P.s. Congratulations are in order for my littlest sister, Sarah, who got a scholarship to go spend eight weeks in Finland this summer on a sort of cultural exchange program! Exciting!
GRR. My left eyelid has been twitching constantly all day. It’s making me crazy. And it feels gross, too, so it’s kind of making me ill. I’m seriously about ready to stab the twitching part with a letter opener or some shit, just to make it stop. I mean, not really, because I’m not about to pull some Betty Blue shit, but STOP FUCKING TWITCHING JESUS CHRIST!!!
In other news, three days in a row of gloomy, chilly weather. That makes me happy as the proverbial shitpig, and I can only hope it continues. I think it’s supposed to be warm and sunny tomorrow, but oh well.
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Looks all cute and shit, doesn’t he? Well, don’t be fooled: he is a GRADE A DOUCHEBAG. (Or should that be “grade D?”) Lately, instead of laying down on the bed to sleep at night, when the humans are sleeping, Skeeter has taken to standing on them and getting up in their shit, and being generally very annoying. We’ve already been through several phases of wanting to play at night, so you’d think eventually he’d grow out of it for good, or realize that sleeptime is not playtime, but whatever. So lately he’s been spending the nights outside the bedroom, so we can get some goddamn zzz. Skeeter wanting to do what *Skeeter* wants to do, of course, and not whatever *I* want him to do while I’m sleeping, has resulted in his learning to rub his paw against the bedroom door. (It’s kind of like scratching, only there aren’t any scratches actually on the door. But it IS loud enough to wake me up.) The first couple times, I let him in, and he would snuggle up and go to sleep. Then he decided it would be more fun to get let into the bedroom and be a prick by standing on us or poking us or thwapping us in the face with his tail until we woke up, so I have stopped letting him in the bedroom in response to those little paw-rubs on the door. He still does it, because it worked the first couple times, so it wakes me up, but whatever, this is what I get for letting my cat “train” me, and I’ve just got to outwait him until he stops fucking doing it, right. Except the past couple nights, he’s realized that it’s not working, so he’ll try rubbing his paws on the door, and then when it doesn’t work, he’ll go beat the shit out of Chalupa. And I don’t mean playfighting, and I don’t mean their usual dust-up that isn’t really a big thing and involves some chasing and some hissing and then it’s over. I mean he is beating the shit out of her and making her scream, and a cat screaming is an ungodly noise. The first time it happened, I woke up freaked the fuck out, and had to check them both over thoroughly for wounds. There weren’t any, but I thought I’d better separate them so they’d stop fighting – and I made the mistake of SHUTTING SKEETER UP IN THE BEDROOM. WITH US. See, I *thought* I was separating him from Chalupa, so he couldn’t beat her up. I was thinking it was kind of like a time-out. But apparently, what I was actually doing was caving in to his will and LETTING him INTO the bedroom. There’s kind of a big difference between punishing a cat (I mean, it’s only time-out, but that’s a punishment of sorts), and fucking REWARDING him. And apparently, according to him, I was rewarding him. So the past couple nights, when rubbing at the bedroom door hasn’t worked, he’s taken to beating the everloving shit out of Chalupa. Last night I finally wised up and took Chalupa into the bedroom, instead of Mr. Ass, who then resorted to crying outside the bedroom door for a little bit. Lucky for me, he’s already learned that crying doesn’t work, so he gave up pretty quickly, and I got to go to sleep. But this bullshit fighting-in-the-wee-hours crap has got to go. And this making-Chalupa-SCREAM shit has DEFINITELY got to go. If only he’d get in the bedroom and go to sleep. UGH. So anyway, he’s being a fucking DOUCHE and needs to quit it.
YAY! It’s raining today! It’s lovely.
More later – I just wanted to say yay for rain. Now I’ve got more Kingdom of Loathing to play. Holy shit, is it addictive.
I feel like a human being again. Awesome.
I ended up staying home from work yesterday, while the withdrawal symptoms whooped my ass. The nausea and stomach cramping/pains were the worst. Late last night, it was so bad that I was considering going to one of those urgent care places just to get it to stop, but they all close at eight, so I got to tough it out (something I’m not so great at). Anyway, so I took today off to be miserable some more, and, more importantly, to go to the doctor. Greg came home and took me, and a couple hours later, I had prescriptions for anti-nausea meds and, if I’m remembering correctly, a muscle relaxer that works on the stomach and digestive tract. (Apparently there are serotonin receptors in the stomach and gut, and so they’re responsible for all the stomach cramping and pains and stuff.) Anyway, it’s been about half an hour since I took the meds, and I’m not nauseous, I’m not dizzy, and my stomach is fine. I’m a wee bit drowsy so far, but that’s all. I might get some more headaches, chills, or sweats later, but I can deal with that.
About that mouse? The cats and I chased it about the living room, dining room, and kitchen for a while, and then it ran back under the washer. The cats are decidedly not interested in the washing machine, so it looks like I may have lucked up and the mouse got tired of being chased and decided to chuck it and flee back outside. We’ll see.
And now I’m back to resting and rehydrating. (I slept as much as I could yesterday, and I think I didn’t drink enough water as a result.)
Fucking great: we have another mouse.
I know this because when I got up early a few minutes ago to fill a prescription so I could pick it up on our way to work, instead of waiting outside the bedroom door whining about needing more food, Skeeter was camped out in front of the dishwasher, right next to Chalupa, who’s been camping out in front of it for a couple days now. But both cats staring intently at the dishwasher’s housing means there’s definitely something back there. I guess it could be a big ass spider, but I’m only marginally less happy about that possibility than the possibility of a mouse, since I fucking hate spiders. The bigger they are, the more I fucking hate them. And by “hate” I also mean “am terrified of.” (And the only reason Skeeter would be outside the bedroom door instead of standing on my goddamn chest to signify his desire to be fed, is I got up and closed the door in the wee hours because I could hear the dishwasher running and it was keeping me from getting back to sleep. Because Skeeter’s new thing is to stand on my goddamn ribs when the alarm starts going off, and just wait for me to get up and feed him. Which is fine, except he weighs like a million pounds – or, you know, ten and a half – and all that weight gets somehow concentrated into his wee little feet, and it kills.)
Anyway, while I’m bitching – why is it that the last time I filled that prescription online, it was available for pickup one hour after I submitted it, but today it won’t be available for two and a half goddamn hours?
Wow. That last post was my 1,000th, and I didn’t even notice. Nice.
I just posted my weekly post at Wardrobe Refashion, so I thought I’d better swing by here and type a little something, so that I don’t get any complaints. (Ahem, Susan, I’m looking your way.) I feel like ass, though, so I’m going to keep it short, so I can go back to bed.
Friday marked the end of two weeks of taking half my old dose of Lexapro every day, so yesterday marked the beginning of two weeks of taking half my old dose every other day. (My old dose was 20mg, so I’ve been taking 10mg. And depending on how the next two weeks go, I’ll either be done with it entirely, or have two more weeks of taking 10mg every third day.) So I didn’t take a dose yesterday, and I had a slightly more difficult time focusing my attention, and I got confused more easily, and had a couple small-ish zaps (ie – NOT the ones that make me clutch my head suddenly and almost burst into tears; just little pinchy ones), but all in all it wasn’t bad. So today I took 10mg, and the nausea is fucking killing me. There’s also some…I don’t know really how to describe it. Tension? In my head. It feels like I’m on the cusp of a bad headache, but I just stay on the cusp, and the headache never actually comes. That, I can handle. The nausea, though.
Anyway, this weekend was pretty cool. Especially the extra day off work. That’s always appreciated. Thursday night, Greg went to “Jim Beam Thursday” in Raleigh (a pre-Easter tradition of Bill and JJ Bronco’s, IIRC) – I skipped out because I wasn’t feeling so hot. I also watched Sleuth, which I cannot recommend AGAINST strongly enough. Harold Pinter fucking blows goats, and is a pretentious and talentless hack, and the only reason I didn’t blog Thursday night about what a phenomenal waste of time that movie is, is our internet wasn’t loading and it was really late. (I kept watching, hoping it would get better, but it never did.) Friday, there was D&D in the evening. Saturday, there was D&D in the afternoon, and a show in Raleigh for Greg’s band that I went to. That was pretty cool, but there was WAY too much slam-dancing. I’m so old. Today, I slept in, got up for about an hour, found the rest of my flamingo fabric stash and picked out a pattern for the refashion (Butterick 4461, view F), felt like ass, went back to bed, felt guilty about not posting to WR, got up, posted to WR, and then came here to post. And now I’m crawling back into bed, where, if I can’t actually go back to sleep and just be unconscious until this bullshit passes, hopefully I’ll at least be a little less miserable because I’m not upright. BLEAH.
As promised, pictures. First up is the dress that will be my next Wardrobe Refashion project, after I finish the flamingo skirt. Actually, I really need a belt, and have had a belt “kit” in my stash for at least a year, so I’ll probably make the belt before I refashion this dress, too. Another refashionista suggested I make a sundress out of it, and I think that’s a grand idea, so that’s what I’m going to do. I love that border print.
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And here are two washcloths I knit up – one from the Ballband Dishcloth pattern from Mason Dixon Knitting, also available here. (I was too lazy to pull out my copy of MDK, plus with a small, portable project like this, I prefer to carry around a piece of paper to a whole book.) I like the resulting washcloth, and I’ll probably make it again, several times. (I’m on this whole hippy kick, so reusable washcloths and towels for the kitchen, reusable bags for groceries, I’m even considering making my own laundry detergent, it might be a little ridiculous. Also, the hippy kick is at least partly responsible for the switch to Feline Pine. And I just found out my middle sister and her bf are participating in TerraCycle’s yogurt container reuse project, and are on the waitlist for their energy bar wrapper recycling project, and I sure do love me some yogurt, and eat the occasional energy bar. So I’ll be mailing them shit, too.) Enough blabbing! After the ballband dishcloth, I did another washcloth, one of those ones where you yarn-over at each end every other row. Only you yarn-over in the other direction, so it doesn’t leave a whole. This one turned out much softer than the ballband dishcloth, so I’ve been using it as a facecloth. It’s pretty awesome.
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Last but certainly not least, we have the lovely Ms. Chacha. She’s so pretty!
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So, Saturday marked the end of the first week of tapering off Lexapro, and it wasn’t too bad, to be honest. I had some brain zaps, but they weren’t as bad as they could be (well, one of them was pretty bad, but the rest weren’t). I was nauseous and dizzy alot, though, and had frequent headaches and/or not-headaches-but-head-weirdness. I don’t know how to describe it – it’s not painful, but it’s unpleasant. There was alot of feeling gross, and I think I might have cried once, or maybe my eyes just teared up but I didn’t actually cry. I’m hoping this week will be even easier, since (hopefully) I’m used to the new dosage now? But if that’s the case, that means next week will be bad, since I’ll be dropping the dosage again. Oh well. Three to five more weeks, and I’ll be done with Lexapro. Sweet.
Let me tell you about how dumb Skeeter is. He’s incredibly sweet to me most of the time. If he’s in the bedroom with me when I’m going to bed, he snuggles up right next to me, between my arms when they’re stretched out from underneath the pillow. The one day I stayed home last week because I wasn’t handling the withdrawal well enough to go to work? He was right with me all day, being very sweet – snuggling with me while I slept, following me around the house, headbutting my knees. He is a total sweetheart, which is why I can’t get too upset when he’s being bad, or just doing something dumb and annoying. So he’s sweet – but jesus fucking christ, is he dumb, sometimes. So, Friday we go to the grocery store, and I decide to try a new litter: Feline Pine’s clumping litter. (I already know they hate the shit out of the “regular” Feline Pine, but that’s because they don’t like walking on it, and the clumping Feline Pine has a different texture, more like the litters they’re used to, and it’s supposed to be better for them and better for the environment somehow, and it’s cheaper to boot. I’m sold.) Now, we have two cats, and three litter boxes: one in the bedroom, and two in the bathroom (a regular box, and then the top-entry one). Once I finish cleaning my craft room, I’m going to move one of the litter boxes out of the bathroom into the craft room, but that’s beside the point. Anyway, so the top-entry litter box needs to be completely emptied and cleaned, and a fresh batch of litter added. (I did the other boxes before, but didn’t have enough litter left over to do the top-entry.) So I decide to clean it out and fill it back up with Feline Pine. I don’t want to replace all the litter in all the litter boxes with Feline Pine, because 1-that would be wasteful of the old litter, and 2-if the cats don’t like the clumping Feline Pine, they need somewhere acceptable to do their business. (I like to help them avoid pissing and shitting anywhere but in a litter box. It’s one of their shared habits of which I wholeheartedly approve.)
So early Saturday afternoon, the top-entry litter box was clean and full of fresh litter, just waiting to be used. They didn’t use it Saturday. They didn’t use it Sunday. In the wee hours Monday morning, one of them (pretty sure it was Skeeter, as you’ll see as this unfolds) wakes me up, puking in the hallway. I go out to clean it up, and there’s regular old cat food in it, but also what appears to be the new litter. Not like they got some litter out of the box to cover up their puke (I don’t even think that’s physically possible), but exactly like some dumbass ate it and then threw it up later. And there’s really only one cat in the household dumb enough to do that shit: SKEETER. Now, the litter is supposed to be technically safe to ingest – that was one of the reasons I decided to try it, because it specifically said on the box that you don’t have to worry about them grooming their feet after being in the litter box, ingesting litter, and getting sick, because the litter is okay to ingest. It’s not food, although Skeeter seems to think so, but it won’t make them sick. Anyway, I cleaned up the puke, and then – there are two boxes in the bathroom, right – I scooped quite a bit of waste out of the “regular” litter box and chucked it in the top-entry box, and mixed it around. I figured, if this didn’t give Skeeter the idea to properly use the new litter, it would at least deter him from eating it.
Monday, we go to work, and on the way home stop by the grocery store for some things, and regale our favorite cashier with some stories about peeps (story for another entry) and other stuff, and I tell him about Skeeter eating the litter. (And also how he tries to eat dirt.) We get home, and I check that litter box, not really expecting anything – but low and behold, they’d both used it while we were at work. Awesome. So Skeeter’s not eating the litter any more, and they both seem to like it with respect to its intended purpose.
I don’t have any pictures for you right now, but there are pictures you can look at on my most recent Wardrobe Refashion post. Over last week/the weekend, I finished ripping the seams out of the flamingo skirt, so it’s ready to be re-sewn/reborn, just as soon as I get the additional pieces ready. I started a crochet bag out of some stash yarn and a free pattern. I also cast on for Knitty’s Isabella with my stash of Rowan 4 Ply Cotton. I’d gotten it intending to make myself an Orangina (only, in yellow), but I think I would get more wear out of Isabella. So, anyway, I adjusted the pattern slightly to remove the waist shaping – this might be the worst idea ever, but let’s be honest, I am a chubby chica. The size of Isabella that suits my bust line – the waist shaping would be too much for my waist, and the fabric would end up stretching quite a bit there, which would not be flattering. (I don’t want the finished product to look like it has to strain to fit me, for reals.) If I went up a size, the waist shaping might suit me better (might, I’m not sure), and if it did, it would probably be more flattering than no waist shaping at all, but there would be way too much ease in the bust. I guess I could have tried cobbling together the two different sizes, like you can do with sewing patterns, but that’s more math and planning that I want right now. So I just took out the waist shaping, and re-centered the eyelet pattern so it would be more symmetrically placed on the front and back pieces. I’m almost up to the second row of eyelets (from the bottom) – the second row of ACTUAL eyelets, not counting the picot edge which I’m also done with. So far I like it. Hopefully the waist-shaping-removal will work out the way I want it to – knit in two pieces from the bottom-up, I’ll be pretty much finished before I can try it on and see how the shaping-free waist looks, and that’s a lot of ripping if I don’t like it. But I think I will. I think at most it’ll have like an inch of ease on average, if that, so it won’t be too loose and boxy-looking.
Pictures tomorrow, promise.
This weekend has been pretty good so far, but also interesting. (And I still need to post pictures of my pre-smocked dress, but that’s not happening today, either.) Friday, I took the morning off from work to go to the doctor. I wanted to get my stupid ring finger checked out (really persistent fungal infection – turns out, it’s been hiding out on my ring while my finger cleared up, then I’d put the ring back on, and bam! it comes right back, even after washing the ring and wiping it with rubbing alcohol – looks like bleach will do the trick, though), and also talk about tapering off my Lexapro, because I think it’s time. So, I’m all set to taper off it, and I started this morning, but apparently one of the side effects of withdrawal is “brain zaps” or “brain shivers.” I wasn’t terribly looking forward to this – on the plus side, all the accounts I found online seemed to agree that it wasn’t usually painful, just unpleasant and disorienting. (On the minus side, those accounts were online, so they could all be bullshit.) And it’s already started today, and for the most part it hasn’t been painful – a couple times I’ve had some tiny painful twinges in my jaw or neck, but my brain hasn’t hurt. It has felt at times like my brain was shivering (that was the first one I noticed), and the rest have been this weird feeling almost like a very small current is running through my head, but it’s not painful. Some account I read described brain zaps as “a light being turned on in my head,” which didn’t make sense at the time, but now that I’ve had one, it makes total sense, and that’s exactly how I’d describe it. I’ve also had periods of…I wouldn’t say disorientation per se, but more just overwhelming bewilderment, like I don’t know what’s happening and I just stop being able to function/cope. (I guess that *is* disorientation, but I always think of disorientation as involving not knowing where I am, and I knew where I was, I was just bewildered.) At one point, we were in Harris Teeter today, and the first instance of bewilderment hit, and the announcements on the PA system (price checks or something) seemed really loud and like they were coming out of nowhere, and I grabbed my head at one point – I’m sure that looked crazy. (Or maybe like I was just hungover and had a bad headache.) And I was convinced I was about to burst into tears, but I didn’t. The other thing I noticed, is Greg was driving us to Ashley’s Unique Boutique at one point today, and I realized I knew where it was located, like I could see the address in my head as clearly as if it were printed on a business card – but I couldn’t *read* the address, or make much sense of the letters. That was incredibly frustrating. Eventually Greg realized he must have misremembered where it was, and we gave up and headed home – and then, after, I don’t know, twenty or thirty minutes of driving, I finally managed to decipher the letters I’d been seeing in my head this whole time, and once I could, I knew it was the right street. In fact, I even knew the exact street number, after only going out there the one time. (I just checked, and it is in fact the right street number: 2915 Guess Rd.) I *never* remember streets, much less numbers. Weird. But very frustrating to take so long to remember, and to see it in my mind’s eye, but not be able to read it. Kind of a tip-of-the-tongue sensation. Oh yeah, Greg’s been driving all day today, too. After the doctor’s, we discussed the potential side effects, and I won’t be driving until after I’m done withdrawing from Lexapro. I might be fine to drive, but it could be very bad for me to get behind the wheel and get a brain zap and get bewildered or whatever, so no driving for me until we either know definitively that I’m okay to drive, or until I’m done withdrawing. Which really means, since I’m careful to the point of neurosis, no driving until I’m done withdrawing. Also, I’ve caught myself “coming to” today – not really coming to, because I haven’t been unconscious or in a blackout. But I’ll get kind of frozen, motion-wise, like a really heavy zoning-out, and then I’ll shake it off and “come to.” Also not a good thing to have happen while driving. So, no driving for me for the next two-ish months.
In happier news, the fun part of the weekend! It rained ALOT yesterday, and I loved it. Last night, Greg and I went to see Municipal Waste at Volume 11 in Raleigh, and that was fun. We also saw Soilent Green. The show was pretty packed, and there was some crazy ass crowd-surfing (that also involved a boogie board some dumbass had brought – it ended up getting broken by some dude after it got thrown into the sound setup, and knocked down some wires), and a fight (dudes got kicked out, I didn’t get a good view of anything), and one dude with a broken nose that looked pretty gnarly. And that’s why I stay the fuck away from the mosh pit. I also saw a lot of pretty, pretty hair – all on metal dudes. Seriously, one guy that was standing near us most of the show, had the prettiest hair I’ve seen in ages. Jealous. Another dude that I think was the tallest guy there, and looked like he stood a fair chance of beating your ass in a fight (ie, kind of tough), was standing next to me for a while – he had the best eyeliner application I’ve ever seen, bar none. I really wanted to hit him up for eyeliner tips, but I didn’t think that the wisest course of action. After the show, we went to a sports bar called Blinco’s to hang out with Bill, and some other people. Then Greg and I went to Waffle House (which was insanely busy), and then home to sleep.
Today, we went to a cookout Greg had been invited to, and I tagged along. I was a little apprehensive about going, since I’m kind of social phobic and I’m a little nuttier than normal due to the withdrawal (which I knew could start happening today), and other than Greg, there would be only two people there that I knew. But it was fucking awesome. Everyone was very nice and friendly, and I got to meet people who share my love of bad movies that come on Scifi, and got to nerd out a bit over comic books (from back in the day, for me, since I haven’t really been into them for years) and vampire and horror movies. It was awesome. I felt very comfortable, and enjoyed myself, which usually doesn’t happen when we go to some random party with a few people we know, but most of the people there we don’t know. I’m usually very uncomfortable and awkward-feeling, but today I had a blast. Which helps balance out all the weird feelings from the brain zaps and shit – sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind. But it’ll end before too long, and in the meantime I think hanging out with friends and doing fun stuff will help bolster me through the crap stuff.
And now I ought to stop blabbering and give you some pictures. Here are pictures of my current main Wardrobe Refashion project: re-sizing my flamingo skirt. I’m still ripping seams – it’s taking much longer than I thought, but oh well. And I feel like Chalupa gets short shrift when it comes to being a documented pet of this household, even though she’s adorable and has her own personality. She’s just not as pushy/needy/camera-whore-y/whatever-it-is as Skeeter is. But I’m trying to fix that, so here are some pictures of her, too, especially being cute yesterday – I left the couch to go do something, and she stole my place to demand pets from Greg. Pretty cute.
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Last night, while watching Underworld: Evolution, I made some Willendorf beads to trade for some nag champa soap. (Yummy-smelling soap!)
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I also made pierogi casserole for dinner, since Greg had requested it. Tomorrow night I’m making curry (red, I think) with tofu, and spicy fried zucchini, and some paratha (but I’m picking that up at the store). And then Saturday, I’m making crockpot spaghetti, Greg’s other request.
Tonight, I’m watching Day Watch, which is pretty awesome, but a little confusing since it’s been so long since I saw Night Watch. There was one scene where the main guy (disguised with someone else’s face) got punched above the browbone, and his brow crumpled like it was made of clay. It was simultaneously the most ridiculous and yet grossest special effect I’ve seen in a long while. Craftwise, I’m going to rip the seams out of an old skirt of mine, so I can enlarge it a bit and actually get some use out of it. It’s one of my favorite skirts – black with pink flamingos embroidered on it – and it occurred to me today that resizing it would be a good project for Wardrobe Refashion.
