Many Years of Poems

Okay, let me try to make sense of the last two entries.

Saturday I took the train down to visit my English friends, who just bought a house here in Florida, about two and a half hours' drive from me. I had a really nice time with them; sadly he had to go home on Sunday because his work was being mean and wouldn't let him have two full weeks off, but I got to spend a couple of days with just her, and that was really pretty cool. She and I think rather alike, and she said some things that made me feel better about the few arguments I've had with him. She's also very witty and fun to be with, and we had a good time together, just us ladies, although I would have liked to have had more time with him. I was friends with him first, and became friends with her because she's his wife; I only got to chat with him for about an hour, really, and I wish it had been longer. Oh well. Now they've a house here, they'll be over more often, I should think, and I've a standing invitation to visit them in the UK, anyway.

I came home last night, which means I got to spend four whole days "on vacation" from my own life, as it were. It was wonderful to spend a few days not worrying about money, or anything except helping them organize things with this house. They intend to rent the house to vacationers and "snowbirds", so they needed an inventory of the furnishings, and a good photographic catalogue of everything, and I helped with that.

But boy is real life back with a vengeance.

Cliff's mother is being evicted from her apartment, and had to be hospitalized and have a heart catheter done. I'm not too sure exactly what the cath found but apparently it's not good. Before I left to visit my friends, I made a list of subsidized apartment complexes and the public housing and HUD people for her to call (or him to call on her behalf), but she went in the hospital before he could get the list to her. She has COPD anyway, so her health is not fantastic. She and his sister may end up in with us; I'm not looking forward to that. I like my privacy, and I don't much like Cliff's sister, who is an annoying brat.

I saw my new medication manager today; she was really nice to me. She thinks I have PTSD, which I've heard before. She raised my Zoloft dosage, and added Abilify to my meds in hopes that it will help with the hallucinations and paranoia. She told me that she'd do whatever necessary to make sure I had my meds; if that meant changing me from Zoloft to something she has samples of, then she'd do it, but she'd rather not since it seems to be working reasonably well. She said I'd been through enough hell, and she didn't want to make things worse for me.

I was kicking myself earlier because I forgot to sign paperwork saying that she can talk to my counselor. I'll just have to do it tomorrow or the next time I see my counselor.

The last time I saw my counselor, she said she thought I had schizoaffective disorder, but in either case, PTSD or schizoaffective, Zoloft is supposed to help the depression and anxiety, and Abilify is supposed to help with the hallucinations and paranoia.

I just wish I had something for anxiety, just PRN. Maybe after I'm off the pain meds, when I see the nurse-practitioner again, I'll ask, if I still have times when I feel like I need it.

I saw the orthopedic surgeon today.

Good news: I shouldn't need surgery on my foot. The type of fracture I have can require a screw or pin to repair, but mine is apparently healing nicely on its own, despite the fact that I've been walking on it when I was told not to bear any weight on it at all. (I couldn't not walk on it; my poor sprained left foot hurt too much for me to bear all my weight on it.)

Bad news: I'm still not supposed to walk on it. The treatment for the fracture is eight weeks of NO weight bearing at all, and I've already violated that for the last four and a half weeks.

Good news: I have a snazzy new brace for it, and some nifty little physical therapy exercises for both feet, and I'm to see the doctor again in four weeks.

Bad news: No drugs. I think I'm not allowed to have pain drugs because if my foot didn't hurt then I might walk on it too much. I've apparently also hosed up both my ankles by walking the odd way I've been walking for the last month.

So, I'll be on crutches at least through the middle of August, it appears. But at least I don't have to have orthopedic surgery. The only good thing about orthopedic surgery is the pain drugs.

I was really worried that I'd end up needing surgery on the silly foot; I was half afraid that I'd managed to hose up the left foot too, and I had odd little mental images of having to have surgery on BOTH feet at the same time, and trying to navigate my rinkydink apartment in a wheelchair.

So yay for a healing fracture!

My feet still hurt like hell.

My lawyers sent me to a doctor's office last week, but for some bizarre reason, even though they have an orthopedic doctor in the practice, they won't treat my fractured right foot, only my sprained left. The law firm said that's stupid and they referred me to another doctor; I just have to wait for the paperwork to go through so I can make an appointment there.

But I ran out of pain meds quite a while ago. I asked Mini-me for the two Vicodin that were left from her dental surgery in May, just so I could manage the Pirates of the Caribbean movie expedition two weeks ago. (Lortab is what was prescribed for me, but Vicodin is essentially the same thing, 5 mg of hydrocodone, and 500 mg of acetaminophen/paracetamol. The generic versions of both are identical, and I had generic Lortab, and Mini-me had generic Vicodin.)

And I managed to turn my right foot oddly earlier today, and I'm starting to fear that I re-injured it. Ow. It hurts, a lot.

I was still bleeding quite heavily this morning, but it seems to have tapered off again this evening.

Sorry I haven't been around much in the last week. Unfortunately, I was a dipstick and forgot to pay the cable bill when Cliff got his last paycheck, so the cable (and internet) got cut off until yesterday when he got paid again.

In the saga of my injured feet, my lawyer's office called and referred me to a doctor, whom I am supposed to see on Tuesday, I think. The reason I'm not sure is that someone else from the office called me Friday morning and told me that it was the wrong doctor, a neurologist when I should probably be seeing an orthopedic surgeon, and that she would find an orthopedic surgeon who will see me under a Letter of Protection (i.e. the doc will get paid when the legal action is settled). She was supposed to call me back on Friday; I'm going to call on Monday and find out what's going on, unless they call me first.

As for the Fourth of July, Cliff and I and Tiff and Beau went over to Cliff's friend Steve's house, where they had cooked out, and we sat around talking and screwing around until it got dark enough for the fireworks displays. Steve and his family live at a perfect spot for fireworks watching, at the joining of a smaller river into the St. Johns, which meant we could see the big downtown display, parts of the Timuquana Yacht Club display, and a little bit of what might have been the Beaches display, as well as the lesser fireworks that ordinary people buy and set off. It was pretty; I still enjoy fireworks, even at my age. Cliff was less enthused but sat with the rest of us.

Last night, we went to see "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest."

(Brief digression: Cliff and I met via the SCA, which is a medieval/Renaissance recreation group. Yes, we're dorks. Some of us in the SCA splintered off and started a pirate recreation group (we still do SCA stuff, BTW). Cliff, Tiff, Beau and I decided to go to "Dead Man's Chest" in our pirate garb; we also garbed up the aforementioned Steve, plus my daughter and a friend of hers.)

It's a fun movie; it's a lot darker than the first one, but it's well done and worth seeing in the cinema. We had a lot of people looking at us a bit oddly, especially me. I didn't wear my normal wench attire, as I was not about to walk on crutches in shoe-top-length skirts; I stole Cliff's big poofy pirate pants and borrowed a blouse from Tiff (all my chemises are shoe-top-length), and wore my own bodice over it.

After the movie, we had to take my daughter's friend home; she had been invited to spend the night and would have except that she had to be at a dance workshop early this morning. After we took my daughter's friend home, we went to TGI Friday's, where Steve's wife works.

At least three different people took pictures of us all pirated up. I get photographed more when I'm dressed up as a pirate wench than I do at any other time; I think it's the cleavage. *grin*

But after all that (plus the usual payday-Friday running around), I HURT. My feet still hurt. I have to go do my damn laundry tomorrow, and I don't bloody want to. But I have to. Bleah.

Anyway, I'm as okay as I get, I've actually had rather a lot of fun in the last week, just not online.

A few weeks ago, our neighbors' cat had four kittens. (The neighbors in question are our friends Tiff and Beau; Tiff and Cliff have been friends for rather a long time. They've both changed personas, but their original SCA personas were brother and sister.)

Cliff is violently allergic to cats; he can't be in Tiff and Beau's apartment (they have three adult cats plus the kittens, and an assortment of ferrets, I'm not sure how many) for more than 10-15 minutes without his eyes starting to water and without beginning to have trouble breathing. He has a dog (Labrador/Staffordshire Bull Terrier cross, looks like a smallish yellow Labrador) named CC, who is usually pretty sweet but can be a pain in the neck sometimes.

I am mildly allergic to dogs; I just get a bit of nasal congestion and runny eyes. I also just plain like cats better than dogs; I'd rather deal with a litter box than have to walk a dog in all weathers. I'm not a dog hater, before anyone jumps my case. I just find cats easier to take care of than dogs, and with the mild allergy, I'm better off with cats for pets than dogs.

I have been staying at my parents' house rather a lot of late, for a number of reasons. For one thing, my kid stays with my parents for financial reasons, so if I stay at the house, I can hang out with her. For another, Cliff's roommate keeps very peculiar hours, and I was having a very hard time sleeping because of him moving around and making noise while I was trying to sleep. For yet another, the apartment is messy and quite dirty, and that causes some anxiety for me; I'm a bit of a clean freak. I'm not necessarily a neat freak; I have a fair tolerance for clutter. But it can't be dirty. The floors have to be cleaned, the house needs to smell clean (i.e. no garbage smell, no strong animal smell if pets are kept indoors, no funk from nasty sweaty laundry), and so forth. That apartment is not in the greatest part of town, and I think that prior tenants probably didn't take such wonderful care of it. The toilet is permanently stained (and not from rusty water), and there is dog hair everywhere. Yuk.

But Cliff has booted the roomie out effective May 1; he's tired of the screwy hours because it interferes with his sleep too, and he NEEDS his sleep. (He's a paramedic, and his schedule is 24 hours on duty, 48 hours off.) There are also some other issues that have caused Cliff to decide to boot the roomie out, but I'm not getting into all that here.

When the roommate leaves, Cliff is going to take over his bedroom, which has its own air conditioner and a door that actually closes properly (unlike Cliff's current bedroom). He's also going to give the house a good thorough cleaning (and cleansing with a burning sage bundle, but that's all him. I'm not quite that mystical). (Cleaning house will be easier once the roomie and his furniture are gone; there's WAY too much stuff in that apartment as it stands now.)

This weekend, Cliff told me that once all that is taken care of, I can adopt one of the kittens.

The one I want was born last; it's a dark orange tabby (though not quite a red tabby), and I just like it. It's too young yet to be able to tell whether it's male or female, so it's being called "Late" for now because it was born last and about half an hour after the rest of the litter. (I attended the kitten birth, and we had thought that Mama Cat was only going to have three kittens, because she seemed to be done. We got up to get the pics off my digicam and onto the computer, and when we came back, there was the kitten I want.)

( Here is the kitten, just after birth, with its dad helping to clean it )

I'm kind of torn about it though; it's really sweet of Cliff to let me have the kitten in the apartment, because of his allergies. (He has said that as long as the cat stays out of the bedroom, he should be okay. I asked if we could make the bedroom an animal-free zone in general, since I'm allergic to dogs and CC hasn't ever been allowed in that room anyway, because the roomie is also allergic to dogs, on about the same level as my allergy. Cliff said that was fine.)

The downside of adopting the kitten is money, over which I admittedly worry, probably too much. CC needs to go to the vet; his inoculations are out of date. But we haven't budgeted the money to take CC to the vet and he wants to add another animal? A baby animal that will need a fair few vet visits right out of the gate? (Kittens nearly always have intestinal parasites, plus there are a lot of inoculations in the first year, and spaying/neutering is usually best done in the first year, too. After the first year, the vet visit is an annual thing unless there's a problem.) A baby animal who needs food and food bowls and a litter box and litter and a grooming brush and maybe some toys? (Of course, we'll spend far less on cat food than dog food, just because CC is a large dog and therefore eats a fairish amount.)

I expressed this to Cliff, and he says I worry too much. I told him that I didn't want to bring the kitten into the house until we'd gotten CC to the vet. Oh, and flea-free. This is Florida, and CC, being a large-breed dog, goes outdoors to eliminate his wastes, so he's going to pick up some fleas from time to time. He's pretty bad off with them right now, though; in some places he's chewed/scratched himself raw. Cliff agreed with me, though, that we should get CC to the vet and de-flea'd before bringing the kitten into the house. It will be much easier to keep the kitten flea-free if the dog is flea-free.

Plus, there's all my medical expenses, seeing the doctor, and paying for my medications, and seeing the counselor. (The counselor isn't that expensive, thank goodness, but the doctor will be, and the meds probably will be as well. Right now I'm still on the prescription from MHCJ, which can be refilled free at a certain pharmacy, but I have one more refill and that's the end of that.)

I just worry that adding the kitten will strain the finances too much, even though I would LOVE to have a kitten of my own again.

I love cats; I frequently joke about winding up as a crazy old cat lady with long silver hair.

And I've had--well--hell, I don't know--an attachment to this particular kitten since it was born. I just like it; I couldn't say exactly why. I'm not a particular fan of ginger tabbies; I don't really care one way or the other about a cat's coloring. (I think black cats are beautiful, but that might be because I used to have a LOVELY green-eyed black cat named Cyrano. Sadly, I had to leave him in Charleston when I moved here, and he got lost when my ex-boyfriend moved house.) I just like this kitten. Everyone else is on about its littermate, who was pure white at birth but is beginning to develop these lovely light-cinnamon point markings.

I want the kitten. I'm just not sure that adopting it is a good idea right now. A cat is usually at least 15 years of responsibility; my parents' cats are 17 and 15, and only just beginning to show their ages in the last few years.

I've even thought about names. I thought of Milo, if it transpires to be male. (From the movie "The Adventures of Milo and Otis"; Milo is an orange tabby.) Jen suggested Ron if it's male and Ginny if it's female, since it's kind of dark orange, like the Weasley hair. (Harry Potter reference, if anyone doesn't know.)

I sort of want a more literary name than those, though. The cats I had when Reid and I were dating were named Cyrano and Christian (from the Edmond Rostand play "Cyrano de Bergerac", which I read in 12th grade and ADORED). I actually did that because the younger of my parents' cats, the 15-year-old, is named Roxanne. We didn't actually name Roxie after the "Cyrano" character; I hadn't read "Cyrano" yet, although I think I'd seen the 1950 movie version. My mother and I just liked the name and thought it fit the cat. (My stepdad had been shipped to Germany by the US Army Reserve when we got Roxie, but he knew we were getting her; in fact, it was his idea. He thought Catarina [the older cat] needed same-species company.) But when I wound up with a male cat, the name Cyrano just fit. (I'd have named him Jade if he'd been female, but I thought Jade wasn't a good name for a tomcat.) And no, he didn't have a long muzzle.

Cyrano happened to me; I didn't really mean to get a cat at that point. He came to me from a neighbor who was in the Air Force and consequently traveled a lot. (The USAF likes to ship its people from pillar to post quite regularly.) If she was going for a long trip, she'd take her two cats to her mother's house, but if she was only going to be gone for a few days or a week or so, I would go over and take care of them, clean the litter box, feed them, play with them, pet them, etc. And when she was home, we used to hang out and chat sometimes.

Cyrano was found wandering by a neighbor of a friend of my neighbor. The original finder couldn't keep him for reasons unknown, so she gave him to my neighbor's friend, who couldn't keep him because she was allergic to cats. So he came to my neighbor, who would have been happy to keep him, except that her female cat hated his guts and turned hostile to everybody while he was there. And I went over to hang out with my neighbor, and the little guy curled up on me and fell asleep. I knew I'd been adopted.

Anyway, in the case of the orange kitten, no suitably literary name is presenting itself as yet though. Of course, I'm trying to name a cat I don't have yet, and who is sufficiently young that I'm not sure whether it's male or female.

I want the kitten. I really do. I just wonder if it's practical to take on the expense of another pet.

It's SOOOO cute.

And I do love cats. A lot. The entire Family Felidae, in fact. I think the big cats are cool, too.

I went to the hospital on Tuesday like I said I would, and as I expected, I was Baker-Acted and sent to the county mental health facility.

I've been hospitalized before for mental reasons, though in private hospitals up until now, and I had forgotten how much it shakes me up and scares me to be in a mental hospital.

I was so stressed and shaky that I got wildly upset at any provocation.

Oh, and BTW, public mental institutions suck even worse than private ones.

At least in a private mental ward, they let you have your own clothes and toiletries without a fight. Expecting to be Baker-Acted, I packed three changes of clothes, my comb and brush, my toothbrush, baking soda (which is what I use to brush my teeth), my shampoo and conditioner, my soap, my deodorant, and pads and tampons since I was expecting my period to start (which it did this morning).

As soon as they took me to the mental health center, they took away my clothes and toiletries, giving me back only two pairs of trousers and my housecoat (no clean underpants or undershirts or shirts) and my toiletries. I finally got some of that back this morning, when I told them my period had started and I NEEDED to shower and put on clean clothes.

There is no dignity or humanity in being poor and mentally ill.

I saw the doctor there twice. He put me on Wellbutrin (which used to work for me fairly well, when I could get it) and sprung me this morning with a prescription for Wellbutrin and a voucher to get it filled once, and a list of sliding scale mental health clinics.

Hoo fucking ray.

That was really fucking helpful.

I'm hanging on because my boyfriend made me promise to "give him time to try to help me." I keep trying to tell him that there is no help for me, that there is nothing that will make me okay. I'm not okay, I've never been okay, and I never will be okay. His determination to help me is only going to bleed him financially and emotionally, just as it has my parents.

There is no help for me. There is only one way out.

I recently went back on birth control pills, after several years of not using them, and I have been having a bit of nausea (which I remember from when I originally went on the Pill). One of the few things that settles well on my tummy is ice cream.

I bought some Breyers Extra Creamy Vanilla ice cream, and I am here to testify that is some YUMMY stuff. OMG. I don't like Breyers regular vanilla; it feels gritty to me. But this stuff. OMFG. Yummy just begins to describe it.

Yum.

That's all. Just pimping ice cream at 4:30 am.

She brought me pain drugs. So I've actually gotten a bit of decent sleep, thanks to Darvocet and courtesy of deepnsorrow.

I'm trying to make myself get up and write a grocery list and go back to the laundromat to get Cliff and Tyler, but it's really tempting to just stay here and go back to bed. Urgh.

But at least when I get done with laundry and groceries, I can take more pain meds and go back to sleep. (I can't take them and then go out cos they put me to sleep: not a good idea if I'm going to be driving.)

Sorry I'm being whiny of late, but I've felt like complete hell since Tuesday; at least I finally started menstruating, so maybe it will go away in a few more days. Go 'way, pain and nausea, go 'way.