Friday, October 5, 2012

Today my Spine Hurts.

I'm typing this supine, because every time I sit or stand, a portion of my spine grinds on another portion of my spine, and I get nauseous, dizzy, and headachy. At the same time, the longer I lie here, the more painful my spine becomes, and the harder it becomes to breath because of where the pain is. Today is one of the days when I really feel disabled.

Make no mistake: My headaches are crippling. If I am caught unawares when a headache hits, I hit the floor. A random passerby offered to call 911 for me yesterday when I screamed a little and dropped into a crouch in the middle of the sidewalk.

But it's been over a year since the headaches came back. I've learned coping techniques to beat back the pain -- sometimes literally -- and continue dealing with my day -- albeit slowly and painfully. I have stopped remembering that things that make you scream and fall down are, in fact, disabling.

The fact that my spine becomes a large sea-urchin as it slides under my shoulder blades is something that only happens every once in a while. The weather is changing, fall is abut to turn the corner and become crisp and golden. As such, the possible fracturing in my spine is letting me know once again that it is there and willing to help.

Today is going to take a while.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

For the Love of Big, Bad Dogs.

I have a funny reaction whenever I see a big dog, particularly something with a Reputation. Pitt Bulls, German Shepherds, Rottweilers, Dobermans and other "Dangerous" dogs never fail to elicit a coo of "PUP-PEEE..." and a stupid grin. There is something about a big happy doggy with a head the size of a basket ball and muscles on his muscles that makes me go all gooey and soft.

I have yet to meet a "Bad" dog. I have met broken dogs, dogs whose owners have maltreated them, and who, for a while, were too frightened of people to be Happy Puppies. I have met dogs whose owners wouldn't, or couldn't, give them the care, training, and discipline they needed, and so didn't know that their behavior was unacceptable. I have met dogs whose owners have trained them to attack whatever moves.

But I have never met a dog who was genuinely cared for, truly loved and properly trained, who could be classed as "Bad".

Well, except for T-Bone, but my interaction with him was limited to whenever he came speeding out of his driveway to hit our car or attack my bike...

Let me repeat myself: I have only ever met one dog who made me feel unsafe. He is the only dog who has ever bit me (and a good swift kick got me disentangled from that with only a single minor puncture wound, and speeding away on my bike), and has on several occasions hit our car as we drove past.

He was (Maybe is -- I'm not sure if he's dead yet or not) an Australian Shepherd mix, and a phonecall from my father lead to a closed gate and a "Beware of Dog" sign. In the case of this dog, I have no way of knowing what his homelife was like. I cannot tell you what lead to his "Bad" behavior. I know the interaction I had with him, and nothing more.

I have plans, eventually, when I'm out of a tiny apartment and into a house I can have a puppy in, to spend several months combing through animal shelters and rescues for just the right puppy. Most likely, at this junction, I see myself with an American Pitbull Terrier.

Because how can you avoid falling in love with a face like this?
Image: http://www.yourpurebredpuppy.com/

I have two reasons to put forth here for wanting an APBT:

First, partially due to public and media bias, partially due to a naturally protective nature, the pittie makes a good deterrent to people attacks. Which, frankly, frighten me way more than dog attacks ever could. I have been attacked by people. They're a lot harder to stop than dogs, and a lot more likely to attack me.

Second, and this might not seem like a plus to most people, but it takes a strong will to train and care for a strong-willed dog. There are few things better for building up the character of a person than training and maintaining a healthy bond with a naturally dominant dog. If anything can help me learn to stand my ground, it would be a dog who wants to boss me around.

Also, I want a running partner, and a puppy is always willing to run with you.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Summer - not over yet.

This summer has been a hectic one.

To start with, sometime between last July and this, I misplaced my inventory for my one big show. In the three weeks between losing my job (more on that later) and setting out for the Fair, I frantically made nowhere near enough inventory. Therefore my display looked bare, and I didn't have enough things to sell.  Grawr.

I found my inventory within three days of getting home from said event.

So that (Making inventory, going to Fair, setting up for Fair, having Fair, and then tearing down and getting home) bit a month and a half out of my summer.

August led to running out to Spokane to spend time with my mother and help my little sis at a convention. Two weeks of living in a trance in the Back Woods and helping get the house ready to shut down, and that's the first half of August gone. Worth it, but gone.

Over labour day weekend, I'll be in Vancouver (Washington) at Kumoricon, where Little Sis Meip and I will have a table in the Artist's Alley.

Also, I've found that my dysphoria is now too strong for me to use my (beautiful, splendid, fast, girl's) bike. I've gotten on it all of three times this summer, and not for lack of wanting to. I just can't ride the damn thing. Also, the frame is probably bent from the one accident I've been in. While I still love my bike, and it is still a good bike, I just can't do it.  I'm currently on the quest for a good guy's bike to last me until I can get a new one. I'm considering begging my roommate to let me borrow her (Ancient, fast guy's) bike.

Now that all my excuses are out of the way, lets move on.

I've started reading again, on a "real" level. I have been a Very Good Student for the past few years, and read almost exclusively what I was assigned to read for class.

My pleasure-reading ability atrophied somewhere around the middle of senior year.

And then I discovered that book-review blogs and two-hundred-page mysteries are the perfect training regime to get back up to reading properly again (Getting enjoyment, not just information, out of what I'm reading...).

In the past month or so, I have devoured five of Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael mysteries, and am chomping on the sixth. I'm hoping to put up a review that I'm working on of one of them, soon, but it would seem my non-essay-writing skills have also atrophied a little, so that's taking longer than it should.

In any case, I'm ending this here and hopefully I'll be getting a little more active on this now.

Slan!

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Helloooooo Neverland!

I am Pan the Man.

Today, I dug my bike out of the dirt, replaced the breaks (Which hadn't been replaced since I was sixteen, and were worn halfway down), tuned up the gears, and aired up the tires.

And then I rode down to the Safeway, which is probably about half a mile away. This is the first time I've ridden this year, and it wore me to shreds. As it turns out, there's a very, very slight hill for half the way home. In other words: A cyclist's worst nightmare. The slighter the hill, the more you have to work to get up it. I, personally, would take a short, steep hill over a long, slow one any day. But that might just be me.

In any case, I've gotten back on my bike. Here's hoping I can keep it up.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

On Time Travel and Job Interviews.

The twenty-first-century job market is not Time Traveller friendly.

This may seem obvious to you, but it has really, really put a damper on my ability to find a job.

I should back up.

All throughout highschool, I dressed like a Time Traveller. I wore cloaks and corsets and floofy shirts and tall books. I fenced and ran around at night in a swamp. I was often stopped on the street and asked if I was in a play or on my way to a Renn fair or something.

I really like the style of clothing associated with the middle ages. It's comfortable, serviceable, and durable. It looks good on me, and hides my barrel chest.

Over this past weekend, I went on an Extreme LARP in the woods behind my old college. It was amazing, and fun, and cathartic. For the better part of a day, my cellphone was a Whisper Stone (scrying mirror), and I was a bronze-age warrior patrolling the boundaries of my clan's territory, following the streams and finding a clay deposit by the beach with which to make an urn for my father.

Yesterday, I dressed up in my kilt and floofy shirt and jerkin and went out Freaking the Mundanes while mailing a payment for my roommate's White Charger that she couldn't get in the mail because she worked too late.

In short, over the past few days, I've been a Time Traveller again, and have had so much fun doing it.

But I have a job interview tomorrow. I was told to wear "Professional Attire."

As a Time Traveller, I have no idea what that means.

At the moment, the outfit I've put together consists of a pale lilac checked shirt (it's better than it sounds), a massively stylized floral tie, my corduroy pants, and a suit jacket, with my black boots because that's the shoes I have for this weather. This is, more or less, the outfit I've worn to all of my job interviews.

I keep feeling like I'm doing something wrong, here...

Monday, March 12, 2012

On Headaches.

At this moment, I am feeling pretty alright. I am not in pain, and my mind is clear. I am able to sit upright, type a coherent sentence, and have lights and music on.

In about four and a half hours, this will not be so. I will probably be huddled in my big green chair, struck with the kind of pain that has caused people to shoot themselves just to make it stop.

In all seriousness.

In mid-summer, I suffered a relapse of Cluster Headaches, which are known among sufferers as "Suicide Headaches". Once a day, every day, some time between five thirty and seven fourty-five, for anywhere from fifteen minutes to five hours, I feel like I'm being stabbed in the face. Many sufferers say that a cluster headache feels like being stabbed in the eye with a hot poker, and I must agree. The best way I can think to describe it, other than that, is like a small explosion going off behind my right eye. To those who don't know what's going on, watching me get a headache can look like I'm having a very small seizure.

And the only medication that will let me be alive in the evenings is still illegal in the US.

I have by this time tried every pharmaceutical headache remedy on the market, to no avail. The only thing that I have found to treat my headaches is green, illegal, and makes it really hard to get and keep a job.

I really wish that we could pull our collective heads out of our collective asses for a moment. It would be nice to both be able to be alive and not have to worry about losing a job because traditional medication doesn't work...

Thursday, March 8, 2012

I can feel myself getting "better"...

I'm not sure what the given value of "better" is for this, but I think I'm finally on my way there. I woke up before noon today, even after getting no sleep until six in the morning. Not only that, but I find myself with a concept of time again, for the first time in nearly a year. I woke up to find that I wanted a shower, clean clothes, and food. The fact that I am currently ravenously hungry should speak volumes to anyone who has spent more than a day in my presence in the last ten months. There's not really much else I feel like saying right now, but I feel like updating this thing is something important that I've been neglecting. So.

I am going to be okay.

Of the Dreams of Fathers and Sons.

Wednesday night, for the first time since his death, I had a dream about my father.

I walked through the kitchen door to my family home, took off my jacket and hung it on my coat-hook, next to the phone. My father was sitting on the couch, smoking a joint, playing the guitar that now waits to be repaired under my roommate's bed. When I hung up my jacket, he put his guitar aside, meeting my at the level split of our house. He stood on the livingroom floor, while I stood on the kitchen floor, six inches above. We hugged, our chins fitting neatly over each other's left shoulder, our chests pressed tight to one another. A deep breath, in unison, and we both started humming, two pitches creating harmony. It is something that my father and I have done more times than I can count.

We broke apart, and went back to the couch. He was healthy, and hale, and happy, as he was in the summer. His skin was tan, and his eyes were bright, and he was smiling. He had taken a hot bath that morning, and had left the towel draped over the couch where he had sat to let himself dry in the open air. He rolled another joint, and we smoked together, and talked. He told me that his teeth finally fit, and that he wasn't in pain anymore, anywhere. He got out my guitar, and showed me three chords, and we sang "The City of New Orleans" together. We talked about me, and I showed him pictures from my graduation. He said that he was there, standing on the edge of the crowd with my mom and his sister, and I knew he was telling the truth. He told me that he liked what I had done with my hair. I told him that I liked that he hadn't changed his.

We went outside, and walked around the property. It was cleaned up, and his garden was full of ripe veggies. His old bicycle, the one he used to ride when I was little, was fixed up and waiting in the front yard. As we walked the property, he showed me all the out-buildings, and the fence, and all his little paths and patches of garden. He told me that his head was clear, and that he could finish things now, and get things done. As he spoke, I realized that all of the things he was showing me were finished, and beautiful. The outbuildings and the fence were finished, sided and shingled, with a long dragon along the outside and the inside of the fence, made of tin-can bottoms and bottle caps, pull-tabs from soda cans, the things that people throw away without thinking. He showed me a new, fresh concrete slab out back, where he had nearly finished rebuilding my mother's kiln, with a covered concrete walkway from a brand-new building, which he was fitting out to be a new workshop for her. We walked around to the very back of the property, to the Thistle Patch, which was now devoid of thistles, but filled with a lush jungle of pot. He turned to me, and told me that I should go for the Folklore degree, and that I probably should have bought the Professor Suit at Value Village, even though it was $20 and too small for me right now, because I am going to need it in a few years.

Then he told me I was going to miss my flight, and we got into my truck, which he had repaired and restored, and he had me drive him to the airport. At the security checkpoint, he hugged me again, humming, and told me that he was proud of me, and to send his love and a humming hug to my mother when I see her next. He told me that he was healthy now, and that I was going to be alright. He told me to get my driver's license and get my prescription for my headaches worked out, and to practice the guitar more often. He gave me a kiss, and another hug, and waited for me to get through the checkpoint, waving. As I put my boots back on, he put his hands in his pockets, and walked away, with a light step, humming the theme to Gilligan's Island, loudly.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up, and it was Thursday morning. Over the course of the day, I felt better than I have in months. I felt ready and able to get doing and at the very least get the kitchen back into a livable state.

I think I'm going to be okay.