You know what I hate? AUTUMN. Autumn pretty much puts the brakes on my brain so come late November, I'm practically nonverbal. Haaate.

I also hate being broke! When I worry about money I have this trigger that kicks in: I stop eating more than once or twice a day, and as little as possible each time. It comes from back eight years ago when I was so poor for six months that I ended up living off of a bag of noodles a day and whatever fruit I could scavenge from the park. Nevermind that I'm not 22 anymore and my body raises screaming protests when I do that to it, the trigger is STILL too strong.

I don't have to worry about being that poor anymore, Juha has promised me, but goddamn if I can't get rid of that trigger. It just happens, and goes oh-so-well with my regular difficulty in remembering to eat.

(Want proof that the simple-minded principle of 'calories in, calories out' doesn't work? My fat butt is your damned object lesson. After a few personal famines--unintentional AND societially sanctioned--my body isn't about to give up its stores for anything short of dire illness.)

Anyhow. With all of this, NaNoWriMo has ground to a... plod. I'm still writing, but fast? Not anymore. Whether it's due to a change in my process over the years, worries, SAD, or a combination, it's going to take me a damned sight longer than Nov 30 to make 50 k.

Oh well.

Keeping wordcounts makes me neurotic anymore, anyway, the same way calorie counting does--I end up full of SHAME for the slightest infraction and end up restricting (food, activities that are not writing) more and more and get more miserable and obsessed with numbers and hating every last minute of it (dieting, writing). As I'd rather continue to like writing like I decided I'd rather like food...

I'll still post the (locked) story bits. Once I'm past this scene. This scene I'm on is a pain in my ass, but I'm aaaaalmost past it. Almost.

Happy First Birthday to my handsome little James.

So, after another month of this health fuckery, I finally had a doctor's appointment. Dear doc was like, yep, probably endometriosis. That's reasonable, given my symptoms. It's 'probably' rather than 'certainly' as the only way it can be diagnosed for absolute certain is with a laparoscopy, and they're not going to cut me open unless they have to. I'm okay with that.

First line of treatment is birth control pills, which I'm a little less okay with. My main fuss is them not playing nicely with lamotrigin, which despite the 'oh no big deal' attitude of dear doc, is a reasonable concern. I don't want my non-crazy pills to stop working, thanksmuch.

However, she did also mention an IUD as a possibility. That's not a bad idea, as it's something I more or less don't have to pay much mind to for five years. Beats the hell out of having to remember to take more pills and get them refilled in time. It depends on the cost, though.

The big thing that irks me, though, is that she didn't pay attention to my energy having waned considerably since August and that I seem to get sick every 2-3 weeks. I realize she was super busy--the clinic is slammed because of flu season--but good hell.

She also waved away how much ibuprofen I have to take to keep my menstrual cramps from knocking me into incoherent misery. APPARENTLY needing to take 800-1000mg is like, no big deal! even though the max safe does per day is 1200mg, and I need more like 1600-2000mg per day when the cramps hit. YEAH. NO BIG DEAL. I suppose she was thinking, oh, it's only 2-3 days per month, but, uh, toxicity can build up, I often need to take it when I'm in the two weeks of general crampy suck before my period starts, and I'm KIND OF sensitive to weird shit happening to my body (unless it's pain killers actually working as well as they seem to for most people, ffs).

(Despite that apparently they don't work on existing pain. Uuuh, tell that to the pain that went away after I took a couple of ibuprofen earlier today...)

Dammit. :| On the bright side, I finally discovered the generic ibuprofen at the pharmacy, so we won't go even broker trying to keep me from misery half of each month.

Anyhow. More research for me, because doctors? Don't really trust them. Ye are mortal, and all that...

A rare photograph of the Miniature Burrowing Tiger (felis tigris gordianus) in his native environment.




Sometimes he comes out of hiding.




The Miniature Burrowing Tiger likes to groom his close cousin, the Tiny Grey and White Jamesbeast (felis adorabilius).


Happy birthday to Gordon, who is one year old today!

To post my NaNoWriMo story to Livejournal or not to post, that is the question:
Whether it is better to abuse my friends with disjointed writing,
Allowing them to see my process up close--
Or to leave them in peace,
And by doing so, leave them in ignorance of my suckitude.


... Okay, Shakespeare I am not. I can't do iambic pentameter to save my life. :D But the question stands!

Looks like it was more of a done deal than I thought: Day before yesterday my sister traveled across the state to Portland and yesterday she did whatever it is that needs to be done to be accepted into the Navy. (No, I'm not being flippant; I honestly don't have any idea.) She got the job rating of AO, which I have to say looks damn impressive. She'll ship next August, after she's graduated high school.

I didn't really get to talk to her beforehand, for whatever reason. Juha did, and what he relayed to me made me feel a bit more sanguine that she made an informed decision. I have an uncomfortable feeling she still has some odd notions, but I did my best to send information her way, and I hope it will be of some use to her.

Of course I'll support her. What else could I do?

Don't really know how to feel about this. It's far more complicated than her joining the military, at any rate.

(via the complete moron who wanted to friend me on MySpace.)

So, uh. My little syster just sent me a message that the info on a scholarship I just sent her isn't something she needs because she's going to talk to a Navy recruiter this Friday and if she gets accepted, she'll get $30,000 for college.

Um. Um. Um.

Okay. I'm freaked out. And you know, it's not just the military thing, even as frown-faced as much of its goings-on makes me. It's that big fat number stated like it's magic words. It's seeing that statement and going, wait a minute, didn't someone give me the same line when I was in high school?

Oh yeah. Right. They did. Go into the military, my relatives said (relatives that have never served themselves), and they'll pay for college! Magic fucking words to an intellectual egghead like me. I had my reservations, but I knew how very working class I was and how good colleges were only for rich or lucky people.

No one ever, ever even alluded to the fact that they don't just hand over this big chunk of change for you to learn whatever you like after a couple of years. It's *up to* that number. There are restrictions. And, oh yeah, you have to enlist for--what is it now? Oh. Eight years.

Never mind that this seemed for them to be completely disconnected from the fact that the military is in the business of killing people.

Let's not gloss it over. Militaries do more than that, but at its most basic, they train people to kill other people. To make an actual informed decision about joining up, you have to be aware that it means that you will more likely than not be directly involved in ending other human beings' lives. That someone around your age, who was once a kid and who once had scraped knees and who has favourite stories and secret dreams, secret dreams that may be a lot like yours, may end up being killed. dead. Gone forever. By you or something you did.

No one ever drove that point home for me.

No one ever told me about PTSD.

A recruiter called when I was 16--my school had this mandatory class where we had to take the ASVAB, and I scored pretty fucking fabulously on it. And he was all over that. And I said that was cool, but hey, I can't run because of this defect in my hip--

And then my decision was made for me. Ohthankyouforyourtimegoodbye. That was the end of it.

Anyhow. I read her blithe message and remember the pretty promises I was made and it makes me sick that someone would go "oh, you love learning? If you do THIS huge lifechanging may not make it out alive thing we'll pay for it someday maybe" and basically lie to her to lure her in.

If she makes an informed decision, fine. She's smart, I trust her judgment. But you know what? This doesn't look at all like an informed decision. At all (especially not as she just adopted another cat--you don't do that and go "Oh hai I'm going elsewhere take care of my cats please" right after). I am not. A fan. Of that bullshit. No matter who does it. Especially not when it comes to my little sister.


---

This should go without saying but I know it doesn't--this post is NOT the time to get up in my grill about matters military. Comments screened in case someone comes by and tries to dickwave.

1. When I was 10 or so, I got a dictionary for Christmas. I was terribly pleased and immediately looked up the word 'androgynous' so I could finally find out if it meant what I thought it meant.

Damned dictionary didn't have the word.

Later I found out androgynous did mean what I thought it meant. I hugged it to my heart like a secret, knowing that was what I felt but was unable to claim, because my body had betrayed me by growing breasts and hips and a belly.

I've never felt able to claim it because of that. However, a few days ago I saw the word 'bigender' come up in a retweet of docbrite's. I asked myself, why had I never thought of that construction before? It's almost perfect. Not quite--but close enough.

---

2. My last period was excruciating. This is beginning to frighten me.

---

3. I've pinpointed my trouble with writing to be that I have too much weighing on it. I've tied up too much of my sense of self-worth on 'making it work'--it's the only thing I can do well, and I'm utterly unsuited to much of anything else.

Which leads to paralysis, no matter how much I want to write.

Because of that, I'm going to try NaNoWriMo this year, and write something that's completely for fun, and just to please myself. My goal is to teach myself that if I'm writing just for myself, if I'm the only one who ever sees it or likes it... that's okay. I still deserve to exist.

I'd feel a lot better about existing if I wasn't so helpless, though.

---

4. Mood stablizers continue to work. I'm not seeing the psychiatrist anymore; at the last appointment, he confirmed that they're still doing me some good, wrote me a prescription good for a year's worth of refills, and sent me on my way, saying that the continued somewhat-depression and ADD symptoms should get better after about a year.

Gee, thanks.

Apparently to get any assistance for any possible ADD/ADHD I will have to convince my doctor to send me to yet another specialist. ADD meds are really tightly controlled here, it seems, so they're even tighter about diagnoses.

He also said it's mostly pointless to treat adults as they've already developed coping mechanisms. I'll let you ponder a bit on just how stupid that is.

Speaking of coping mechanisms, I recently realized that I have very few anymore and that's a big part of my problems re: functioning at all. Many of my coping mechanisms were rickety structures at best, and the big grief-borne depression that hit when Izzy died tore all of those to pieces.

Twenty-eight years' worth of coping mechanisms, swept away in a day and a half of hell.

---

5. However, my boys continue to be a balm for my heart, even as much of an excitable pest as Gordon is. I need to take more pictures of them; soon they'll be an entire year old.

I would be interested in and even liked Twilight if it had been like this:




C'mon. Who DOESN'T like dinosaurs?

I haven't been up to writing the past day and a half (omg so tired today), but I haven't forgotten that I owe a bunch of you comment replies (Petter, Sheepy, Jacque, Kytha). I'll get to it tomorrow, promise.

For now, have some sketches to tide you over. They're big, so they're under a cut.

( Sketchiness )

I picked up the term 'Uterus Death Time' for my period from Audrey. I don't find it an amusing term anymore.

I originally made this as part of a comment on Shapely Prose. I'm posting it here to keep track of it for when I need to arrange and print it out for the doctor, later.

---

Over ther past two-three years, starting when I was 27-28 (I’m 30 now), I started having ovulation pain when I’d never had it before. I also started having much shorter and more painful periods, going from 5-6 days that began with a couple of days of crampiness and being more easily tired (and having been that way since my mid-teens), to 2-3 days where I’m pretty much wiped out from pain and tiredness, despite a light flow. I was still fairly regular, but every three months or so my period would be two weeks late. I also sprouted a few dark whiskers on my chin.

This was all after my formerly inbetweenie self (~185lbs at 5′9″) gained around 40 lbs in short order, following an ankle injury that kept me mostly immobile for 3 months and subsequent bouts with influenza. This was in early-to-mid 2006; the 40 lbs haven’t budged since.

It was all a little baffling, but I didn’t think too much of it until I noticed it’d gotten much worse.

Now, I when my ovulation cramps start they don’t stop until after my period. They range from a constant low-level ache [in my lower pelvis] to intrusive, stabby pains. My menstrual cramps frequently leave me nauseated and wake me up from a dead sleep, and it takes upwards of 800mg of ibuprofen to even make a dent in them. My usual pre-period breakout has gone to being worse than what I got as a teen–-now I get bunches of large, painful pimples along my jaw, the back of my neck, and back in addition to the usual. Those few whiskers have spread over my chin and jawline and around the sides of my mouth. Finally, my already copious belly, leg, and arm hair has thickened further and darkened.

So I’m thinking, huh, PCOS maybe? I haven’t been able to get a good answer out of my mom about if any of this is common on her side of the family–-I know having a bit of a moustache is common, but I also know that I was hairy enough as a teen my mom was aghast and thought I had a hormone problem. I don’t know anything about the women on my father’s side of my family, since we’re estranged, jsut that the guys tend to be pretty hairy.

But here’s the kicker: I’ve brought this up with my doctor, but her response was to handwave it as ‘normal’, that the gynecologist (who has never seen me in person) who looked at my bloodwork last year didn’t think there was anything wrong with my hormones, and that unless I wanted to go on birth control there wasn’t anything to be done.

So I guess my question (after going at it in a roundabout way) is–in your folks’s experience, is this really ‘normal’ for someone like me? Am I, as I fear, making a mountain out of a molehill and just need to suck up my body changing and find some better painkillers? Or do I need to give that doctor a piece of my mind? I’ve been trying to research this but my Google-fu has been failing me (probably because I’m more than a little freaked out).

---

The suggestions I recieved were to also look for endometriosis and that I need a better doctor. After looking at the list of symptoms for endo, I concur on both counts.

---

This was especially timely for me to write out as I started my period last night, heralded by cramps that left me dizzy.

Dizzy.

Today, it's been dizzy + nauseated, and the pain bad enough at times (It's bouncing between level 6 to level 8) I have to fight not to cry. Keep in mind I'm used to a near-constant level of physical pain and have a fairly high pain tolerance. I almost never cry from physical pain.

I will make an appointment, I will bring a list of symptoms, a packet of research, and Juha with me. The doctor will be yelled at if need be to make her listen to me.

Normal. Fuck her.

Lately I haven't been able to tolerate much in the way of reading about writing advice or other people's writing process, and in the past few days it's dawned on me as to why. Most of the writing advice is toward the hopelessly naive, a stage which I've passed out of. Now, I can't and don't fault seeing fresh waves of advice coming up for, because there's always a new crop of hopelessly naive wannabes needing that wave to smack them.

But. It's a big but--the vast majority of the rest of it is from an able-minded perspective. Rarely do I see a writer who writes about their processin a way that's informed by mental illness (and those that do touch upon it or talk about it or admit to it, like matociquala, become precious to me), but I can't recall reading a single instance of out-and-out advice that came from anything other than a more or less mentally healthy, neurotypical viewpoint.

I don't doubt the human animal's capacity for self-delusion or the necessity of the vast majority of writing advice given in an attempt to derail that self-delusion. I know I need the occassional reminders not to slip into those traps. However, there's a difference between that and seeing the constant exhortions to have discipline, maintain a schedule, be persistent, really want to do it--advice that assumes that the neophyte's biggest obstacles are self-delusion and excuses.

Which is, frankly, ableist.

Imagine the simple act of leaving your house. Now, imagine if your house was surrounded by an environment that was occassionally randomly hostile--sometimes the ground would be unexpectedly boggy, sometimes you'll be attacked by wild animals shortly after you leave, sometimes the door will be frozen shut. But, for the most part, you can get outside and take a nice walk and go to the store whenever you want.

But some people open the door to find a thorn bush labyrinth has grown up around their house overnight, or they're beset by monsters when they set foot outside, or that their house is suddenly in barren desert on which the burning sun never sets, or that everything familiar is mirror-imaged and everyone is suddenly speaking an unfamiliar tongue. And this happens almost every time they open the door.

That's what it's like to have a mental illness and/or be non-neurotypical. I never know what I'm going to get when I open that door, but I eventually learned that it's probably going to be a struggle. I have to run like hell from or fight those monsters. I'm going spend hours wandering that labyrinth to find the way out. I'm going to have to take a long, dangerous journey just to get to a place where I can find solace, although I'm more likely to have to turn back because that desert never seems to end and I run out of water fast. I know that every time I get used to that mirror-imaged world and start learning the new tongue, everything changes again.

But when I always hear about how it's persistence, willpower, discipline, wanting to write, with the implication that I'm making excuses or being lazy or not wanting it enough if I'm not writing regularly--

It's been easier to blame myself than to come to terms that there is no cure for what makes my brain far away from the middle of the bell curve, only management that sometimes doesn't manage all that well. It's been easier to blame myself than to come to terms with the fact that very few of my fellow writers acknowledge or even realize that for some people, willpower, discipline, and persistence is what allows them get out of bed in the morning, shower, and more or less feed themselves.

It's really lonely.

Coming to terms with these things (and I am in no way done; I will have to come to terms with them anew on aregular basis), I understand why I have so little patience with the vast majority of the advice and the process posts and so much of the writing about writing. The advice and the discussion so rarely takes into account that people like me exist who often desperately want to write, but we have to fight off a horde of monsters or wander a mind-twisting labyrinth or traverse an almost endless desert to even start--and that we have to do this almost every day. With other writers, their voices are so rarely voices like mine.

I'll keep trying to keep those monsters from killing me, I'll keep trying to find the way out of that labyrinth, I'll keep trying not to die of thirst in that desert, I'll keep trying to understand an ever-changing world. I'll keep trying to be a voice.

I wish I wasn't so lonely, though.

Humidity does the strangest things to my hair. (Today hovered between 90-98%.)

--But I sure can put together an outfit.

Dress: H&M, on clearance for 9e
Slip: Handmade by me
Socks: H&M, 4e
Shoes: El Naturalista, 89e
Sweater: Mossimo, $18
Necklace: Gift from narina
Bracelets: Indiska, on clearance for 1e

Sudden shame that I'm not a viviacious or witty extrovert and that I can't pretend to be one any more than I could fly to the moon by flapping my arms.

I just came back from seeing Moon (warning: I consider the official trailer to be spoilery).

OMFG.

Moon is one of the BEST science fiction movies I've ever seen. The science works for the story and never takes over it. The suspense is amazing; it's slow and creeping and made me squirm in my seat with curiosity, but never did it try to startle me out of my seat. It made me think without trying to make me race to catch up, and it rewarded my thoughtfulness.

The writing and acting are brilliant. Bring tissues to this one, just in case; this movie swells with emotion. Sadness, anticipation, hope, very human types of horror--it never seeks to overwhelm, but you'd have to be trying not to feel the emotion in this one.

Overall, a wonderful, thoughtful movie.

[I originally re-posted the comments I left rovanda here but have since turned it into a wider spectrum and more useful and measured post, as my comments on her post and her replies there stand within their original context.]

Earlier today/last night, rovanda made an interesting post about common self-imposed limitations, like staying in boring-to-toxic jobs instead of reaching for more satisfying ones because one believes one can't possibly do it.

Now, the meat of the post is considerably more nuanced than that, and rovanda has very smart things to say in it--but nonetheless, I took (an originally ranty and impassioned and upset) issue with it. I didn't take issue because I felt she was wrong in particulars, but because the presesntation of her post takes it as a given that one's circumstances as an adult are based solely on one's choices--which disappears those of us for whom white, middle-to-upper class, educated, heterosexual, able-bodied life is not the norm.

rovanda is not the kind of person who would do this out of any sort of malice or -ism. She did, however, forget to check her privilege*.

This matters because the result was that, in blindly assuming these privileges of her readership, her thoughtful, interesting post became something that disappeared the experiences of myself and people like me. I felt I had no room to participate, regardless of being a friend, because the post-as-stated had no room for people like me, people who have had our choices very limited by accidents of birth or living.

When a person is disappeared like that, it's really upsetting, regardless of the intentions of the poster.

I got quite upset. I admit I was very angry with her as I took down, point-by-point, her examples of choices that are for so many of us very little choice at all. Every single thing I listed is something within me that ached at seeing them labeled a 'choice'.

You know what rovanda did? She acknowledged my upset and my experiences as valid, acknowledged her blind spot in this matter, apologized, and unpacked her post more to refine and define the point she'd wanted to make originally--and in doing so, included me in the conversation again and kept my trust.

This is how it's supposed to go. I know it fucking hurts to have someone go, "Dude, you're stomping all over my goddamned feet with your privilege, here," and it's really easy to get defensive in return**, but doing that doesn't stop the hurt and does close down communication.

Getting defensive is the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and going "lalalala can't hear you your point of view is invalid!" Someone you do this to might not stop talking to you or stop calling you a friend... but it will definitely hurt their opinion of and trust in you considerably. They'll know they can't confide in you or trust you with important parts of themselves.

But saying, "I've obviously hurt you, and I apologize for that," and thinking very hard and acknowledging how you hurt the other person and then doing your damnedest to avoid doing it again fosters things like communication, good will, and trust. It's owning up to what you did by saying "I'm sorry I offended you," like rovanda wrote, never avoiding responsibility by saying "I'm sorry you were offended."

It's not about being PC or whatever way 'having some fucking respect for people different from yourself' is being denegerated now. It's about acknowledging not everyone is like you or should be. It's about acknowledging and trying to understand what it's like to not have the positive things you've gotten by an accident of birth or good luck, and how the world often marginalizes, hurts, or ignores people not like you. It's about listening to the marginalized, hurt, and disappeared people and acknowleging their experiences and emotions. It's about exercising your empathy.

It's about making this sad old world better a little at a time.

[With thanks to rovanda for being a good sport about using her post as an object lesson.]

---

* This is what I mean by privilege. I'm not interested in arguing this definition or discussing how you do not either have privilege or how your privilege is canceled by All These Bad Things In Your Life. The Oppression Olympics are not held in my journal.

** I'm not perfect and have done this myself in areas in which I am privileged. It's not an unusual or unnatural reaction, but it's worth clamping down upon if you're interested in actual communication.

A billion years ago, I put up a sketch meme and got a few responses. Unlike usual, I got the sketches done fairly fast... but then utterly neglected to scan them until now. For that matter, I haven't scanned anything since early last December, but whatever.

( Ellen's Dragonflies. )

( Penny's Viking. )

( Tiffiny's Pirate. )

( Bonus nude fat woman (non-detailed). )

Reference: 1, 2. I read through the comments on the man's first post when it was up to seven pages, and there wasn't a troll amongst them--just some of his yes-men, followed by a couple hundred people telling him for shame.

Needless to say, Mr. Wright is all wrong and will never see a dime of my money.

[Edit: Author Hal Duncan not only makes with the snark, but does a complete takedown of Wright's 'arguments'.]
[Edit 2: Another brilliant takedown, point by point, by cucumberseed.]
[Edit 3: And finally, a closed letter that sums up why I've spoken out about this and why I feel it's important to stand up to people like Wright here, but naamah_darling.]

After almost two and a half years of growing out my hair, it's gone from stubbled scalp to brushing the top of my shoulderblades. That's the longest it's been in fifteen years--

And I've learned all over again what an absolute pain in the ass long hair is on me and want it gone as of yesterday. I dream of having hair that doesn't take four hours to dry, doesn't shed all over the floor, doesn't clog the drains, and doesn't tangle in my comb.



Long hair is easier to take care of, my fat white ass!

My bad leg (which has in turn contributed to my oft-aching lower back) has been causing me some amount of distress lately, in the form of the not-nice-at-all waking up to the muscles all around where my leg meets my body aching. I've been able to deal with it (with some amount of concern) fairly well, until early this morning--

It woke me up. My entire left leg from hip to ankle ached, with the pain concentrated around my major joints (hip, knee, and ankle). My first thought was, had I slept on it wrong/too much even though I woke up flat on my back? No idea, although possible, since my left arm hurt a bit too. I tried to go back to sleep, but that was not happening.

Cat pestiness intervened and kept me awake for a while anyway, but when they quieted I took a burana (400mg of ibuprofen) and I tried to sleep again--no dice. I told myself it hurt but it wasn't that bad, was it? Which worked until I started to cry.

Yeah, it was that bad. Thinking about it after I woke (which is after the burana finally took the edge off and I slept another four hours, ten total! I should have just stayed up), I decided to put it on a pain scale. 0 is no pain, 10 is the worst pain I've ever felt--the hideous, I-want-to-scream-and-puke-all-at-once shrieking agony of the last time I sprained my ankle which had bonus temporary dislocation. 5 is the cutoff for pain that won't wake me up and keep me from going back to sleep. With that scale, I reluctantly put my aching leg at about a 7, which answers why I kept tearing up about it.

Even though it's receeded to between a 4 and a 6 depending on the joint, it's still bugging the everliving fuck out of me because sleeping on it wrong should not result in a fucking 7. Perhaps I overdid the exercise even though it wasn't particularly strenuous or bouncy. If it was the exercise, it means any impact (walking) or weight-bearing (squats and lunges) at all is going to cause problems.

The doctor last year's response to this was to ignore me when I told her the problems I had before, order x-rays, then tell me the x-rays showed nothing wrong with my bones, and by the way, I needed to lose weight. ...

Which is completely unhelpful bullshit. Fat did not cause my congenital hip dyplasia, or the improper treatment I recieved for it (see the pictures of braces? I got triple-thickness cloth diapers by order of the pediatrician instead*). Fat does not cause the stiffness and tightness of the muscles in my inner and outer left thigh and up my left side. Fat did not cause the resultant luxating patella, and it sure as shit didn't cause me to place my foot so wrong I sprained my ankle badly on two seperate occassions.

Fat has also not prevented my right leg from having no problems whatsoever. None. No hip issues, no knee issues, no ankle issues, all despite having to make up for the weakness in my left leg my entire life. The worst I get is some soreness on occassion when I've walked a lot on a day when my left leg is particularly problematic, and stiffness across my lower back--but not up my inner or outer thigh or side.

How thin does the doctor expect me to be to fix these problems? Looking at a BMI chart**, the top of the normal weight range for my height (5'9") is 165lbs, a paltry 5 pounds over the weight I was when I was too weak to walk more than half a mile at a time--but by god, I could fit into a size 10 jeans!

Does she honestly expect that starving myself is going to HELP?

Because being thin never helped these problems not occur and didn't stop them getting worse as I got older. Being thin didn't make my left patella suddenly stop luxating or my left hip suddenly stop clunking or hurting when I stood too long. Being thin didn't make my left ankle any stronger or stop me from stepping badly.


Once upon a time in my teens--when I was thin--I muttered to myself that I'd be using a cane by the time I was 40. For a while I convinced myself that I was just being histronic. Lately, I've not been sure I'll make it to 40 before I'll need one. But, you know. If I can be THIN, then I can say I have a real problem. Hey, I may be a cripple by then, but if I'm THIN it won't be so bad, right?

Stupid fucking doctors.

---

* If that asshole hadn't already died of brain cancer I'd be sending him lots of very nasty letters.
** Why the bloody fuck are doctors using a Victorian-era statistical method for medical diagnoses?

So, uh, I've actually been writing. A little. I've given myself a tiny daily time goal, full permission to stop at any time after I meet it, and flexible retrictions. I tenatively say it's working, because I have been managing to do it and even enjoy it and, extra bonus, do useful writing.

I've been poking at Night City stuff, which is now called Surreality because Night City is only a part of that world, and two days worth of worldbuilding made a bunch of character motivations and meetings click into place. Now I not only know that Thanatos (a seemingly minor baddie in 31 Days) was manipulating Atanas (the baddie of 31 Days) and why, but what Thanatos was doing in the background and, most importantly, why.

And, well, I finally came back around to the essence of what Surreality came from--my own dreamscape as it's appeared over the years, full of crumbling buildings of jumbled eras and ruined cities and vast wastelands and creatures no one ever wants to run into, even on purpose.

The inside of my head is a scary place, folks. Even I think so and I live here.

I think my most important realization aside from the above is that Surreality has more in common with horror than it does its surface veneer of urban fantasy. Yes, there's magic and vampires and ghouls and some other things under the surface, but the essence of it is not romantic. It's not oh, look at the magic of it all. It's the horror of hoping the world makes sense, trying to make it make sense, but the moment you look at it too closely you realize how thin it is around the edges and if you poke too hard, you might just fall through. It's finding out that magic warps their reality, and too much melts it.

That's important because, when I was thinking of it solely from an urban fantasy standpoint, the things I was writing weren't quite right. It was too light and the lightness was forced. Mad came out kind of strange, soft where she should be crackling with insanity and fire.

Not to say everything will be unrelenting misery and totally broken characters because that's boring and I'm trying to escape real life here (hahaha. Ha. Ha). But the horror current, the trying to make sense of what inherently doesn't make sense, is extraordinarily important to what Surreality is.

So. Lots of worldbuilding in my future, and rewriting all that amateurish stuff to be... uh, slightly less amateurish. Heh. Or rather, rewriting it all to fit together coherently and the characters be their sharp, damaged, very real selves in a world that isn't very real at all.

I grabbed this '101 things to accomplish in 1001 days' list-meme from steppinrazor. 1001 days is roughly 2.75 years, so I limited myself to things I could reasonably accomplish in that time. I also limited myself to things that depend very little or not at all on other people--meaning, I don't have "Get such-and-such published" because, after a point, that's in someone else's hands entirely. To me, the point of such a list is to think about what I can do in a set period of time.

101 things for 1001 days:

1. Completely for-real finish SCHISM
2. Completely for-real finish Zombies in the Spring
3. Build a functional bare bones Night City encyclopedia
4. Illustrate said encyclopedia
5. Completely for-real finish 31 Days and its sequel
6. Walk the distance from home to Helsinki
7. Have at least one manuscript in circulation
8. Do 200 squats in one go
9. Do 200 crunches in one go
10. Do 100 knee pushups in one go
11. Do 20 plank pushups in one go
12. Exorcise the weak and hedging phrases in my speech patterns
13. Get involved in a creative online community
14. Draw 52 strips of that comic I've had languishing
[15 is lost in a maze of twisty little passages, all Swedish]
16. Leash train the cats
17. Successfully train the cats to obey the three basic commands
18. Sew three boho-fabulous skirts
19. See VNV Nation in concert again
20. Hold an entire conversation in Finnish
22. Re-learn algebra
23. Re-learn geometry
24. Successfully gender and age convert a Sims 2 hairmesh
25. Make a custom hairmesh from scratch--with proper animations
26. Do a headstand
27. Go out dancing
28. Buy a buttplug
29. Crochet 3 animal-themed hats
30. Crochet 3 fancy scarves
31. Dress in guy!drag and successfully pass
32. Dress in girly!drag and successfully pass without looking like I'm going to die of discomfort or embarrasment
33. Perfect an androgynous look that works with my shape
34. Hold a fancy tea party
35. Hold another cheese party
36. Hold a rainbow food party
[37 is pining for the fjords]
38. Learn how to sing passably
39. Sing in public
40. Read Crime and Punishment
41. Read The Three Musketeers
42. Learn how to turn on the 'extroverted and happy to socialize' act at will
43. Learn to knit again
44. Try REAL absinthe
45. Redesign the Night City site
46. Redesign my personal web site
47. Catch up with, keep up on, and participate in Shadow Unit
48. Draw/paint the 7 SCHISM iconic portraits
49. Begin learning yet another language
50. Learn how to swim properly
51. Visit yet another country
52. Become comfortable drawing only in ballpoint pen
[53 redacted by Internal Security]
54. Construct a satchel
55. Read a children's novel in Finnish
56. Completely for-real finish Thorns and Blood
57. See City of the Lost Children again
58. Bake something I consider fabulously difficult, like puff pastry or angel food cake
59. Make a decorated layer cake with fancy decoration
[60-101 were eaten by a grue]

matociquala says it occasionally, and how right she is--suffering is boring, and it's the most intensely boring when it's your own. You get sick of yourself, tired of all this ouch and pain and suffer, suffer, suffer. Problem is, no amount of jollying or stern lectures to yourself or deriding yourself works. It takes trying new things, time, and patience. Lots and lots of patience.

O, I have the patience of saints, let me tell you.

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One thing I haven't been talking about that has been working is my project to get back into shape. My progress hasn't been fast or dramatic--I've had a lot of starts and stops since last August due to various illnesses--but it has been steady. I'm still weak and without as much stamina as I'd like, but I'm doing far, far, far better than I was a year ago. My bad ankle is much stronger, as is the rest of me--I can walk nearly as fast as the average Finn again! I can also do knee pushups, which was a big milestone.

Walking has been a big part of my recovery, as has the hundred pushups challenge. I did it last year, starting off with wall pushups. I also incorporated squats and crunches using the same chart. This year, the same people have made seperate-but-similar programs for squats and crunches, so I'm using those charts instead.

My progress has been slow--I keep getting knocked on my ass by my medical issues and having to restart again--but I'm finally on week 3, and intend on proceeding through the entire program this summer even if I have to claw my way through my health issues to complete the sessions. Then I'll start it all over again, this time with plank pushups, which I haven't been able to do since I was a child.

As it happens, all this progress means my clothes fit me much better, but I've always been ambivalent about talking about my fitness in those terms. The whole anti-fat prejudice really gets my goat anyhow, and it drives me even more nuts considering the lies spun around it. I recently found out about the Minnesota Human Starvation Study and what I read about it blew me away. It ran totally contrary to everything I've heard pushed, yet echoed what I've seen happening with my own body.

I mean, sure, my body fat is inversely proportional to how physically fit I am, it's influenced by what and how much I eat. But... not in the ways most people think.

I will only lose so much of my body fat and still be healthy. The only time I did not have a bit of a gut was after I grew two inches in a week. I will always have extra around my hips, and if I ever can easily discern my hipbones under my skin, I will be the kind of thin that comes from being well on the way to dying. At the thinnest I've ever been, I was also the sickest and weakest, sicker and weaker than I was last year, not able to walk more than half a mile without resting (but everyone but my mom liked to say how good I looked... as long as the ignored the waifish, starved look of my face).

The only good measure of my physical fitness is, in fact, by my muscle mass and endurance, not by what the scale reads.

I need to stay away from eating much in the way of processed foods and refined grains, otherwise I get crashy and overtired easily and pick up every bug that comes along, and thus can't maintain my muscle mass very well. It isn't, however, about calories; one of my big struggles in regaining my fitness has been to have the appetite to eat enough. All the calorie restriction and careful balancing of foods in the world does for me is make me horribly cranky, exhausted, and neurotic about the numbers. Yeah, I'll 'lose weight'--at the expense of my fitness, and once that's used up, I'll gain it all back plus extra, as I did.

When I told myself I'd stop counting calories, I became much less neurotic about food. I've started to blow off the measuring sessions I had been doing, because I have more days when I think I look good and hold my head high when I don't have my measurements (and the knowledge that once, they were smaller, and I was deemed more acceptable to look at by the world in general) lurking in the back of my head.

So I eat a lot of real food, the total calories and fat grams of which would make dieting gurus faint in horror. Oh, the amounts I eat, especially on a strength workout day! But I have to eat that much so I can do two hours worth of workouts a day (which I do by choice, I like using my body for something other than to hold a chair down), and being able to exercise that much means I build lots of muscle and rarely get ill.

Funny, innit.

This is hard for me, because I grew up around a very weight-conscious extended family. Being thin is a big deal--so big that my grandmother, who has never been rotund in the least, fussed about her hips being too fat when she was 72 and had all the health issues plus some of being 72. I bet she still fusses, even though she's nearly 79. I got constant hints I should think about getting thinner when I was a fat kid, because it had to be all about willpower, not that I hardly had any friends and was rarely encouraged to do anything active, and was shamed into staying in my own yard by the neighborhood shitheads. At least they didn't convince my mom to do anything horrid like put me on slimfast, as one poor boy in my class had to suffer through.

So not talking about my progress in terms of pounds lost or inches trimmed is really weird to me, because that seems to be all anyone cares about. Do you look culturally acceptable in a bathing suit? No? Well, who cares if you can do 200 squats if you're fat, amirite?

Well, wrong. It's bullshit. BMI is bullshit devised by a Victorian era statician and has been ramped downward to 'account' for the smaller, lighter builds of Asians--but not, apparently, the taller, bulkier builds of non-malnourished northern Europeans. Thinness as the panacea for all ills is bullshit. The things that have affected me the worst--my hips, my back, and my mental illness--did not get better when I was thinner. People come in different heights and builds and girths and we, as a world, need to get the hell over it.

Including me, about myself and others. I hate that I get into mental "At least I'm not as fat as her" games, because I don't know that that 'her' couldn't walk twice as far as I could or pick me up and carry me around. I can't measure everyone else by the same yardstick I measure myself with, because they're not me; I certainly can't measure them by the bullshit yardstick I'm consciously rejecting.

When I do talk about my fitness progress, the numbers you'll see me write about will be how many squats or pushups or crunches I can do, not tape measure numbers or numbers on a scale. Those numbers are irrelevant. My fat tissue is irrelevant; I'm not on this world to be decorative. If anyone who reads these posts or sees photos of me wants a number to attach, they are free to make up what they like, as it'll have exactly as much bearing on my fitness.

Today marks Juha and I's fifth anniversary. Married for five years--what a trip! :D (And we've known each other for ten!)

This makes me absurdly happy.

Cymbalta withdrawal (which it seems doctors like to call 'discontinuation syndrome'--way to pussyfoot around the truth) has been unpleasant. Very unpleasant. A brand new sort of hell unpleasant.

I was told to taper off of the pills by extending the time between taking them, even though they're in time-release capsules. I did so, but while not in obvious withdrawal stages I felt pretty gross physically, with lingering nausea and hot flashes and certain food smells/tastes (specifically animal flesh) causing intense nausea. I also found I was grinding my teeth almost all of the time, which put me in pain, and the pain and sensations in my teeth and gums led me to grind my teeth even more. The resultant jaw and gum pain alone was enough to drive me up the wall. Needless to say, this tapering doesn't work very well.

I took my last one sometime on Friday. Sunday, I beleive the withdrawal had started in earnest, with sleepiness made more intense by lack of sleep the night before. I went to bed aching from tired.

Monday, I was fine until shortly after I ate breakfast, when the vertigo and disorientation set in. Every time I'd move my eyes, much less my head, I'd feel a sensation in my head similar to what one feels in one's stomach when in a fast elevator--a lag to catch up to my point of reference, vertigo, and a bit of nausea. It was very intense unless I was lying down. Other than the intermittant nausea, below the neck I felt okay. My appetite had come back for real despite the nausea and I had no issue eating a (homemade) beef burger.

Monday night at bedtime brought racing thoughts, intense anxiety, and tears. I had to take an ibuprofen to reduce the pain in my gums enough so I could sleep. I tried sleeping with my mouth slightly open, which, while a bit unpleasant, kept me from clenching/grinding my teeth while sleeping, which in turn reduced the pain I woke up in.

Tuesday morning brought a slight lessening of the vertigo that increased the longer I was awake. I ended up napping for two more hours two hours after I woke up, and could have slept for more, without the usual grogginess that results from me napping. The mood swings also started in earnest, with gnawing despair about the vertigo, weepiness, anger, feelings of betrayal and abandonment, and loneliness. All of these seemed quite reasonable until I suddenly felt centered again, sometime in the evening. I still faced moodiness at a lower intensity for the rest of the night.

At that point much of my vertigo had lessened to the point I mostly felt weak, achey, and somewhat dizzy, like one does when recovering from a fever. Appetite still normal.

I slept for ten hours and woke up today to more vertigo, which again was somewhat better but still persistant enough to impair my activities. Again I took a nap a couple of hours after rising, and could have slept more. The mood swings persist, not as intense as yesterday but still troublesome, especially in feelings of intense loneliness and abandonment.

On the bright side, my memory has improved from nonexistant to the merely crappy the intense depression took it down to, and my fine motor control has improved immensely. Small victories.

From reading around, it isn't particularly unusual to have unpleasant withdrawals from Cymbalta, although I wasn't warned of any of the effects or of how to deal with them, a fact I resent greatly and will be having strong words with my doctors about. These effects have impaired me physically and at times been utterly frightening to myself and Juha.

I haven't found much information on what helps the withdrawal symptoms. Some people have had the foresight (or who had clued in doctors) to have prescriptions for Xanax. Others have found that antihistamines or motion sickness pills, like Benadryl and Dramamine, have helped with the symptoms. Other than that, people's coping mechanisms have been to hold on, drink lots of water, and pray.

Awesome, huh.

At 4 pm I took a motion sickness pill called Postafen, which is chemically different from Dramamine but is supposed to have similar effects, so I'll see how that works out. It's 4.50 right now and I seem to have less vertigo.

Hopefully the Postafen does work, as the vertigo limits one of the two best system-flushing activities--drinking tons of water and sweating. It's very difficult to work up a sweat when one feels like one will fall right over when one is sitting.


For now, my strategies are:

- Drink lots and lots of water.
- Eat lots of vegetables and whole grains.
- Exercise when I can, as intense as I can safely manage.
- Sleep whenever I feel like it for as long as I'm able.
- Postafen, if it helps, every 12 hours.
- Perhaps some dandelion or liquorice teas, which are supposed to be liver clearing.
- Keep all emotions under suspicion of being withdrawl effects and therefore false, and not act upon them.
- Keep mostly to myself so as to keep fallout from the moodswings from damaging others.
- Do activities that keep my mind busy, are productive or pleasing to me even if they are 'slacking'.

I may be dealing with the withdrawal for anywhere from a week to a month more. Please keep me in your thoughts, if you have them to spare.

Cymbalta withdrawl is a lot worse than I thought it would be.

Possibly due to medication weirdness, possibly something else, I can't stomach meat right now.* I need alternative meal sources aside from bran flakes, fruit, salads, and sandwiches, but I don't have much experience with vegetarian/vegan dishes and my hippie cookbook full of the stuff is heavily soy-based.

I know I have at least one vegetarian friend out there (Hi, Sheepy! I want your risotto recipe! :D) and may have more, or omnivores who know some good vegetarian recipes they can share with me. If you can help, I'd be really grateful.

I do have some cavets:
- I can't buy anything but ingredients for meals at this time--no cookbooks or magazine subscriptions or anything like that.
- No soy protein. It gives me nasty stomach cramps and digestive pain if I eat any at all.
- Nothing particularly processed. Besides that I just can't get here a lot of stuff that's common in North America (for instance), I'm probably sensitive/allergic to it.
- Broccoli and cauliflower taste horrible and bitter to me unless they're drowned in some sort of flavourful sauce, which isn't exactly healthful. I've tried to learn to like them, but my tastebuds simply aren't geared that way.
- Same with cumin, cilantro, coriander, and caraway, although instead of bitter, those taste like soap to me.
- And lingonberries make my throat feel scratchy and swelled.
- There are some things that I simply can't get easily. Artichokes, good avacados, and any fruit or vegetable outside of its natural growing season that doesn't come readily canned. I can get most usual basic ingredients used in European cooking, but outside of that it's a crapshoot.

Other than that, I have no known allergies, sensitivities, or strong dislikes. Dairy is fine, eggs are fine as long as they're well-cooked. I'm very open to trying new foods and cooking techniques, as long as I can get/find a tutorial!

Again, thanks for any help you can give.

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* I might be able to stomach fish, but I don't know if it'd be a good idea to try anything other than sushi--which is way out of my budget.