Life in my head...

Yellow butterflies in the South

Yellow butterflies in the South.  I've always looked for them, knowing when I saw them that cold weather was on it's way out or in.  They are our harbingers of spring and fall.  Now I look at them like bad omens, as spring and fall are the worst times of the year for me.  I saw some last week, and sure enough, I've been in pain for 6 days now.  I spent hours last night in the ER, but it did help.  Poor Tim got pissed off beyond measure within an hour, and ended up sleeping in the car until I was done.  Why do people think the ER is a fun place to be?  Do they call all their in-town relatives and neighbors to come with them?  Ugh, I couldn't work in the ER.

Up at 2:00am, not at work

While 2:00am is a normal time for me to be at work, I get a bit testy when I see this time of the morning at home.  I have, however, fallen prey to a new phase of headaches, so night ramblings are getting common.  I do so well with my migraines and cdh during work, I feel guilty about complaining that my off-days are fraught with pain.  Guilt or not, it's pissing me off.  Waking up with a migraine is no fun, and waking with one in the middle of the night is even less fun.  So, I'm up right now with a pounding headache.  Obviously not one of the migraines so bad that I can't open my eyes, but it's bad enough.  Thank God for the internet, my extensive collection of books, and satellite TV.  The only thing worse for me than being in pain is being bored and in pain.  Right now I'm reading Cold Mountain, and I think I'll be picking it up again soon as the monitor on my laptop is beginning to bother my eyes.  I'd really like to be cuddled up in the bed, asleep.  The cat keeps yawning and looking at me like, "Why aren't we in bed?"  Why indeed.  I guess I'll take some more muscle relaxers and try to go back to sleep.  As this is the 3rd day of pain, I'll probably end up in urgent care or ER this evening when T gets off work.

unpacking my life

So far in the new house we have one room devoted solely to my books and Christmas decorations.   I've been culling and organizing, and it's quite amazing.  Thanks to Freecycle, I was able to get rid of a huge box of books, but I'm still overwhelmed by what I have left.  (The number of duplicates I have makes me want to laugh and cry; it's both a sign of my love of some authors, and a cry for help over my disorganization in life.)  It's telling me some things about myself.  The obvious, of course, is that I love to read.  It also has revealed to me how much I like to isolate myself from the world.  I'd much rather live vicariously through an author's words than take the plunge and live for myself.  On a high note, I'm meeting up with a group of delphi forum friends when I go see Dr. K in a couple of weeks.  Whoa!  Venturing out in a strange city to meet people without a laptop screen between us?  Quite a step for me. 

I even met one of my neighbors about a week ago.  And we've joined the HOA.  Both are something akin to me picking up a spider and petting it.  Neighbors?  Eeeeeewwwww.  To be fair to myself, we have had a quite a history with neighbors.  The drunk neighbor who would come to the door at all hours to a) borrow water (no, no, just keep it, I don't need it after you've used it) b) borrow the phone to call his relatives, and then sit on our sofa drunkenly berating them for an hour and c) ask for food.  The crazy bedridden neighbor who would call and ask me to come get her off her bedside commode.  No, you didn't misread that.  Yes, I typed "bedside commode".  Said neighbor also insisted that I just dump the contents of said bedside commode in the yard as it was too much trouble to flush down their toilet.  Oh, and honey, watch the hole in the floor!  We keep it covered with filthy carpet--wouldn't want the dog coming in through the floor.  Hey, poverty did give me a front-row seat to some of the most interesting lifestyles America has to offer.  But, now we're "normal", in a normal neighborhood, without gunfire or raw sewage to be had.  There's something truly attractive about the 'burbs after one has been trailer trash.

So now we live in an average American neighborhood with average neighbors.  Are we average?  I wish.  Most people don't know all the pharmacists and techs in their nearest Walgreens as I do.  Oh well, it's something to strive for.  That's it, I'll concentrate on mediocrity as I drive half-way across the country to see the *one* specialist that has been able to help me in this great land.  I'll wear flip-flops, and stop at every Cracker Barrel on the way.  And then I'll step into a doctor's office where I'm on a first-name basis with everyone.  I suppose it could be worse.  I could be on a first-name basis with law enforcement or child and family services. 

Still here

We have recently completed our move, thank heavens.  There are times when I refuse to ever move again.  5 times in one marriage is enough, I think.  Unfortunately, we don't have internet set up at home yet, so my blog has suffered some serious neglect.  Pity, too, because I am experiencing new symptoms that are driving me nuts.  I have now started having what I call my "alarm clock migraines".  Typically, I go to bed the first off-night after a stretch of night shifts, and I can expect to wake up in agony around 4 am.  Lying down is just too painful, so I sort of crouch on the couch in the dark with as little movement as possible, waiting for all the meds to kick in.  I usually go back to sleep for a couple of hours, and then wake up feeling as though I'd been run over by a truck.  Well, I've often said that life with migraines is never boring.  Maybe my brain thought that pain-free days would make me complacent.