Category Archives: Pacing Myself

It May Not Always Be An Easy Life, But It’s My Life

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And I just want to live while I’m alive.

I think it’s time to update everyone.  I’ve had a very eventful couple of weeks.  To the point where I haven’t told anyone not directly involved in said events anything about them, not really.  It’s taken some processing time.  Also, it’s painful for me to be still long enough to write anything.

So, the new year started off with a bang.  I went to see my infectious disease specialist on the second.  There was good news: I am no longer in the acute stage of mono, I am now in the convalescent stage.  Except that really is only good news on paper, because the convalescent stage can last up to six months.  And having had mono before, I know that it’s pretty much guaranteed to with me.

I felt so miserable (physically) that very day that I went to the urgent care directly as I had finished my appointment, and they pumped me full of two liters of fluid.  I didn’t have to pee once.  I tell you this, because as anyone in the medical field might recognize, it was indicative of my severe dehydration.

The next day I took my two younger sprites down to see the lights at the Denver City and County Building, as I was meant to do the day before, but couldn’t, being hooked up to an IV and all.  This may have been a mistake, as I was in no shape for it (there was much to see, so we got out and they ran around while I trailed behind and hollered for them not to get too far away), but we had a really nice time and I managed to save my meltdown(s) until I came home.

I haven’t melted down like that in a long time.  That night I was like Vesuvius.  Explosions and tears and anger and yelling and frustration. . .  Well it got very ugly.  I was emotionally and physically drained, and had made the mistake of actually looking long-term and realizing that July was when I was probably going to be back to about 85%.

See, that was (and still is) kind of a huge thing for me to deal with, because I pretty much spent three years in bed due to mental illness.  Except for appointments and very rare visits with friends, I lived my life curled up in my sheets.  I couldn’t wrap my head around being forced back into a state like that, even temporarily, and even when I was doing pretty damned good psychologically.

Well, I had a lovely friend, whom I actually reached out to — which is huge in itself — help me through that night.  And for that (among other things) I’ll always be grateful to her.

So I’m dealing with the mono recovery road, but I’m also dealing with sciatica.  I developed mild sciatica about a decade ago, in my left hip and leg, when The Artist formerly known as Babygirl (I can’t call her Babygirl anymore, I’m afraid, she’s 13 and way too grown up) had been riding on my hip for a couple of years.  It went away — I would get a tinge every now and again, but no big deal.

Well, starting last Fall, it came back, and it came hard.  A couple of the times I went to the urgent care for Dilaudid injections, the sciatica was my primary pain.

(Side note:  My primary care doctor and I — the one I was certain there was no hope of salvaging a relationship with — somehow hit the reset button during one of my urgent care visits.  A doctor at another location in the same network that my doctor works in essentially treated me as a crazy drug-seeker, which pissed my doctor off righteously, and I’m wondering if it maybe made him see the way I felt he was treating me [minus the drug-seeker part, he's never treated me badly from that standpoint].  Whatever it was, he and I are now on the best terms once again.  Just goes to show you, there is always hope when a person is a good person.)

It continued to build, and it continued to build, and after seven urgent care trips in two-and-a-half months, and a conversation on the phone with my doctor this past Thursday, I ended up spending Thursday night in the emergency room.  My doctor wanted me somewhere they could do a more thorough workup, instead of just treating the pain, and I was happy to defer to him.

It took two shots of Dilaudid (I don’t think the first one was more than one milligram, I think the second was about twice that), but finally, finally, and for the first time in months, I think, I was out of pain.  I knew that day that I was in a great deal of pain, and waiting in the ER to even get through triage was pretty ugly, but I don’t think I knew how bad the pain really was until I got out of it.

So I saw my primary in the urgent care on Friday, because his office said they couldn’t get me in until the beginning of February (he said other things when I saw him).  I have an MRI set for Monday morning to check for a slipped disk or spinal compression, I’ll be set up for physical therapy contingent on the results of that, I’m taking an oral steroid — if that helps there will be steroid injections to follow — muscle relaxers, and I’ve got my good friends ibuprofen and oxycodone keeping my pain minimal for now.

It took me some time to process all of this, and I’m probably not done — right now I’m just kind of high.  I keep hearing things from people like, “Wow, you just have one thing after another,” or, “It never stops for you, does it?”  And there is truth in those statements.

But, with the exception of The Night Of Vesuvius, I’m alright. Better than alright.  Even that night was just some dealing and processing I had to do to get to here.  My mental health is well intact, praise God, and everything else will fall into place as long as I have that.  After being without it for so many years, I feel like as long as I’ve got it — and all of the support my amazing friends and family show me — I am leading a charmed life.  It may sound cockeyed, but then so have I been cockeyed for pretty much all of my life.  ;)

You may not be hearing from me much, as I have instructions not to sit for long, and when I do rest, the only way that I’m comfortable for any length of time is if I lay down and stick two big pillows beneath my hips.  You try working on a laptop at that angle.

But I’ve been playing on Twitter; if you don’t already know me there, my handle is @BlushingScarlet.  That I can do from my phone, which is easier to stick on my stomach and type with.  I’m going to still do everything I can to be a good admin for A Canvas Of The Minds, which now has so many wonderful authors that they can easily run they site without me (which is good, I may not be writing much there for the present).*  I’m reading posts from my phone, and clicking the “Like” button is my version of “I was here, thank you for giving me something worthwhile to read”, and sometimes I will attempt a comment — though those can get a little too runaway for a phone and a girl like me.

My personal correspondence is going to be a little slower.  And by that I mean even slower than normal.  Same with comment responses.  But just know it isn’t because I’ve forgotten, okay?  I love you all so very much.

I’ll leave you with the pictures I took in the ER while high as a kite on Dilaudid, Prednisone, Valium, and at least one or two other things.  I honestly just remember there were multiple shots and I swallowed a cupful of pills, and those of you who know me well know that for me to have been that willing to put so much blind faith in any doctor, things were pretty bad.  But I had fun trying to take pictures amid the tangle of wires (blood pressure cuff on my left arm, pulse oximeter on my right pinky, oxygen hooked up to my nose, mp3 player headphones in my ears to help zen me out) in my little ER bed.  Thank God the nurse left the sides up, I probably would have fallen out.

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And also, I give you the immortal words of Jon Bon Jovi, from the song Its My Life: “My heart is like an open highway/Like Frankie said, ‘I did it My Way‘”

“Don’t bend, don’t break, baby, don’t back down. . .”

I won’t if you won’t.

Kisses,
Ruby

*Speaking of Canvas, we can now boast of two Freshly Pressed authors! In case you missed it, DeeDee was Pressed in December for her piece Coming Out Bipolar, Round 1, and just this past week Alice was Pressed for her piece Epic Quests and crap like that. Congratulations to them both; they write good shit, and more importantly, they’re good eggs. Now they just have to get something they’ve written for Canvas Pressed!

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Ruby’s Dilemma

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“Wish I was a Kellogg’s Corn Flake, Floatin’ in my bowl takin’ movies. . .  Wish I was an English muffin, ‘Bout to make the most out of a toaster . . .”

Wait.  That’s Punky’s Dilemma.  That ain’t right.

So what is my dilemma, lovelies?  Well, it’s all of you.

No.  That’s not true either.  And it isn’t even late 60s-child-of-hippies confusion, either.  It’s blatantly false, it’s a passing of the buck.

Because, in truth, I am my dilemma.

I spent 12 solid hours this weekend reading blogs, commenting, etc., etc.  Seriously.  I know this because I woke up at 2:30 in the morning and by the time I finally quit, it was mid-afternoon.

I could, of course, have stopped myself at any time.  But I didn’t.  Because I have become emotionally entangled in your lives, and I want to be able to be present for everyone (even often silently) while still being present for myself (which sounds pretentious as fuck in the re-reading, but I promise I don’t mean it to be so).  One would think that would be impossible even as far as the time commitment goes.  Maybe it is, but I’m somehow making that work right now.  Usually.

I’m even balancing the emotional some.  Enough.  For the moment.

I spent yesterday “out and about”, as they say.  I had a doctor’s appointment, treated myself to some strawberry margaritas for lunch. . .  Wait.  I mean with lunch.  I sipped and kept company with Thomas Hardy and Egdon Heath, then went and had my hair done.  After which I got myself a chai tea (and had a fun flirt along with it, I don’t know that I’ve ever mentioned it, but I am an incorrigible flirt – in the best sense of the word, of course!), then went home and had an afternoon snack of aspirin and lots of water, remembering why I don’t drink lots of tequila at 11 o’clock a.m., and marveling on the phone to my very good friend (Hi!) at how I got through my early 20s pretty much sans hangover.  There’s a legitimate methodology to why, but I digress (like that’s ever stopped me before).

After my phone conversation I popped in a movie (Rita Hayworth as Gilda), followed it by soaking in the tub, whiled away the time with some music, and eventually fell asleep.

What is my dilemma again?

Well. . .  Shit.

Oh, well.  Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Moral of the story:  Don’t forget the plot of the damned thing!

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Of All The Weeks In My Life, This Has Been One Of Them

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And it has been very long.  Very, very long.  So long.  Long.

I think I am the opposite of most people who deal with manic-depression, but I’m not sure. I try to remember from the zillions of books I read on it, but that was so very long ago. . .

What happens with me is that when I am depressed, time rushes by, but when I am manic, it goes so very, very slowly.  Guess what this week turned out to be?

“I blink and half my life is over. . .” ~ Pete Winslow

I have never been a huge poetry-reader, I will confess that now.  Mostly I stuck to prose, especially in my younger years.  But beginning a poem in an anthology that one of my dearest and my oldest friend brought back to me when she visited the City Lights book store in San Francisco years ago. . .  (you know who you are now?  hi!).  That line began a poem and it jumped out and grabbed me and has stuck with me in a way so many and so few things have.

City Lights possibly might not mean a lot – anything – to some of you, but if you’re familiar with the Beats and specifically Lawrence Ferlinghetti, that’s his.  The progression is I spent pretty much all of my teens wildly enamored of Jack Kerouac.  I have made good acquaintance with Ginsberg and Cassidy and Burroughs and Holmes and so many more as well, but Kerouac will always be my true love there.  We are both “crazy mixed-up Catholic Buddhists,” though I only have a name for it because Jack gave name to it.

Thank you, Jack.

This week was, as I described to my psychiatrist Thursday when I saw him, florrid mania.  Psychotic, to boot. But then it had little tiny ultradian cycles woven inside the days and most especially the nights.  I would lay in my bed at night, knowing there would be no sleep, listening to music, Thinking, and hallucinating with four out of five senses.  Time stretches out for me in a very unreal way.  And I lay there and I Thought about so many things.  One of them was how I was having my parents drive me to my doctors’ appointments, because I didn’t feel like it was at all safe for me to be behind the wheel of a car.  A decade ago that would have been the first place I jumped in that state.

I have slowed down.  I have grown older.  I have grown wiser.  I have grown tired.

(For those of you keeping score, 72 hours awake, 4 of blissful sleep, 16 awake, between 30 minutes and 2 hours asleep – little hazy about what happened there – 14 mostly awake with a wee bit of dozy time, which is not real sleep but is closer to it than anything else I found, 4 of sleep, 6 more awake and that is now.  I know.  It’s confusing to me, too.)

By Wednesday afternoon I decided the best only course of action for me was to go silent, which I learned by hard lesson is what to do with myself in that state.  I stay completely off of the internet, and keep all other interaction very minimal, until I feel like I have most of my judgment returned.  If I ever disappear for a long period of time with no notice, that will most likely be why.

Thursday night the mania dissipated (though the insomnia didn’t) in a very nice and novel way.  Just a matter of minutes, it was like inside me some dials and slider switches were moved and I was restored to euthymia.  Euthymia.  Such a pretty word.

I think it was a combination of finding a bit of balance, and some clonazepam (Klonopin) that did it for me.  And yesterday morning my doctor wrote me for my favorite sleepies that didn’t kill me but should have (not a botched attempt there, a drug interaction that no one knew about nor figured out for months, despite me repeatedly blacking out – and I was the one who discovered it – but I’m off the other drug), which gave me my four hours of sleep last evening.  Which I needed, because while I haven’t come down this time into a full depression – yet – things got pretty desperate for me yesterday.

The wherefore of that is a little hard to explain, but it has to do with the lovely way I have of almost dissociating when I am so long with very little or no sleep and nicely manic, and no longer having that, being fully present in the reality of the moment.  And it has to do with how hard I work to insulate my mind, my mental state against anything that might further compromise it, even a little, and coming out of that cocoon-in-a-very-high-tower-with-no-door-and-briars-at-the-bottom.  That’s a good one.  It not only describes perfectly what I build around myself, but doesn’t it sound pretty much like hell to come out of?  It is.  I nailed that, and right off the cuff.  Love it.

Lastly, my desperate state had to do with one of the many moments of clarity I had while Thinking, actually this one deserves the designation of ‘epiphany’, that I found myself in during the whole episode.  I’m saving it for another time.  Maybe.

Moral of the story:  ”I’m a paranoid schizophrenic.  I am my own entourage.” ~ a delightfully misnomered quote, from the always lovable and neurotic John Cusak, in America’s Sweethearts

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Admin’s Block

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Everyone knows about writer’s block.  I personally know a great deal (although once I get past the dam, the ideas flow like Niagara).  But since I have been working as an author and the Admin on A Canvas Of The Minds, I have learned about a new form of idea backup – Admin’s Block.

One of the authors suggested a really great and seemingly straightforward to implement idea for that blog.  But for some reason, I spent about five days completely stuck on how to fit it in and best introduce and promote it.  I also had another thought of my own, and while I knew exactly how to integrate it, I just somehow couldn’t.

Then, a bit after a nap yesterday, BOOM, it all came flooding through me like the Falls.  I was literally working on two main pages, six drop-downs, a post and an email to the Canvas bloggers explaining the mishigas all at once.  I didn’t create a new universe or anything.  But it’s my nature.

As I explained to another blogger, I have all of these really great, inspired ideas – no, seriously! – such that I constantly have to prioritize and re-organize and remind myself, Slow down, Ruby.  One thing at a time.  If I try to get it all done at once, well things get so clogged that pretty much nothing gets through, and the little that does doesn’t get due diligence.  It’s a matter of continually breathing very deeply and reminding myself that both Canvas and this blog are projects.  They are ongoing, they are always going to be growing (I hope!), and by their very nature they are dynamic and not static.  New inspirations and suggestions and ideas and dimensions will be constant, and I need to adapt my mindset for that or my brain will explode!

I’m lousy at this and I know it and I’m working on it and I’m trying really hard to establish balance and pacing and boundaries.  These are skills that could make my life so much calmer, were I to hone them, but they are antithetical to me and the way I live.  I dive in headfirst without looking at depth, and if I take something on, I do it all-or-nothing.

Yes, my moods can exacerbate these tendencies, but I think that really they’re legitimate aspects of my personality, not a result of any mental differences (the kind that come with a label and diagnosis).  I am an extremely dedicated, passionate person, and I simply cannot do things by halves, e.g. my kids.  They aren’t mine, biologically or legally, but I never for a moment held myself back or kept myself reserved or them at arm’s length because of that.  I still don’t.  I love them, and that’s something I defy anyone to do – love someone by halves.  You think you can do that?  Guess what, you aren’t actually loving them.

People speak of unconditional love and it baffles me, because there is no other kind.  The minute you put conditions on your love, it ceases to be love.  Uh-oh.  There’s a rant coming on.  I think I’ll shut up now.

Moral of the story:  Find what works for you.

On a tangentially related note, it might appear that I have done away with my Blogroll. I haven’t, not really, but it was getting long so I wanted to organize it some.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

I Don’t Know Why I Feel This Way

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But someone whom I respect tremendously (and have a bit of a crush on – yes, still, and forever) has kindly offered a medium to explain at least the way I feel for me so’s I can give my overloaded brain some respite.


(This song and video are solely the property of their respective owners and artists. Absolutely no copyright infringement is intended.)

(And anyone who knows anything about me knows how crucial it is to me that he introduced the bass player/vocalist.)

Moral of the story:  “Give your ears a chance.” ~ My maternal grandfather and most kindred spirit, heart of my heart, soul of my soul

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Free Day!

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Which in my mind is blog-speak for I am so exhausted and have finally hit the wall, so I’m going to give this a shot, but it may not work.  I was even going to watch a movie, but no way.

Ooh, here’s one!  So. . .  Never mind, because out of nowhere my head is throbbing.  Usually these things come on slowly.

Moral of the story:  I posting this solely as a reminder to myself that I tried.  That matters in life, you know.  Especially my life.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

This Is What I Get (For Trying To Get Some Sleep)

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So I took a sleeper late Thursday night/early Friday morning, and with the exception of a few brief interludes (e.g. my very short post yesterday), I have been asleep ever since (after reading the aforementioned post, I was arguably asleep when I wrote it).  This is what happens when I start a project and then don’t keep up with it:  I’ve got at least a dozen comments to respond to/posts to comment on (I know, not like 100, but I try to respond to each with thought and depth) both on my blog and the blogs I read, 17 – no joke or exaggeration, 17 - unfamiliar blogs to thoroughly read, examine, and in all ways vet (usually this process includes commenting and seeing what, if any, response I get), which may seem overly intense, but I have recommended and/or put blogs on my blogroll that seemed like good start-ups, only to realize they were – well one I’m even wondering about the honesty/authenticity of – not anything I wanted associated with my page after the fact, so it has caused me to be extra-careful (once bitten. . .).  Now I spend probably a minimum of 45 minutes on each, and if they’re very new, I put them on “watch” status:  I check back in with them every few days so that I can form a proper impression.

A number of these blogs also have blogrolls, which of course I check out as well, so this process becomes basically endless.

I’m still working on. . .  I am not even going to count the number of pages I need to edit as well as links I have to double-check before I add them to this blog, so that I can finish my “construction,” for now anyway.  I have another blog post that I need to write up, which will probably be broken down into about three separate days, but it’s different from my normal posts, much more focused and expository, not to mention extremely important and potentially difficult to write.  It’s one of those things that I am also extremely ambivalent about writing, but in the final analysis I know that I really need to, whatever the reaction from the masses.  I had planned on setting aside yesterday for that purpose, so I am already behind.

Also, tonight I have the semi-dreaded dinner with my father (even though it was my idea, I blame the sleeper because it wasn’t my original idea and it’s a more direct and confrontational approached than I had planned on initially), so everyone wish me luck with that.  As a nice little topper, my chin has been breaking out from all the stress in my life lately, so I have to allow extra time while getting ready to do a full face (also because I get terrible dark circles when I sleep for too long as well as not long enough) - my skin has been so kind to me lately and I haven’t needed to do one of those in ages.  Sigh.

I also have yet another project brewing in my mind. . .  Lord help me. . . but that’s just going to have to wait.

So that was what I had set aside three days for, and now I’m down to one and a quarter.  And yes, I can continue on into Monday and further if I need to, I’m pretty sure I don’t have anything to interrupt the day, and no, no one will die or be grievously injured if I don’t get it all done on my deadline -

And I just remembered a bill that was due yesterday that I have to go pay (I’ll potentially get socked with a $30 late fee on a $30 bill now), as well as a prescription that needs filling.

This is why I stopped planning things in my life.  Because they don’t work out when I do.

Moral of the story:  ”The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley/An’ lea’e us nought but grief ‘an pain,/For promis’d joy!” ~ Robert Burns

I think I need a nap.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.