Another year has come and gone.....

... and it was a very rough one, but we have managed to keep our heads up and our sanity in tact.
I was reminded yesterday of how the universe does not care if you are prepared when it unloads a shit storm on you but if you remember not to think about it all at once and instead just do the next right thing, you will be OK.
We had plans for our fifth wedding anniversary, our first meeting with a new couples counselor, and a little surprise for Suzy, but things do not always go the way you expect them to.
Suzy's dad had called the night before to ask me to listen to a funny noise his car was making. I could not really tell exactly what the noise was over the phone but I could tell it was some sort of damaged bearing and I advised that he take it in to the repair shop first thing in the morning. He did and while it was a bearing, it was not something small (like a power steering pump or alternator) it was in fact a main engine bearing and on a car with 150k miles you just don't want to spend $5000 to keep it going. So we changed our plans and I dropped Suzy off at a friend's house to get a ride to work and I headed over to meet Jim at the Buick dealer.
To add to the confusion, Jim and Anna's cat Gimmel had a low blood sugar the day before (we think) and was not responding to a glucose injection so she needed to go to the vet to see what was going on. After hours of going from place to place Chris (Suzy's brother) finally got her in to an emergency vet for an exam. Jim and I, now checking out possible replacement cars, are also trying to find out details of the cat's condition and to top it all off Jim's cell phone starts acting up.
So, after we finish up at the dealership and get a bite to eat we head home to search the web for other cars. A short while later we get a call from the vet to find out that Gimmel is really in bad shape (not from the low blood sugar but rather from a host of other problems) unresponsive to light (a sign of a stroke) very low potassium, an irregular heartbeat, and extreme dehydration. I call Suzy and we arrange to pick her up after first stopping off at the Sprint repair center to order Jim a new phone.
Once we all finally get coordinated and meet at the vet the difficult decision is made to have the doctor euthanize Gimmel. We all said our tearful goodbyes (even Suzy's mom Anna via phone) and gave Jim a few minutes alone with the cat. Jim took it all very hard and blamed himself for not taking better care of the cat (which is silly to all of us since she is 19 years old with all kinds of health problems and they have been giving her insulin shots twice a day for years now). Jim was very close to Gimmel and said that out of all the pets they have had over the years she was the only one that was really his pet. We finished saying goodbye and the doctors took her in the back to send her on her way to heaven.
We went back to Jim and Anna's house to regroup and the decision was made that we should all go out to dinner at Provino's in honor of Gimmel and to celebrate Suzy's and my anniversary. After a nice long dinner we headed home and we were sure to give our animals some extra attention that night.
Anyway, with all that has gone on this past year we have managed to survive and we will try to continue to do the next right thing.

Sometimes freedom is hard to measure

But if it is your freedom, the feeling of it alone is enough to satisfy any perceived need or desire to put a value on it. It may seem wrong and I can understand the argument against such a comparison but the only thing I can think of is being released and having your rights reinstated after having served time in prison, or moving to the US after having grown up in a "third world" or Communist country, but then again I don't know what that is like either but that is the best thing I can think of so just use your imagination.
It may seem trite to some, but I have been a slave to medication of one form or another for my entire life. When I was a child it was Ritalin, Dexedrine, Desipramine etc... and later Lexapro, Elavil, Wellbutrin, Effexor and several others. If you have a knowledge of these drugs then I guess you see a connection. Well in my case it started as the disparate attempts of my parents to turn me into my brother or something like that. Not to say that he was perfect or anything, they just didn't expect their second kid to be wired backwards and they didn't know that was what made me so hard for them to relate to. Hell, I didn't even figure that out until just a few years ago,..... I shouldn't say I didn't know that is how I am, but I didn't realize until recently that I don't have to be wired like everyone else. In fact I honestly prefer being the way I am, even if it makes my life more difficult, I would rather life be hard and my experiences rich and meaningful instead of it being easier and my experiences being normal and safe. I do have regrets, lots of them, but my mistakes have made me who I am and learning by trial and error seems to be the only thing that works for me. Hey, at least I am aware of it.
Anyway, the new found freedom is for the first time in almost 30 years I am no longer experiencing my life through the fog of mind altering meds. It took me two months of slowly reducing my dosage (which was the highest I had ever heard of for the medicine I was taking) so as to avoid any nasty side effects, which I have experienced before when one or another doc decided to play guinea pig on me. I had no interest in going through that again. So, here I am almost a month after the last dose, and I feel great. I should just say "I feel", because with many of these drugs the general effect they have on you is to deaden your feelings to the point that you can't feel anything at all. So maybe I am just over excited at being able to feel again, but I am going to enjoy it as long as I can. And I am writing this to remind myself later how much I love to feel, happy, sad, excited, horny, whatever. I almost forgot what it felt like to feel so I want to remember what it felt like to not feel. So here's to freedom, however you get it.

Still alive (for the most part anyway)

I can not even put into words what a completely over the top crazy year 2009 has been so far. I really need to sit down and take time to work these thoughts out of my head, otherwise I think I may end up a clock tower sniper. For now all I can do is pinch myself every now and then to make sure I am alive. It may be long way down, but even through the isolation and confusion I know from experience that I can find the way, even if it means crawling on my hands and knees and feeling around in the dark.

Peter Poppins...

This just made me laugh out loud!!!!


via videosift.com

If at first you don't succeed....♦

try, try again.








I am somewhat let down with the results from the latest ablation procedure on the Monday before Christmas. So far it feels worse than before. I don't know if it is just pain from the procedure or what but it feels more like it is the bones and joints that hurt not the muscle area where the probes were inserted. I am really worried that there is something else wrong that is causing all of these problems but I don't know what it could be. I am still hopeful that it can get better but it just gets harder to keep a positive attitude as time goes on and on. I am afraid that I am going to have to live with this my whole life and that is really a scary thought. It is really depressing to think that I don't have any choice but to be in pain all of the time or be medicated all of the time. It really sucks, and what makes it worse is that the nurses treat you like a drug addict and act like you are exaggerating when it comes to how bad the pain is. I guess I can understand somewhat, since they work in an environment where they run in to that sort of patient all the time, but still that is no excuse to treat everyone like a junkie.
Anyway, here are some pix from the ablation (courtesy of Suz).