The Room - Part 2

The Room - Part 2

Today, after my cat came home from what seems to have been a 3-night adventure in the underside of an old vehicle (probably the very old white van permanently parked outside my apartment) I bathed her and laid down with her to take my weekend nap. (See previous entry called Dizzy.)

After that and after several very successful attempts at sidetracking myself I dove into the boxes that have been haunting The Room since I moved here. (I avoided the incredibly urgent need to go shopping for a St. Francis statue to keep in the house as a sort of thank-you for bringing my cat back home safely.) There are books I haven't seen in a year, art supplies, pieces of art from here and there in my life and notebook binders galore.

But, how can I possibly work on this sort of thing in the quiet? I need music, and not the radio; I have to, I MUST buy songs for my iPod. I received a gift card for iTunes and I have been planning on making an Austinatious playlist ever since. Now I have 12 songs (some of which I already owned) in this playlist, and a nice start to an alternative music playlist as well. (So, I wanted Creep by Radiohead. I love that song so I bought it and played it. I learned that I will have to remember to pay attention to the label "Explicit" when looking at songs. [Again, see in Dizzy where I address issues I have with warning labels.] I played Creep and, WOW! On the radio he sings "You're so very special..."; on the recording he uses a very different adverb. It's almost distracting enough to keep me from enjoying the rest of the song. It certainly gives the whole song a different - more angry and jaded feel over-all.)

But, back to The Room now. I have stacks of books, 2 boxes of art supplies (some of which might not be of any use at this point) and other stacks of things: things to throw away by the door next to the pile of things to donate to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. I'm not sure what amazes me more, the amount of things that can accumulate in my life or the amount of dust that can accumulate since I gave up dusting in here 6 months ago because I couldn't reach anything.

Next step, closets. There are things that I plan to donate or give away. Clean out those spaces and I'll have room to store the art supplies that I plan to keep.

At some point I'll have to go through the books and really get rid of a lot of them. Truly. It's almost embarrassing. The word 'almost' in that last sentence was truly superfluous.

I have to remember only to put into the closets things that I actually plan on using. Not to say I'll use them every day, but if I do use them it's worth keeping them. Otherwise, they gotta go. In a memoir Carol Burnet wrote about her grandmother and the stacks and stacks of magazines that she kept because there were recipes in them that she planned on cutting out. For years those magazines sat around. I'm already 3/4 of the way there simply because I technically own 7 cats (only three of which live with me). I have to keep the image of a hoarding, old cat-woman in my mind to keep me on track.

Now I can see the floor. I can dust the CD's. I call that progress. Not good progress, but progress nonetheless. Now that it's almost midnight I think I'll go to bed.

Good night.

eArnie

March 1, 2012

I don't have anything to say, and I should really be sleeping. So, here's a picture of a rubber chicken singing. (Please note the Redwing Blackbird Valentine in the background.)

I imagine that she's singing a song originally sung by The Carpenters. It goes something like this:

Sing,
Sing a song,
Sing out loud,
Sing out strong...

Thank you and good night.

eArnie

Follow-up to Dizzy

I thought about my last post today, and about my weekend in general. One thing I forgot to mention, that I had completely forgotten about, is how tired it makes me when I miss a dose and then get back on the next day. If it happens to be a weekend I usually end up taking a (long) nap, whether I want to or not. Sometimes I almost don't make it to the bed or sofa in time, the sleepiness hits me so hard and so suddenly. But, nap or no (I didn't get one last Saturday) I end up feeling drained. The entire weekend was kind of a fog for me – I said that more than once on Sunday. Maybe if I had taken a nap on Saturday it would have been better. But, even today I'm a little lethargic.

I don't like it. I need to not miss a dose again.

eArnie

Dizzy

February 25, 2012

I was going to write about how discombobulated I was today, but instead I think I'm going to write about something else, something that been affecting me since all of that started this morning. Please note that I wrote "since all of that started" and not "what caused it all."

I take a medicine daily. It's called Atripla. All medicines come with a list of side effects and one that I see frequently on bottles is that it can cause dizziness. As a matter of fact, I see it so frequently that I had long since stopped paying attention. So, when I first began to take this medicine I didn't think much of that little yellow notice on that bottle. I lived in Elgin at the time and I was about to drive into town. It was a Saturday. I took the pill and waited the required hour to eat. It specified that you have to take it on an empty stomach, so I had to wait, not eating for a while before I was able to take it, and then wait 30 minutes to an hour afterward in order to eat again.

So, medicine taken, time waited, I ate and got ready to go to town. Then it hit me. I don't know if you, Gentle Reader, have ever taken multiple tequila shots and then realized that there is a waiting game with tequila. It's like this: You take a shot, you feel nothing. You begin to feel empowered and you take more shots. Then they start to kick in and you realize that even if you stop taking shots at this point, the rest of what you've already consumed is still going to be kicking in and you're probably in trouble. You might notice this when you stand up and turn to go to the restroom and the room stays in place and then catches up with your line of vision, which has already shifted to a different part of the room. You then realize that you can't walk with very much dignity, so you just do your best. While in the restroom you discover that you're very aware of your face, particularly your upper lip because it's tingling. Later you discover that you can't really feel your upper lip at all any more. Now, depending on how much you consumed before you realized the delayed reaction qualities of tequila you might at this point throw dignity to the wind and stumble helplessly to the bathroom to meet your new best friend, the porcelain toilet. Or, you might decide to make your escape only to witness your vomit beat you to the door of the establishment you're trying to exit. Projectile vomit is rarely considerate enough to actually open the door for you, it just makes it incredibly messy to do so and absolutely impossible to leave without everybody in the room looking at you and possibly laughing, applauding or threatening to call the police, or even all three.

Not that that's ever happened to me.

But, the "dizziness" that the bottle warned me about took me about halfway there. I was absolutely drunk, to the point that my upper lip tingled. I could still feel it (my lip) mostly, but I had to sit down and reconsider my trip to Austin.

As the days went by I tried various approaches to taking this medicine. Taking medicine on an empty stomach is much more easily done first thing in the morning, but clearly taking it when going to bed has benefits when this particular side effect is involved. Then I learned something. I don't know if you were paying attention before, but I wrote something earlier, a clue shall we say?  What I learned is that this dizziness doesn't kick in until I eat. So, taking it at night doesn't help because when I eat breakfast it kicks in then. I suppose that I could really work to make it happen properly by not eating for the required 2 hours (which is difficult enough as it is and only possible in a controlled environment, which doesn't leave room for hanging out with friends) and then taking the medicine and then eating 30 minutes to an hour later so that the dizziness kicks in and gets itself out of the way before I start my next day. I can't even guarantee, though, that it wouldn't kick in again when I ate the next day. I decided that taking it at night wasn't going to work for me. That's too much planning and I don't like to try to plan my life around taking a pill, even if that pill is keeping me alive. Besides, I fail miserably at taking pills every night. I do better first thing in the morning. So, being that it is a Very Important Medicine I felt I'd better do what I knew would work.

So, I stuck it out. I took the pill first thing in the morning and waited until I went to work and then I ate and then I was intoxicated at work, but I wasn't driving. I was just taking a very long time to do something that should have taken me 10 minutes to do.

As I ventured through life I found that this effect lessened. I also found that the medicine had other undesirable side effects, so now I take an antibitch medication along with it, which makes me clench my teeth so I take Advil as well. Before I began taking the antibitch medication I further learned that a side effect of the medication, aside from the dizziness, was that it made me stupid. I forgot things, like to take the medication that started all of it in the first place. This caused me to learn that the effect comes back when I miss a dose or several doses. It's not at full-force, upper-lip-tingling strength, but it does make me sit in my chair and swoon and it even makes me walk like I've had 1/4 of a drink too much. (By the way, nobody that I've talked to – nurses, doctors or pharmacists – has acknowledged that stupidity is a known side effect of Atripla.)

But, a couple of years down the road I think I've got it more under control. I carry a man-purse now, so I can keep back-up medicines with me so that in case I discover that I didn't take it in the morning I can take it at work, or wherever I happen to be. The messenger bag, as I like to call it and as it was sold to me, is so handy in so many ways that I can't even begin here to describe the benefits. But, before I digress completely let me come back around to my first paragraph. I was having a rough morning in a confused, disorganized way. I also noticed when I took my dose today that yesterday's dose was still in the daily pill dispenser, and I know that I didn't take it later in the day yesterday from my emergency stash. So, I realized that today is going to be one of those days. When I was sitting at Starbucks and found that my Nook wasn't in my bag I couldn't blame it on the meds because I hadn't eaten anything yet, so I had to chalk it up to a bad, disorganized morning. Halfway through the coffee the intoxication began to kick in so I headed home and clumsily began writing this instead of outlining the events of the morning, which are probably more humorous, but don't have as much socially redeeming value.

One other thing I've learned that's worth mentioning is that, though I feel intoxicated – I walk and often talk like I'm intoxicated – I don't experience the dropping of inhibitions that accompanies actual, alcohol-induced intoxication. So, while I am a little concerned at work that somebody will see me walk crooked, I don't really have to be concerned that I'll make bad decisions with regards to the maintenance man who I've been planning on doing unwholesome things to for 5 years now.

And now, I'm going to eat lunch and take a nap.

eArnie

Valentine

February 15, 2012


I received a valentine from a friend of mine in Dallas. She's an artist - an illustrator and a sculptor. She works in watercolor, ceramic and bronze. And, now in iPhone. 


Frankly, I consider it an honor that she counts me as one of her friends. If you ever have a chance to see her series of field hands in bronze don't miss it. I would post some pictures, but I'm writing this in a moment of flattered inspiration and I haven't received permission.


I met Glo Coalson through a friend, who shall remain Nameless. This is the valentine that I received from her, via email. She created it on her iPhone, she says.

She called it in her email, "Redwing Blackbird Valentine". I printed it in color and hung it at my desk. It makes me happy to see it. Then, a coworker walked up and said, "Wow, it's a redwing blackbird."    I had no idea it was a real bird. So, another coworker and I googled the term Redwing Blackbird (because apparently we had nothing better to do with our time while at work) and lo and behold there were hundreds of pictures of black birds with red spots on their wings and a yellow strip next to the red. I should have known, though. Glo is an avid birder (I say this on my own; I don't know if she would agree with me or not. From what I can see she's avid.) and an animal lover in general.


I am so touched by my valentine. Thank you!


I love you, Glo.