My new Cadillac!

Posted on January 31, 2013 by S.

Sleeping all the way through until the alarm clock goes off and not being awakened by pain in my head feels like the biggest luxury in the world.

I feel like I’ve stolen something, and any second now I’m going to get caught on the lam with my eight hours of sleep and a handful of magic beans.

I really can’t believe I’ve been missing this for so long.

My neck is still tired from toting around my head (the human head weighs 8 pounds, you know), but not being awakened at 4:35 every single morning or my life by pain in my head is just craziness.

Plus, you know, my eyebrows look fantastic.

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Botox update

Posted on January 29, 2013 by S.

All kidding about the Botox aside, I think it’s working. I’m typing that softly because I don’t want to jinx it.

My forehead feels like when you do that dead man’s fingers thing with your friend. It’s my forehead, but I sort of can’t feel it from the inside. Which is weird.

And I can’t frown. I can lift my eyebrows, but I can’t frown, so if the need arises, I announce I’m frowning at you.

Where the injections were around my neck, the muscles are…disabled, I guess, and the muscles around those muscles are having to compensate, which has been an adjustment.

As the day wears on, the compensating muscles become incredibly tired from holding up my head (which is large anyway) and I have been getting a headache (for lack of a better term) back there. I’ve been able to get rid of it with a dose of Butalbital, which is what I take for tension-type headaches.

Today is the first day that I made it all the way to 3:00 before the neck fatigue set in. I took one pill with a glass of water and stretched a little bit. I’m having some isolated fatigue in the area, but it’s not like a headache, it’s just tired.

I haven’t been awakened by a headache since I had the injections.

Here’s hoping progress continues in this fashion.

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Fun with Botox

Posted on January 28, 2013 by S.

Last Friday at Lynn and Pete’s for dinner, we were talking about the shots I’d had earlier that week and Anya asked what kind of shots. I said, “Botox.”

Her eyes got very big and she looked concerned.

She looked at her mother and she looked at me and she looked at her mother and then she giggled.

Then we realized she thought I had had my buttocks injected into my face.

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Lisa

Posted on January 25, 2013 by S.

Today would have been my cousin Lisa’s birthday.

In her honor I am dancing around the kitchen, baking a cake.

In her honor I’m singing tunelessly at the top of my lungs.

In her honor, I’m wearing my rattiest jeans and some boots and a plain t-shirt, and nothing matters except the people I love and who love me.

I miss Lisa. I know that wherever she is, everybody knows she’s taking care of them.

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Botox

Posted on January 23, 2013 by S.

I do not have lines on my forehead. I did not have them earlier today, either, because I am not a frowner or a squinter.

My mother spent the first 18 years of my life saying, “Don’t squint!” or “Stop frowning! You look unpleasant!”

Nonetheless, this morning I had 31 injections of Botox in and around my head.

I have finally failed enough drug protocols (yay?) that I qualify for “botox for migraines,” which I think is a dubious achievement.

The frequency of my migraines has increased in the last year enough to be classified as chronic migraines, which I think is an even more dubious achievement.

Yesterday was my birthday, and the insurance company called to tell me that I was approved for it, and how would I like to pay for the part they weren’t covering, please?

And less than 24 hours later, I was at the neurologist’s office, getting those shots in my head.

Friends, it hurts. It hurts turble. I would never get Botox for purely cosmetic reasons.

After the ones in my forehead, I had to ask for a glass of water because I thought I was going to pass out. And I have had a shot in my face that went into my sinus.

There were shots in my forehead, around my ears, around my occipital ridge, down my neck, and along my trapezius. Now there are little flattish bumps where the injections were.

What I hope for is a 50% reduction in migraines. I am hopeful.

I am also hopeful that I won’t end up looking like this:

Endora-bewitched-5409887-320-276

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Habits

Posted on January 21, 2013 by S.

Once you get in the habit of running your dishwasher every night and emptying it first thing in the morning, you feel a little whack if you skip a day.

That is all.

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Gun control

Posted on January 19, 2013 by S.

I don’t really want to talk about this, but it appears I’m going to have to or I’m just going to bust.

It is shockingly easy to buy a gun in Georgia. You have to go through the NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System), which takes about ten minutes. And then you have your shiny new gun. There’s not a cooling-off period or a quiz to see if you’ve got good sense. Nobody asks, “What are you going to do with this gun?” or “Why do you need all these bullets?” or “Weren’t you just in here last week?”

I have questions.

Why does a civilian need an assault rifle? Or a high capacity clip?

Is it for protection? If so, protection from what? An intruder?

I just went and measured the distance from the driver’s side of my bed to the bedroom door and it’s 10 feet. The distance from the bedroom door to the front door is 18 feet, which is the longest uninterrupted line in the house. I happen to know I can drop the target, consistently, with two shots at 25 feet.

Is it for protection from the government?

If it’s for protection from the government, I will direct your attention to the incidents at Ruby Ridge and Waco, which impressed upon me that while  you might could accumulate a stash of assault rifles, the government has a bigger one. And they have tanks and missiles and warheads.

Is it for hunting? What animal do you need to hunt with an assault weapon?What would you do with an animal you had blown to tiny bits with one? If you need a machine gun, are you really such a great sportsman?

I stand firmly on the side of regulating sales of assault weapons and high-capacity clips.

What is so objectionable about the pending legislation?

The government is not going to come knocking and take up your guns if you register them.

A deeper background check is not going to kill you. It’s already law that convicted felons cannot have guns – ten days or two weeks to make sure you’re not one before you get a gun is not a bad thing.

Making sure you know how to use the gun you just purchased is a fantastic idea.

And really, what does Joe Citizen need an assault rifle for?

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New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on January 15, 2013 by S.

I am not a big fan of the New Year’s resolution. I think it sets me up early on for disappointment in myself because I tend to let my big plans (No more dessert! Save $1000 dollars! Cut down all the brush in the back yard!) fall by the wayside pretty quickly, and then I’m left with well, hell, that didn’t last but a day and a half.

So I generally pick something small and manageable that won’t really impact my life if I fail to follow through.

One year it was that if a pen didn’t write, I would not scratch it on the paper or shake it or heat it with a match to try to get five more sentences out of it, I would just merrily toss it in the trash instead of put it back in the pen cup. That ended up saving me a lot of time rummaging around, and I still do it.

Another year it was that I don’t go to co-ed showers. I just don’t. I’m single and I’m not going to drag some man along just so I’m not the only unattached person there. It’s miserable if I am unattached, so I just don’t go to them.

Then there was the year that I decided if there was valet parking, I was taking it. I am a person who is convinced her car is going to be towed.

I have been to the tow lot with other people who have had their cars towed, and it is an hours-long pain in the ass to get a car back. I would like to avoid it if at all possible. I will pay the $5 or $7 or however much it is to eat my dinner without the anxiety of knowing I’m going to making a visit to the tow lot, which I will know has been dropped by a crane into a space too small for it, after it has been ransacked by only the good Lord knows who.

Right after Christmas 2012, I read an article about decluttering the mind and the home. One suggestion was to run the dishwasher every night. That seemed a bit muchly at first, but my dishwasher has top rack only mode – a feature that was on my list when I was dishwasher shopping, because dirty dishes cooped up in a dishwasher are smelly by the time you run it if you’re the only one making dirty dishes.

Now. I hate unloading the dishwasher. And I hate to hear the dishwasher running. So every night before bed, I set the delay function (on my obviously very fancy dishwasher) and go to bed. When I get up in the morning, it takes about two minutes to unload what I washed the night before.

And what do you know? My kitchen is less cluttered because my countertops and sink are clean and clear, and my mind is a little less jangled

I save my big resolutions for my birthday, which is coming up. These are some that I have made in the past:

1. I no longer eat with people I don’t like.
2. I no longer sleep anywhere I’m not guaranteed at least a full-length sofa.
3. I can’t because I don’t want to.
4. I can get along with anybody, as long as I know what I can expect from them.

I don’t know what I’m adding this year. Maybe that I will no longer try to make sense to people who are unwilling to entertain the idea that more things are right than just the things they think.

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Money talks

Posted on January 3, 2013 by S.

That money talks, I’ll not deny,
I heard it once, it said “goodbye.”

Money is not a big deal to me, insofar as I don’t measure my worth or anyone else’s by how much of it they have, and I don’t need a lot. I live in a small house and I drive a moderate car.  I still have and use every pocketbook I’ve bought since 1996 or so.

Making my budget is a big deal to me, though, and I spend several hours a day at the beginning of each year parceling it all out for the coming year so I can see where I’m going in the next twelve months.

But you know, a million things could happen. I don’t really know what’s going to happen, and best laid plans and all that.

This time last year, I knew I was going to Italy in a few months.

I did not know that I would have the opportunity to buy some property that I dearly wanted, or that through a series of events, planned and unplanned, I would be able to do it, realizing a 25-year-old pipe dream.

I do know, though, that had I not been making a budget every year since 2006 and following it pretty closely, I would have been waving at that opportunity from a distance.

The actual truth is I kinda suck with money. Which is why I have to write it down on paper and look at it two days before every payday.

Lots of people make budgets, so it’s not like I came up with some brilliant plan.

My budget is extremely simple and only tracks net income and outgo in rounded amounts; it does not account for interest accrued or points for using one method of payment over another, and it doesn’t count savings or retirement. It merely tells me how much money I have and how much I’ll have left over after bills.

An accountant would snort if he saw it.

But. I have made my budget for 2013. I’m feeling very accomplished. And poor.

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Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future

Posted on January 2, 2013 by S.

I don’t care for mediums and middles, never have, so I guess in that regard 2012 was a winner.

I went to three funerals, and there were three more I should have gone to.

I went to a wedding.

One friend was diagnosed with cancer that had a pretty grim outlook, but it looks like it’s going to be okay.

I thought we had all finally skated to the end of the year when another friend had a heart attack right there at the end.

My house was smoldering for a few weeks and I didn’t know it. The restoration was tortuous.

On the upside, I had the best two weeks of my life in Rome with my best friend.

My brother and I made some huge leaps forward.

I bought some property that makes me happier than anything ought to make a person.

My homeowner’s insurance covered the repairs from my fire. The house did not burn down with me and my little dog in it.

My head continues to hurt, but it’s not as bad as it could be, and I have a ton of insurance.

My family and friends continue to be wonderful and amazing.

I hold a lot of hope for 2013. I wish you health, happiness, and prosperity, and all the love you can stand, plus a little more.

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