Friday, June 22, 2007

It's getting to me, making me gloomy. Where were you last night?

I woke up last night at 3:45 am and had to use the bathroom. Nothing too unusual for that, just was feeling the bladder pressure. So I got up, did my business, and went back to my bedroom.

It was then that I noticed that, sometime in the 4 hours since I’d gone to bed, I’d removed my neck brace. The strange thing is that I don’t remember doing it at all.

There have been a few times where I’ve undone the Velcro straps to loosen it, and I remember waking up and thinking it was too tight, loosened or undid them, and went back to bed. The thing is I remember doing it.

Last night, I undid the straps, took it off, and, as evidenced in the morning, threw the damned thing across the room. All without remembering doing it.

A friend at work tells how she has a habit of getting up and eating in the middle of the night. But she has said that she usually remembers it all, even though she recognizes that she is in some half conscious state when she did it.

She had bought some fudge last week at the Pittsburgh Arts Festival, ate some there and stored the rest in her fridge. She woke the next morning to find the remnants of the wrapper on her kitchen counter and all the fudge gone. As she lives alone, she knows she is the one who did it, but she can’t believe that she doesn’t remember a thing about it.

I, of course, being a good friend, made several jokes about what else she was doing in the middle of the night without knowing it. I was wondering why we can’t channel that energy towards cleaning, or doing laundry. Why does all of our nocturnal, half conscious self have to do bad things? Of course, I predicated my entire line of jokes at the fact that I always remember doing things in the middle of the night.

So here I sit, Friday morning, with a slight headache from not wearing the neck brace because I woke in the middle of the night, tore it off, and in anger threw it across the room. I think that is what I did, cause I can’t remember a thing about it.

Or maybe my cats banded together, heard me gasping for air because I had made it too tight, and with their opposable-thumbless paws, removed the offending apparatus, and made sure they put it far enough away from my reach in the hopes that I didn’t accidentally, while half conscious, retrieve it and put it back on, too tightly, and have problems breathing again.

Yeah, that’s my story. My precious kittens were just trying to save my life. Cause they love me. And they are now considered genetically altered kittens with opposable thumbs. Check out how sweet they look!I wonder if I can get them to move around some furniture in my house so that I can get that BowFlex to fit in here. Cause I don’t seem to have the energy to do it alone. And I’m getting too fat and out of shape to do it on my own. Not in good enough shape to move the one thing that I need to get into shape. Delicious irony, ain't it!

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Why don't you like me without making me try?

Wow. I’ve been really bad at this blogging thing for the past week or so. Like really, super duper bad. So amazingly bad that I haven’t even blogged. Or for that matter, run at all. Or eaten healthy. Or done anything that could make me healthier. What I have done is eat the new Wendy’s BACONATOR! (Can you believe that there is no mention of this 6 strips of bacon on 1/2 pound of beef masterpiece on the Wendy's website? What is that all about?) And sat on my ass as much as possible.

To be fair, I haven’t had too many headaches. My neck still gets sore a bit from time to time, but I have been immobilizing it when I sleep and done the neck exercises the physical therapist told me to do. And I am getting tired of botching about it, so I don't.

But I am still a bit leery to about getting onto the treadmill. Based on the pain I put myself into the last time, I am going to be careful. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t walk on it, but I’ve been way too lazy to even do that part. I’ve just sat around and gotten fatter and fatter. By eating a thing called the “baconator.” And watched some television. Not even some good television (except for The Sopranos series ender which I personally thought was fantastic!) More like crappy “A&E Investigates” and "American Justice" and the like that weren’t even that good.

I want to get healthy. I swear I do, but I hate when I write about it, then go home and sit down to watch how the Long Island Lolita case worked itself out. Or how the Scarsdale Diet Doctor was murdered.

Oh, and I’ve spent plenty of time listening to the Mika Album “Life in Cartoon Motion.” It so far is my summer album. It is fun, danceable, and unique. Kind of a mash between Queen and any Jimmy Somerville led group (he is a queer singer who had hits in Europe with Bronski Beat & The Communard before he went solo.) It is part bombastic glam rock ("Grace Kelly," "Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)") part cabaret ("Billy Brown," "Any Other World") part dance ("Lollipop) wrapped into a nice pop sensibility. If you get the chance to listen to this album, I say do your ears a favor.

Here's hoping the rest of the week is better for me. And maybe I will be better at this blogging thing.

Friday, June 08, 2007

Well now you're lookin' for a world of truth, trying to find a better way. The time has come to see yourself: you always look the other way

I want my life back.

That is what has been going on in my head this week as I battled headaches, weariness and depression. I know it is such a ridiculous, cliché ridden sentence, but that is what I have thought.

I want the pre-March 16th Mike back. I want to feel good when I wake up in the morning. I want my morning headaches to be about not having enough caffeine from Diet Mountain Dew in my system, not about sleeping in just the wrong way. And speaking of sleep, I want to be able to sleep without my neck immobilized. It ain’t fun.

I want to be able to look to the left without a sharp pain causing me days of agony.

I want to get on the treadmill and run without feeling like the muscles in the back of my neck are ripping slowly with each step.

I want to drive on a certain stretch of the road I live on without staring at the other side, seeing if some other fuck up has decided to cross the fifteen foot wide median to slam into another car I am in.

And I want this stupid self pity to go away.

I know I am blaming, blaming and blaming. I seem to be good at it these days. The anger comes quicker, the letdowns come easier and the pain seems to be constant, even when it isn’t sharp.

I am lucky, and I know it. In my job, I see motor vehicle accidents daily, death daily. I see accidents much lesser than the one I was in rip families apart due to death of a loved one. My accident even showed how much love my family has, such as how they came together in the middle of the night and helped Carl’s boyfriend Darren, all alone that night as Carl & I were stuck in the hospital overnight, when they didn’t know him. My 14 year old nephew showed, even with his teenage angst, to be such a responsible, loving young man when he volunteered to help in doing so many things that weekend for the three of us.

Through no fault of our own, the three of us were in an accident, and we are lucky to be with what can only be considered limited problems. This isn’t to lessen the pain we are all in, but I see, on a daily basis, death, dismemberment, paraplegia, catastrophic loss from accidents that seem less severe, and we are all walking, talking and (mostly) thinking clearly.

But I want my old life back. I want to feel like me again, and not this ball of rage, pain, self pity and depression. I don’t know how to get back to it. And I am tired of using the accident as an excuse for everything wrong right now, but my brain won’t let me stop.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Corporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody tuesday, Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long.

I was born in the year of the cock. I don't know if that was prescient, coincidence or providence, cause we all know how I feel about cock. Just saying.

I don't believe in the mythology of these different forms of Astrology, but I do find it interesting. There are obvious and well known types of astrology, like the animals in Chinese Astrology.
And there are the ones we all know is the west, known as Western or Magickal Atrology. I am a Gemeni. Again, I have no belief that the attributions and dispositions of said Gemeni's are embodied in me, but I do find it interesting that the Gemeni is suposed to be a "chatty, versatile (not THAT kind of versatile), communication specialist," and that does seem to describe me (my BA is in Communication, so I am seeing the link.)

In Thai culture, they have a belief that the day of the week you were born on has a related color. I was born in 1969 on a Tuesday, and therefore my color is:
In case you didn't get that, let me put it this way:

One more time that is:

So, in a final look at my own world according to some astrology, I am a pink cock with a dual personality. Hmmm...maybe there is more to this astrology crap than I had originally thought.

If there is, is this a picture of me?


Just curious...

Sunday, June 03, 2007

You say it's your birthday, it's my birthday too--yeah

So as of 2:30 this afternoon, I will have been a living, breathing member of the Earth for 38 years. And how do I plan on spending my 38th year out of the womb? That is the question I have for myself.

In order for me to come up with a plan for 38, I wanted to look back at 37, as it seemed to start out so well. I had just flown back from Amsterdam the day before my 37th birthday, and was looking forward to trips to Rome, Edmonton, London & Thailand in the coming year. I went to all of them and had a great time.

One of the reasons for this blog, as I have reiterated ad nauseum, is for me to be able to follow my progress, habits, see what works, what doesn’t work, et al. (Damn, I am up on my Latin phrases today, eh?) And it works out good today, when I look back and see that I started my 37th year at 226 lbs right after I got back from Amsterdam. And even by the time I was ready to leave for Rome at the end of June 2006, I was only at 221 lbs. It seems that my running on the treadmill problems started right before I left for Amsterdam, and I wasn’t as consistent as I remembered.

Well, not that I was bad or anything, but my goal has been to run 5 times a week, and, from looking back over my archives, I wasn’t consistently running 5 times a week most weeks before March 16, 2007. And, due to problems with the whiplash, I’ve not been able to do it much since then. Last week I ran 2 days and then had a tremendous headache on day 3 and weakness in my left cervical muscle.

I start out today at 237 lbs, a bit of a bigger belly and no stamina or ability for running any distance due to my neck problems. I am going to at least start working on walking, at the minimum, for 30 minutes a day. Get back in the routine of at least using that chunk of time after work for something other than complaining that I can’t do it.

I am going to eat healthier. I don’t exactly know why I’ve done it recently (the book I am reading says that long term stress and depression can cause people to eat more and unhealthier than they are used to) but I’ve let it all go to hell. So starting Tuesday (work is having a little meat & cheese tray for me tomorrow for my birthday, so I won’t be eating healthy then) I will start eating better, and I will walk starting tomorrow.

And finally, here is a picture of me & my special little guy Justin.
He is my nephew who lives in NYC with my brother and his wife. He is 3 year old and a little pistol, so adorable. He, just like his uncle, was recently in a car crash and we were comparing scars on Friday. He asked if I cried, cause he did. I said of course I did (I didn’t let him know I was actually yelling “Fuck!” in lieu of crying when they put staples in my head; he doesn’t need to know that) but my Mom was there for me, just like his Mom was there for him so I was fine, and then he kissed me on the cheek and said he hoped I felt better, cause he felt better. A little tear started welling up at the love little kids can show. And that is when my sister took the picture. Adorable!

Here is to a great 38th year, and maybe some more after that. But I think I have a great opportunity to raise the quality of my life if I can get healthier.