes! Now! I really don't have "a thing to wear" !)

I am very very very tired.  More tired than I even should be.  I don't have this blood sugar thing quite under control yet.  I know I need a blood sugar monitoring kit...and I also know that even though they sell them in the drugstore, I don't have the $$$.  Thank you, unknown wallet thief.  I wouldn't want YOUR karma!

I have to say I know of very few people personally who really enjoyed themselves tonight.  A lot of crises.  Very odd energy. 

Tomorrow I am going to meditate, prayer, do laundry, and be here for anyone who needs or wants me, because I saw and also sensed friends tonight in a lot of pain.

I'm not in pain; I'm just ill, and that's not the same thing.  I don't think I quite have my own brain back from whatever hyperglycemia is doing to it, but I'm working on it.

And I avoided every single dessert successfully; I can go to bed sickeningly proud of myself! :)

 Just ignore me in the way there; sorry...:)

I would love to go back there one day!

 I think it is natural that someone who has spent as much time being ostracized as I have been occasionally wonders what it would be like to be popular.  I think the positive feedback would be incredibly heart-warming (although so removed from what I know as my normal experiences as to be almost an embarrassment of riches) but perhaps other things, like maybe a feeling of needing to give a lot of personal time to respond to each admirer, would become a worry when there isn't that much time available.  Heh, I wouldn't know; just an exercise for my imagination!

Tonight I was enjoying driving home in my little car which I love dearly, listening to great music along the way.  I was treated to a view worthy of a chamber of commerce poster for the California central coast: sunset palette, ocean like a mirrored surface, two shiny bright planets lighting up their part of the deepening color of the sky, mountains fading fast from purple to black...I had the "it doesn't get much better than this" kind of feeling.  When compared to what might have been a typical drive several months ago, going from and to the same places, with perhaps a migraine blotting out my vision completely in the left eye, and a car I had to sort of coax up the hill, the contrast is enough to convey an impression of having stepped into another lifetime entirely.

I think a popular person would be able to stay on the topic of the beauty and perhaps some of the exquisite emotions it evoked.  But even while I was in a semi-religious awe of the sea and the sky, I found myself suddenly imagining what it would be like to be hypnotized!  And from that thought, my brain jumped to a completely fabricated scene it made up all on its own initiative...a scene in which a friend of mine in real life was there, but who was silent, and I was there as well, and so was some made-up-person I have never seen before who was attempting to hypnotize me against my will.  I was begging the latter person to please refrain, to respect my wishes, to understand that what she (this was a she) was planning to do was to get me to reveal things from my past and I knew I wouldn't just reveal them, but re-LIVE them.  And I didn't want to do that!  I saw no potential benefit whatsoever.

But my begging went unheeded, and so suddenly I was re-living an old memory...and it was an ACTUAL old memory.  I mean I was sobbing hysterically in the car after just a few minutes.  Maybe I'll tell the story of the memory under the good old lock and key of friends-only, a feature of LiveJournal's which I cannot possibly applaud enough.  

Anyway, I think I am just too weird to ever make the social register.  Not to mention that I sometimes wonder how one can drive a car at high speeds and process old trauma at the same time.  Our brains truly are wonderful and terrible things, no?

Sorry no photo, though.  I am so NOT going to stop the car on a freeway and risk life, limbs, and citation for the traffic violation of a lifetime just to show you something I was able to see.  I am certain that if anyone is indeed reading this besides my usual three-person group of vaguely interested persons  (its members are called Me, Myself, and I), that they have imaginations, too, and can fill in the picture.

 Yes, I am one of the sinners who take too much stuff with me!

I often have to occupy myself while others are in the sun, so I bring books and other things to do.  I need items that other people don't, like hats and gloves.  It is not always easy to find clothing or even shoes that fit me, I'm not allergic to, and won't hurt myself wearing. I'm abnormally sensitive to the slightest changes in the weather.  I'm allergic to 9 out of 10 OTC products from soap to shampoo.  And I need an entire carry-on bag just for my meds.  This all adds up to needing a bit more suitcase room than a friend of mine who brags that he "goes commando" because "then he doesn't have to do any laundry".

Not to mention that sometimes the stress of deciding what to bring is sometimes quickly solved by bringing all of the items in question ;)

I may not be able to get away with it any more !  

If I ever go anywhere again, that is.  I've been promising myself for many, many years now that I would go back east to see real autumn again.  Never have the $.   Guess I'll have to try again next year.

 Dburr and I got treated to dinner!  At the Olive Garden!!!!  Mmmm!

No, I did NOT eat anything that would cause the fake tooth to loosen its grip on reality.  I had manicotti.  Soft pasta shell. The meat eater is the guy who sat next to me ;)

 that's when my medical problems know to strike!  Aha, the doctors have all gone home!  Let's make this as difficult as we possibly can, woo hoo!


Tonight's little list:

The full-blown lupus is back.  Hopefully not for the whole season.  Maybe it is just letting me know the season has changed.  I will thank it for this information and tell it to calm down now.  But just as I really needed to hustle to pick up a prescription and be back home on time to meet our ride up here to the Bay Area, that's when the joint pains and the trouble breathing and the monster headache and the fever and the right-out-of-the-textbook lupus rash showed up.  No, I did not take extra steroids.  Yet.  I will have to see how I am tomorrow.  For now it is opiate pain killers.  The fever can stay; helps with weight loss.

Usually the really bad asthma waits for October.  I'm not sure why it picked this afternoon to announce itself.  It's early.  And I learned something:  the new non-aerosol rescue inhalers really DON'T work as well as the old ones.  Not really sure why someone with too much power decided to solve global climate change by letting us asthmatics keel over, while the major polluters just keep on listening to the band play on.  Whatever.  Suddenly I could not breathe.  I blacked out twice.  I made that God-awful wheezing sound.  I was late for our ride because I could not come right home after going to the pharmacy; I had to be able to SEE in order to drive and that takes some oxygen.  It's still with me; I can't walk (exercise in any way) and still talk.  I realize many may see this as a blessing, but dburr actually likes me to talk.  I tell myself that he finds me interesting (and not that he just needs to hear my voice since he can't see where I am...!).

Do you know what to do when a horrendously expensive dental implant comes loose while you are traveling on a highway at high speeds away from your home on a weekend?  I sure don't.  Pray I don't swallow the thing.  I hate to bother docs at home but I had to call my implant surgeon once we arrived here.  Surgeon wants to see me immediately. Unfortunately immediately is going to have to be Tuesday.

Doc told me to eat on the other side of my mouth, and then remembered that the huge molar on the other side is OUT and that the implant on that side is not yet IN.  Oops.  So he told me to eat eggs.  I laughed.  I haven't eaten an egg since I was three and threw up every time I was given one.  He also suggested ice cream, but that is not on my weight loss diet. 

I'm going to enjoy my time here anyway.  Out of spite, if necessary.  I am not taking orders from a bunch of out-of-control immune system components and a fake tooth.

And if God forbid I do have to take steroids, well, dburr won't use the emotional lability as an excuse to lose me in Chinatown.  He says he knows to help me keep my self-esteem up, reassure me, compliment me even, no criticism, and is always willing to help me tell depression to shoo!  In that respect, he is Saint Dburr.  I seriously recommend his canonization.  I don't know why he's able to tolerate steroid-induced emotional lability; it is a rare talent.  Now, if you asked him if he ENJOYED being around it...but I don't ask that :)  

Although his letting me know on the way here that we were coming home Monday instead of Sunday presented its own little challenge...!  For who will now give the seven pet hermit crabs water, on Sunday????  I had to try to explain how to do this to a Spanish-speaking friend, over the phone, since she at least has a copy of our house key.  I wonder if I got "NO CHLORINE USE THE DISTILLED WATER"  across.  You know, I may just worry about the crabs all night, in which case I won't sleep, and then I won't swallow the implant!  Oh, but the lupus would get much worse.  Rats. For a bright shining moment I thought I had found a solution to at least something.  Like I felt when Obama was way ahead in the polls.

At least I was able to explain the part about not letting the crabs escape.  They are getting big enough to need the next tank size.  I think I will take up a collection and start searching for an aquarium that maybe doesn't hold water so perfectly but will do ok with sand.  In the meantime, the kwabbies love to be taken out of the tank to crawl around, and they do try to let themselves out when I have the tank lid off.  I think they think they are being helpful.

I'm going to bed soon so I may as well say my prayers.

 "Please Lord, let dburr and his friends all enjoy this trip and the wedding.  And if for any reason they do not enjoy it, please do not let me be the cause of their not enjoying it, in any way. Please send bad lupus and bad asthma back down whatever sewer they came from.  If I do have to take steroids, please do not let me have any bad reactions that could affect anyone else besides myself.  Lord, don't let me swallow this artificial tooth my mom paid for.  With the company that pays for what's left of her retirement pension and her health care up on the auction block, she doesn't need any extra desperation begging from me.  

Please Lord, do not let things for the poor and the middle class and especially the disabled get any worse in this nation...please let times for the majority at last get better.  Please help people vote with their brains and not listen to the voices in their head that got switched on when someone on Wall Street who wants more billions pushed a button.  Please don't let our sweet pet crabs get let out to die or killed by chlorine.  Please help me find out how to say chlorine in Spanish.  And Lord, please let the one grey hair that I saw somewhere on my head in the restaurant's bathroom and can't find now fall out in my sleep.  The hair.  Not the fake tooth.  Thank you for all of your blessings."

You have your prayers, I have mine.

Crabs are funny things.  I remember when for some reason several of them picked shells that had the same pattern all at once.  As if someone had taped a memo to the wall near a water cooler.  "Today is RED SHELL day.  Show some team spirit!"

 Actually my hair is wet; hope it dries in time.

I have not done so well for the past 2 weeks on the exercise front, with the result that I have gained a couple of pounds back.  Not all that I had lost, but I just don't like the upward trend.  Unfortunately I seem to be one of those people who need exercise to lose weight.  Starvation seems to just make me very sick...and slows me way down.

Usually it's the joint pains that stop me from getting much out-of-the-water exercise (well that's not really the right phrase, since I have a high pain threshold...it's the blinding pain kind of joint pains, the damage I am doing to the joints when they hurt that much, the swelling and weakness I know I will have the next day and the at-least-a-week-of-total-down-time if I push through that kind of pain, which keeps me from exercising as much as I want to on land).  But sometimes the problem is my breathing.  Right now I have the pains AND the asthma.  Which is making it really hard to pack for a weekend away and pick up this little home of ours so I don't feel like I am inviting vermin to visit while I'm gone.

I only have to finish getting my clothes together, pick up a bunch of stuff SOMEONE left on the floor (difficult for me due to a hernia), clean the mess SOMEONE left in the kitchen and the living room, find the accessories and makeup I want, pack shoes and find a jacket that goes with my dress, get my hair to dry, locate a missing medication, figure out what to do about a fragile gift SOMEONE didn't pack to travel well, answer 3 urgent letters, pay 2 bills, take breaks every 15 minutes so I get enough oxygen and don't faint, tidy the crab tank, find the card that goes with the gift, I'm sure there's more, and be ready by four.

Oops I need to see if a friend has the key for housewatching and housesitting and crab checking.
Oh snap I need to inspect dburr's suit jacket; I don't think it was dry cleaned after he last wore it.
Do I need to go to the bank today?  Um, it looks like I might have to.

This blog is getting written while I catch my breath from the incredible exertion of taking a shower.  Sigh.  With this level of stamina I should last about half a day in the post-peak oil world?

I read some article (well, skimmed) about some judges who had ruled that a few people were not in fact disabled because they could function well with medications and/or other treatments.  I'm not in that category, I guess, but for those who are I do have to wonder if, after being declared not disabled and being kicked off of their disability program which pays for their health care, just how they are supposed to pay for those meds and treatments...even large employer groups are starting to screen for pre-existing conditions now, albeit subtly when laws are in their way from doing so blatantly.  I guess they are to let themselves get sick again and then apply for disability again...?  Things like this make my head hurt with total confusion.

Anyway.  IF I get my act together in time, dburr  and I and another are going to the wedding of one of dburr's friends from college.  In the Bay Area.  That should be fun, even if I am bringing a nasty dose of lupus fatigue along with me.  I don't have to drive this time and that should help with the being so tired.

The below is a photo of sea lions who hang out at Pier 39 in San Francisco.  No, I am not there yet.  This is an old (no time to edit it, either; sorry) picture.  DOH!  :)




  


P.S.  Of course I will have the laptop with me!  I'm traveling with dburr, remember? :)  I think he's already made an appointment at the downtown SF Apple Store.  No, I am not kidding.

We had a good trip. I am just tired after the long drive and keep falling asleep. I think I'd better get in my bed!

Yes, I heard about John Edwards' extramarital affair. It would have been impossible to not hear about it. I'm just about as interested in it as I am about John McCain's womanizing in the past. Or that Barack Obama's father may not have treated his mother well. I get tired of saturation coverage of things that are so personal and hearing so little about things that might affect me. I want details of health care plans and Iraq strategies and economic policies and how they would work to prevent another failure of government like Katrina...I'm too tired to go on but you get the idea.

I do wish we could find a smart, yet caring candidate who was also of impeccable moral character. Let me know when Jesus runs. In the meantime we have to do our best with what we've got...fallible human beings. I also wish our system encouraged more people to run and would make it possible for them to do so. Right now we can only have as viable candidates those who were born to money, made money, and/or are good at raising money. If we are going to pick only from that group maybe we should have them set up a charity to benefit the U.S. Treasury and get them to raise funds for it to balance the budget.

Wow fell asleep again. I am going to HAVE to go to bed. Good nite!