Still using bandwidth like nobody’s business, so in addition to the robot file, I just installed sk2. If that doesn’t work, I’ll have to resort to stricter means – as much as that sucks. Unless someone else has any other ideas.

What a bunch of shit.

MB4’s advocate dropped by the final papers today for me to sign before he submits them to the board for approval. Or whatever the fuck the process is when you basically beg to have your name added to the lengthy list of parents waiting for a meager handful of services. Our family rates a bit higher than most because mommy is bipolar – who’d of thunk it? Guess they don’t want any nasty bathtub incidents. That was a bit crass, wasn’t it?

I’m feeling that whir again. I know it won’t last. I know it won’t take flight and carry me into the land of fantastic moods and incredible energies and purring internal motors, but I’ll take what I can get. How long before I stop missing the dragon? Doubt I ever will.

I’ve been trying to work on a few designs for myself and Joanie, and I’m drawing a blank. Just can’t get the mojo to work anymore. The technical stuff seems to still be there, but the ability to formulate a decent layout in my mind is just shot. I think I have something, and I ruin it in the translation from brain to print.

Kids are on my fucking nerves right now. C’mon MD and get yer ass home.

Reading through the advocate’s final profile of MB4 punched my guts again. It’s nothing new. Hell, most of it he copied word for word from the forms we filled out, but it still stings to read it. And I forgot to take a Klonopin, so I stumbled all over my tongue like a fucking moron the whole time he was here, so I’m sure he has no doubt what tree the apple fell from.

Wanted to go fishing tomorrow, but this nice weather is on its way out. Still might. Just need to do something. Feeling a bit edgy.

Donations for Light The Night are still coming in, and I appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.

Run kid #1 to his volunteer job.
Run kid #2 to his overnight lockin.
Rush home in time to meet freecycle gal and give her vases.
Run kid #3 to the third fucking birthday party this week.
Rush home in time to meet freecycle gal and give her toys/stroller.
Pick up kid #1 from the hospital and haul ass home to meet MB4’s advocate.

Anyone close to finishing up a transporter? I sure as hell could use one.

“…my 4 1/2 year old daughter wasn’t able to find her teachers/group in a park. Mind you, I’ve no idea how big the park is but the point is that my daughter genuinely felt lost and could not find her group. She remembered that I told her to look for a mommy with a baby or small child. And she did! The mother walked my daughter back to her group and all was fine.”

Once again, proof that it’s never too early to start talking to your kids about safety. TalkTalkTalk. Do It NOW!!

^{And Rosie, I’m so very glad that you did. And I’m so incredibly thankful that she listened.}

Plugin needed that will get rid of the bandwidth thieving spam bots please. It’s getting fucking ridiculous. For now, I can hop in and up my allowance, but there has to be a solution for this shit.

MS called. Said her port has been installed and she ain’t liking it that much. Hope that it becomes less of an issue as time goes on. She’s been placed in a clinical trial for a new drug. Guess it’s not exactly new, but rather an older drug they are trying for different purposes. This one is usually used for Stage IV folks, as it prevents the cancer from forming it’s own travel system. Simply put – it stops it from growing limbs and getting the fuck outta dodge. This prolongs the life of a terminal patient, so they are thinking it might be perfect to use on Stage III’s to avoid that step altogether. I’m so glad she’s at this center. She starts chemo next week. Fingers crossed and all that.

I need to find a house soon. We are so cramped in this cracker jack box, I can hardly stand it. I shuffle shit around and send out as much as we take in, but it doesn’t matter. No matter what I do – we’re drowning. There’s only so many things you can get rid of. If I give away any more, we’ll have nothing for a house when we find one.

MB4 had another therapy appt this morning. I didn’t go back this time, as she wanted his honest take on his family members. Guess we passed, as they let me take him home. She said he’s incredibly bright, and she can see how that alone is going to cause problems. She didn’t elaborate, as her next patient was a rude little troll taptaptapping her foot in the waiting room, so now I know I’ll have A Beautiful Mind nightmare tonight.

She made his next appt for two weeks after the meds appt, so we’ll she if she can see a difference. I brought in a list for her of the questions he asks and the problems we face and the ways in which he drives us all crazy. I felt like a rotten bitch for doing it. Not because I was ‘telling’ on him, but because I was so damn excited that someone was finally going to help us that I couldn’t write that shit fast enough.

Do you get arrested for biting your fingernails? If I walk outside barefoot, is that illegal? MG picked a flower and now it will most certainly die – when are they coming to out her in jail? MB1 sleeps all day which means his body must be tired and soon he will die. I can’t eat at BurgerKing because I didn’t bring my toothbrush. I can’t use this pencil because it makes a skooowy skoooowy noise on the paper and hurts my ears.

I just hope they can help him.

Never take one single solitary day of feeling good for granted. Never.

MB4 has trouble with sharing. Turn taking and the like. Seems easy enough to fix, but it’s not.

If he’s playing with a toy, and someone wants a turn, he gets angry. They must wait their turn. They don’t want to share, in his opinion. Trying to steal from him. He throws major fit.

If MG is playing with a toy and he wants it, he gets angry when she won’t hand it over. That also means she isn’t sharing, in his opinion. He throws a major fit.

See the problem?

No matter how many times I explain it, it doesn’t sink in. He reverses it into one of those scenarios – and technically, the way he words it, he’s right. I’m left with my mouth hanging open like a dumbass. Again.

Colonoscopy has been scheduled.

Feeling much MUCH better this morning. Still pondering the ponderings, but they shuffle to the background on days like these. MB4 has therapy today, and I’m thrilled that I’ll understand a small portion of what the hell she’s talking about this time – for real. yo

Gets mighty cold in the winter for MD, who works in the shop. We’ve somehow managed to snag a set of Carhartts every year for him, but I’ve always had my eyes on those Extreme Artics they have. I bought the bib and coat last night from Sierra, ’cause I ain’t never seen the bibs that cheap. Buy ‘em if your man uses ‘em. Still one helluva deal on the coats as well. I can’t wait to see his face when he opens this box.

Now that I’ve let my hick show, I must go find something trendy & modern to do. Like fold laundry.

There’s been a battle waging in my mind for as long as I can remember. The fight as to who is really in control up there in my mind’s mothership, since my life takes on a new direction with the wind. Finding out that this struggle was caused by a bipolar disorder helped in a lot of ways, but not all.

What it didn’t do was answer the most important question – who am I really? Maybe that doesn’t matter to some. Maybe it shouldn’t matter to me, but it does. It does, and it eats me up more than I care to admit.

Was I born bad? Perhaps not bad in the Ted Bundy sense, but then again, why not? Who’s to say that the emotional detachment I feel wouldn’t have enabled me to bring harm to others? I think it might shock people to know just how cold I can be. How truly numb I can make myself. Unaffected. There was a time when I thought everyone felt this way or had the ability to shut it off, but I know now that’s not true.

And maybe not bad, but I was indeed born different, that’s for sure. Something inside my brain makes me different from most people. It causes me to re-rank my life and shift my family to the bottom of the pile. It causes me to not give two shits about where I go or who I go with. It causes me to care about nothing and no one but myself. For some reason, I seem unable or unwilling to form any real relationships. People don’t mean much to me usually.

Let’s just say that I was born an android. An emotional void. Seems to fit.

My question is –
Do the pills give me what I need to be a human? Or do they take away what makes me an android?

Might seem like there’s no difference there, but there is. A big difference. To me anyway. I need to know who I truly am. Someone who was born with cold hearted tendencies and needs a pill to make her a nice person, or someone who was born a nice person but needs a pill to stop the cold hearted tendencies from taking over because of a brain fuck up every so often.

And lastly, I need to have my blogging privileges revoked when I’m feeling depressed.

Never thought I’d be waiting eagerly for the day to roll around that my kid gets handed some Prozac or whatever they decide to try first with MB4. But I am. Boy howdy, I am. People can say what they will, but they aren’t the ones trying to keep the peace in this house.

Reading this book that his new therapist recommended – Tormenting Thoughts & Secret Rituals. It’s about OCD, and damn, does it paint an incredibly clear picture as to what we’re …… he’s dealing with. It explains exactly what obsessions are – which are nothing like what I assumed they were. Same with compulsions. Here I was thinking I knew what the hell the docs were talking about, and it turns out that I was an ignorant fool. But I’m learning.

I’m also hopeful. This gal said that damn near everything I was telling her was OCD related in some fashion or another. Since the OCD is totally treatable in 90% of those that seek help with it, I’d much rather it be his main issue. And I know that once he can actually stop tripping over rules and details and the like, he can start to wrap his mind around the pragmatics he needs. Right now, his therapy seems to be working against us.

Mood still sucks, but I have a mood disorder, so technically, that’s normal.

I upgraded WP, so things might not look the same for awhile. I need to work out the kinks and whatnot, but I can only do it when the urge hits me. Still need to replace smilies, tweak old skins….brain has already shut down just thinking about it.

Have had the new epithingy a week, and I love it. I lovelovelove it. My lower legs toughened up real quick. Upper legs, where the hair is a bit softer, is taking longer to get used to it, but I’m getting there. Stings more. Basically I went at it every single day for the first 4 or 5 days, and I haven’t used it since. Legs are still smooth. Smooth like silk. Haven’t the guts to tackle the underarms yet, and I have only done the jungle twice, but I’m braver every day.

I’m now an official HP widow. No, don’t pass me a spare book and tell me to try it. I’ll bend you over, shove it up your ass, and mull over the whole can I get away with the perfect murder daydream I’ve had since I was very small. I hate the loneliness that HP brings to me.

I am getting ready to start, hence the extra pounds. But even though I know that, it didn’t stop the tears that flowed all day whenever I’d catch sight of the scale. Hell, didn’t even need to be the scale. I’d bawl over ink color these days.

The dosage demons are still hot on my ass. They are trying to drive me crazyer. One day I feel fine, and the next I’m hiding in a room crying because it hits me again that I’ll have to take a pill every day for the rest of my life to be socially acceptable. I know that’s the disorder talking, screwing with my mind – but my mind is me, after all.

All of this crying is making it easy for the fear to creep in. The fear surrounding this shit with my sister. I can usually keep it at bay, but I’m failing lately.

Something’s gotta give soon. It’s crushing me.

How in the hell did I manage to gain 3 more fucking pounds while in Omaha? Spent all day Saturday walking in 97 degree weather. Drank nothing that day but a truck load of water. Heat killed my appetite, so I barely had anything to eat. Sunday we played outside, and I had my usual smaller portions of food. So what the fuck? I have to start exercising again, I know. I just hate it. I know – everyone does. Whine Whine Whine.

Wore out from the weekend, but I have a shitload to do. We sorted through that monster lot of clothes, and we have a winner! Something for everyone – mostly for me. And considering the chunk of guilt I have about buying anything for myself (a gift that my mother passed down), this was right up my alley. MD hit the jackpot as well. We repacked what we can’t use, added a few bags of things that our kids have outgrown lately, and it still filled up 11 boxes – one of which is 3 feet tall. I offered it up on Freecycle last night, and some other family is on their way this morning to (hopefully) score some goodies from the stash. This is how Freecycle is supposed to work. Take a hint moochers.

I don’t have anything planned this week, which is good. I need some down time to deep clean this house. I think the meds are starting to level off, as I don’t feel as grouchy. Sometime today, I’ll get around to posting the pics from the weekend in the gallery.

Break time is over. Walls to wash.

We’re headed to Omaha to spend the weekend with a friend of mine. We’ll take in the zoo, some BBQ, some wine, and plenty of fun and sun. Maybe it’ll help snap me outta this foul ass mood I’m in. Probably not, but maybe I’ll lose that pound I gained last night. That’ll sun tomorrow will probably melt us all into pools of shit, so I shouldn’t worry about it.

Actually, I’m not as snippy as I was. Not a crybaby either. I feel sorta plastic again, but I’m trying very hard to remember that these intial side effects fade away eventually. I won’t flush the pills down the toilet and smash everything in sight while screaming I Wanna Be Me at the top of my lungs like I want to.

I scored a 300 piece clothing lot from Freecycle this morning. Want something to wear?

Almost done school shopping. Finished supply shopping last month. Cabinets look like an office supply store. Just don’t tell MD about the other cabinets I had to use for storage as well. He’d flip a nutty if he saw just how much I bought. Hey, we still have food.

And I’m off. Bored as hell sitting here. Maybe I’ll upgrade WP and fuck shit up. Sounds like fun.

Well, she met with the cancer center’s head guy yesterday. Guess it’s time to get serious, as he wasn’t MrChipperTheSunshineBlower like the other doc who did her surgery.

He told her that he would always be honest with her, which she appreciates. He is going to throw everything but the kitchen sink at her in ways of treatment. It’s a research center as well, so anything promising at all is going to be given a go with her. She has the port installed next week, and she starts chemo the middle of August, when her weight and anemia is more under control.

She will have chemo for 6 months, as well, she will take some form of something or another at the house, to try and combat the cells while they are active. This is where he lost us a bit. Something about cancer cells go through inactive/active phases, and they are most vulnerable to the chemo while they are active? So if he hits it at the cancer center, and then again at home, the chances of getting them active are better. He will also pump her full of hundreds of other pills that should keep her feeling decent through this process. He said she shouldn’t need anyone there to help out during chemo. He also said he would warn her if she’s about to start the regimen that will cause her to lose her hair.

Her MIL left this morning. Mom should be able to head up there soon, so we’ll take it one day at a time going forward. My aunt is a nurse, and has also said she’d pull a ’shift’ if need be, so I think we’ll be ok if she needs us.

I am forcing myself back into robot mode. I can’t deal with MB4’s issues and MS’s issues if I’m falling apart, and no one can lock it up and function better than I. Falling apart will have to wait.

I have a new toy. I bought it and it’s mine mine mine. Comes with more attachments than a Dyson, and thankfully, it’s electric, which will save a shitload of money on batteries.

I tried it out the second the UPS old dude codger put it in my eager hands. The kids were curious, but I informed them that it was mine mine mine. I threw a few bucks at MB2 to watch the little ones, ran to the bathroom, and proceeded to strip. Took forever to get the damn thing out of the box, and even longer to find out which end was up and what head did what and where – but I finally got it figured out.

Meet my new toy….
(more…)

MB4 had yet another intake appt today. These people turned out to have brains in their heads, and he will start attending regular therapy sessions every two weeks to try and slowly ease the obsessive behaviors. He will also go as needed for psych appts to start him going on some meds. We’ve debated and researched and all that jazz, so keep your well meant comments and warnings to yourself please. I don’t want to hear it. There comes a point when you have to ask yourself if NOT medicating your child is causing harm. We’re at that point. We’ll give it a go anyway.

I still feel like shit. Short and snippy and just bleh. But oh well.

Last night sucked. Shitty mood turned into ….. I don’t know what. I just cried. And I don’t cry. Was still there this morning. Well, not actually crying, but more of an on the brink so to speak. Talk about a fucking roller coaster. And these meds are helping me? Um. Yeah.

Feel better now, although I’m still grouchy. I feel bad because my temper is incredibly short with MB4, and he just doesn’t handle that very well. He either ignores me, or he fires back with rage of his own. Neither is good. I just can’t handle him lately. I know a part of it isnt’ just me, as MD has had quite the time with him lately too, but we’re his parents. If we can’t handle him, who the hell can?

And he’s not bad. He’s …… not even him…..it’s what has a hold of him…..it’s non-stop. It never stops. It never gives me a minute to catch my breath. To say he’s worse might not be a fair assessment, as we were told it would simply be more obvious as he got older and his actual age moved further and further away from his functioning age, but shit. I’m about to pop.

He chases poor MG around and hollers at her all day long. Either she’s singing wrong or talking wrong or has said something that constitutes as a lie in his book (which isn’t really a lie, it’s merely a 3yo girl’s take on things) or she tells him to leave her alone and he totally crumbles. Last night he said over and over – Do you love me MG? When she turned around and hollered no – he howled in the corner for over 20 minutes. Nothing I could do would comfort him. He finally stood up and said that if she hated him, he was going to kill himself. He’s 6 fucking years old. No one ever says shit like that in my house, so where did he even get that from?

I totally freaked out and forced MG to tell him that she didn’t hate him, and that seemed to do the trick, but he was right back to being her Personal Corrector within 2 seconds. I, on the other hand, was a fucking basketcase, wondering what kind of a fucked up mother raises a child to say things like that. God knew what he was doing? Fucker please. No God would have sent a child like this to me. I have enough of my own problems. I’m not fit to raise sheep most days. My little boy has suicidal thoughts. Nope, no parent of the year truck outside waiting to deliver my prize.

Shit, I’m done thinking about this today.

Haven’t felt much like writing. Haven’t felt much like doing anything. Not depressed, I don’t think anyway. More angry than anything. And I’m not sure if it’s the normal anger that usually follows the tragic bullshit, like this thing with my sister, or if the doc increasing my meds is doing it. Regardless, I’m one nasty bitch to be around.

The doc had tried raising my dose before, but I stopped after a few weeks. Then he tried again to convince me that it won’t do any good if there wasn’t enough in my system for it to work. I get that – I really do, but now isn’t a good time for me. He accepted that, and said to go up as slowly as I needed to. So, I laid off while I was in TN, but now I’m working my way back toward the higher dose – and I feel like Satan himself.

Not exactly a moody change – because I just have one. I’m not even sure how to list it on the stupid ass chart. I’m angry enough that day to day life simply infuriates me, but I’m not sure which oval I should be filling in. I don’t feel depressed. I don’t feel manic. I feel homicidal. Surely that isn’t good either. I’ll have to ask him to add a special oval just for my Time To Kill moments.

My wedding ring fits again. It didn’t for the longest time. That humiliated me, given how loose it was. I fit into another pair of shorts that were in the Way Too Fucking Tight pile.

Eh, fuck it. I tried to sit here, but I’d rather pace or clean or chew on someone’s ass.

MB3’s birthday today. He wanted a drum set. We obliged. Head exam please.

Haven’t been on the puter much. This shit with my sister has renewed the desire to not waste a drop of the time we’re given on this planet. Not to say that I’m sky diving and bull riding and whatever else he sang in the song, but I am trying not to fall back into a rut when it comes to time wasters.

Damn, I’m more tired than I thought. Sucks getting old.

If you ordered the newest child id tag from the link I posted awhile back, you should be getting them soon. Received ours yesterday.

Has a new format this year. Lots more tips and tricks for talking to your kids. I was relieved to read that they also recommend telling your children to find a mommy with kids or a cashier if they are lost. That’s what we tell our kids, but there was always a nagging feeling that maybe we hadn’t thought that scenario all the way through and there was a bad aspect of it that we weren’t thinking about. Now I am sold.

Again, talk to your kids. Talk Talk Talk.

MS is finally out of the hospital, and says she feels great. Her lung is staying …. inflated (? whatever) so far, and she should check out ok tomorrow when she goes in to have it looked at a final time. Then it’s a few weeks to finish healing, and then she heads to UT to start chemo. She is meeting with that team tomorrow as well, and hopefully we will find out what type of treatment they are going ahead with. She’s so damn upbeat about it all, and for that, I am so very thankful. Things have a way of going south real fast when the right attitude isn’t there.

As for me? I’m finally starting to feel rested. I’m telling ya, that stint took a lot out of me. Hate to whine when my sister is facing such ‘real’ problems, but 8 kids is no walk in the park. MB4 and MS’s #2 (her spectrum kiddo) did great – and then not so great. And when 2 autistic kiddos get to hashing it out – omhell. There’s nothing you can do to stop the repeating in MB4, and her son has very sensitive sensory issues – to the point where even MB4’s chanting was driving a wedge into his brain. MS’s#2’s reaction was to rock and mumble and it scared the shit out of me – MB4 doesn’t do that.

I felt sorry for both of them, because nothing I could say would explain how the issue they were fighting about was really a nothing argument. Like neither would believe the other is in first grade, because neither saw the other in kindergarten. To tell them they attended two different schools made no difference – they didn’t get it. The concept of states and cities and such is a bit too big for a mere mortal like me to explain. I finally had to drive MB4 by MS’s#2’s school to ’show’ him the difference, since it was mainly he who had trouble with it and WOULD not let it rest.

This whole thing has been so great for my diet though. 13lbs gone. It’s going a lot slower now that the stress isn’t messing with my appetite all day, but the puter break there really helped to get me active again (well, that and 8 kids), and I am going to do my best not to get into the rut again. I have gone to bed early every night since coming home, and waking up early to get going on the day.

Oh, and did I mention that it’s now been 11 months of no smoking? Thank you. Thank you.

Many thanks to everyone again. Lucky for me, by the time I had ‘time’ to sit down and deal with my own fears and emotions about this whole thing – it’s moved to a better outlook entirely. Now to get up my guts to have MB1 and myself checked.

MS is back in the hospital. Her lung keeps collapsing. Her mother in law is there to help out now, but I still feel like an ass for leaving. I should have stayed.

because my darling husband decided to help me by using his manly ways to scrub my tub. Yanno – those hard water impossible to remove stains that you just ignore because they were there when you moved in and you tried every cleaner known to man and nothing ever worked so you said fuck it? Well, he removed them.

Now when you hop in and sit down down and expect to slide on in for some much needed aquatic bubble-icious R&R – your ass comes screeching to a halt midway, your buttcheek flesh rips off, and you howl in pain as you wonder what the fuck is going on.

He removed the porcelain sheen. The top layer of my tub. Or the top 20 layers, whatever. It’s rough and tough and I have the ass scars to prove it. He’s sorry, but who can holler when he was trying so hard to be helpful?

Anyone know how to fix it? The tub, not my ass. Didn’t hurt me none to lose some assfat.