I Will Not Suffer In Silence

It’s still easier for me to refer to my illness as ‘george’ when I am discussing the illness, hence the subject line. It’s simpler to say ‘george is late’ than to say ‘i started bleeding later than expected’. It’s more polite in a way – people don’t want to go right into a conversation hearing about blood. But hearing about a person being late to something, that’s tolerable. ;)

Tuesday, August 12: Warned the lady I sit for that I was feeling severely fatigued and achey and I didn’t know if I’d have to go home early or miss work that week. Started pre-medicating with Ibuprofen 600 as of Monday or Tuesday. One per day.

Wednesday, August 13: The lady and her husband were late to work because of me – well because of a misunderstanding. I told them I’d call IF I couldn’t make it in to work. I didn’t call, so I went to work. Still very fatigued and feeling crampy but less so than the previous day, so I went. Turns out they were just covering their asses and wanted to be sure I’d show up, so they waited on me. They didn’t appear upset with me.

Thursday, August 14: Got my energy back – took the baby on two walks that day. I started spotting around 10pm and was sure george would arrive full on by morning.

Friday, August 15: George is officially due but doesn’t arrive. But all day I was tired and had mild to moderate cramps again. I was still taking Ibuprofen but took 2 over the course of the day on Friday. I had very light spotting on and off.

Saturday, August 16: Woke up at 6am with severe low back pain. Decided to ride it out instead of getting up and eating some food just so I could ingest Ibuprofen (taking Ibu on an empty stomach causes me severe stomach pain – causes most humans stomach pain). Got up because of the pain every hour after that until 9am, when I got up for good, ate some breakfast, and took an Ibu600. More spotting and light cramping on and off. Pain ramped up a bit Saturday night, especially in the low and mid-back region. By about 9pm I took a Tylenol 3 rather than deal with the pain.

Sunday, August 17: Up again from back pain and this time uterine pain too, every hour from about 7am to 10am. Full on bleeding and cramps started by 10:30am.

So my question is, did george arrive one day early, on Thursday, or did he arrive two days late, on Sunday?

In either case, I’m happy to report that I still have a full week clearance around the wedding. If I continue to be good to my body, george will not be early in September or October, either.

I know a lot of women must fret a bit over the whole getting their period on their wedding day thing. But the general populous of women don’t outright panic over getting their period on their wedding day, because most women can just take birth control pills or the morning after pill to stave off the menstrual cycle, or they can just not even care if they get their period because it’s such a non-issue for them.

But for women with endometriosis, I’d wager a lot of us look at our looming wedding day in abject fear that it could be ruined, all because of the pain and heavy bleeding we go through.

It is because of my illness, and also because of my father and my brother, that I spend about half of the time not looking forward to my wedding day, and just want it to be over with.

The other half of the time, I promise, I really am having a blast with my man planning for our wedding. We’ve gone on several wine tasting excursions because we want to serve locally produced wine. We’re about to burst with anticipation because next weekend is a big sale on last year’s surplus Halloween stock at a local boutique, and the weekend after that are the Scottish Highland Games, where my man hopes to get the rest of his wedding ensemble put together.
We have worked together on creating our own wedding invites and reply cards. My chosen sister gave us a sinister idea for favours that we ran with like children squealing in the park. We tasted cake until we were bored with the ordeal, because nothing was appealing enough to us as the expensive cake we wanted. So we finally gave in to that. Funny thing is, the expensive cake wasn’t expensive for being a wedding cake (the dreaded ‘wedding tax’ just because it’s for a wedding) – it’s not a wedding cake at all!
It’s just that the design and shape of the cakes this particular baker does is so much work that she has to charge accordingly.
We can’t wait to show people what we chose for our wedding cake!!!!

Back to the reality I am in at the moment – bedridden from the Endometriosis pain and hopped up on Tylenol 3…
Because the pain and bleeding did not start on time last Friday, this has messed with my weekend and at the same time denied me the upcoming work week.
Had the bleeding and pain started on Friday like it was supposed to have, then I’d have been bedridden Friday, Saturday, maybe Sunday, and feeling better by Monday, then returning to work as scheduled on Tuesday.

But no.

Now, with the pain starting today, I am bedridden Sunday, Monday, likely Tuesday, and feeling better by Wednesday but not sure if I can return to work Wednesday or Thursday.

When I only work Tuesday – Thursday right now, this means I lose pay this week. This in turn gets me pissed off at the company that fired me all over again, because although a settlement was reached, they still have not PAID it out. I am still waiting for these goddamned people. They still hold the upper hand and have the last word as it were. They are still harassing me in this regard. They are still abusing and taunting me.

And I want them to combust for it.

I hope they get caught up in a hostile takeover and then parted out.

My emotions have been high – I’ve started craving coffee and salty foods again. Looking at the calendar, this tells me I am in fact PMSing – george is due not this Saturday, but next. PMS normally begins up to two weeks out for me, because god hates me.

It’s after 3pm now and I’ve not started my workday. I’m in my pajamas. I started off the day badly. I forgot again if today was workout day with my friend or not, so I got up after 6 hours of fitful sleep, got ready and went to her house, only to find she never emerged to greet me. So today *isn’t* workout day.
Instead of going to work out, I came back home. I hadn’t wanted to work out today, anyway. I went dancing Saturday night and dancing always messes my knees for a few days. I was sore from that, and then on Sunday, I helped my friend sort through stuff in her house because she’s moving. It was labour-intensive, pulling stuff down from the attic, moving big boxes around, sorting bags and bags of recyclables that never got taken out, etc, etc.
So I was sore from that, too.

Oh and the george pains started again Saturday and Sunday. Mittleschmerz I think it’s called. I had to take 600mg Ibuprofen yesterday. The pains were shooting through my ass, and it was difficult to sit down. Then again, I’d had an espresso milkshake on Saturday – that’s two forbidden items on my list at the same time – caffeine and dairy. I bet that’s what set off the cramps.

I went back to bed after my man left for the gym this morning, and within half an hour, a car accident occurred right outside the house. The crash woke me up and I ran to the front window to see how bad it was. Old man in a truck vs. a woman in a compact. Both were ambulatory and exchanging info. But the sound was all it took to make me flash back to the car accident I was in back in 1994.

I tried to go back to sleep after pacing the house for several minutes. When I did get back to sleep, I had nightmares of magnitude 7 earthquakes and people being double-crossed; stabbed to death, poisoned, choked, and suchlike.

My phone woke me from my nightmares – it was my man calling to check in on me. This made me feel even worse – he knew I’d gone back to bed. This makes me feel even more like a slacker and a good-for-nothing to someone who already doesn’t trust me to deliver a business I said I would.

Of course, he’ll never say he doesn’t trust me. He’ll never say he doesn’t mind supporting me.

I feel like I’m just a sponge – the thing he’d feared in all women has come true. His extreme independence and materialism is compromised.

Sometimes I dream of being single again, because then I’d have nothing to lose and I could have my business, and do it right, and do it on my terms, in my own time frame.

But then where would I live when no money is coming in? Even if I were single, I’d still have to pay rent and buy groceries, and pay basic bills for heating and electricity somehow.

The short of it is that I need and want to be a dependent in order to get my business off the ground, and it’s not fair that no one is willing to play along with me on this. :p

Oh and don’t forget, I still have to plan a wedding.

I don’t want to get married right now. There’s too much going on without the hassle of a wedding – a wedding that to me is useless because we’ve been together for almost eight years. We’re already married in spirit. Why can’t he see that? Why does he need a $1,000 ring to show people that he’s married already?

That’s the other thing. I’ve had SO MUCH SHIT about getting a ring cuz all the rings I like are over $1,000. Then the ring he picks and HAS TO HAVE is $1,000.

WTF.

WHO’S THE GIRL.

I just need to go cry, now.

5:17pm Edit: Well, I didn’t cry. I whimpered a bit. Then I sucked it up, and started doing the chores I’d assigned myself to do today.
I called a friend, who said she will go to Berkeley w/ me Thursday or Friday to distribute biz cards.
I will distribute around town this week.
I will refresh my listings on the search engines.

I plug ahead even as the cord is about to be cut.

I don’t know why I bother.

Haven’t worked again today.

The depression really slammed me yesterday. Just suddenly I was FECKING DEPRESSED.

Is it the codeine pill I took Tuesday night? Is it just PMS? Is it due to the forbidden foods I’ve been reintroducing in order to get the stupid blood test for my allergist? Is it because I’m panicked again over my ability as a professional astrologer? Is it all of the above?

I also started getting george pain pretty strongly at 12:02pm yesterday but he never did show up. The depression worsened throughout the day as the pain stayed constant yet just enough to be annoying. On a whim, I bought tickets to see Siouxsie live at the Fillmore, even though I don’t have the money for such things. This of course made the depression worse.
At the last minute, I got off my ass, threw on a dress, did my hair and makeup, and went out the door.
On the way across the Bay Bridge, I had to fight the very strong urge to pull over, get out of my car and dive off the bridge. My brain was SO broken that when I argued against such plans, my brain came back soothingly with, “Oh it won’t hurt, do you ever hear of people killing themselves by jumping off this bridge? NO. It’s always the Golden Gate bridge. You’ll be fine. You can just go for a swim. It’ll be nice.”

Of course I didn’t listen, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this. :p

But the urge was compelling. Very strong. WTF.

I didn’t get to San Francisco in time to meet my friends for dinner, so I went without. No big deal, I’ve not been hungry lately, anyway – just craving chocolate and sugar mainly. My friends met me outside of the parking structure and we walked to the Fillmore. When we got there, Rasputina was playing. I’d never seen them before. I had instant cello lust. I played cello in 4th and 5th grade. The only reason I stopped was because we had to move to a new school for 6th grade, and they didn’t have a strings department, only a band department. Thus ended my career as a cellist – my mother was too poor to *buy* me a cello of my own, let alone pay for lessons.

Siouxsie was great. I enjoyed seeing her and yowza, does she still got it. Catcalls galore, all night, from every inch of the gender spectrum, for our beloved Auntie Siouxsie.

When the show got out, my friends and I parted ways. I was in such pain from standing and craning my neck and dancing that I needed to take an Ibuprofen600 on the way home. I felt better emotionally and physically when I got home.
Woke up this morning from the dream I posted about in the last entry and well, spent the rest of the day today in a depressed funk all over again.

I will say though that I did spend a lot of time outside today. I sat in the backyard and took pictures. I even took my cat out there on her harness but all she did was meow and howl because she was afraid. Her tail was all bushed out, too.
My friend came over later and we talked out in the backyard in the sun.

Here’s some pix I took of the backyard today:

“The sun is up, the sky is blue, it’s beautiful, and so are you…”

After my friend took off for work, I went and retrieved my car – it was parked a couple of blocks away – and I went and got a mini pizza to further test the reintroduction of foods. I SWEAR TO {INSERT DEITY HERE} I DIDN’T EXPERIENCE ANY DOOM.

I’m absolutely fecking baffled by this. I swear, I have been severely ill in the past from eating pizza dough or a dinner roll or anything with wheat and yeast in it, especially the yeast. So I have no idea what the deal is. I’ve probably been consuming yeast in some form or another and got my gut reacclimated to it, I guess. Would sugars do that alone? I wonder.

This would explain the weight gain over the past 2 years. Time to cut everything out again – this time for the purpose of weight management!

…

And now I feel better that I’ve emptied my head. My man is on his way home from work, so that helps, too. Tomorrow is a new day. I will do what I can tomorrow, knowing that this is downtime, be it emotional (depression, stress, anxiety, PMS, etc) or physical (the endometriosis), it does not matter. I’m in downtime. And I need to take care of myself. And the work will have to wait, and I will just have to TRUST myself that everything will happen as it should, in its time.

*sigh*

It’s just convincing my man that this is all good. That’s going to be the problem as we approach May of this year, when the state financial assistance runs out.

*sigh again*

But right now…. RIGHT NOW… I take care of myself in my downtime.

Maybe it’s just that I’m a week premenstrual… yes, ALREADY… :(

But I’ve been really tired again lately. Especially the last two days, I’ve slept in til 9am and would have kept sleeping in had my anxiety not acted up. The anxiety tells me YOU ONLY HAVE SO MANY HOURS IN THE DAY! GET MOVING! YOU HAVE TO GET SOME WORK DONE ON THE BUSINESS!

But for the past two days, my eyes have felt puffy, sticky and irritated, and I’m just TIRED. When I look in the mirror, my eyes look fine. So perhaps I’ve got some allergies going on.

This morning I got out of bed, got dressed and walked a few blocks to the acupuncturist to pick up a refill on the herbal meds. He doesn’t feel I need the “stomach pill” for the spleen anymore, even with hearing about the liver enzyme issue. But he gave me a refill on the “blood mansion pill” for the uterus, and instructed me to make another acupuncture appointment right before george hits.

One thing that irks me about this doctor is his personality quirk. Every time I see him, he says, “so you’re not working today?” And I have to tell him “No, I work from home, I make my own hours.”
He always says “Ah.” and nods once and looks down at the floor or his paperwork.

It just pisses me off, because it plays on my insecurities. I’m trying to be proud of being self-employed, of being independent of an employer, and I feel like I’m getting hostile energy from this guy when he feels compelled to ask me the same question every time I see him.

*breathe in…. and exhale…..*

I just have to remember that his comment, his judgemental behaviour, his attitude… is Not My Problem.

Lastly, back to the liver enzyme issue – at least my urine isn’t dark brown anymore. That was scary when it lasted like two weeks before the blood test came back to tell me about the high liver enzymes. I’m taking vitamins again, too, and I’ve incorporated more carbs into my diet (more carbs helps with the liver issue). Now, I just have to get on a regular exercise regimen again so I don’t get even fatter from the extra carbohydrate intake. Granted, it’s complex carbs but still.
I’m at 168lbs (76kg) right now.

In February of 2006, I was 183lbs (83kg). When I omitted carbs, gluten, yeast and sugar, I dropped 30lbs – I went down to 153lbs (69kg) – within three months.
And then since 2007, my body’s been trying to gain it all back again. :(

Exercise good. Walking to the acupuncturist and back again before breakfast == good. Having spent 10 minutes on the bicycle trainer last night == good.
Now I just have to get diligent again about doing my situps first thing in the morning and before bed each night.

Woke up this morning in dying back pain. Had to do the ‘turtle’ or ‘child’ pose, then had to get on all fours, then had to put knees on floor and flop stomach first on bed…. sounds like this should be an exciting sexual encounter, eh?

Alas, welcome to Various Stretches To Ease The Pain.

My man warmed up my rice heating pad and laid it on my back for me. He rubbed my back, too. What a lovely man he is! I love him so.

The headache is a dull pain in the back of my head, now. I’m not nearly so sensitive to light as I was yesterday. I can handle my man walking on the bare wood floor in his boots this morning. I can handle hearing the sound of my fingers on the keyboard.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get some business website work done today.

11:46am Edit: Aggggghhhh massive squid attack… looks like horror flick… pain… setting in… badly… ramping up…

*sigh*

so much for working today

Today the george pain was bad enough that I took a total of two Tylenol3’s throughout the day, and an ibuprofen600. That’s not as bad as it was last month when I had to be on T3 every 4 hours for a few days. Ugh. I realised just how much of that shit I took when I grabbed the bottle of pills today and wondered why so many were missing. No wonder my liver enzymes are high!

Today while working on my astrology site (got about five hours of work done today), I got thee worst migraine. I don’t normally get migraines, but honestly, I can’t remember getting one this bad before. I had to dim the monitor to the lowest setting, dim the overhead light, and set the background to all of my open windows from white to dark grey. I couldn’t listen to streaming audio anymore because the sound pierced my ears, even on low volume. Even the clicky of the keyboard made my eardrums feel like they might burst. Even drinking caffinated tea didn’t help the headache go away. I felt nauseated, too. I took frequent breaks and finally called it quits after 5 hours of work.

I laid down but my back hurt from the george pain. I put my rice heating pad over my forehead and eyes and that helped ease the headache pain. When I got up, my left eye was swollen and bloodshot!! I think all told, I took two naps and slept a total of two hours today. This of course means I’ll be up all night. It’s already after midnight. Then again, the george pain is returning…if I take a Tylenol3, I’ll hopefully be out again.

My friend came over on her birthday to deliver an alternative remedy called HeadOn. She’s adorably sweet. We often have pill exchange for our health issues, heh…
She took one look at my face and eye and told me that’s exactly what a migraine does to one who suffers frequently from them. Ugh, I truly sympathise with her, and with my old coworker who gets them so bad that he is left bedridden.

Anyway, I had my doubts this HeadOn thing would work, and I was right in a sense. The headache and eye pain never did go away, but the menthol in the HeadOn stick makes my forehead and temples feel tingly, almost numb, and cooled down instead of feverish. So all I gotta do is just get some peppermint tea on a washcloth to get the same effect next time. I won’t be using this HeadOn stuff again, now that I know one of the ingredients is a known carcinogen!!!!

My man gave me a massage tonight, which felt sooooo good. Too bad he can only massage me for up to ten minutes before calling it quits because his hands and arms hurt. Ah well. If only I could afford to go to my masseuse regularly.

Regarding my father, I didn’t hear from him all day after sending the email explaining our stance for a themed wedding. Last night I had nightmares all night. I’m just going to wait for him to call me or write back to me. Ball’s in his court.

The bleeding’s really ramping up again, so I’m gonna go.

I worked for eleven hours yesterday and feel like very little was accomplished.

George showed up two days early this week, and then proceded to dawdle all week. Now I have to cancel the business seminar I was planning to go to. In detail: george showed up as I was getting ready to go bowling on Sunday. I had stabbing right side ovarian pain the entire day, with moderate spotting. To also get TMI on you, it was dirty blood, which confirms visually for me that I’ve treated my body badly in the past month. I’d also not been taking the Chinese herbal medication, which is supposed to get all the dirty blood and clots outta there. This moderate dirty spotting has lasted SINCE Sunday. That’s a total of four days now. I’ve not had uterine cramps until today.

I told my man last night that if george doesn’t ramp up BEFORE noon today, I’m calling to cancel the business seminar.

Guess who ramped up at 12:04pm?

I now have light uterine cramps and the blood has gotten brighter. The death cramps are on the way now, that’s how it works. So I called the woman organising the event and cancelled and explained why. She’s going to refund me the money, thankfully.

I told her, I told myself, and I told my man that I hate to live by my illness, I hate to let it dictate my schedule, but honestly, this illness has kept a pretty accurate schedule for the last 21 years. I don’t think it’s going to make an exception for me this weekend, SORRY.
I always feel like I’m letting people down out of fear and paranoia when I cancel or call in sick ahead of time due to george. In some cases, I really am letting people down and in some cases they really are upset with me. Take for instance the job that fired me for this!

But you know what, people? A business seminar that costs money I don’t really have right now is NOTHING in the grand scope of things when it comes down to my health and well-being.

It’s NOTHING.

There’s another business meeting happening next week for much cheaper. I’ll go to that, okay?

And then there’s this:
I had my first near-freakout over wedding planning yesterday. Yes the cat is publically out of the bag, I’m getting married! I will now devote a category to that and begin daily rants, because I can’t keep this stuff in any longer.
We began shopping for rings last summer and got frustrated within a month or so, mainly because of the way we were going about it. My man wanted to have me pick out my own ring, then order it, then when it arrived, get down on his knee and propose.
I thought that was the dumbest thing ever, because if we’re shopping for rings, I already KNOW we’re getting married, so getting down on the knee is redundant. He got all offended and hurt, and I couldn’t apologise enough to make it better, so I called the whole wedding off until we could understand how our brains were parsing everthing.

THAT was the problem – I had NO IDEA I thought a proposal and a ring were supposed to BE a certain way, else I get upset. I just thought ‘that’s how you do it, why would it be done any other way?’ and had no idea that I’d get upset if another way was approached.

And we’re still going through this on various levels. Badger had no idea he’d be the one pushing for the big girly wedding, while I shrank back and said HOLY SHIT, THIS IS TRAUMATISING, LET’S GO TO VEGAS.

We started looking at wedding venues again in November or December, and looked at rings from time to time. This month, I started looking for a wedding dress. Cue up the horror flick music!
I tried on a dress that was perfect for me on my first outing at the wedding dress super store in Fremont. Only problem is, it had no tags, they wouldn’t let me photo it or have my friends photo me in it, they wouldn’t tell me where geographically the dress was made or who the designer is, and they wanted $1,600 for it!!!! So I told them I’d think about it and fled the place. I’ve been looking at other dresses.

Yesterday, the super store called and asked if I still wanted the dress. I told them no, it’s out of my budget by $600, sorry. The woman quickly said they’d offer me a one time discount of $999 on the dress, but I had to put money down on it TODAY, IN THE NEXT HOUR.
So I said ok, let me call you back…

Commence panic mode and frantically dialing all my attendants and my father for advice.

All told, I spent three and a half hours on the line with my father and his wife, and with two friends, discussing my priorities and budget. I’m the one who finally decided that a $1,000 budget for a dress is TOO MUCH, and I’d like to lower that to $600 tops, please k thx bye.

The good thing that came out of all of this is now I have an idea of real money that my father is offering towards the wedding. Since last night, I’ve been sending him all sorts of info on venues we’ve been looking at, as well as laying out budget expectations. So this is good. I got dad dialed in on this now, finally. Before this, he didn’t want to deal, didn’t want to discuss other than “you have my support”. Now he’s attentive.

I am not supposed to drink alcohol for three months because of high liver enzymes. Yesterday’s little panic pushed me over the edge. I had a glass of wine. I’m sorry. I really think I’m going to need xanax to get through the wedding planning. But first, let me call some yoga places, that’s the healthier route. Oh and exercise – I need to get my ass into a gym, stat. My man has a membership but never uses it because he works late all the time. I can’t go unless he’s with me, then I can get in for $5.
So I’ll need gym buddies and yoga buddies. Yes, that is a plan. Sending the email out now.

Tonight my man and I will look at another wedding venue and talk and discuss.

Oh, it was this month that I officially decided on all of my bridal attendants, too. I waffled for so long, mainly out of fear. It’s a big step. A big decision. There’s three, and MAYBE there might be a fourth, but only if my man’s attendants reach three or four as well.

And the last headache – the guest list. OHMYGOD the guest list. We JUST got it down to 80 people this month, down from over 100. And of course I’m wracked with guilt at having to omit people. If money was no option, I’d be at nearly 200 people, I kid you not. Sadly, money is a huge issue, and I’ll be the happiest person ever if I can just realign my expensive tastes a bit on the dress issue. My goal is to come in several hundreds of dollars under budget on the dress. I’m not looking at wedding dresses only. I’m looking at gothic dresses, Victorian dresses and bridesmaids dresses. I look great in an A-line dress with some gathered taffeta poof.

Lastly, I have NO idea if this journal is the best outlet for my wedding rants. Maybe start yet another journal? Hmmm. Maybe. Maybe not. I never pay attention to who reads this.
I also have no idea about traditional wedding etiquette or who I might be pissing off or who might think they’re invited just because I tell them I’m getting married. I do worry about that, so in every day public, I need to STFU about it.
I’m empathic and always worry what the other person is thinking and feeling. But the thing is, I HAVE to turn that off. I HAVE to ground myself now.

People will know if they’re invited or not if they get a friggin invite. If someone doesn’t get an invite, it doesn’t mean I hate them, it means we simply didn’t have enough money to make it happen for more than n amount of people. I just want people to know that going over the guest list has broken my heart every time so far for the last six months. As long as people know that, I hope they’ll not get upset with us.

One wedding book I was reading said that per tradition and etiquette, I should have my parents and my man’s parents give us a list of friends and family THEY want to invite!!!!
SCREW THAT!!!!
If they want to pony up a few thousand extra dollars, then perhaps they can invite their friends too. Otherwise, HELL NO, WTF.
I have great friends. They all agree I should burn that book. ;)

Ok, the pain is ramping up, time to take more pain meds.

Haven’t heard back from the doctor’s office on the blood tests for liver, thyroid and other stuff yet.

Went to the immunologist and he needs time to research all that I told him re: endometriosis/pancreatitis/allergies all being linked under the endocrine/immune system trouble I have. He, like me, wants to link everything under one umbrella but says it’s likely not so clear-cut in my case.
He’s going to order blood tests and unfortunately for me this means I have to subject myself to the foods that cause my immune reaction – namely the wheat/gluten/yeast/corn syrup/milk/eggs stuff I’ve been avoiding.
Then the big one I’ve REALLY been avoiding – he wants me to get that colonoscopy I ran away from in 2006 when the other allergist in his office told me to get that done. I chose to just abstain from the offending foods, instead.

But now, since my health is not improving, it’s time to get the dreaded colonoscopy. The reintroduction of the allergens and the prep for the test are the worst parts of the test – not the scope itself. They drug you silly for that. But I’m afraid of ALL the aspects.
*sigh*

On the employment front, this week I had two companies asking for status from me on whether I’d join them or not. The first company is a child care agency. They want me to spend $125 on fingerprinting myself and sending the data to the department of social services. They say they DON’T do that FOR me cuz they’re an AGENCY.
After much venting to my man about all this, he says I should still go for this job, and he’ll help with the financial aspect in getting started.
The second job is an office job. Need I say more? I talked at length with my man and decided finally after two months of hemming and hawing that I do not want to take that job. So I called the guy up. He sounded disappointed, if not outright mad. Too much weirdness personality-wise goes on between him and the rest of the office. It’s severely insecure, I dunno what else to call it. I don’t feel comfortable offering more detail than that. I’m better off without that job.

Wednesday is my man’s birthday – no idea what we’ll do, yet.

Continuing for a moment in the realm of diet, I have NOT been adhering well to my restrictions. Today I had chocolate and rum. Last night and today I had some shrimp. Every day I have a couple of tablespoons of cow’s milk mixed into the yoghurt mixture I make.
Today I was more stressed out than usual these days, because of the two companies wanting to hire me. I don’t WANT to go back to the working world, but I *have* to. My man doesn’t want to support me full time financially anymore while I get the astrology business off the ground. He wants us to have money to get married this year. So I go back to work soon.
In my stress over all that, I ate chocolate and began drinking the rum.

I was listening to streaming online music when suddenly the music stopped and tried to rebuffer. It had done this a couple of times and found its way back to the stream. But then iTunes did something I’ve never experienced before – it LEFT the stream completely and instead of stopping, it began playing music from my general music library. I’ve never had this happen before. The song that came on was Gravity by A Perfect Circle.

Gravity – A Perfect Circle

Lost again
Broken and weary
Unable to find my way
Tail in hand
Dizzy and clearly unable to
Just let this go

I am surrendering to the gravity and the unknown
Catch me heal me lift me back up to the sun
I choose to live

I fell again
Like a baby unable to stand on my own
Tail in hand
Dizzy and clearly unable to just let this go
I am surrendering to the gravity and the unknown
Catch me heal me lift me back up to the sun
I choose to live, I choose to live, I choose to live

Catch me heal me lift me back up to the sun
Help me survive the bottom

Calm these hands before they
Snare another pill and
Drive another nail down another
needy hole please release me

I am surrendering to the gravity and the unknown
Catch me heal me lift me back up to the sun
I choose to live, I choose to live

I got up from my chair and declared NO, I CAN’T do this, and poured another drink. But after that, I forced myself to chug water and come back to full sobriety and just DEAL with all that was on my plate. I’m not good at dealing with stuff. I love to medicate to mute things that make me nervous or anxious or afraid. But I also believe in synchronicity. And the song stuck with me and had special meaning for me.

Tonight is the New Moon – the moon of new beginnings. So I danced. I had Club Steph with the darkened house and the blue string lights. I held ritual and created energy as it were, with incense aiding me into the dance. I danced until I sweat, until my knees ached (Moon in Capricorn – Capricorn rules the knees), and danced some more. The music was what I call ‘swirly’, and not the kind I usually dance to. Usually I need Industrial music. But tonight I needed swirly. Stuff like Dead Can Dance, Tristesse De La Lune, Ivoux, Juno Reactor, and actually, ‘Colours’ by Sisters of Mercy.

Oh, and during my dancing, I got a flood of emotion in my chest and belly, and an image of my Aunt B. So I need to call her and check on her and my uncle tomorrow. He’s the uncle with Stage IV stomach cancer.

Today I hit another milestone in my astrology business. The last milestone was on the 4th when I figured out an industry secret. ;)
And today I also got permission from an independent bookstore to link to them from my business site! I spent at least eight, maybe nine hours at work today porting over changes that a web designer friend gave me. It’s not live yet – I still have nine more areas of the site to change. This would all be so much easier if I knew CSS or had money to pay a webmaster.
Soon. These things will come soon enough.
Today I am proud of my accomplishments in the realm of self employment.

And now I must sleep. I will try not to worry too much for my uncle.

This is the THIRD time this month that I’m sick. >:(

Last night I went to bed and immediately my stomach began to hurt. I thought, “oh great, I took pain meds on an empty stomach and now it’s killing me.” So I got up and ate a bite of a protein bar, and chugged some water and went back to bed. However, the stomach pain remained, and I even had low-grade nausea.

Woke up this morning to minor george pain in both front and back, but still barely bleeding. And the stomach ache was dulled but still there, as was the nausea.
Late in the morning, my man was on Internet chat and told me he’d be coming home early from work because he felt achey and was slightly nauseous.

GREAT.

That’s when it occurred to me that this was not george up to new tricks – I could actually be sick again.

Pissed off, I sent an email to as many people as I have emails for, who I could remember were at the party on December 25th. There was a household of about 17 of us.

SEVEN of us are ill as of last night or this morning.

It can’t be food poisoning – none of us have diarrhea and we’d have gotten sick sooner than 72 hours after hanging out. Only one person has puked so far. The rest of us have the achey bodies, stomach ache, and are VERY tired/run down. A couple people have been coughing.

Blah.

First I had a bacterial (sinus) infection with george at the beginning of the month. Then it went away. Then it came back and I took antibiotics for it. Then george came back (on time, 27 days later) and a virus hit me.

DECEMBER IS FIRED FOR HEALTH HAZARD.

This makes me not want to go out at all from November to January ever again. :p

On the george front, the bleeding ramped up today. It’s moderate and manageable. I’ve been medicating every 4-6 hours, alternating with Ibuprofen 600mg and Tylenol 3, so the pain too has been manageable. This means that should I become re-employed, I still have to take time off work because of the heavy medicating. That’s okay with me though, but just sayin.

Oh, and I made $100 today for doing charts for a family. And I spoke with a business contact in town, who wants to coordinate advertising with me. And yesterday I emailed a local independent bookstore about linking to them from my biz site. I’m feeling positive about my astrology business. :)

And now… more sleep.

Spent all day yesterday sneezing and having intermittent faucet dripping nose action. Had some mild coughing fits but nothing too bad. The worst part was the foggy brain and being SO tired. And then the sinus headache started in around dinner time.

My man decided last night that since both of us are now sick, that he’d buy us dinner instead of having to make dinner. We got something quick and cheap and brought home Boston Market food. Of course, as I sat there chowing down, the food tasted a bit sweet to me. I said “great, I think there’s corn syrup in this”.
And I was right. I thought the corn syrup was in the creamed spinach but no, it was actually in the fecking squash casserole! And there’s wheat in the squash casserole, too! Not enough for me to get sick on it seems, but obviously I want to avoid it in the future.

Throughout the day and even after dinner, I found my stubborn streak and held onto it tightly, and got over a full day’s work done for my business. Even went out and bought printer paper, and though it’s a shade off, it still does the trick for printed reports. I’ll get OCD later and try again to match the colour from the site to printed paper.

Today I started off the day with a really bad nightmare, and it took me about an hour to settle down (I think chamomile tea and a nice email from my friend wanting to buy my product helped, too).

I’ve been VERY tired again today, and my eyes feel itchy and swollen, AND I’m still feeling like george is gonna be here any second, too. I wish he’d make up his fecking mind and be early already, instead of dragging on the pain for days before the Real Pain.

I keep trying to get work done, but I can’t focus for shit. And now the coughing has started again. GAH.

I hate today and it’s not even noon, yet.