Jung's Puppy

pain and stuff

2010-07-16T08:37:00.003-05:00

As Fi becomes more and more aware (?) of its surroundings, i just feel pain much of the time. It hurts. No acute, but a chronic underlying ache. A pending sorrow.

I need to feel that pain and allow it to change me, to morph me, to grow. Is it really pain or is it simply emotion which doesn't have a proper name? I can play the "pain game" in which I acknowledge my pain-then decide my pain is actually something else-rename pain. Thus pain becomes a cloud, a pitcher of tea....It allows me to reshape the emotive response and then do things with it. Like pour my pain into cups over ice, and then take those glasses and hand them to different people.

Oh, wait, they are all back and are pain again. Hehehe, I guess I need a better, more meaningful image. The pain shapes my mind....

The Wheel of Functions

2009-12-28T10:03:00.002-06:00

The more I learn and the more I watch others, I keep seeing the same frustrations arise across typological categories-specifically across the (TeFi)/(TiFe) divide, regardless of which function order predominates. Call it type bashing if you'd like.

Rather than reaching a place of understanding and mutual forgiveness of the others' differences, understanding the diffs in the jungian functions seems to lead to a more venomous dislike of those who use the other function classes. I just see more and more frustration-hypersensitivity?

An example:Fi judges others actions on its own value set, why get angry at an Fi user for doing so? Instead point this out to them and then counter with why your function combination does not do so... An attempt at education?

The same could be said for Ti seemingly being mean to an Fi user, Te being bossy and dominating to an Fe user, or Fe feeling controlling to a Te user.

As a group we should be better than folks in the real world at forgiving and attempting to understand others who differ from us. Instead we seem to be an order of magnitude less forgiving.

Why is this?

Do we assume that once the other understands, they should be able to change?

Do we expect they will not keep behaving according to type-even once they understand the "flaws" of said type?

How much change can you expect from another type?

Playing with Ti

2009-12-27T16:25:00.002-06:00

I felt the need to post this somewhere. It was utterly bizarre.

On christmas day I found I could enter a Ti state. An NeTi state? I dunno... I could do so by looking to the upper right, then dropping my eyes and linking them into one focal point. Very quickly my mind developed a concerted focal point. Things outside of this point were disregarded as irrelevant.

I spent all day this way. I had more fun with my XSTP in-laws than I ever have before. It felt cutting and mean but amazingly in tune with them. I could cut back at them as sharply as they could cut towards me. It was amazing fun.

My mom called in the evening and emo dumped towards me. My reaction-instead of sadness-I felt extreme annoyance that she would dump her emotions towards me. She should have delivered the message in a way to gently ease it to me, and instead used it as a way to emotionally manipulate me.

Things of note-a sense of isolated excellence. The assumption that of course I know what I am doing and of course I am excellent at it. Fuck the other. If they disagree who gives a fuck as they are irrelevant. A sense of arrogance, disdain towards external opinion.

My thoughts felt isolated and individualized. I am alone with them and how can you even begin to think you could appreciate or understand them, let alone replicate them. In the past every ENTP user I have ever spoken to laid charges of presumptious upon me trying to understand their minds. Now I know why.

It feels so individual. selfish, isolated, individualized.

Yesterday evening the strangest thing happened. I laid down to go to sleep and told my son a story about deers a forrest, flowers. As I closed my eyes, I felt the strangest sensation.

I felt a very distinct sense of "OTHER" in my mind. Like someone else was knocking on the backdoor of my mind and they were not pleased. Specifically the back right corner of my head. Distinctly unhappy to say the least. A distinct feeling of external influence. It felt so real, and they almost spoke. I shut down the sensation before they could speak. However it was a woman's voice and she said "You are ignoring me". I totally freaked out. It felt like a very dominant strong woman.

At this point I got out of bed, then took a shower, and consciously tried to extend/relax to Ti of my mind into the area of Fi.

The sensation of having a split body-left vs right was very strong.

So to go from ENFP to INFJ takes work and effort.
To go from ENFP to ENTP took far less work-but twisted my brain into very strange places and introduced a personality fight.

Living Fe from an Fi perspective

2009-11-30T09:06:00.000-06:00

Fe is succinct. And spells words correctly.

Having an Fe mask is energy conserving.

NeFi never stops adapting to the "other". Everything we feel, we project externally. We hide nothing. However that constant metamorphosis requires significant energy. I don't "see" the other because I "feel" the other. It is exhausting and painful sometimes.

How to describe Fi... Fi is mistlike. It engorphs the other, captures all of their minutia, internalizes them, seeps into all of their nooks and crannies, caresses them, not with the eyes or the hands. With the soul. Fi feels magical. It is boundless. When people talk about an aura, they are talking about Fi. NeFi seeks to become one with the" other" and loose itself it the patterns of the "other". Like drowning in an ocean

From the Fi perspective, using Fe is is fascinating. A new perspective. Please note my below description may be flawed as I "cheat" to taste Fe.

(NeTe is also watching, observing, catagorizing, but quietly, under the radar, as to not quench Fe. It finds Fe daintiness hysterical. NeTe is laughing its metaphorical ass off.)

Fe, when in full bloom, is beautiful waves that gently collide. It plays without words. I don't have to say what I mean as the other Fe user already knows. Unspoken conversations with the eyes.

To share unpleasantness, the voice volume drops, becomes softer, the eyes and face silently convey a problem. The face angles to the right. Fe wants to know about your family. Your thoughts. Your problems. Can it help you, feed you, exhibit benevolence towards you?

However-Fe feels "for you". It doesn't "feel you" like fi does. Thus Fe is not inherently painful.

I cannot emphasize how wonderful this is. To carefor you, but to not suffer for you. Fe actually supresses and quenches Fi. This is delight.

The weirder aspects?

Fe is dainty, nesty, a bit prissy. Things must be a certain way. Fastidiously clean and neat (and since you are conserving energy by not emo groping others with Fi, you actually have energy to clean.). Fe likes nice things. Fe notices tiny details indicative of quality. Fe is a maybe a little snobby.

Fe is a mute button. Fe in full bloom introduces gaps in speech, pauses. Thoughts. must be phrased. In the proper. Sense. Using the right word matters. Fe serves as a translational filter to rework the message to generate the correct contextual message. Fe says I should not post this. It finds it both rude and too honest, far too open. It says too much, and pulls too much attention from the societal conversation, of which it should only be a small piece.

Fe loves formality, civility, ceremony. Every gesture, hand movement, blink, every modification of the mask is a symbol, a sign, important to be correctly performed. Details, delicacy matter. Read CJ Cherryh. She creates entire Fe societies in some stories.

Unpleasant?

Fe finds loud, direct behavior to be uncouth, rude, disruptive, unsettling. Even simple direct statements seem too blunt, too course, thus unsophisticated, even somewhat offensive. Always soften messages...

Fe comes with exclusivity. It reads the faces of Te and Fi users and finds them too open, too childlike, too niave. There is a dance going on around them, amongst them, that they do not perceive. They keep missing steps.... As I said, a bit snobby...

God? Can I play?

2009-11-30T08:55:00.002-06:00

I have considered believing in god. Not because I need a god but instead because it is a save place to direct love. You cant o wrong loving an amorphous, non existant entity. It wont leave dirty shoes on the floor or take up living space or food. It also is responsible for its own bills. The downside would include a lack of snuggletime, sex and spooning, however unlimited love may make up for that....

I dunno, maybe I just need another dog.

Written stutter?

2009-11-23T14:03:00.002-06:00

My friend, 9/9 the ENTP, is starting to encounter issues. He does not respond to any emails from anyone except executives. He will be unemployed soon.

I cannot change him, however he is a very interesting person puzzle to observe and try and understand. He is very strange compared to normal ENTPs, however I propose the roots of 9/9 may be found in normal functions overused.

So-a hypothesis:

Fe is like a mute button-a filter. When I use Fe it makes me dainty, fastidious, reserved in speech and gesture. I hate to “waste words”. It takes a lot of time to write things.

9/9 self described as Ne, Fe, Ti with a splash of Se when presented with the list of functions. When 9/9 does reply to emails, it is one word or one sentence responses. His mannerisms in person are very refined, his tastes very cultured and specific, dainty.

Assuming 9/9 overuses Fe drastically, could this same “muting” effect I observe in small amounts, as I play, be overwhelming to him?

He receives 75 emails a day. If Fe forces the response to be poised and perfect for each response, it becomes impossible to reply.

Thus almost a learning disability/cognitive translation issue-like dysgraphia-except Fe imposed in the opposite direction? Like written stuttering.

Also-more oddly-Fe imposes social distance. Not only is it difficult to reply, it might feel wasteful to spend the precious, extreme efforts required in replying on those who are unworthy of a response. “I like you, however I am really to busy to spend a lot of time on an email response to you right now.”

Fe/Fi and basal cortisol levels

2009-11-11T16:59:00.002-06:00

Today I stood in La Jolla and let the ocean wash over my legs. The ocean is the most beautiful thing ever.

Now I have sand all in my feet and my pants are wet, but meh, I dont think anybody notices.

Much better today than the past few days.

Fe is like swimming in a calm bath of honey. Fi is like a cutting pain internally or a beautiful mist that washes up and out.

Fe suppresses Fi. This suprised me. Fe also suppresses inflammation internally. My body stops aching. I suspect that basal cortisol levels are to blame.

However I am too Fe happy now to write this up.

I am a barbie doll with a plastic face

2009-11-10T15:16:00.001-06:00

2009-11-10T06:34:00.002-06:00

I am made up of two pieces. One is Fi induced pain and suffering. The other is Te induced responsibility and self criticism.

Yesterday was so beautiful. I can remember why, from yesterday, that it would be impolite to burden others with my pain. It was so beautiful to feel no internal pain and instead be able to focus on the happiness and beauty of the other. However today that went away.

Back to the normal pain. Today I wish I could die. I wish I could walk into the ocean and swim until my arms give out and then just drown. Just to give up and not feel the internal pain anymore would be so beautiful. The ocean would surround me and hold me and I would inhale it and feel pain, but it would be self limiting. This pain does not seem to end.

I of course wouldn't do that. It is just a whim as it will gone tomorrow. I have my kids to be responsible for and bills to pay and things to check off my list. Te always wins in the end.

How I wish I either did not exist or was someone else.

an ENFP vs an ENTP interview

2009-11-09T06:37:00.002-06:00

We recently interviewed two potentials for my bosses' position-Director of Marketing. The first was an ENFP, with a well developed tert Te, but very polished and well rounded Fi. The other was an ENTP with a lot of Ne and not so much Fe, who went on several Ti walks and left us all behind.

I loved the ENFP as she was very good, but we also need more Fi, not more tert Fe.
I could have been great friends with the ENTP though as she was very clever and actually looked to be a lot of fun.

Other people's thoughts:

the ESFJ and ISFJ both liked the ENFP better but felt she was wearing a mask and questioned what she would be like on a bad day. In other words would she be mean. They could sense the tertiary Te.

The ENTP really disliked the ENFP. First he said she was weak. I couldnt get a clear answer for what he meant by this. Then he mumbled that she would be controlling. He uses tons of tertiary Fe, and what I have seen seems to hold true-tert Fe and tert Te do not go well together.

The ESTP-her boss-only looked at her resume and the fact that she had the exactly right background to push one product into one marketplace. data, data, data, and a total lack of understanding of the big picture.

The INFJ actually said "I feel for her" with respect to the entp, as I think she was picking up on subtle Fe vibes of distress that I was missing. However she agreed the ENFP was the better choice given her well roundedness.

Just interesting to observe.

Pain, Fe vs Fi and cortisol

2009-11-09T06:22:00.002-06:00

Today I am sick. I have a sore throat. This morning it was really hurting. Then mentally I tried to tell myself the pain was not real.

Within 30 s the discomfort decreased from a 10 to a 1. At the same time I noticed that my left shoulder, stopped hurting. I have bursitis and anytime I bend over it flares with agony-not quite icepick style but bang your finger with a hammer style.

I combined the thought that the pain was not real with the idea of supressing the Fi mist. Quell everything and observe external.

I am in an Fe stoned ass zone right now. None of my joints hurt, I am so calm, my motions are so much more coordinated. My toddler broke a glass on the floor. Instead of feeling frustration, I felt very calm and just cleaned it up and told him it was okay.

Twice before in my life have I felt this way. Once when taking cortisol, and once when on valium just after having an endoscopy.

Today's theory:
Fi and Fe are just a sliding continuum regulated by cortisol levels. The more cortisol produced, the calmer you feel, the less pain you feel due to less inflammation overall, the more energy you have to play social masking games-or is this actually the norm???? However cortisol depresses the immune system, thus hypothetically an Fe user will get sick more-thus from an evolutionary perspective die off. If depressed it will be of the chronic type that responds well to SSRIs and is thought to be due to overproduction of cortisol.

An Fi user produces less cortisol, and has a much more reactive, stronger immune system. This allows them to survive illness better evolutionarily. However you would expect more chronic pain/inflammation due to nonspecific immune activity, more true autoimmune disease. Also pain will be felt more accutely. The same injury really will hurt an Fi user more than an Fe user. Other trends-Fi users will be more likely to exhibit chronic fatigue syndrome. Mentally Fi users will rely upon adrenlin rushes to help counter the lack of cortisol-Te rage/frustration. They will also be prone to anxiety more. They will feel emotional pain more strongly and without the calming, controlling effects of cortisol, will externalize.

Qs:
1) why does Fi love feel so different from Fe love?
2) what about Te users vs Ti users and tert Fe vs Fi?

The list of three

2009-11-08T15:56:00.001-06:00

Three things I would like to do before I die:

1. Think an original thought never thought before

2. Go to a place where no person has ever been before

3. Develop a theory of social/organizational dynamics based upon MBTI, NPL, and Jungian functional theory

Saturday Poem

2009-11-07T15:14:00.001-06:00

Patterns scurry in front of my eyes.
Frothing ocean's breeze
little oak tress leaves numbered in the billions
lover's hair in delicate spiral patterns
skin, textural delight, under my tongue.

Societal stability and the Jungian judging functions

2009-11-07T14:59:00.003-06:00

I summarized all of my thoughts concerning societal stability and jungian judging functions. I was going to email them to my two favorite ENTPs. The I asked myself why? Why do I need to show others my ideas? I enjoy the debate and discussion and enjoy new ideas but there is more than that. I think I seek their affirmation of my ideas, which they will always give as they do not approach social interactions in a critical fashion. I share with them as I have an emotional connection and trust them.

However this ends up being selfish of me. I burden them with having to emotional affirm me via my ideas which is rather impolite.

Thus I am going to collect them here. Here feels like a real diary given the millions of blogs that wonder by here. I can post, and thus post to myself. Meditation of a sort.

The ideas are skeletal. They need much work.

Four Judging functions:

Te-seeks to control external environment via domination, imposition of structure, efficiency. Decisions made by Te will be straightforward, blunt, even rude, often accompanied by hand movements to "box" the ideas in. If you violate the social heirchy via not submitting, punishment will be intense, dominating, even physical intimidation or confrontation until you back down or resolution is reached. A representative example would be the leader of the pack. Best deployed to control or structure groups or organizations in a strict hierchal way.

Fe- seeks to control external environment using defined set of social rules/customs/social reciprocal bonds. "I scratch your back, you scratch mine". If you violate the social rule set the punishment is exclusion. Initially it will be temporary, later permanent. These social reciprocal bonds are invisible, tenuous in nature and based upon the trust of mutual reciprococity. Primary or secondary Fe users are bound by these obligations and must abide as they form an internal code of ethics. Tertiary Fe users are not bound by the same level of mandatory reciprococity and can use the Fe social networks to leverage others and play social games. The rule seems to be that everyone is equal-if anyone tries to rise above that they get knocked back to an equal status. A representative example would be the stereotypical way women behave to each other. Best deployed to control organizations is a loose, network, diplomatic way.

Ti-an internal judgment, not about control. Based upon internally derived logical system-a Ti ruleset. A problem is observed, data is internalized-, ie the person mirrors the problem their mind, a Ti ruleset is applied to the data, the logical answer is derived, then the answer is externalized. Often a Ti user will have issues verbalizing the thought path leading to the conclusion. When they do, it will be very detailed, with precision being of utmost importance. Logical inconsistancies are not tolerated. The Ti ruleset is based upon logical facts the Ti users accumulates over a lifetime by learning and experimentation.

Fi-an internal judgment, not about control. Based upon an internally derived value system-an Fi ruleset. A problem is observed, data (the emotive state of the other person) is internalized, the data/emotive state is mirrored in the Fi user's emotions, the value derived logical answer is derived, then the answer is externalized. Often an Fi user will have issue verbalizing the emotive path that led to he decision. It will just be "right". The Fi ruleset is based upon value based observations the Fi user accumulates over a lifetime. For instance if they see an action, they observe it to cause pain to another, they then mirror/feel that pain themselves-thus the rule "action A is bad" has been formed.

2009-11-05T16:50:00.002-06:00

Funny things the baby said:

He learned to play pretend this week.

He said the toothbrushes were snakes, the blanket was a gate. He pretends we are different people-I am his brother or the dog is his friend allan at the skatepark. He also told his dad at line in the supermarket "I think we are missing something..." then pointed at the candy on the rack.

No more complaining is my new rule. Made much easier by the fact that folks are making good choices at work.

purple, pleasent, petulant tears
lips plush, kisses soft and moist.

my soul breathes easy.

2009-11-03T16:37:00.002-06:00

writing allows me to express and tap into Fi more cleanly than anything else. Saying goodbye is hard but even more fun is setting the goal of never returning and then sticking to it.

Te loves goals and loves achieving them. If I miss the goal I stuck in a cycle of never ending failure. By hitting the goal, I satisfy the never ending beast on my back.

To love, to be loved, where do those puzzle pieces lie. I dont know those answers. I go against the grain of wood, get stuck in the rip currents of the way life is lived. Even for those like me, I end up a bump in the smooth laminate flooring. It's okay, as I am not upset, just accepting.

I love my baby.
I love my gangly teenager.
I love my strange elusive entps.
I love my petulant istjs.
I love my strong, silent, sweet INTJs.

I can stand alone and I am okay with that. I love from afar.

new blog home

2009-11-03T15:27:00.000-06:00

This will be my new blog home. My old posts were scattered across the old place but I'd rather think alone for awhile here.

alone after all

2009-08-05T00:56:00.002-05:00

I started life off throughout my early adult hood feeling alone. I never could connect with others the proper way.

I finally thought I had made progress and was starting to understand how to use what I am to connect to others. I was incorrect.

I felt as though I was connecting but the people I was connecting with lack the proper "receptor" for lack of a better term to understand what I offered them.

They never realized how much it cost me to offer this up, this inner part of me.

They live in a world of temporary playful emo connections that disapate when the wind blows. I dont understand what love is or what true connections are, but this is not it.

Yet all of the people I am connected to are via this types of connections.

my baby

2008-09-12T06:17:00.002-05:00

is big, bites, pinch-scratches, pulls hair and is all around the toughest little 18 month old ever. I guess that is what happens when you have a 12 year old brother who picks on you all the time.

Actually that just may be an excuse. I think this one was just born tough.

however when it is time to go to nurse (I am a hippie) he is so funny. As soon as he knows he gets to nurse, he starts to giggle, smile, latches on, then rolls his eyes back in his head and wiggles in happiness.

Nursing must be some sort of addictive dopamine flood. It's like the kid is taking a hit, or drag on a cigarette.

We are going to look into a "patch" pretty soon for the little addict.

buying a home

2008-09-12T06:06:00.002-05:00

So I finally decided to take a plunge into home ownership.

Right now, since me and the ex are still technicall wedded, I can buy a house only using my income but have to show his debts as part of my debt to income ratio.

He has a lot of debt.

I cashed out my stock awards for downpayment and closing costs, but this still puts me in a delicate situation without the required down payment. I found a mortgage broker who will help, however we are riding the "funny money" mortgage debacle coat-tails right up until it becomes illegal on Oct 1st.

We are getting "downpayment assistance" from the seller which will become illegal on Oct 1st. This means they "give" me $5000 which actually gets added into the cost of the mortgage.

I am a little confused as to why this is becoming illegal. Most folks can swing a mortgage that is close to the current rent payment. For me I pay 1100 in rent or it looks like about 1076 in mortgage for the condo. My credit is excellent and I make plenty of money. I just lack 5% plus closing fees-ie 12 grand or so in cash.

I think the down payment assistance is just an easy target to blame. In reality the ARM mortgages are the real problem. There is no good reason folks in a state like Texas need a crazy ARM mortgage unless they are flipping houses. Mortgage brokers just found easy targets amoung the poor and uneducated (aka financially stuid). The ARMs are the reason for the high default rates.

Also I read somewhere that 75% of first time home buyers who show up with a significant downpayment got it as a gift from family. Not everyone has mom and dad to fall back on.

europeans drink less water than americans

2008-08-02T19:02:00.004-05:00

ADH + CRH = ACTH (see vasopression and cortisol regulation)
ACTH = cortisol

low ADH or low CRH leads to low cortisol
CRH essential for crisis response-death of Ccentral adrenal insufficieny during crisis.

ADH coregulates daily secretion of cortisol? coregulation proven but details uncertain.

High (Na)= low ADH. Low (Na)= high ADH

Florinef= High (Na), low ADH
supplement with florinef and cortisol= low ACTH, low CRH, low ADH.
Stop cortisol. higher CRH, but High (Na) due to florinef leaves low ADH.
thus low ACTH and low cortisol. expect lots of irregularity in cortisol secretion, spikes and valleys. BP variations from 120/90 to 70/40 from AM to PM. Delerium and lack of peripheral circulation in PM.

Stop florinef, (Na) drops, ADH spikes, cortisol spikes. symptoms go away.

every visit i have made to europe makes me wonder about those folks. they drink very little compared to us and seem to make less trips to the potty. how do they stay hydrated?

i wonder what the daily urine output of somebody with CFS is?

well if she had only...

2008-08-02T18:34:00.004-05:00

well if she had only...
-wore her seat belt
-hadn't been drinking
-had work a helmet
-had been more careful about car maintenance
-he was really overweight and didnt work out
It's a shame but...
-he had a mental problem
-They were "those" sort of people, you can't expect much more out of them
-he was really white trash
-he had it coming
-you know how (fill in your favorite racial slur) are

All Fs feel empathy. All humans actually have some inkling. However when we see another in pain we often build defense barriers to allow us to dismiss thier pain. It is almost second nature and hapens by default.

Two ways:

1) they deserved thier pain/death or some how caused it
2) they are not part of our "tribe" thus thier suffering is irrelevant.

God bless the USA, but we forgot about the rest of the world. or those folks on the east side of towm. or the black people or the mexican immigrants.

Oh a guy got hit and killed, sad but he was just an illegal... they are everywhere nowdays.

Another I have seen medical professionals guilty of:

When they cannot solve the problem or cannot find data to support the symptoms in test results, then there is not a problem. Ignoring the fact that they have limited biomarkers available and an exceptionally poor understanding of pharmacogenomics and individual varients of complex disorders.

How do they avoid having to feel empathy?
-she has a mental problem
-she's neurotic
-she's seeking attention
-it's psychosomatic (which has been redefined as of late funnily enough)
-it's all in thier head
-they are lazy and looking for attention
-everything becomes depression (gushing blood? your just depressed. eyeball pop out? depression.)

There are several "syndromes" where the docs really have poor answers yet are willing to apply all of the above answers -CFS, fibromyalgia, IBS, yet many docs are profoundly dismissive.

Of course all these folks are just seeking attention. All 10 million. Lots o' lonely folks in the world who propebely deserve it eh?

And they tell themselves when they walk in the room to allow themselves not to feel guilt and pain that they cannot fix the problem.

Gluten and the bullshit alternative docs

2008-07-27T12:44:00.002-05:00

My pal went to an alt med practitioner after years off having IBS type stomach problems. She jumped through all the hoops, did all the tests and never had an answer. She also had five first trimenter miscarriges and no live births.

So she goes to this alt med guy, pays about $500 for visit and tests and he tells her she has a gluten-casien allergy. I thought what utter bullshit-I am a biochemist- but I didn't want to argue with her as what else was she supposed to do? So she stops eating gluten and cow milk.

And all her stomach problems went away. Then she would eat some, and they'd some back. That was about 2 years ago and symptoms still turn on and off just by avoiding the gluten and casien.

She also carried her first baby to term.

Maybe it is just luck, but given that first trimester miscarriges and food allergies are immune system issues, makes you wonder.

So about a month back my gall bladder, stomach, and duedenum were all torn up again-I have been checked for stones four times, so I though what the hell. I committed to a seven day gluten free diet. By day three the stomach inflammation and dueodenal pain was gone, and the gall bladder was done to the occasional sputter. Now if I eat Gluten, the inflammation will come back for the next day or so, then go away agin. It is hard to resist as I LOVE bread but I am enough Pavlov's dog that the bread is starting to look less yummy.

tyrant

2008-07-27T12:33:00.002-05:00

Baby is a tyrant

we walked at about 9.5 months. Still nursing at 14 months. He is a loud demanding little fellow, growls and bites, and only cuddles when sleepy. He thinks I am pretty weak and not a particularly good parent, but will have to do...

Alas, I think he will have high standards once he is grown.

He is more organized and structured than my first son ever was. He is doubtful of strangers, ske[ptical of strange things, and will sit and ponder for several minutes at a time. He loves to put lids back on containers. All things must have lids. He takes them off and puts them on.

This morning he pulled out the gallon of milk, took off the lid and dumped it all over the floor.

His face is so expressive. You can see his skepticism in all the tiny, minute movements of his eyes and a touch of pursed lips. Already at 15 months he gets pissed , with spells of indignant fury. How dare you deny him the wire wisk? How could you keep HIM out of the pantry? He cries a few pissed screams, throws his spoon on the floor, and stomps off to the livingroom. God forbid I try and hug or kiss, or even talk to him. Talk about cold glares.

I have to try not to laugh as it is freaking hysterical. He says Mama, dada, papa, eeth (ethan), puppy, and meows at the cats. He likes to hug and kiss all the pets and his brother but then tries to whack them with whatever cooking utensil he happens to be holding. We are also a fan of dropping food after mama told us not to just to see what mama will do.

On another note my older son told me I drop the F-bomb so often I could have completely destroyed america by now.

what's wrong with society?

2008-07-27T12:31:00.001-05:00

Perhaps, turning our country into the nanny state it has become is necessary to save the millions of consumers who are genetically inclined not to care about anyone but themselves. Perhaps we are fighting natural selection by supporting a genetic trait whos weakness requires the support of others to survive. Instead of only the fittest surviving, we are encouraging the consumer traits to thrive with our craddle to grave support. Perhaps we have to. For the sake of compassion. Funding consumers at every turn to survive in a capitalistic land built by producers. Perhaps we don't have a choice. As a compassionate society. If someone is born into producer or consumer status, perhaps we should stop trying so hard to bring turn them into something they are not and accept that they are genetic consumers and we must take care of them for the sake of compassion and fighting the forces of Darwin.

Hi Happy,

I noticed this old post and thought I'd comment up here so it didn;t get lost. What you are seeing is reflected very clearly in MBTI personality types. 40% are SJ, those are your producers, 40% are SP, those are your natural born party gone wild consumers, 10% are NTs-you and all you dr buds, scientists in general, and 10% are NFs-the tree huggers, priests, artists and such.

so what happens is the SJs are engaged in an never ending battle to keep the SPs in line and be a contributing part of society and all the Ns just get stuck in the middle. Just ignore the Ns.

SPs live in the moment, are spontaneous, have very poor long term planning skills and are very impulsive. Coprorate america exploits this on every turn. Marketers love the SPs because they are EASY. They miss all the fine print, the interest rate increases, the late fees, the overdraft fees, the strings attached to any offer. They buy whatever pops into thier dumb little brains as soon as they see it and are the target of the vast majoirty of media communications.

Impulsivity appears to have a strong biological corrolate and when you combine that with someone who is very in touch with sensory information, its a party.

Is it wrong to exploit the biological imperfrections of the stupid SPs? In the past religion and societal pressure kept the guys more in line. Peer pressure can work really well on these guys. But nowdays we speak out of both sides of our mouths. "be a responsbile, contributing member of society" and "dont you want to buy this really cool thing?" which makes our 401Ks grow bigger as the corporate stocks rise due to thier consumerism. We kinda set them up for failure honestly.

I favor graduated adulthood where they have to earn rights to consume, and some level of protection for then from folks who financially prey on them. Did you know in greece no TV commercials are allowed that market to children?

empathy

2008-07-27T12:11:00.002-05:00

Empahty is technically sesning the emotions of others. We understand how they feel. Biologically? It is the feeling of emotional pain when we wee a fellow human in pain or discomfort, physical, mental or emotional. What does this look like biological? What set of chemical cascades trickle down? In effect we really are sesning some level of true biological pain by being surrounded by others in pain.

Pain would cause action-ie helping the other so that it does not suffer-the biological, evolutionary basis of empathy as a society depends on having each of us support the other so reciprocally, wehn we need help, the other will support us.

If a true biologically induced sensation, then the empathic person can suffer stress, a biological phenomena, from not being able to alieviate the suffering of the other. High stree can trigger all types of other problems-depression, CFS, fibromyalgia-all thought to be mental but as of late found to have true biological components.

Thus, it follows that highly empathic people are more likely to suffer from stress induced types of illnesses.

Another aspect:
When surrounded by others in pain, to relieve the empathic pain, the empath does something to help the other. If they cannot, not only do they continue to feel the other's pain but also experience guilt at not being able to allieve the other's pain. After years of being surrounded by a society full of suffering the empath is weighed doen by loads of guilt and remorse that don't really have a specific origin. They seek forgiveness for this lack of ability to do anything via religion, self-injury, or sado-masochisitic relationships where they give conrtol to another. That person/god then can "punish" them for their inability to act in the past and then "forgive" them.

The empath oddly enough gets a sens of joy and euphoria when helping others. For them charitible work can also be a source of forgiveness and "action" in aleiviating the other's pain thus stopping the internal pain as well.

Empath personality types: SFJ and NFP. The SFJ will be better off as they can fall back on societal norms as the reson they did not help the other or build up walls that redefine how they relate to the other. ie "I will help my neighbor but those people on the east side are just lazy and cause thier own problems". NFPs will experience the full gamut of being an empath as they cannot rationalize away the other's pain.

2007-10-04T10:53:00.000-05:00

Imagine living everyday with a buzz of discomfort constantly with you.

I have a very high tolerance for hard work and discomfort. I worked in stable 60 hours a week as a teen tossing around hay bales. Have you ever lifted a hay bale? I had both of my sons naturally. I drove from Texas to Michigan with a kidney infection. I thought they went away if you kept drinking cranberry juice. I developed profound hypothyroidism because I just thought it was my lot in life to be uncomfortable and more tired than other people. I just ignored the fatigue and vision problems. I love to long distance run and like yoga. If I hit my hand, cut my finger or receive a superficial injury I almost don’t notice. These injuries are like single notes against cacophony of constant discomfort.

My stomach and gall bladder ache. It turns out my back pain the last ten years was stomach inflammation. My fingers hurt, my arms ache, my neck hurts. Every so often I will “catch” a hip and it will hurt like hell for several days. I don’t know why but it always goes away. This time it happened on a business trip to Amsterdam. It hurt so badly that I was having problems walking up stairs and down the street. I am 30. I left all of my coworkers and went to dinner alone so that my “illness” doesn’t compromise my chances for a promotion. The hip hurts and I then promptly “catch” the knee and the other knee as I start to walk funny to avoid placing weight on the first hip. My shoulders ache and my wrists hurt. The plane ride to Europe and back is agonizing. Not enough to make me cry.

I have only mentioned the aching once to a dr who said “no, you don’t really want to talk about that. Just rest a little.” I never mentioned it again. I come from a long line of women-six generations-with psychosomatic illness. We have a hereditary imaginary illness that causes imaginary stomach inflammation, imaginary gall bladder pain, imaginary nonspecific upper intestinal pain, imaginary fatigue and imaginary muscle and ligament pain. I am sure a bit of therapy might help. I think it should be called WWS for whiny woman syndrome.

The Dutch are very funny. They don’t apologize. They may say “my mistake” but really they mean “deal with it”. Get the fuck over it. That is my daily motto. Get the fuck over it and get the things I need to be done finished. Some days I look at my mom on fentenyl patches and I just want to sit down and cry. But no I get the fuck over, quit feeling sorry for myself and get to work. No body will save me, nobody will help me. The things that must be done will be done by me. So fuck everyone and get out of my way with your inefficient, stressed out drama routine. I have no tolerance or sympathy anymore.

I have become caustic.

new finds

2007-07-29T21:23:00.000-05:00

ADH causes salt retention via a particular receptor in the kidney. Paper compared total receptor mutants to normals and assessed water loading-nephrology-

ADH levels increased in hypothyroidism. Results in hyponatremia-mild. Thus by default it MUST drop upon treatmentof hypo.

Typing is hard when holding crying baby.

requirements

2007-07-29T21:19:00.000-05:00

4 "i love you" s a month
4 hugs a month
2 kisses a month
who needs sex...

walker

2007-07-10T18:57:00.000-05:00

I did the irresponsible parent thing and bought a walker for the little grump. His wiggly, squiggly little legs want to do something. fortunately we don't have many stairs here in texas.

His little wobbly head wavers back and forth when he sits in it and his toes just rub the ground. In one day he learned that he can move the walker if he throws his whole body back and pushes his feet forward. The walker will inch back a bit.

Except he doesn't quite understand the feet push component of the equation. Most of the time he just throws his body back and doesn't move. About every fourth time he pushes with his feet too. contemplatively he sits and ponders how that just happened. His little brain is so amazing.

Sonya says he is far more wiggly than other babies she has in her family. If he isn't pondering he is wiggling

week by week

2007-07-06T13:58:00.000-05:00

one week-first breast fed projectile poop-you must cover the rear exits at all times!
two weeks-he mimics mommy when she sticks her toungue out
two and 1/2 weeks-first time he grabbed his own long hair. The more he cried the harder he pulled.
three weeks-he started to get some fat
thrre and 1/2 weeks-first breastmilk bottle from dad
four weeks-first tiny smile
five weeks-first time he spit up in mommy's mouth
six weeks-first laugh
six and 1/2 weeks-he holds up his head, pushes his chest off the ground, and flexes his baby muscles
seven weeks-first time he puked down mommy's dress
seven and 1/2 weeks-first zantac prescription-happy smiles!
eight weeks-we laugh and smile and are fascinated by the dogs,we smile at mom when she comes home from work. we torture our father as he lacks the magic milk makers]
eight and 1/2 weeks-second time he spit up in mommy's mouth
nine weeks-second time he puked down mom's dress
ten weeks-we rolled over. It took ten minutes at first but then several more rolls followed. He quit when he realized you just get stuck on your back.

kid-isms

2007-06-24T10:54:00.000-05:00

ethanisms for today:

Mom can you make your breastmilk into cheese?

(While I am using the restroom he is shouting through the door wanting to have a conversation) Mom I know you can multitask!

We are doing work with fractions and decimals at home this summer as well as cursive writing. Texas public schools are so obsessed with TAKS that they leave gaping holes in some topics. Today I was trying to explain what 7/8 actually means when you convert it to a decimal. So you have seven apples and eight hungry children. Each kid only gets a fraction of an apple-thus a fraction or a decimal of an apple. Ethan then decided that perhaps a more fitting example was eight hungry sharks and seven helpless children. Each shark doesn't get a whole kid. This then led into a discussion of how to approprioately fragment the seven children and we moved to a discussion of plato's world with perfect separation rather than our imperfect world.

Nyjah is six weeks old now. There are tentative smiles for dad and ethan as well as the closet and some of my friends but none for mom. I am the milk provider, not worthy of smiles. This morning he woke up cuddled in my arm nook after his morning routine of a thousand farts and grunts. His little eyes peeked open and he began to stretch every part of his tiny anatomy. His eyes rolled around and widened and closed, squinted and squished. His mouth got big and little and round, then pursed and puckered, and suddenly a little tongue emerged and got very long and then disapperaed into it's little cave again. His cheeks puffed and wrinkled and little lines became etched into his tiny, hairy brow. His head rolled in little circles, arms flexed and grasped and his whole body extended as far back as it would go, little legs pointed and fixed.

Then he relaxed and opened his yoga-asian-wise old man eyeballs and looked at me and milk.

colic log

2007-06-13T17:12:00.000-05:00

2.5 ml of baby's bliss knocked little one out. There is no alcohol so what's up? turns out ginger in large doses is a sedative. No wonder all those testimonials talk about babies sleeping through the night.

Nonetheless ginger does seem to exhibit cholinergic activity in the GI track via muscarinic receptors. Perhaps it enhances stomach emtying or regulates contractions thus preventing reflux. Thus the ginger alone could explain the happy baby tummies. This is also supported by the happy tummy the day I ate ginger bread pancakes. Second hand ginger?

yesterday I tried a 0.25 ml dose after he got fussy. I try and wait till he is is a good amount of pain, clenching his fists and gnashing his teeth, also nursing, pulling away then nursing again. It seems like a bad idea to give the kid meds if he doesn't need them. The small dose seemed to help a little-maybe?-but didn't knock him out. But then maybe it wasn't a bad day to begin with.

Today should be a great test day. I ate thai food and iced tea for lunch. I am some sort of masochist. At 4 he got fussy and was cleching, biting, and scratching by 5:10 along with squels of pain now and then. Constant holding as he screams when put down. Tried 0.5 ml.

It's 6 pm-we are sleeping!

colic

2007-06-10T18:22:00.000-05:00

It's 6:30 and he isn't crying. his legs are softly folded up on my side, not stiffly stuck out in pain. His little hands are relaxed and sweet, not grasping and scratching. When he nurses he is sweet and gentle and falls it a milk induced coma with little bits of milky, sweet drool falling out of his mouth. Very much unlike the frantic, jaw clenching, chomping that quickly gets him a pacifier rather than a breast. Now he eats a whole meal rather than eating and pulling away after a few bites to cry.

Ike was colicky for the first six months and was a vomit projecting, miserable child until almost a year. Lets hope little nicholas doesn't suffer so.

Ginger pancakes for lunch.

today

2005-10-29T19:38:00.000-05:00

Gave the dog and stinky shots. Twit will have to wait for his as the first time I gave stinky his shot I only had it in the first layer of skin and it all went out on his coat. Oopppss. At least I think all of it went out-it could be that he got 1 and 1/2 vaccines. Does that equal 1 and 1/2 years? Anyways I will take them all in for rabies and likely get twit's 7 in 1 then.

Still busy bugging the MDs. Somebody has to give them hell. Perhaps by pestering them a bit, they will stop and consider the style of thinking they have fallen into. We all need wake up calls now and then.

TSH from 7.8 to 1

2005-10-29T19:17:00.000-05:00

October: noticed feeling crappy taking 50 ug AM and 25 ug PM. Got really irritable and depressed. Upped amount to 75 ug in the AM and am doing okay. noticed afternoon ickies a bit but ibuprofin and lots of h2o helped. I am feeling a little sluggish at times. Wondering if estrogen spikes during PMS and ovulation trigger changes in TBG and thus less bioavailable T4. How fast does TBG respond to changes? Also cut florinef dose to 50 ug during estrogen spikes as heels hurt a little-possible water retention? The dosage cut worked but then had to go back up to 100ug as estrogen dropped-got all dizzy and salt cravings started. Also noticed T4 reset start of menses-started two weeks early.

Am back to going to sleep early-around 9-10 however I feel better overall. No more afternoon fatigue or narcoleptic like episodes. Would like to up the dose again as I want to get back to where I was back at the start. Will wait for dr though. My brain is so quiet and calm! Vision is much better-like HD TV. All the black spots are gone. Also noticed yellow-sappy color on skin is going away. I am a plain old white girl again.

11/05
Took 50 ug synthroid and 150 ug florinef on accident on Monday. I felt horrible till I realized what I did and took another 50 ug synthroid-then I felt fine. Next day lymph nodes on left side of head swelled-including the odd one in front of my ear. The next day the left side of my body was weak and a bit floppy. That lasted about an hour then I got very flushed and ran a fever of about 100 then I felt okay. I went to the dr the next day and she told me that it was TMJ not an infection. I need a new dr.

Upped my dose to 100 ug today. I will get the TSH drawn in the morning and hopefully it won't be too off from the early increase. i just was feeling horrible. very weak and tired, depressed.

TSH 200 to 7.8: part six

2005-10-23T22:59:00.000-05:00

One of the first things I noticed now that I was actually stably medicated was that I would get the afternoon ickies. This was happening before but the presumed hypoaldosteronism was by far the worse of the problems. Every afternoon I would start to get a scratchy throat, get foggy headed, have abdominal pain around my liver and stomach, and have what I later determined wre called athralgias-arthritus like aches in my hands, legs and feet. Don't get me wrong. This sucked but it was nothing like what I went through before. This went on for two weeks getting worse everyday. At first if I went running it would make me feel much better but by the end of the two weeks I felt like shit. I went back to the evil internet where I posted on a message board where a doc suggested adding a T3 dose in the PM. I didn't have any of that so instead I added a T4 dose. Magic! Taking 25 ug in the AM and 25 ug in the PM when I noticed the afternoon ickies starting made me feel much better.

This really does challange the idea that the T4 half life is seven days especially in a very hypothyroid patient. It seems that my body was eating up the AM dose and that left my poor crappy thyroid to pick up the slack in the PM. In the severely hypo patient the type 2 deiodinase in the brain and skeletal muscle is upregulated, whereas the type1 in the liver and kidneys is downregulated. The type 3 deiodinase which degrades the T4 is also downregulated. So likely in my case the brain and skeletal muscle ate all the T4 quickly leaving the rest of my body without any. Another very relevent fact is that the expression levels of these enzymes are regulated by T3, not T4, so it doesn't make biochemical or enzymatic sense to give a pateint T4 only. A combo T3/T4 treatment is a better idea-but try and convince some of the endos of that idea.

So after two weeks I started exhibiting many of the "normal" hypothyroid symptoms. I was constipated and felt really groggy and tired. It was all very lethargic though, nothing like the previous shaky weakness from the presumed hypoaldosteronism. I thought at first maybe I had messed up my circadian cycles taking the two doses so I started taking 50 ug in the AM only. I realized I was also in the PMS stage of my menstruel cycle and there are things I have yet to learn about thyroid binding globule and estrogen levels that may have also explained it. I felt better but started noticing the afternoon ickies returning so I took another 25 ug dose in the PM which made them go away.

So now I am up to 50 ug in the AM and 25 ug in the PM. My endo was very good about the dosage increase. Honestly he took it better than I expected. I tripled my dose between visits and he seems only a bit concerned. I feel like I am knowledgable enough about where my final dose will be and the debate about raisning the dose during treatment that I am comfortable changing things but he doesn't really know that.

The oddest thing is that every week sort of reminds me of some stretch of time in the past. I guess the exogenous T4 suppresses my TSH level. As the TSH is supressed, any T4/T3 production capability I might still have left is supressed. At this time my exogenous T4 is not enough to totally replace the amount my thyroid would make so I end up with a net deficiet of T4/T3. The last few weeks have been a little sluggish and a lot of muscle/ligament stiffness and pain. I thought it was ovulation but it has kept going. I would up my dose on my own but I did tell him I wouldn't do that again at least till we meet next month . poor endo..... So at any rate I am stepping through history physiology wise-back in 99 I felt like this for awhile, back in 2001 I remember this symptom. It is kinda funny.

I think these things will be ironed out in time however I am still a touch concerned by the origin of the presumed hypoaldosteronism. If it isn't adreanl it seems the other not so fun option is hyporenninc hypoaldosteronism due to kidney damage. My endo says that if this were the case my creatine levels would be messed up however my aldosterone levels also looked "okay" during some of the tests ran. 99% chance it is just an adaptation the the extreme hypoaldosteronism but for myself I like to understand the possibility that rarer more severe things may be there. My office mate says she would worry terribly if it was her but for me I would rather be aware of the possibilities and probibilities than hide my head in the ground.

We tested my TSH level in house back at the start of this mess. It came in right about 200 with a %CV of about 10%. The other day it was down to 7.8. Yippie, I am in the single digits!!

Things to be learned:
1) Do Not assume drs are always right. Question them and make suggestions. If thier egos can't take that you need to find a better dr.

2) No realm of medicine or science is fully explored. A textbook may give you answers 99% of the time but you still may have to thinkon your own and recognize a case that is outside the norm the remaining 1% of the time. The stuff in books is on a bellcurve. There are things in the extremities which will exhibit different patterns.

3) If your patient brings in a suggestion and you don't have a clue-maybe they are right. I know they lack a godlike MD but maybe they have some idea.

$)Drs need to spend more time listening. Cudos to my new endo. He is saintlike in is ability to listen and help.

That's about it. i guess my book is finished!

The next chapter will be TSH from 7.8 to 1! My guess is there will be some mention of T3 in addition to T4. Stay tuned!

TSH 200 to 7.8 : part five

2005-10-23T22:58:00.000-05:00

Two weeks later and I visit the new guy-who is very new indeed. Later I found out he had only been a real practicing dr for one week when he saw me. The office was very different from the last endos office. Her place was a bit like a meat market with twenty or thirty peoiple waiting at any given moment. You would sit in a little box when they took you back for about thirty minutes and then get a three to five minute visit with Dr. Satan. This office was a small room with some couches. Two or maybe three people would be waiting. The office was filled to the brim with Texas decorations. Somebody here loves Texas! The doc was totally different. He was young and cheerful and didn't seem to be in too much of a hurry. I think i didn't shut up for fifteen minutes straight. I never got a chance to say anything to satan women as she made it clear she didn't have time to talk. This poor guy got his ears talked off. I showed him all my previous test results and told him I wouldn't take the synthroid till the other problem, whatever it was, was resolved. He ran a bunch of tests for cortisol and ACTH as the symptoms appeared to him to be adrenal related even though the ACTH stim test looked fine.

The next week we had another visit. The tests came back fine and he was at a loss. He wanted to try an even lower dose of synthroid-12.5 ug. At this point I was a bit disgusted with the idea as the past couple of weeks had been very tramatic. But it was a very low dose and he was a really nice guy so I figured I'd try it. The first day I saw the excessive urination, headache and nauses come back in small amounts. On the third day I dropped the amount to 6 ug or so given that chewing a tablet in fourths isn't real practical. The symptoms were still there and I was getting a bit weaker. It looked like now I would just slowly get worse and worse. No optimism here. I got a bit herbal on my poor doc and tried to take some licorice rooat as it is the herbal solution for weak adrenals. Licorice prevents the enzymatic conversion of cortisone to cortisol in the kidneys. This allows a large excess of cortisone to be present in the kidneys and bind to the aldosterone receptor, replacing a lack of aldosterone. Usually this enzymatic conversion is what gives aldosterone its specificty as cortisone can bind just as tightly as aldosterone. Licorice "poisening" results if you eat tons of licorice root and mimics hyperaldosteronism (conn's disease).

It worked! I actually felt better. I took several licorice pills and drank some licorice tea. Of course the problem with herbals and the like is that the way they work is so unregualted and you have no idea when they stop working. On the second day I went back to the ER as I guess all the licorice was metabolized and I went from fine to severe tremors in ten minutes. Of course the ER doc said I should TAKE MORE SYNTHROID... Of course I should. Poor guy.

I went back to the endo the next week and told him what happened. He said we could try taking no synthroid at all but I had seen the change taking the synthroid, at least at first. I did feel better. I wanted to feel better. I was tired of living in a shell with wierd symtpoms all the time and feeling like a hyperchondriac. So he was going to try a dose of prednisone with the synthroid. I asked him to consider a very low dose of hydorcortisone instead and he said sure. Then I said that since my symptoms were aldosterone related, perhaps we could just try florinef for a bit first as it won't suppress the HPA axis at all. He said sure why not and sent me home to take 100 ug of florinef and 25 ug of levoxyl. I think he was so baffled.

A week later I was back and doing really well. I felt much better and the florinef was keeping me stable with no apparent side effects. In theory if I was making aldosterone in reasonable quantities I would see edema and raised blood pressure but overall I saw nothing. My endo was so excited. He told me to keep taking the synthroid for five weeks and then we would do more tests and possibly raise the dosage. My poor endo...

TSH 200 to 7.8: part four

2005-10-23T22:57:00.000-05:00

I stopped taking the synthroid, contrary to dr.satan's demands. The next day I thought I was doing okay so I went up to visit my mother who lives two hours away. While there, drinking a cup of coffee and drinking water, (how wonderful it was to drink water again) I began to get drunk. I started laughing at everything my mother said and wasn't walking so well. I couldn't speak clearly and was sort of slurred. I drove myselfto the ER. By the time I got there I was shaking badly, my speech was so slurred I couldn't speak clearly and I was cognitvely messed up. I was also hyperventilating The got me right to the back. I told the dr about all the endocrine abnormalities and suggested he might want to look at hypovolemic nyponatremia. He was the nicest of ER docs and told me I was having a panic attack. I explained to him that I wasn't normally one to have panic attacks and he said that everyone says that. He told me that I needed to be sedated. I tried to ask him about the slurred speech and cognitive impairment being signs of a panic attack and he said neurology is that way. Yeah... After the benedryl incident sedation did not seem like a good idea.

So at this point I got mad and told him I would take my panic attack home with me. I tried to stomp off in a stubborn little girl fashion but I couldn't make me feet work the right way and think it was more stumbling and dragging than stomping. I got to the ER door and couldn't get it to open. I slammed my body into it three times and it wouldn't move. I finally realized there was print under the handle which said I had to press a button. I stumbled around the wall and found the button and found my father-in-law waiting on the other side of the door. He helped me out to the car and stoped at a store and got me gatorade. I sat in thier living room punch drunk for about three hours sipping at gatorade. Finally whatever was going on passed. That night I tried to sleep but I started to get so cold and my respiration slowed down. My heart was beating so slowly and I felt so calm and groggy, yet clear. I started shaking and felt incredibly relaxed and lathargic. I couldn't find to energy to move. This was new. The coldness and lethargy struck a signal with the hypothyroidism so I took the tinest nibble off of one of the 50 ug synthroids. Within five minutes I felt a little better and I could breathe a bit faster. My heart rate also seemed to have picked up a bit. I tried to tell this to my GP who insisted it was a plecebo effect. But you can't trick a biochemist like that. Later on I learned about the deiodinases which convert the T4 to T3. It turns out in hypothyroidism the expression levels are upregulated. In my case perhaps very upregulated. T4 has an immediate effect within five to ten minutes when I take it.

I had one more ER visit the next night due to the uncontrolled shaking and drop in body temp. Again they told me to take the synthroid. I called my GP that day and she told me to call the endo. I explained the endos behavior and she asked me to come in the next day. When she saw me she was horrified. I was still shaking and very, very weak. I couldn't follow her finger with my eyes at all and couldn't walk very steadily. She did an ECG, sent me in for an MRI, and told me NOT to take the synthroid. Most importantly she gave me a hug. I explained I had made an appt with another endo for the next week and she said that that endo office had a much better dr in it who was trained as a general internist.

That thursday was my last visit with Dr.satan who told me my ACTH test looked great and that I should take the synthroid. She also insisted that I needed to see a nuerologist friend of hers as the numbness in my extremiites was a nerve problem. It seems pretty obvious to me it was a lack of peripheral circulation but whatever. By this time I was back to normal and had actually went running the day before. It seemed rather obvious to me that the synthroid was not the right choice until whatever else was going on was resolved. I take the synthroid-I think I am going to die. hmmm..... It isn't a tough choice for me. I felt okay so I said to hell with her and just waited for the next endo visit with the new guy.

TSH 200 to 7.8 : part three

2005-10-23T22:56:00.000-05:00

So...getting to the point of the story...my GP calls me on a Sunday night about two weeks later and asks me if i feel okay. It turns out my TSH level was >150. She said it was a lab fluke as I didn't have any hypothyroid symptoms so we'd retest it. We did that week and again it was at TSH>150. She was baffled as I am tall and thin, somewhat underweight and only had very mild fatigue. She hesitantly started me on a 75 ug dose of the generic levothyroid, had me go in for an ultrasound on my thyroid and tested all the other hormones as I also had been lactating a bit (I know, it seems like this would be a big deal but I nursed my kid so I didn't think much of it). The first doses were like the ritalin only better. I felt fantastic. I had so much energy and my brain was so clear and focused. I could "feel" again. After the fourth dose I still had the good effects but I started to feel bad as well. In the AM I would be okay but by three PM I would have a horrible headache, be very nauseated, and get very weak and shaky. I started having mild shooting pains in my arms and legs and urinating like a pregnant woman, only worse. I started to notice odd things about food like tea tasted really flat and I was having really strong salt cravings. On the sixth day I stopped the meds as I was feeling so terrible. My GP was on vacation so I didn't want to call her and bug her till the following Monday. I actually felt much better for most of the day.

That evening I started to feel like my hands and feet were really swollen and burning-to the point of explosion. They didn't look swollen but felt really hot to the touch. I started having stabbing pains in my arms and legs and was hurting pretty badly. My first venture into internet support groups was at this point when I posted what was going wrong with me on a thyroid message board. I finally called my GPs office and had her paged as I felt so bad. She called me right back and told me I was having an allergic reaction to the synthroid and I should take some benedryl. So I went down to Target and bought a box. I was hurting so much I tore the box open and ate four of them in the store-perhaps it was a bit too much benedryl but I sort of equated it to ibuprofin and thought twice the dose would just work twice as well. We all make mistakes in life. I made it home still feeling bad and got back onto the message board where three people had logged on and told me I might be having an adrenal crisis due to the initiation of the thyroid hormone treatment. I tried to reply but realized I couldn't type anymore and was starting to tremor. I stood up and fell over and then my husband got me into the car and to the ER which is just around the corner. I didn't want to freak him out so I told him to go home and stay with our nine year old son and I'd walk in by myself. He dropped me at the entrance and left.

I made it to the desk but then couldn't walk anymore as the tremor had gotten so bad. I was also starting to breathe really strangely, very spasmadically and in spells where I would take several very deep and then several very shallow breaths. The took me straight back and then my husband was there as he had wanted to make sure I made it in okay. I couldn't talk at this point and the nurse and dr kept telling me to try and control my breathing. I could hear them but I couldn't really speak clearly. I finally composed myself a bit and tried to tell the ER doc what was going on. I said I might be having an adrenal problem but I didn't know. He asked me why i thought that and I said it had been suggested to me by somebody on a message board. He looked very skeptical but I think he tried to take care of me the best he could. My electrolytes looked okay but my TSH was 89. He concluded I maybe needed more synthroid and that I should NOT stop taking it. He said it wasthe benedryl that caused all the problems. I didn't want to argue with him but i decided not to take the synthroid the next day and called up an endocrinologist.

They got me in that day. She-henceforth labeld as Dr. Satan -my first endocinologist quickly looked me over and decided I had adrenal insufficiency and told me not to take the synthroid. She ran cortisol, ACTH, and aldosterone tests and set up my appt for the following week. I made another short ER trip in that time as I had started to tremor again. I had read up in the week enough on adrenal problems to realize I might have low salt levels so quickly started increasing my salt. While waiting in the ER I drnak three V8s from the vending machine and felt much better and left.

When I went back in to see Dr.Satan she said my cortisol levels and ACTH levels were fine and I just needed a lower initial dose of synthroid. So I was to start at 25 ug for a week and then go up to 50 ug for a week and the visit her again. By this time I had read a lot more, and having a BS in biochemistry and an MS in biophysics let me understand quite a lot of it, so I was a bit skeptical. But I figured this lady had been doing this a long time so I should trust her judgement and follow her guidance. She was board certified and all that jazz. Surely she knows her stuff.

I later noted she didn't have my aldosterone test at that point and it was below normal but again I figured that she had looked it over when it came in and would let me know if there was a problem. So I started my meds like a good patient. After the fourth day all the old symptoms were back-the headache, nausea, weakness, fatigue, tremor, excessive urination and salt craving. I started to increase my salt intake which initially seemed to help. I also noticed a new symptom starting as the days went on-numbness in my hands and feet. However drinking a bit of salt water of gatorade or V8 would control all the symptoms and I would feel okay. After about five days the salt water didn't make me better, it just seemed to keep me kicking. I would go through phases of grogginess and extreme fatigue. In the middle of the second week I got stuck in a long meeting where all I could drink was water. It seemed like even drinking the samllest amounts of water made me urinate out much more water and my hands started to get very numb. Half way through the meeting my hands were ice cold and pale. If you pinched the skin to test for dehyration it would just sit there all folded up. I left the meeting and kept running into doorways and my speech was starting to slur. I called my endo and got voice mail. I left a message but after waiting an hour at my office nobody called me back. I got in my car and started driving home. I couldn't feel my hands but thought if I could just get home and lay down I'd be okay. Halfway there I started having spasms under the left side of my chest. Like the whole left side of my body was caving in upon myself. I was terrified at this point and was going 105 mph to the closest ER. I got there, explained what had happened and then told me I was likely hypoglocymic and to have a seat, but not to eat or drink anything. So I waited for about an hour very incoherent and confused, staggering when I tried to walk. I finally found the vending machine and drank three V8s in a row. After a few minutes I felt a much better and left.

I took a half dose of syhtroid the next day as I didn't want a repeat of the first round of stopping synthroid. I called the endo and got some nurse who said it sounded like I was having an electrolyte problem-what a smart kid-but then he said he wasn't a dr or even a nurse so he'd get them to call me back. The nurse calls me back and says to make an appt with a cardiologist as I have a heart condition and that's why the synthroid makes me ill. She also said to cut the dose of synthroid by half. The next day I took no synthroid, went to see the cardiologist who said my heart was fine. During the day I kept going through delerius spells. I would get really ahaky and weak and drink some gatorade, which would then make me feel really groggy and delerius. The endo called me herself at 8 am and said to come in for an ACTH stimulation test that afternoon. When I showed up she said my electrolytes where fine and yelled at me that they would have seen that and they had tested that-which they had not. She yelled that she had never seen anybody like me in 5000 patients and 35 years of practice and that I just needed to keep taking my synthroid. She said she'd do the test but that that wasn't what was wrong with me. I couldn't understand why she was so angry and hostile. I had never been argumentative or even suggested what might be wrong with me. I had tried to keep track of what had happened to me over the week on a piece of paper. She wouldn't even look at it and her nurse practitioner told me she really needed the condensed version. I had had four spells of delerium that day, one of them while sitting in the cardiologists waiting room and she wants the condensed version.

They took me to a little room to wait for the nurse where I sat and cried. I am not by nature a crier. I am actually pretty tough but I was in such bad shape and Dr. Satantic Evil demon seemed to think I was making it up. The nurse came in and gave me the ACTH shot. Within ten minutes I felt so much better. I stopped hurting, could think somewhat clearly, and felt okay. I left after the blood draw and ate the first meal I could eat in the last two weeks. I drank two full glasses of tea and felt so much better. It was so amazing how good it could be to eat again. All told I lost 15 pounds in two weeks.

TSH 200 to 7.8 part two

2005-10-23T22:54:00.000-05:00

I found my job in biotech and moved back home to Texas. I liked where I worked as my boss really didn't expect much in the way of intelligence so I just pretended to be a bit less smart than I was. My coworkers were great and work was and still is sort of like a party. I believe in having fun and loving what I do so I force my coworkers along for the ride.

My health seemed fine and I actually had more energy than I had in awhile. It was very spastic, crazed almost manic energy but energy all the same. I also felt like I was kept from the rest of the world by several layers of saran wrap. The world was there and I was here and if I stretched out really far I could see them and talk to them. I also had this odd dull ache right underneath my stomach. It had been there for years but it seemed to be worse now. I also noticed it was harder to "have" emotions. Mentally I would "feel" some emotion but it wouldn't be carried to the rest my body. I just felt sort of empty and isolated. Not sad or happy just empty.

I had gotton off the pill and gotton an IUD with no hormones so I started to notice how much my hormonal cycle messed with my world. I would ovulate and start menses with clocklike precision every 28 days. I had never, ever been so regular. Almost to the hour on the particular day. I also noticed that my mental state would fluctuate in a clocklike way directly related to my hormonal state. The three days around ovulation I would basically be comatose. I was so tired and so foggy headed. I couldn't think clearly. I got to where I hoped those days would be on the weekend so I didn't have to work. The whole week before my menses I would be very cold and callous and a bit irritable. I felt like I had no heart. There were other days where I would be hyper for two and a half days then be focus for three days, then be tired for three days. I mapped it out for five months on a calenander becuase I thought I was going a bit nutty. Finally in one of the PMS cold callous states I calmly explained to my husband that I did not want to live with him anymore or anyone else for that matter. I had even thought about how we would seperate the bills and care of our son. No emotions involved. Three days later I was horrified I had decided all this as in general we have a pretty good relationship. I thought that perhaps getting back on the pill might help even out all the hormonal changes.

I made an appointment with my general practitioner. She is a wonderful person but very busy as all the docs are now days. I tried to explain to her what was going on and after three sentances she gave me some samples of an antidepressent for the PMS. I thought, well, okay. Then she lectured me about not getting bloodwork she had ordered the previous fall. So off I went for the bloodwork and I took the antidepressent for the next round of PMS. I was so happy in a very drunk like state. Everything was so funny-which says a lot cause I think pretty much everything is funny anyways. PMS was much better. On the way to get the bloodwork done I think I remembered asking God-Siva of course-to make them find something odd as I was so tired of feeling so odd all the time. Little did I know...

From 200 to 7.8 (TSH levels that is.....): part one

2005-10-23T13:28:00.000-05:00

So I guess I have spent some portion of my adult life not feeling great but doing okay. As I hit the mid twenties I knew I was hurting for no good reason, depressed, tired and just feeling like crap. I come from a family of women who "wear out" early. We all start having vague unexplained pain and tiredness at right about thirty and when we talk it over with the docs it is said we are just getting old. My mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother, my sister have all been labeled as hyperchondriacs or mentally ill. That's why they feel bad. Fibromalagia, CFS, bipolar, Irritable bowel syndrome, PTSD, you name your favorite vague symdrome and my family has gotton stuck with it.

So when this happened to me I just ignored it. Just imagine going down to the Drs office and saying " I feel tired and am achey" Nothing like being branded a hyperchondriac at 25. Instead of dealing with know it all drs I just ate better, excercised more, did yoga, meditation and mentally prepared to deal with pain on some level and fatigue on some level for the rest of my life. I was just getting old. When I first moved to Michigan I spent the first six months totally exhausted and in constant pain. I figured it was the stairs-I hadn't lived in a place with stairs before. Over the next few years I went through a slow decline in my ability to focusand remember. I ended up with a diagnosis of ADHD and took ritalin for awhile. It did help it really odd ways.

I could focus better and I felt calm and relaxed. I guess I had morphed into a constant state of hypervilegence for some reason. I was always on edge-not in a panic attack sort of way but somehow on a more innate level. When I started the ritalin I was taking aikido-My teacher noticed a huge change in the fliudity of my movements. Before I had been very spastic, even spasmodic, now they were very smooth and integrated. The ritalin also helped me sleep so much better. I would sleep much more deeply and not dream at all. Before this I always dreamed, always remebered my dreams and would wake up every three hours or so with clocklike precision. I would find myself on some nights waking up from nightmarish dreams were my brain would get stuck in repetitive thoughts-an OCD like mesh of doing the same task again and again. My legs would also ache in a really odd way and I would wake up my husband by kicking him as I rolled around. It was exhausting. The ritalin made that stop and I could sleep so soundly. I also learned to "watch" my mental state as on and off the meds I could see huge differences in the way my mind worked. It gave me essential skills in self observation.

On the down side I had to stop taking it after awhile. Normally when ritalin wears off you go through a half hour of hyperactive irritability due to the innate dopamine levels dropping a bit. Your body steps up and restores those levels to normal but it takes about thirty minutes for that to happen. Kids on ritalin will be super spastic when this happens just for a bit. For me this was horrible. I would feel really bad with headaches, eyeaches, stomachaches and exhaustion for about two hours after I stopped the meds. I also noticed the longer I took the meds, the more of the calm effects had disappeared. I would just be more awake. I finally stopped them altogether and just embraced the fact that I was who I was and there wasn't much I could do about it. I found god-not jesus by any means! and focused on mopping up the mess that my graduate career had turned into.

I considered vet school as I realized I didn't want the lifelong PhD research route. My GPA and GRE scores were easliy within range so I took a pharmacology class in my grad program to see if I was smart enough to do okay in vet school. I totally understood the mecahnisms and the underlying science but I couldn't remember any of the drug names. My memory had been in serious decline for awhile so I figured I was just to old and dumb to really pursue that route. Our moms tell us we can be anything we want to be when we grow up. It is a lie but one told for the kindest reasons. I had tried to be a biophysicist but it seems my differential equation limited mind was not quite up to par. Now it also seemed like vet school was not realy a reasonable choice. On that note I worked for another year helping my Pofessor finish up some extra work and left with a Master's degree. A four years master's degree is a bit sad but a PHd would have locked me into a much worse path.

science fair and rejection

2005-02-26T17:48:00.000-06:00

Dumplings project went to the regional science fair. It really bugged me that they gave out awards rather than just letting the kids present and all get a ribbon. Ike got a second but I am really disturbed by the whole thing. As a cranky parent I have to say that the awards were placed according mostly to presentation not originality or actual scientific thought. Ike's was really messy cause he did it himself and I let him cut and glue like a maniac. We also spray painted the whole thing gold so I cant say most the TJs in the world can appreciate that. It was really screwed up as there were maybe 50% firsts, 40% seconds and 10% thirds. What does that tell the kid who got the third place. It is one thing to have one first place-only one kid out of fifty gets it. It is a whole other thing to have three thrid places out of fifty. Basically they are telling you your prject sucked ass. again it seemed that the third place really was just a matter of pretty presentation rather than truely bad ideas. Maybe I'll write somebody an angry letter.

I have been so depressed and irritable the last few days. Crabby , crabby. Meds help a little but I don't like to take them. I am also super sensitive to rejection due to being moody. I read a blog I like and I emailed the lady a question which she didnt answer. I am sure she is very busy and just overlooked answering it or didn't have time to, however I go and get my feelings hurt. Then I want to crawl under a little space between the stairs and hide from the world. It is so funny to be so old and still care what other people think. I ignore all the Ss in life but when I make overtures of friendship to the Ns and get rebuffed as being a wierdo it makes me kinda sad. How do you not be a wierdo? S at work said the popular people have Nerdar that kicks in when we walk in the room. Not only am I a big dork but I just get so intense about things sometime. When I do something I guess I go over the edge and look like a psycho. I luagh louder, talk louder, feel more, am more sensitive. When I play, I play harder. Then people think I am wierd. A friend had me reading Ananis Nin and she seems a bit more nuts than I could ever hope for so I guess I am in okay territory.

Part of growing older seems to be a self realization of sorts where you become detached from others around you to find your true self. Unfortunatly I spent most of the early years detached because I couldn't unerstand how to interact with others. Now I interact but not always appropriatly. I find myself wanting to detach but I question if its for the right reason. Am I hiding from other people because I screw up whenever I am around or is it really a step in spiritual growth?

The science fair today had me really back on the idea od pride and why we feel it. How many people in the room really understand why thet are overcome with so much pride when thier little one does something good or so sad when someone slights thier little one. If my little one does good things it enhances his and my social status in my tribe and we get more of the food bounty and better mates. The greater his accomplishments the better position he achieves in a social hiarchy. I then feel a little ashamed of feeling a bunch of pride . I try and temper my pride and instaed support his growth in positive directions. He is very emapthic and loving so I guess I am doing something right.

teamwork

2005-02-24T17:35:00.000-06:00

Everybody is so cranky sometimes at work. None of us seem to understand that to make the silly company successful, we must work together as a team.

Sometimes I find myself hating other people-like super dislike due to how I have interacted with them. I make a mistake and then I became angry at myself over it-embarresed-and thus dislike them. How old will I be when I realize that what other people think doesn't matter. Not simply insulating my emotions deep undewr what I am but seriously really not caring. Inside I fly around like a little happy bee. I flirt from flower to flower and see all the beautiful things around me-one of which is not this mac keyboard as the keys are all too sm,all and pressed down. My big floppy fingers hit them in all the wrong places. Anyways there are days that I wish I was invisible so noone could have an opinion of me. I could just observe thier silliness and make my own way. Then there are days when I want to be noticed and be unique. Thats all biology telling me to be the center of attention so I get the best mate but it is still there. Also the sense of power sometimes seems nice. To be incontrol-biology again.

the sun is out again

2005-02-22T16:35:00.000-06:00

Ahhh, finally the sun is out again and I can return from hibernation to post in my diary. I get so distracted and it is hard to post in a diary when we only have one computer and my husband would so make fun of posting in a diary.

It has been so sunny the last few days. And as usually I have suddenly had so much energy. Returning to texas was a good choice as I really can't take the dark MI winters. Even here I got tired and sleepy andhad no sex drive at all.during the dark months. Now all my plants are peeking out again-okay they are all really green and most of them were green all winter. It is Feb 22 and it is basically early summer on a MI scale. I love the way the dirt smells and the trees . Even the bugs are all good. I just want to rub my hands through it all and bring all the yummy plant roots and stuff to the surface. If I didn't live on a fucking rock that is. The house is totally on limestone so I had to bring all the good dirt from the forrest down the hill and mix in some peat so I can grow most plants.

Work is fun. I have a lot of good talks with Sunny about personality, creativity and what makes us who we are. I honestly never throught I was very creative or spontaneous. Till I was away from my family and around people who really accept me. They think I am crazy but they accept me without much question. I honestly expected to have to be a conformist out in the real worll but it seems that these guys are more open to different types of people than the academics. Like in academics we were all similiar. I was more of a feeler than most of them so I seemed flaky-I am. However they were such skeptics and so critical-not intentionally but just inhearently. They cannot let illogical things slide past the radar. If it isn't true it must be pointed out, analyzed and corrected. I say many things that aren't necessarily logical. wow I think I just spelled necessarily right. Sometimes logic is overrated. More about that later. At any rate, my new companions are very different-INFJ (people pleasing mom like kindest, most giving but with some set ideas about things), ENTP (keen, open to wide ideas, talkative, very flexible), ISTJ (talk about wierd), and ENTJ (my lover of protocols and correctness. So we can viably discuss things like tarot cards without an immediate condemnation. Logic isn't always required. There are even some republicans at work. Talk about having to be open minded and understanding of others differences.

I think I like handwriting better than spelling as I can just slur over mispellings a bit easier.

So I have started to have fun god thoughts as of late. I have been reading some on string theory and complexity theory. The string theory purports to understand how things work at 10-33 meter. I guess it all gets kinda funky down there. At any rate it looks like you have to have more than four dimensions to make that work well-like ten or so. Even more entertaining is the idea of these twistor things that Roger Penrose invented. Acording to that theory we are the complex conjugate of a real and imaginary dimension. What imaginary space would be like could be interesting.

So then complexity theory talks about basically the fact that you can't predict the way a complicated changing system will behave by studying its smaller parts. The whole seems to be more than the sum of its parts. You have a system with millions of interlocked "gears" which will have many small movements, a few medium size movements and the occasionally large scale explosion. Earthquakes, avalanches, traffic, piles of grain, weather all follow these statistics.

So we may have dimensions floating around, interweaved somhow in our daily exsistance but unobservable and we can't really predict how a dynamic system will behave because the sum is greater than its parts. It seems like combining those two definitly leaves room for god somewhere in the mix or at least things far outside of what we as humans can easily "see".

I at work of course, cause that's what they pay me for, :) conducted a statistical analysis of horoscopes the other day. It seems like you can match up a given horoscope with a given person with a much higer probibility than random. Sunny got 5 out of 7 and D got 4 out of 7. Granted it is small but leans toward some significance. I tried myself matching the in laws up but it seems flawed as thier inpenetrable will likely prevents astrology from playing any role in thier future. They are tough ass people.

So I moved on to Tarot cards- When using the whole deck I got answers that made sense and that I didn't like. It told me things about me and what others might think of me. It freaked me out a bit so I waited a few days to try again. This time the results seemed skewed. Later I realized I had dropped one of the cards in my car and didn't have a whole deck. The lady at the store said that would make a difference(they sold me a sample deck so she checked the count).

So could it be that there really is more to the whole than we can see. Anias nin seemed to realize you couldn't force the world to become like you so you make a place for yourself that works for you. You create your own world. The world may be much more adaptable and malleable than we realize. Could it be as the kasmiri shaviates thought, that we are god and god is us. That by defining what we are and "creating" our own reality by our beliefs, we could alter the "whole" by some large or small amount. How much can we change what is around us by our thoughts, feelings beliefs. How truley focused and enlighted will I have to be to use things like tarot and horoscopes to peer under some outer layer I can't "see " past. How enlighted before I can alter that?

busy busy busy

2004-08-24T21:09:00.000-05:00

Lovin the new job. Lots of training but I couldn't have gotten luckier with respect to coworkers and a boss.

Tha apt has turned out to be a bit buggier than I would like. It is surrounded by oak trees and situated in a forest more or less so lots of big "palmetto/water " bugs are hanging out. A bit of spray should take care of them and at least they aren't scary german cockroaches. I wonder how many of those I ate in my sleep as a child. Uggh.

My neighbors are about as wierd as me. I talked over my potential role as a stalker with several friends. All conclude that while I may be nosy-I attribute it the childlike curiosity-I am not a stalker and not out of the norm for nieghbors. In any case I moved all the plnats around back in my little yard so I can enjoy them and hung up a curtain across my front window. That way they don't have to worry about others observing thier comings and goings. What are they drug dealers or do they hold S&M parties there? Seriously, why all the concern?

Anyways I decided to save a cat recently. It was because he kept screaming at me. He is this scrawny black and white oriental. At first I thought he was starving. He is underfed and really skinny but he also appears to be a fashion model of the cat world. He is buitl like a siamese my sister had awhiile back. All legs, ears and tail. I can fold him in half like a bendy toy. He is so wierd looking. So he crawled out from under my sister's house that she was moving from and yowled at me. I thought he was dying. Nope he always yowls like that. I originally named him shiva as I am a big fan and thought that maybe shiva made me feel bad for him and take him home. Then I started calling him skelator as he is quite skelatal. Now he is stinky. God almighty he stinks to hell and back. It seems his digestive tract is rather sensitive to odd foods and unfortunately he loves to eat human foods. He is also kinda dumb and didn't seem to understand when I moved the litter box, that he needed to place his unpleasent items in the new location and not on the floor where the litter box used to be. That twice in a row got him turned into an outside cat. I took him outside and three times he ran into the door trying to get back in. Twice he jumped up on the window screen and mewled trying to tear his way into the window. He was such a happy indoor cat. He loves affection-starving for it I would guess-and sleeps beside my head at night. He so wants to be held and loved. I stuck with the outside cat for two days and then let him back in last night. He is so pathetic. Now he stays out during the day but comes in at night and we jusrt keep the doors to the bedroom shut so he doesn't leave us unpleasent suprises. Not hard as we are still in the living room on the futon.

Things to think about:
castles on the hills-why do we want them
animal love/programming/domestication
genetic human personality traits

black sheep

2004-08-11T21:05:00.000-05:00

Away from entertaining nieghbor stories and day to day junk and back to randon thoughts. before I end my son's life. he is driving me bonkers.

What makes a black sheep of the family? What qualities and patterns of behavior lead to whole braches of family being neglected, left behind, classified as no longer worthy of inclusion?

When I was small I knew we were poor and that we had what I thought of as rich relatives. They were all my great uncles and they would come around and visit on the big holidays as my G Grandmaw lived with my Gmaw and they wanted to see her. They would stop by and chat and be social but we really never talked at any length with them. Later , it turns out, they often told my grandmother and mom that we children would never turn out to be anything other than white trash. We, being small and fond of santa claus, didn't know what that meant.

As I traced my family history it seems I am descended from the balck sheep of every generation, most being women. The men, ustable or entertaining depending on how you look at it, married stable women who took care off them. Their children were raised in stable families and grew up to be a risky, somewhat qualified version of okay.

The women being of a somewhat sensual, slightly manic, decideldly out of the ordinary nature, married men who were even more "interesting" than themselves. They were in a search for a certain type of mate which when they found it lead them into trouble. Men look for a stable mate to raise the kids. Women look for a strong mate

my head is shaped like a brick

2004-08-05T09:47:00.000-05:00

I got my proofs from the photographer yesterday. Some of them were really neat-several very abstract shots of my torso-no legs or head just torso. Also several of my back and front but without much face. It was the ones with my face in them that freaked me out. I swear my head looks like a big square brick. I don't think its possibly to have a bigger fatter head. I look like a weightlifter or something. Plus seeing my face in mirror imgae is always odd. I guess everyone goes through that but not with a brick for a head.

My mom in law always tells me that I could be a model-well a real model -not just figure studies. At least some portion of the male population thinks I am attractive as well. It seems to be a hit or miss thing. Either I am not at all interesting to them or they stare a bit obsessively. Foreign guys love me. Guys in my high school wouldn't ask me out. Then however they voted me the best looking girl in our class. How does this happen? I have few to no dates all of high school, yet it turns out somebody thought I was pretty. I was so pissed too. Not "most likely to succeed, or smartest, or sweetest" no I was the good looking one. It bugged me as looks take no effort. You are born a certain way and there isn't a lot you can do to change that. Inside of you is very different. You grow and change and if no one ever looks past your face, they miss what you really are-the important stuff. All they ever saw was the outside of me. They never saw what I was like on the inside. With a brick for a head too.

It is the native american heritage coming through. I am somewhere around 1/64 to 1/128 native american, uncertainties arising due to anglo surnames being given to pure or half indian children. You'd think this'd leave me looking like a plain old white person, but we can't seem to lose the chin in the family-well the face in general. My son looks just like me, with his dad's eye color (and his aunt's backhair). I look like my mom but actually more like my grandmom. My mom looks a bit morelike my GGmom. We all favor my GGGmom as to the face and eyes. Her mom is in the same picture but there is the jaw. The picture is her with her ten daughters and her poor beaten down husband. The girls are all in thier twenties or thirties. One of them might be lacking the jaw. Her face is more triangular. The rest of them have the brick head appearence. Most of them are prettier than me as they tend to have higher eyebrows and more open eyes. Mine are lowset and I seem to look sleepy in all the pictures I take-seriously drugged sleepy.

The strangest thing is that I think I forget what I look like sometimes. When I was very small, in my mind when I pictured myself, I was pale with long straight red hair that I wore in a ponytail. My favorite barbie looked like that and I thought it looked like me. One day I realized that I look nothing like my mental image. It was sort of a shock and was so sad as I didn't think I looked very pretty the way I was. That was when I was four or five. Now I think they same thing happens sometimes. I tend to equate my appearence with TV maybe. I see the avarage brunette on TV and I guess I morph my mental picture of myself sort of onto that. Then I actually see myself and am put off by it as I don't look the way I think I look. It isn't bad or anyhting just very different from what I expected. The way my body looks is very reasonable because I see it all the time, but my head catches me by suprise now and then. As strange as it seems that is the most interesting part of the photos is seeing what I really look like. What do I look like when I am not peeking at myself in a mirror. What is it that other people see. It isn't what the perfect model on TV or magazines looks like. It is very different and that really bugs me. I have to force myself to look at each picture for awhile to get over that initial yuck feeling.

The funniest thingis that I think most models are so damned boring looking. Scrawny, steroetyped faces with too much makeup. I can't tell brittney spears , cristina aulara, and that jessica simpson girl apart or madonna for that matter.m They are just generic blondes. They all blend together and nothing about them makes me want to look again. I claim to think thet angelina jolei is beautiful but sometimes she blends as well. The pretty red head om "pretty woman" is different. Her features are so beautiful and her smile is so full of joy.

So what I wonder-my husband very often comments that this girl is fat and ugly or that girl is nasty looking. I don't see what he is talking about as I think they are jsut normal people. Do we Americans all have this problem of thinking we should look like something from TV? Do we get such high expectations of ourselves and our mates appearences from it? What did pretty mean when you lived in a small village all your life? What would the world be like if there were no mirrors to stare into? The people I find most interesting are the ones who have something really interesting about them that catches my eye and makes me want to look again. Even if that something is a long straight distinctive nose or eyes that may be a bit bugged out but make that person look very unusual. Will our culture ever get tired of what the TV tells us we should like and instead develop individual tastes? My husband is my little miner's canary of what the avarage person (a doer not a thinker) is thinking. He seems to indicate that he likes the steoreotypes look. (He also thinks Kerry will win the election)

Well my brick shaped head is weighing heavily on my neck and my tummy is demanding food.

More thoughts:
stick figures
prostitution

art fair

2004-07-23T08:20:00.000-05:00

It is that time of year again. So hot and sticky and about 100,000 people
come to town for art fair. The booths are spread up and down all the
streets for several blocks. Little white tents that house painted ,
scultped and knitted treasures. It isn't like I can afford to buy any of
it. Some of it is really beautifulk though. There is one guy who paints
pictures of water. Being water is my greatest phobia, they sort of freak
me out. They are beautiful but empty scenes of a neverending ocean.

Last night I had a water dream again. I was walking with a group of
children. One of the little girls, a beautiful little black girl with
pigtails fell in the water. It had been raining and the waters had risen
and flooded everything. I jumped in the water and grabbed her hand and we
were both pushed uot towards the entrance of the area we were in. Out the
door I could see the river, vastly overfilled running very fast into
drainage tunnels. I was barely holding on the the wet concrete rim that
kept us from getting pulled into the river. The children were screaming.
I saw one pulled past me into the river but I couldn't grab her as then I
would have let go of the other little girl. All I could see was the water
gushing into the drainage tunnels. So fast and relentless. I knew if I
got pulled in there I would never get out. I realized I was dreaming at
this point and fought to wake up. I actually started biting my hand to
wake up. When I was awake, I realized I hand my hand in my mouth and I
had bitten it pretty hard.

Later I had another dream that made me wake up sobbing. I was an
adventurer. I was climbing things and jumping far and fast. I had an
enemy chasing me with his helper but they were no match for me. I had my
little helper and we were so cool, so good at what we were doing. My
enemy came up behind me and I think I stabbed him in the chest. He fell
off the thing we were climbing up and died. Then his helper climbed up.
His helper was just a little boy who looked very sad. I pulled him close
to my chest and hugged him and told him that we would take care of him and
love him. He started to cry and thought that he had died. I told him no
that he was still alive. Then he said something like, this must be heaven
cause I have never been so happy, except I thought I'd have lazer eyeballs
in heaven. I guess it is one of those things that make more sense when
you wake up all groggy. I cried because it made me so sad thast the
little boy had never known anyone to love him. I loved him so much and
wanted to take care of him forever. I guess however that in a perfect
world, all little boys would like cool superpowers thus the lazer
eyeballs. I think dumpling has professed a desire for lazer eyeballs once
or twice.

Another funny thing dumpling said once: He thought cows peed out milk. I
said no, it comes from thier boobs. This (as opposed to the pee idea ??)
totally freaked him out and he wondered around disgusted by the idea for a
couple of days. He also in all seriousness thought that brown cows have
brown milk. He was little of course-about four.

So back to the art fair. Herds of people-hundreds and hundreds of them
wonder around in the hot sun/pouring rain (both of course are required for
a good art fair). The merchants sit at thier booths piled high with
whatever stuff they happen to be selling. Entertaining stuff-crazy
lifesize super realistic scultptures of peopls. These things are so
realistic as to be disgusting, moles, wrinkles, pot bellys, all the
imperfections we as humans possess. Yuck. Also twenty foot tall metal
animals-two ponies, last year there was a spider and other stuff too.
Some really pretty work with nudes. I guess I like that stuff myself as I
think the human figure can be really beautiful. One lady had taken nudes
and then messed with the negatives to get make pictures where all that was
left was color and an outline of the original nude. Very abstract but
quite pretty. Another guy had very neat stuff in which he took photos and
cropped them into pieces and then overlayed them and replicated them.
Like you put the nude and some furniture in a blender and out came this
sort of wierd yet cool picture. Very nice stuff. Lots of digital
manipulation in the photos as well. I saw one other booth with some
nudes but I wasn't as enthused about them. They were mainly of two very
pretty, very thin models, taken outside in a variety of locations. It
seemed wierd to mix the extra detailed complicated network of trees and
clouds and outside stuff with the simplistic symmetric/antisymmetric
figure studies. It just didn't fit so well together. But then again what
in the hell do I know about art! :)

The booths remind me of when I was small at the flea market.
Every weekend I'd help mom and grandmaw set up thier antiques-mostly
grandmaw. We'd get up at six, drive out and get donuts, then drive to the
flea market. Off would come the sheets and she would turn on the lights
and put all the jewlery in the cases. Suddenly a tiny piece of a big grey
sullen cattle barn where the flea market was held became a tiny department
store. Little maniquin heads wearing sparkling jewelry, a lady' head
planter turned into a pin cushion to hold amazingly elaborate hat pins. I
would help grandmaw on Fridays when she moved in the tables and boxes and
unpacked most everything. I think that is why I am so good at moving now.
You cram all these items neatly into a small space and have to quickly
pack and unpack them. Fridays we would set up big card tables, and put
nice table clothes down. Then all the stuff would get placed on the
tables, artfully of course. We would cover it with sheets and go home to
return bright and early the next morning. I would uncover the items and
turn on the lights and once grandmaw was up and running I was free to
explore.

I have no idea how I didn't become a child abduction statistic. I
wondered around alone in isolated scary places for most of my childhood
just seeing what was there. What's around the next corner. I vistied all
the muesuems in the area-then the life science mueseum was free. The
Kimbell was really dull-how many cowboys can anyone person want to see. I
got asked to leave the modern art meusum as I was touching the paintings.
I was only about eight and there was this amazingly big pink one with
gradients that ran the length of it. How could you not touch the silly
thing?

I spent the most time however at the horse show facility next to the
cattle barns where the flea market was. I saw the Paso Fino, appalossa,
palamino world shows. The arab regionals. The welch pony world shows. the
paint horse youth world show. I saw hunter/jumper stuff and a bit of
dressage. I saw the world cutting horse championships four years running.
Lots of reining and quarter horse events as well.Quite an education for
the horse obsessed girl. The entire time I wondered around noone ever
asked me to leave ( well except when I was shoplifting at the home and
garden show across the way from the horse barns-my brother started that).
I would just wonder from stall to stall peering in at all thses yummy
smelling horses and everyone took for granted that I was supposed to be
there. In retrospect I think I was like a little shadow that just ignored
the people and thus they ignored me. A tiny little something that is
behind the scenes and belongs. I was so alone with myself and I really
didn't mind so much. How odd.

chaos

2004-07-22T11:56:00.000-05:00

Everything is so chaotic at the moment. I feel like every post is just a
blurred continuation of the previous random post. My days are filled with
a bit of anxiety and fractious, unchannable energy. At night my sleep is
so upset. I toss and turn and dream all night-solving problems in my
sleep
again. Leaves my days feeling so upside down and sleepy. I manically
attack my house to little to no avail. Clothes are evrywhere, trash is
everywhere. Need Focus! The move date is rapidly approaching and I feel
unprepared.

Finish the giving post-
buddhists
car
north
money
the more you give the more you get. Does that include bullshit?

proofs
tomatos
art fair
spelling

giving

2004-07-20T11:48:00.000-05:00

I am almost finished with the packing and throwing out phase of the move.
Originally my intent was to rent a uhaul truck. Four years ago it cost us
800 to move her from Texas. To move back would cost us 1800. It turns
out that there is much more demand for the trucks going north to south so
I guess they have to pay someone to return the trucks after people take
them down. Seeing as all of my household belongings combined aren't woth
1800 I am not going to pay that much to transport them.

We decided to rent a trailer and haul it behind the truck when my sweetie
comes down in Augsut and I'll just fill the minivan till it bursts. This,
however , means purging our home of much of the crap we have. Clothes are
easy to get rid of. Since dumpling is with grandparents, toys are a
cinch. I called him and said that I had packed the legos, yugioh cards,
and transformers and did he want anyhting else. Being that he inherited
my short term memory he just said he wanted the legos, transformers and
yugioh cards. Simple enough. He had no idea what else was actually in
his room. I am a mean mom.

I gave the stinky escort to my nieghbor. I cleaned it up and it actually
looked pretty nice. I wanted to donate it to a car charity but so many of
them seem really shady. I started talking to him over the fence as he was
wanting to give me some watermelons. I asked him if he knew of anybody
that needed a car. He said he did and wanted to buy it from me. I told
him, no it wasn't worth much and he could just have it. Instead of
finding a charity to give my car to the poor I just located a poor person
myself. He is a good ol' guy. He drinks a bit of beer and lives with his
wife with a bunch of

When the truck's a rockin...

2004-07-19T09:21:00.000-05:00

So we finally bought a new truck on Monday. We were planning to buy one
in Texas but I realized that once we moved we'll both have new jobs and a
new residance and while it'll still get financed, the interest rate will
be painful. We decided on a toyota tundra as they are rated really well
by consumer reports and after our minivan fiasco with the honda and the
windstar I have to say I trust them.

The salesman was the biggest prick ever, such a greasy nasty individual.
He was bug eyed and just rude. I wanted to go ask the nice old guy to
sell us the truck but being from Texas and having some amount of manners,
it seemed rude to switch horses in mid stream.

The truck is this strange grey glittery color-really ugly I think until
the sun sets and then it picks up all the orange and red and looks really
beautiful. I can't summon much excitement about the truck as-well it is
just a truck. My husband however is absolutely enthralled. He loves the
truck-more than me I think. Well maybe not but he does love it.

Last night I had showered and crawled in bed and was snuggling up to go to
sleep when he came in and pounced on me and started giving me kisses. One
thing led to another and before you know it we were being exhibitionists
in our new Tundra-and back behind the house. We live right up on a main
road and are askling to get hauled off to jail but I guess at least we'll
entertain a person or two before we go.

It is really amazing how excited my husband gets about running artound
naked outside. Not only does he love our back porch and truck for the
obvious reasons but he thinks it is funny as hell to run around in front
of the windows naked or outside in boxers. I keep yelling at him beacuse
he feels the need to take a leak out our back door off the porch. He just
laughs.

I get back to nature by hiking and yoga, trying to reach deep inside
myself to maintain a sense of wholeness. My husband just wants around
naked
outside. He does look pretty cute though ...

Found a job maybe-at least a phone interview. In the right town and right
field. Now if we can only get Dumpling in the charter school we were
hoping for. It is a school based on multiple intelligences and professes
to be flexible. He needs it. He is a genius, especially spatially. He
tested at the 97% overall IQ but at the 99.6% spatially. Unfortunately he
really needs help with his social skills. He needs a teacher who can keep
an eye on him and recognize when he is upset and help him finds ways to
resolve it without having a breakdown. He does some of the same stuff I
did when I was little when he gets upset. I would bite my hands and bang
my head in the wall. He tends to yell a bit more, but will bang his head
on the table and the wall sometimes. It's funny as my little niece from
my perfect sister-in-law is about a year old and not only bites kids,
teachers and mom but will also bite herself.

I feel bad for dumpling and her because they have so much overflowing
emotion that they don't understand how to express or society forbids them
to express it. For dumpling at least that's the case. Even now
sometimes, if I argue with my husband, I will find myself knawing at my
hand. This really freaked him out at first and he would harrass me about
it. I think he figured out it was a way I had of derailing irrational
anger and then became much more understanding. We actually never fight
anymore. Every now and then we will disagree but almost always apologize
in a couple of minutes. He is such a wonderful, amazing mate. I Love
him.

limits of infinity

2004-07-19T07:26:00.000-05:00

So scheduling getting an IUD is kinda like taking the limit of an infinite function as it approaches infinity. It just keeps getting further and further away. You think you have almost reached the appointment only for them to cal and postpone it again. The first time they had me scheduled with the wrong Dr, then they had to order it (3 weeks!), now they haven't gotton it in yet. It isn't thier fault as they can't control the shipping time but I am leaving the state in a week and will have crappy health insurance after that. Health insurance that won't cover the cost of an IUD. It seems like such a simple solution. Perhaps I can get them to give me the stupid thing or ship it to me and I can find a dr who will insert it in Texas. I can't have any more little ones right now. My poor husband. After this week he won't see me for almost a month. Unless he drags home a little sororiety girl, he will be lonely. And now for the next week, I have to use condoms or that terrible spermicide for birth control. ewwwww.

We celebrated our two year aniversary the other day. We have been together for almost four years plus two from before when we broke up. I am glad we didn't get married the first time around. We would have beeen quickly divorced. Rather we both went away for awhile, found ourselves and realized what we were missing. When he first wanted to get back with me, I was very frustrated and didn't want any part of it. I am very independent and strong. I hate being made to feel guilt and don't want to rely on others at all. I wanted to be alone and be free of any obligations to a man. I had my tiny man of course but he is a special case! I pushed him away for several months. We would have dinner, agrue about something and rather than being sweet and apologizing I would just leave-free. Within an hour he would call me and say how sorry he was and that he loved me and wanted to be with me. I didn't mean to change him or make him whiny, but I refused to deal with his previous self. He had to learn that he will not always get his way and that things will at times go my way. If I am going to be invoved with a person as odd as he, I have to have some level of control over the relationship.

In the end it worked out. He moved with me across the country from friends and family to a place he hated. The first year we fought a lot. Sometimes over small things, but mostly over dumpling. My little dumpling, it turns out has ADHD and always has. He got kicked out of two daycares and finally went to regular school which is much harder to get kicked out of. He is doing really well now since we understand how we can help him florish, but back then it was so hard to know what to do. So me and my mate fought like banshees about what was the right answer.

After about a year we stopped fighting, we would go off in a huff and not speak for a couple of hours. Now mostly I give him nasty looks for about three minutes and he then proceeds to tackle me and tickle me and tell me that he is sorry and loves me and doesn't want to fight. I then apologize and we cuddle and figure out what to do about whatever the disagreement was.

After two years in the artic tundra, we got married. He was out riding his bike, fell down and busted his nose open pretty badly. He came home and we butterfly bandaged it together and I told him not to go to the hospitol as they can't do much with a broken nose till the swelling goes down anyways. I think. Anyways, his insurance sucked and mine was really good. I told him that since he would likely need surgery on his nose, we should get married so it would be covered. We Stomped down to an Ohio courthouse and got hitched. Our minister was this funny little black preacher who took our little disposable camara and in between asking "Will you take this woman" snap snap of the camara "to be your lawfully wedded wife" snap snap he took pictures. Then we went to bennigan's for lunch. I am far happier with this courthouse-crazy minister-absentee bridesmaids wedding than the traditional wedding. Now my husband tells everyone that we got married after he recieved a head injury.

My three friends knew they couldn't come to the wedding due to my delightfully asocial husband so they threw me a bachelorette party-without me there. They went to Target and bought these three pretty blue dresses and then made me a beautiful bouqaet. They also got totally trashed it seems and appointed AX to be my maid of honor. She raised her wine glass and gave a drunken speech-they showed me the pictures-later they returned the dresses to Target. Tacky maybe but fun all the same!

I have such great friends and am blessed to have a wonderful husband and a naughty silly little dumpling. I don't think this week can get any better. A new, good job, dumpling is in the school I want him to go to, I will have an apt surrounded by trees, I got beautiful photos taken of me and had a great time BBQing for my friends who came over last night. Plus, it looks like the stupid project at work is finally going to successful. My tarot card was the World on this little quiz I took and it sounds very appropriate.

I was nekkid

2004-07-18T14:25:00.000-05:00

I got to pose for the photographer today. It was really fun but now I am very tired-languid I suppose. He had me work with a few gauzy shirts I have and then had me do a bunch of shots with backbends in them. I gues in a normal day or yaoga I do about five minutes of backbends altogether. He had me doing about twenty minutes worth. Plus the extended time holding some of the poses is making my legs ache. No running or yoga today. I think I have worked hard enough! It was so odd because I thought I would be more self concious naked in front of a strange guy, but he was so nice and professional that it didn't matter at all. I just stood about butt naked while he adjusted lights and sheets-it was kind of funny. I wanted to take pictures with my tomatoes but by the time we were done I was too tired to worry about it. I have to say the lighting pasrt of photography is an art-science. Lots of measuring.

Twitty kitty came back this morning. I was outside eating breakfast and he sauntered up and started rubbing against my leg. Last night we heard him fighting with a big white cat and then he took off. We put out the live trap with tunafish in it but I must have disabled it when I moved it because this morning there was no tuna or cat. It was just sitiing there wide open. I was so glad to see poor twitty. He looks a bit skinnier and had some burrs in his coat, but doesn't seem too bea6t up or anything. It was funny the way he wondered up all nonchalontly, just happened to be in the nieghborhood and wanted to say hi. I bet he is sick of getting his butt kicked and living in the rain and just wanted to come back home without losing his feline dignity. I think he must be sleeping down in the basement right now as he didn't even say hi when I came in the house.

Never use nair on your underarms.

2004-07-17T16:03:00.000-05:00

Never. ever. ever do that again.

I found a job! Gainful, payed employment. The job is where I want to be, dumpling goes to the charter school I want him to go to, and it actually looks like a fun job that will match my personality nicely.

It is a tech type job that requires customer service skills. You spend most of your time helping customers work through the probbels they encounter with the technology and developing new ways to use the technology. Perhaps I'll put off law school a bit if I like the job well enough. On top of everything else it actually pays really well-about 10K more than I was expecting. I guess my MS wasn't such a mistake after all. The best bonus is that it seems like my boss is a really great lady. She sounded laid back but enthusiastic and very friendly and outgoing. She also said " we don't usually get in till around nine or so" yeah!

Twitty the kitty escaped outside yesterday as I was moving boxes in and out of the car. He has spent the last year and a half plastered to the window watching the outside world and has gotten more and more brave about the door. I guess at some point he slipped out as it was closing behind me. We tried to catch him for about thirty minutes last night but he would run away from us a few feet , then turn around and stare. This morning he was nowhere in sight but he had left us a very fresh dead mouse minus a foreleg. We put his food in a live trap by the tomatoes so hopefully he'll get dumb and go eat there.

Stupid cat. I am really worried about him.

more funny things dumpling said

2004-07-16T17:23:00.000-05:00

God loves geographic engineers

how do you defeat milk?

Ow these butterflies bite! (I put butterfly clips in his hair)

What are these little balls under my wee wee?

I feel bad eating animals, but I like to eat sausage and pepperoni. If we
had holographic pigs we could cut pieces out of them and eat them instead.

In a letter he wrote from grandmaw's house: The cat is probably going
ballistic.

questions

2004-07-15T09:39:00.000-05:00

What are your long term career goals?

I would like to transition into a position of responsibility. One that
allows me to interact with others in a team and achieve commom longterm
goals of the comapny. I would hope to valued for the unique gifts I can
bring and help improve customer service and use of the products
manufactured.

Then I would like to be a fish.

I'm sorry what did you say?

A fish. I would like to then transition into a fish. A pretty yellow one
with blue stripes that swims around the coral reefs. Like this one on
this book here. It looks so happy so carefree! Weeee, what a happy fish
I'd be. Look there's my little pink buddy.

Um, that's very interesting. Do you think they would be an achievable
goal here at wifgits inc ?

I think widgits spirit of employee support and understanding of employee
needs would allow me to thrive in any area I chose to pursue. Your long
history of workers rights and excellent benefits makes me think that
widgits would be an ideal place to pursue my goals. And there is that
ponf out front.

The pond?

Yes. I mean granted the fish thing will take some time. Daily immersive
baths to begin accomadating the scales I'd guess. Gills can't exactly be
easy.

why the car smells like a dead person

2004-07-13T09:07:00.000-05:00

I love the car. The ford escort. little, grey, well behaved, cheap to
fix car. It is a five speed and is actually fun to drive. Well until the
day. The shopping day.

Kroger seems like an okay place to shop. Relatively cheap, easy to
navigate, as polite as any other store. So I shopped like normal. I put
all the groceries in the car (sweet little grey car) and drove home. The
inverse occurs when I get home. I unpack the groceries out of the car.
It seems however that the milk is suddenly much lighter than it used to
be. The seal popped and now, in the docile, domesticated little ford
escort, there is almost a gallon of milk absorbed into the back seat.

Hummm....

So my first thought was to try lysol. In theory (form my micro class)
the reson milk will smell is that bacteria in the milk start growing and
breaking the milk down. In theroy, I kill the bugs and the car won't
smell. So over a gallon of lysol also gets poured on the seat.

hmmmmm....

So within two days the car is an absolute demonic place of residence. The
milk of course smells to high heaven, yet now it is tempered with a
disgutsing sickening sweet, vomit like lysol odor. It is, of course,
Summer in Texas, so with the windows rolled up, the car becomes a little
bacterial oven, further comingling the fine, delicate smells to a
horrifying extent.

After the fourth day I start leaving the windows rolled down, to at least
dissapate the baking. Now in the morning when I come outside I realize
multiple, huge, hairy flies have taken up residence in the escort. They
know that somewhere there is a plethora of nurishment buried in the seats.
I never saw any fly children as I guess they couldn't penetrate the high
quality foam ford uses.

yuck.

On about the fifth day I went for the carpet cleaning approach. I bought
mountain berry smelly foam carpet cleaner and two bottles of extra
strength febreze. What a fine blend I have created. On the finest of
purfume palettes could now pick out the true origins of the filthy, vile
stench that pervades the poor undeserving escort.

All this time, I have to still use the car for transportation, so me and
dumpling keep gallevating around in the stench home of demons. I think it
was the carpet cleaner that finally broke him out in hives. Big quarter
size whelps all over his legs and thighs. So we took a few days off from
the demon mobile and bought some bendryl.

hmmmm...

So at this point I started focusing on maybe less covering of smell and
more absorption of smell. I bought six boxes of baking soda and dumped
them all over the car. Fine white powder all in the carpets of the
escort. It is possible that this did help some with the smell-at least
till I dumped a cup of coffee over in the passenger side floorboard.

Yummm....

Milk-lysol-mountain cranberry-febreeze-baking soda-coffee smell. All
cooked over slow oven raosting coals of the blasting Texas summer sun.

I finally resorted to taking the car to get the carpets vacuumed. I
watched as the mexican guy cleaning the car starts pulling all the other
car wash guys over to my car to show them what hell truly is. They
laughed-for about ten minutes they laughed.

So the car was a bit cleaner but the smell lingered on. For the next four
yers it lingered. By the second year it was only really bad during the
summer. Now you hardly notice it unless it has set closed up for a long
time in the sun. A faint odor drifts past your nostrils. One that makes
the sulferous fumes of hell seem pleasent. Or it could be that the ever
worsening exhaust leak in the manifold dilutes the milk smell out. My
husband said that upon getting another vehicle to drive my son's and my IQ
should raise significantly as our brains recover from the exhaust fumes.
I don't know-is IQ really worth the rotten milk smell?

hmmmmmm.....

my beautiful mother

2004-07-13T08:40:00.000-05:00

This morning my mother held me, wrapped around me with buttery, flowing
moist kisses. She filled the air with glowing radiance, making the sun
scatter and disperse around her volumonious tendrils. Her hands were full
of life giving foilage sucking up her wet, sweet affection. , her arms
made of gritty branches, bugs crawling who won't have to drink again for
days. Her breath so
moist, saturating my skin leaving a sticky, sanctimonious layer of debris
that no amount of AC can fix. It was really humid.

test

2004-07-13T08:34:00.000-05:00

test

drowning kiddos and other thoughts

2004-07-10T13:52:00.000-05:00

Last night I dreamed my dumpling fell in the water. We had been swimming and he suddenly wasn't above the water anymore. I dove under and found where the water dropped off. He was there trying to grab my hand. I pulled him up but he was unconscious and not breathing. I calmly put him on the ground and begain breathing into his mouth to try and revive him. Dribbles of water poured out of his mouth and he coughed and then was okay again.

It reminds me of a very similiar dream awhile back, with a purple goo ocean instead of water. I was standing waist deep in it with drowning children all around. I was methodically plucking the babies out of the goo and reviving them then passing them off to someone on shore.

I think it is my way of controlling the things that I fear. I am worried about a lot of things in my life-I endlessly try and plan how to take care of them. The water is always my 'fear' and I guess in my dreams I get some practice controlling it by saving the children from it.

I am going to start some modeling for a guy who advertised in the paper. Mostly nude but tasteful work from his portfolio. It doesn't pay really well but a bit of extra cash would be really useful. It will be fun too I think. I really thought my husband would protest more, but he seems to think it is fine. I believe inside his fairly animal male brain, that the fact that his wife is modeling reaffirms social hierchy in a wierd way. A beautiful mate makes him a stronger more desirable, worthy man. The fact that someone would want to photograph his wife reffirms the fact that others think she is beautiful outside of himself. By saying-my wife is modelling-it submits all types of odd social messages. In reality I think the photographer will pretty much take photos of anybody willing to pose for him. He did ask me if I have any corsets though... corsets are kinda cute.

Started yoga seriously again. It does such amazing things to my posture after just one session. By making my back ache, it reminds me that the muscles that give me good posture are there. Throughout the day I find myself engaging the muscles there and making my posture better as to not slump so much. My mom has an extra vertebra in the region where they connect to your ribs. I would guess this means she has an extra set of ribs as well. Not nearly as uncommon as you'd think. I am built almost identically to her so likely I have one extra as well. Makes stregthening my back really important as with an extra vertebra you introduce lots of weakness.

Trying to meditate as well everyday. I am also reading more about Kashmir shavism as it is enlighteneing but complicated. Found an interesting blog sight where lots of hinduism in discussed. It makes me reflect on what I have learned and as always readapt and rethink.

My project at work finally started working. Two years and something finally worked. The day after I find out I am getting another job likely, I find out the project might actually go somewhere from here. Likely I'll get an authorship but it just the success at last that is so satisfying. I in no way want to stay and finish my Ph.D. but it makes me feel good about my efforts.

employment is heavenly

2004-07-09T08:10:00.000-05:00

I may actually have a job! Perhaps. I'll have to see in a day or so.

Funny stuff my kid has said

If the four horseman come, he wants to be on thier side. His dad will be the fifth horseman.

He compared childbirth to getting your neck chopped into with an axe-blood everywhere.

He tried to be a lawyer for his friend at school and give him legal advice on how to avoid getting into trouble.

Buddhism is not right. He is going to worship video games. He knows that he doesn't know that, he doesn't know that, he doesn't know that buddhism is not right.

He bulit an amzing gun out of bathroom trash while I was on the phone. Toilet role tubes, paper towels and used tampon applicators he dug out of the trash.

Insisted that buddhists like hip hop music and that I am a buddhist. Said buddhists are actually buttists and like butts a lot and are all from India.

Once when smal he stuck an entire frozen package of guacamole into the vcr slot then tried to use a spatula to retrieve it. He finally says mom "I can't get the vcr to work" I wonder why.

On another occasion my 3" floppy drive was not working on my computer-it said my administrative assistant was not allowing me access to the drive. It turns out my "administrative assistant had inserted my driver's license into the drive

the tomato forrest

2004-07-05T19:12:00.000-05:00

My tomatoes have taken over a portion of the front yard. I planted them in tires placed out in the grass so I didn't have to dig up more grass. At the time they seemed so little. They are all almost four and a half feet tall now. The grape tomatoes and yellow pears will be ripe in a couple of weeks. In a month I'll have german striped ones and purple plum ones and I think some of the green and yellow zebra striped ones as well. The cucumbers are also huge, growing out of a wheelbarrow, with squash, strawberries and red and white wave petunias. My house looks like a crazy person's. Not that I am at all crazy. I am perfectly normal. Totally. Really.

I mowed the lawn with my little electric grass fondler today. My husband came home and wanted to know if I had missed the patches of clover and little weed flowers on purpose. Of course. I have this one patch in the back where I let the little purple fey flowers grow up. Whatever plant that is has basically taken over there and now I have groundcover rather than a lawn. My poor landlord. He is such a nice little greek man. My neighboe kindly offered to cut down the overgrowth that is on the fenceline for me. I laughed and told him I was letting it grow for the flowers. I offered to cut it if it was bugging him but he didn't seem to care too much. He has four broken down cars in his front yard. I don't think my flowers matter too much.

Dumpling is with his grandparents for the next couple of weeks. It gives me lots of time to do whatever it is that people without kids do with thier time. I guess I'll figure it out as I go. Lots of reading, posting in my blog and job hunting mostly. Also the evr present yardwork which seems to be a framework for my life. I have been running a bit more as well. Made it up to ten miles on Friday, then six yesterday. I could keep going but tendonitus in my hip acts up a bit and lets me know I need to cool it. It is amazing though cause I am not out of breath, or feeling any muscular pain at all. I could really keep going for quite awhile. It is my summer time mania kicking in. The longer days give me extra energy, just like the shorter ones take it away. I can't wait to get back into a more southern location. This place is too damned cloudy!

Trying to meditate more. It is tough as I am a pretty lazy pig :)) It is easier to go run ten miles than to sit still and be without thought for twenty seconds. If I could try and be mindful while I run it might be okay, but my thoughts are like the wind. I get such a high and come up with such neat stories and fantasies while I run. It makes me happy.

Trying to read more about shiva and such. New learned thing-consciousness in the shiva thought is not quite the same thing as the english translation. It is cit in sanskrit. This means sort of oneness. I'll find and write down what the translater said he thought it was closest to.

Told my husband I am actually hindu. He thought I was a buddhist. He lives in his owm little world sometimes-okay mostly in his own world. We love each other so much but really talk so little about anything. I am actually happy this way. I come up with my own ideas and act upon them. It leaves me being very private and protective of my internal feelings and emotions, as I don't really think he could deal with what I really am like. He sort of knows and lets me run rampant with my excessive, insane yardwork, christmas scuptures, statues all over the house and wierd craft ideas. As long as it doesn't mess too much with what he likes to do, he doesn't really care and is supportive. When we actually try to talk about politics, religion, raising kids or anything at all contreversial we often argue. I feel the need to think in depth and he is a lazy thinker with very set ideas about is right. So we just talk about that stuff at all unless we ne3ed to. We end up being good roomates who have sex alot-good yummy cuddly sex-raise our kid the best we can and do what we can to make each other happy. He does really silly things like take in the groceries for me and carry the fishwater to the fishbowl and I love him so much because he takes the time to care enought to help me. My liberal friends think he is a total ass, but I think we have a really great committed working relationship. They want a guy who fits some book ideal of perfect. My guy is a total nut at times but we make for a good match I guess.

Alright I am going running! Too much energy!!! Ahhhhhh, runn runn runnnnn

so sick

2004-07-02T17:43:00.000-05:00

Oh, I fell yucky. I keep running a fever and getting all sweaty. My stomach hurts and all the antacid in the world isn't helping. Last night I couldn't sleep very well as I kept having these stupid repetitive nightmares about stupid things like mispelling words. Ugggghhhhh.

Ibuprofin helps for awhile. I took some yesterday and felt better then went running. I ran close to ten miles and felt fantastic. About two hours later the yucky feeling hit and I realized I must have been running on borrowed drug induced energy. It was great-I felt so energized and glowingly happy. I think this summer, when I am feeling a bit better I am going to plan my own personal marathon. I have a six mile route but I would like to expand it to a 24 mile circle-along roads and such so if I drop down into a coma at least they'll find me at some point!

Read a book about the origins of the devil. Turns out the "devil" figure was invented in zoastorism about 600 BC but that the personal "original sin" and damnation of your soul without intervention from the priests was actually a sumerian (babylonian) invention. All the guilt and fire and brimstone seems to trace from those guys. Originally they were indoeuropean so why they jumped the gun and got all angry seems to have to do with the desire of the kings to be absolute rulers. In such an enviornment that means anyone else outside the king was nothing but garbage. To maintain powere it is essential that to be "saved" you have to please the diety-ruler. These guys make the catholics look lighthearted with all the ceremony, confessions, guilt, and need for forgiveness for little trespasses they had to endure. Don't quite get it all. Will have to read again later at a less sick point. Many things I want to write about but I need a nap first.

the nature of punishment

2004-07-01T08:17:00.000-05:00

Should all people receive the same punishment for the same crime?

Did previous cultures hold all members of society to the same standards?

How do you account for the effects mental illness or personality have upon the likelihood of committing a crime?

Is it fair to punish someone becuase thier innate biology wires them to respond in an manner that society considers incorrect? (God-judeocristian seems to think so)

How would you implement understanding of the fact that different people are different ?

At what level does a biological difference truely begin to impair judgement to an extent that a person should be awarded a differential punishment?

Logic applies easily when a group of things are identical or easily classified. Of course if they are equal, then the all receive the same treatment. How do you (or do you) modify logic to account for the fact that your group is actually nonhomogeneous?

Will there eventually be a way to quantify personality on a genetic basis, with the understanding that it is niether wrong or right, but rather just different?

How do you teach others to embrace the things that make them different and make others different as gifts or talents rather than abnormalities?

As a society are we moving towards greater or less homogenaity on a personal level?

How do the three families that the "boy book" discusses play a role in how homogeneuos our population is?

Would it be good to identify/type persons at a young age so that as they grow, thier specific personality needs could be better accommadated?

How do you keep this typing from becoming Gattacca or big brother?

What is the point of punishment?

Does retribution really work to prevent future recidivism?

How promptly and painful must the punishment be to render the desired mental lesson?

Is it better, sometimes, to structure punishment as a lesson or as service to others? Does community service really teach anyone anything?

Last night I dreamed I had to go to a little jewish village where my sister bought the most delicious bread, because I was the only one who could save them from the demons invading the town. The demons looked like normal people. I beat the crap out of this little old demon woman. Before that dream I was waiting tables again. I was doing okay till John the bartender got behind on one of my drink orders. He is so tempermental and I didn't want to leave without the drink. When I got back to my section all the tables were rearranged and they were all looking at me in need of various items. I haven't waited tables in six damn years.

keeping track of thoughts

2004-06-30T19:40:00.000-05:00

Where did my I hate scientists post go?

I guess it wasn't meant to be. I ranted about how obstinate all of them are and it seems I didn't save it. I don't really hate them after all I guess.

Things to think about: boys vs. girls, tomatoes, siva, types of meditation, patterns

Water dreams

2004-06-29T14:50:00.000-05:00

when I was small:
1. My dag was traPPED IN THE BOTTOM OF A 55 GALLON DRUM covered with water.I could see her but my arms were too short to reach her.

2. My grandmother was trapped in a puddle of water with a piece of metal netting over her. I could see her hands but nothing else. I knew it was her becuase she had on her copper bracelets.

3. My brother had fallen into a crack in the drainage ditch we always walked home from school in. I could see his hands reaching up from the bottom of the crack under wtare but every other part of him was stuck underneath the concrete.

As of late:

A dream about living on an island-hawii like but nightmarish. We had been conquered by outsiders and rather than give up I had decided to die. I jumped in the water and the currents pulled me away from the shore and down into the depths. While I was afraid I was also embraced by the water. It was so strong around me, comforting me while I was sorrowful.

I was visiting a camp of some sort and the children had gotton too close to the water and fallen in. I grew to be very large(tree size) and reached down and plucked them out. I also made the water go away and as it receeded there were the most amazing creatures hiding under it. They were brightly colored and monsterous but not scary as they rightfully belonged in the water and we were invading thier space.

Almost all my dreams have water located in the proximity-an ocean with strong, yet lulled waves, a calm green pond, Sometimes I have to lull the waves to make them calm down or make them stay away from the "dream space"

a water dream

2004-06-28T13:25:00.000-05:00

I dreamed as always of the water. The water was surrounding our house and we had all ran to the top floor to escape it. I was in control because I could protect my family. Common sense and rational thought are what is needed in a time of crisis.

I left them and was running away from a man who was chasing me. I wasn't really afraid because he couldn't hurt me. Since I started taking martial arts, people in my dreams don't frighten me anymore. Anger yes, but fear no.

I ran away from him down a long road. I had left the flooded area and my family safe behind. As I ran ahead I saw the ocean. I stopped by the edge and turned to face the man. I sort of stepped out of the dream at this point a bit miffed as I always dream about water. I asked him point blank "Why do I dream about water all the time?" He told me that I dream about water because I am afraid of it and that I like what I fear. That I like to be afraid.

He took my hand and we began to have sex at that point on the gray, gritty beach. Then the alarm went off, which sucked as dream sex is alwasy entertaining even if it is gritty beach dream sex.

Anytime anything tramatic happens to me I dream about it and I very often remember my dreams. After the fire I dreamed of fields on fire. Now when I dream of fire, I put it out with my mind. Whole fields will be ablaze and they just sputter out. After the tornados, I dream about being surrounded by tornados. Seriously, hundreds of them. In my dream we all go sit in the basement and watch them all go by. In another dream they went by in lines circumventing my house because I didn't want them there. After 9/11 I dreamed of planes just falling out of the sky at random. I mean it the damn things were like rain. Now I catch them and help them land smoothly. They sometimes fill in the background of my dreams but they don't crash anymore.

Water is all that's left. In almost every dream I have it is there. I am not really afraid but rather mistrusting and wary of it. I can control it some but the fact that it doesn't go away fascinates me. Sometimes I swim in it-it is so dark and deep and pours over my body engulfing me. It is where I am safe, like a mother's womb. Sometimes I have to save people from it. It is a scary friend that, kinda like the planes, is often in the background of whatever dream I am having. It does scare me.

continued

2004-06-28T13:04:00.000-05:00

What is the point of supressing all the fluff and noise our minds constantly spew? It seems that either through prayer or meditation, this supression has been pointed out again and again as a way to become something more or realize something more than what we are.

Better even, where does all this noise come from in the first place? In an ADD mind the noise is louder and faster, manic in intensity. However it also seems to be a wellspring of creativity and an amazing aid to brainstorming. Being an ADD mind, when I take meds, the flow is eased and a quiet takes over. It becomes more difficult to be the random idea generator. Brainstorming and random creativity are supressed while at hand task awareness is enhanced. Global understanding is more difficult whereas step by step processes become much more reasonable to perform.

When I don't take meds, patterns fall into place and I come up with entertaining ideas like putting lighted up Shiva in my front yard and building my own lightup raindeer for christmas. I also become much more artistic. Feelings are more important as well.

I am getting to the point(is there a point?) Where, anatomically, is this flow occuring? It seems to be 30s event-perhaps as small as ten s in the ADD population. The chalkboard holds an idea for 30s-or remains blank-then feels the need to switch ideas. The old thought are pushed aside by the new thoughts.

Like a pumping-a heartbeat or a pulsing of neural networks. I need to find out what event in the brain might occur at these intervals. Ahh, brain anatomy all poured out of my head. I need a refresher course.

Thoughts:
Creativity arises from the convolution of these mental flows. The ability to attach them to past memories and recognize patterns subconciously.

Flows are stopped during meditation, deep sleep.

Flows faster in the ADD population-slowed upon stimulant administration.

Shiva, beautiful shiva, I am sorry not to think more about you. I feel your glow when I meditate sometimes or when I walk or sit. My whole body is lit up and I can't not smile. How odd to be in love with god. I wish that you were something tangible to touch and taste. Sometimes I imagine that you sit in front of me or actually inside of me. When I do I can feel the blood rushing through my hands and legs and feel my heart beat. When I think of you, my lips are soft and my cheeks are flushed. how odd.

uggghuuuugggggggggggeiiiiiiiiiiiiii

2004-06-28T10:17:00.000-05:00

job hunting is so depressing. Interview in Dallas went very well. Lunch in Austin went well, however temp agency lady is sort of hopeless. A month in advance I schedule the interview, and two days before she cancels. She then rescedules for four days off, only to never give me a time/place/paperwork. I drove to austin but it turns out she was in sanantonio. She didn't return my calls and I finally called her only to have her say "can we schedule a phone interview?" I could have done that without driving 1900 miles. Seriously. Now back at work with no definite prospects in the future. I picked a terrible time to job hunt. All the BS students just left school and are job hunting leaving me quite unemployed.

On to happier thoughts. Started meditating again yesterday. It really helps to quench the flow of thoughts that rip through my silly noggin all the time. I was so tired yesterday that I think I was really sleeping sitting up but all the same, it counts as trying.

I have been thinking a lot about the point of meditation. It seems to be developing "one pointed focus" What does that really mean? I think, it may be to utterly stop, quench, supress, the "flow of conciousness" . I recently read part of a text on conciousness by a prof in England. She did her PhD in ESP research and realized it was a bit unrealistic and now teaches courses on the nature of conciousness.

It made me think back on what is conciousness. Conciousness seems to be the flow of information/sensory/past experiences through our working memory. We sense it as a continous run of thoughts and ideas that are convuluted. merge. processed and mulled over. I guess our working memory either is or is next door to the "chalkboard" where all the chewing occurs.

The aim of meditation seems to be to empty the chalkboard/working memory. A blank slate. A blissful empty canvas. It is nature's abhorrence of a vacuum that makes our mind fill that space the second it empties. Meditation is hard becuase we are supressing our mind's desire to fill the gap.

Blah, I am lazy

2004-06-04T08:45:00.000-05:00

I am so lazy today. Finally have a few job interviews. I had to tell them I'd work in two weeks, they wouldn't have to pay me to relocate, and I work cheap. At least they called.

I have decided when I go down to visit Austin, I will go to the one place I really wanted to work, and I will take 200 copies of my resume with me. Then I will put it on every car in the parking lot. Then I will strip down butt naked, Write the name of the company all over my body in permenant marker and tape as many copies of my resume as I can to the building windows....until the police show up of course. I also considered getting the name of the company tatooed across my back, stomach and both my legs.. I would have been a dedicated employee.

In a very scary way.

At least one interview is with a temp adjency in the area and some positions are with the company so perhaps it might work out okay in the end.

uggg. gruuuu. blugggggg. I do not want to work today. I am so lazy.

Funny, reading the myersbriggs description had me and my pal in tears. It is so accurate. I seriously can't stick to one topic before I bubble over into something else. am exceptionally random, Like a random number generator a physics or math guy would use in a computer program. It just randomly comes up with the next number. I am a random idea generator. I am alittle NF girl lost in an NT world. If I go to law school they'll just be a bunch more little NTers to drive me bonkers. I have decided I want to be at the first percentile of my law school class. We figured that you can't be at the zeroth percentile, so theoretically the first percentile ispossible. And you know it almost sounds good at first glance "the first percentile". I don't know if law school GPA matters much, but by the time I get there I will be a wrinkled up old prune with half a brain left compared to the cute little ones, so hey the first percentile isn't such a bad deal. What do they call the med student who was last in his med school class? Dr.

myersbriggs personality type

2004-06-04T08:12:00.000-05:00

ENFP

"The Champions"

Extraverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Perceiving

General:
ENFPs are both "idea"-people and "people"-people, who see everyone and everything as part of an often bizarre cosmic whole. They want to both help (at
least, their own definition of "help") and be liked and admired by other people, on both an individual and a humanitarian level. They are interested in new
ideas on principle, but ultimately discard most of them for one reason or another.

For ENFPs nothing occurs which does not have some significance, and they have an uncanny sense of the motivations of others. This gives them a talent for
seeing life as an exciting drama, pregnant with possibilities for both good and evil. ENFPs strive for toward the authentic, even when acting spontaneously,
and this intent is usually communicated nonverbally to others, who find this characteristic attractive. ENFPs, however, find their own efforts of authenticity
and spontaneity always lacking, and tend to heap coals of fire on themselves, always berating themselves for being so conscious of self.

Social/Personal Relationships:
ENFPs have a great deal of zany charm, which can ingratiate them to the more stodgy types in spite of their unconventionality. They are outgoing, fun, and
genuinely like people. As they are warm, affectionate, and disconcertingly spontaneous. However, attention span in relationships can be short; ENFPs are
easily intrigued and distracted by new friends and acquaintances, forgetting about the older ones for long stretches at a time. Less mature ENFPs may need to
feel they are the center of attention all the time, to reassure them that everyone thinks they're a wonderful and fascinating person.

ENFPs often have strong, if unconvential, convictions on various issues related to their Cosmic View. They usually try to use their social skills and contacts to
persuade people gently of the rightness of these views; this sometimes results in their neglecting their nearest and dearest while flitting around trying to save
the world.

Because they tend to be hypersensitive and hyperalert, they may suffer from muscle tension. They live in readiness for emergencies, because they have this
facility, they assume this is true for others. They can become bored rather quickly with both situations and people, and resist repeating experiences. They
enjoy the process of creating something - an idea or a project - but are not as interested in the follow-through. They are typically enthusiastic, and this is
contagious. People get caught up and entranced by an ENFP. While ENFPs resist the notion of others becoming dependent or having power over them, their
charisma draws followers who wish to be "shown the way". ENFPs constantly find themselves surrounded by others who look toward the ENFP for wisdom,
inspiration, courage, leadership, and so on - an expectancy which, at times, weighs rather heavily on an ENFP.

ENFPs are characteristically optimistic and are surprised when people or evnts do not turn out as anticipated. Often their confidence in the innate goodness of
fate and human nature is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

ENFPs are friendly folks. Most are really enjoyable people. Some of the most soft-hearted people are ENFPs.

ENFPs have what some call a "silly switch." They can be intellectual, serious, all business for a while, but whenever they get the chance, they flip that switch
and become CAPTAIN WILDCHILD, the scourge of the swimming pool, ticklers par excellence. Sometimes they may even appear intoxicated when the
"switch" is flipped.

Work Environment:
ENFPs are pleasant, easygoing, and usually fun to work with. They come up with great ideas, and are a major asset in brainstorming sessions. Follow through
tends to be a problem, however; they tend to get bored quickly, especially if a newer, more interesting project comes along. They also tend to be
procrastinators, both about meeting hard deadlines and about performing any small, uninteresting tasks that they've been assigned. ENFPs are at their most
useful when working in a group with a J or two to take up the slack.

ENFPs hate bureaucracy, both in principle and in practice; they will always make a point of launching one of their crusades against some aspect of it.

ENFPs have a remarkable latitude in career choices and succeed in many fields. As workers, they are warmly enthusiastic, high-spirited, ingenious,
imaginative, and can do almost anything that interests them. They can solve most problems, particularly those that deal with people They are charming and at
ease with with colleagues; others enjoy their presence. ENFPs are outstanding in getting people together, and are good at initiating meetings and conferences,
although not as talented at providing for the operational details of these events. Once projects or peoplel become routine, ENFPs are likely to lose interest;
what might be is always more fascinating that what is.

ENFPs make excellent salespeople, advertising people, politicians, screen or play writers, and in general are attracted to the interpretive arts, particularly
character acting. One study has shown that ENFPs are significantly overrepresented in psychodrama. Most have a natural propensity for role-playing and
acting.

People-to-people work is essential for ENFPs, who need the feedback of interaction with others. ENFPs may find it difficult to work within the constraints
of an institution, especially in following rules, regulations, and standard operating procedures. More frequently, institutional procedures and policies are
targets to be challenged and bent by the will of an ENFP. At times, ENFPs demonstrate impatience with others; they may get into difficulty in an
organization by siding with its detractors, who find in an ENFP a sympathetic ear and a natural rescuer. In occupational choices, ENFPs quickly become
restless if the choice involves painstaking detail and follow-through over a period of time. Variety in day-to-day operations and interactions best suits the
talents of ENFPs, who need quite a bit of latitude in which to exercise their adaptive ingenuity.

ENFPs like to tell funny stories, especially about their friends. This penchant may be why many are attracted to journalism. I kid one of my ENFP friends that
if I want the sixth fleet to know something, I'll just tell him.

ENFPs are global learners. Close enough is satisfactory to the ENFP, which may unnerve more precise thinking types, especially with such things as piano
practice ("three quarter notes or four ... what's the difference?") Amazingly, some ENFPs are adept at exacting disciplines such as mathematics.

Friends are what life is about to ENFPs, more so even than the other NFs. They hold up their end of the relationship, sometimes being victimized by less
caring individuals. ENFPs are energized by being around people. Some have real difficulty being alone , especially on a regular basis.

ENFPs sometimes can be blindsided by their secondary Feeling function. Hasty decisions based on deeply felt values may boil over with unpredictable results.
More than one ENFP has abruptly quit a job in such a moment.

Extraverted iNtuition
The physical world, both geos and kosmos, is the ENFP's primary source of information. Rather than sensing things as they are, dominant intuition is
sensitive to things as they might be. These extraverted intuitives are most adept with patterns and connections. Their natural inclination is toward
relationships, especially among people or living things.

ENFPs consider intense emotional experiences vital; when they have these, however, they are made uneasy by a sense of being there but with a part of
themselves split off. They strive for congruency, but always seem themselves in some danger of losing touch wiht their real feelings, which ENFPs possess in
a wide range and variety.

ENFP Family Life
As mates, ENFPs tend to be charming, gentle, sympathetic, and nonconformist. They are not likely to be interested in the less-inspired routines of daily
maintenance and ever will be seeking new outlets for their inspirations. As parents, ENFPs are devoted although somewhat unpredictable in handling their
children, shifting from role of friend-in-need-rescuer to stern authority figure. They may not always be willing to enforce their impulsive pronouncements,
but leave it to their mates to follow through. A mate of an ENFP can expect charming surprises: extravagent generosity punctuated by periods of frugality.
Independent actions regarding money on the part of an ENFP's mate are not ordinarily welcomed, and the mate may find him or herself in an embarrassing
situation of having to return purchases. ENFPs generally are the ones in charge of the home, and a conflict-free home is desired, almost demanded.

mowing the lawn

2004-05-29T16:47:00.000-05:00

I mowed my prairie of a lawn today. My poor husband worked on the old lawnmower for weeks, however it ended up needing a new carborator which we didn't want to pay for. So I went out and bought a new lawnmower. Funny, when you let someone who has never mowed a lawn buy a lawnmower. I bought the coolest little electric mower. My lawnmower is the most amazing little thing in the world. It wieghs about 2/3 of the weight of a normal mower, starts when I push a lever, doesn't stink of gas, and has a sweet little purr instead of a deafening roar.

It is so the girly lawnmower.

My husband hasn't stopped making fun of me yet. He says my hippie mulching lawnmower doesn't have blades. Instead it has little gentle hands which slowly massage the tops of the grass off. I love my lawnmower!

I enjoy mowing the grass and watching it all level off evenly. So easy to do and it is so perfect and flat when you are done. Plus it stays that way for at least a week or two. Very unlike housework. Mowing time is also thinking time. I like to think, far too much, as sometimes I forget what my hands are doing as my mind is far off thinking. When I mow, I just have to touch base now and then so I don't mow down my son or the cord, and otherwise I can think.

Today I thought about, well stuff I shouldn't mention, hah, hah, That's why I looked so happy mowing the lawn. But outside of inapproriate thoughts, I also tossed around thoughts about society and such. My grand, impressive theory of what is worng with society. For me, being a scientist, most everything falls down into evolved patterns of behavior.

other stuff
NT,god,siva,driftwood,sm

Almost all of our behaviors were developed over five hundred thousand years or so of evolutionary pressure. Our minds balloned enormously. We developed the capacity to speak Some skills helped us find food or find mates, but many of the "personality" traits that we have now evolved as a means to maintain intact small social groups. We lived in small tribes/packs which required intense cooperation to exist over long periods of time. I think of these packs like small towns. You know everyones business and they know all of yours. You grow up surrounded by the same packmates, watch the old ones die, the new ones born. You have a reasonably well established place in the social hiarchy. You know where you stand.

If you become injured, at least in the short term, the others assist you-the origins of empathy. If you help others they most likely will help you in your time of need. A very necessary component of a social group. Each of you gives food, shelter and care to others in the group for the same things in return. While in a small town, you may hate it because you can't be anonomous, for the same reasons, a lot of people return to small towns to have kids. You want your offspring to be surrounded by others who care for them and at keast in some fashion comprise members of a social net, to catch them in case of trouble. We all search for a clan of sorts that will take us in and embrace us. We spend so much time searching for this "group". In the form of fraternities, religion, geneology, PTA, the in crowd, a club of people who do what we do, or gangs for that matter.Or race or my favorite the goth or punk kids who are outcasts and thus part of a group, Even blind patriotism to a country/state/city or sports team qualifies as finding a "group" When we find it, we feel the need to attack others who aren't in our group, as a way of boosting our own self esteem/social standing/survival rate. (if we feel better about our selves we project that externally, and others may percieve us to "better")

These groups and the need to belong to one seems like a double edged sword. On one hand it seems to be the source of most wars that we fight. On a tribe/pack level back in the days of prehistory, it makes sense to have evolved a blind allegience to your group. Your group keeps you alive, and it seems that attcking other groups also keeps you alive. If the "others" don't survive then it makes more room for your and your group's genetic contribution to be carried on. That may be pushing it a bit-definitely in the BS range :) , However blind loyalty to the group and the extreme need to be in a social group was a very selected for trait for highly intelligent, yet highly vunerable pre humans. No matter what your group-giving you security, food, affection,-is put ahead of all others. Your offspring was part of that group-you insure they survive and that your Genetic contribution gets passed on. Now days that blind group loyalty and the intense need to be part of a group gets us into all types of trouble. What is it that you identify with and how willing would you be to fight for it? religion and patriotism seem to be the big ones. How many of us Americans quit eating french fries just because they are french? Why is it worse when one american dies as opposed to one iraqi? It's becuase he was one of us! How dare you kill one of us! You can only hope folks stop and think a bit more before they make snap choices. Sometimes you have ignore the gut feeling because it is grounded in animal instincts. They work well mostly, but the larger the "group" becomes, the harder it is to deal with irrational animal instincts. If nothing else, recognize what you feel , recognize WHY you feel it, then make a choice.

On the flip side of the groups. We need them. As the group gets too large, we feel lost, alone. We no longer have the feeling that someone is there for us if things go bad. If we are "injured" or "hungry" metaphorically or literally, will there be someone there unconditionally to help us? In a small town, quite likely. In a big city, likely not. As we, at least in America, move large distances away from our families and early childhood friends, we , at least subconciously, loose the net/group. Even worse, we never have the group in the first place. Single parent families (I was one for several years) and a collapse of "raising the child by the village" , drug and alcohol abuse by parents, and on and on lead to an apathy of sorts. I see this in my family, the "white trash" approach to life. Why should we bother helping anyone else (not littering, not stealing, mowing the lawn, smoking around our children, roadrage.....) when no one will help us. Our group has been decimated and so we no longer feel empathy for how our actions will effect other members of our group. Who cares. it's not my problem... Or perhaps, external stressors (bills, debt, terrible jobs) leave us so energetically drained that the necessary mental and physical energy needed to feel empathy is totally absent. We can't care about you becuase we can't keep our own heads above water. Perhaps in a group, your actions that hurt other members of the group would leave you outcasted. Now days we have become used to not caring about others and made our group so tiny,

Rates of "induced" mental illness have increased quite a bit over the last century. By induced I mean Depression /alcoholism/drug abuse/stress induced exacerbation of more permenant disorders like bipolar/ADHD. In almost every mental illness the traits that in extreme make it negative, can be seen in a positive evolutionary light. They served a role. Now as we have lost our group, we are much more prone to developing mental and physical disorders. It used to be that psychsomatic meant you were imagining it. Now days it means that you feel physical pain induced by a mental condition. If being a bit loopy is grounded in biology, than the same biological "flaw" can cause you to feel pain or become sick. Stress makes all these things worse. As we become richer, "happier" and more independent we become more miserable.

What is true happiness? How do we recover a group without being idiotic and letting our blind faith in the group lead us into trouble? How do you teach folks that it is this group idiocy that leads them into war? How do you recover our ability to work as a group and feel empathy for each other? Interesting book called emotional IQ that addresses how, at least, to teach social skills to kids. Perhaps it would be a start. Boy, long winded today. Gotta go plant the flowers now. In the driftwood of course ....

2004-05-29T12:23:00.000-05:00

Dumpling is playing yu-gi-oh with buddha

election year

2004-05-28T08:15:00.000-05:00

Dumpling is running to be his second grade class president. I helped him outline his speech in which he said that he felt the community center needed more trash cans as the class was very messy.

His slogans:

1. I don't bite ... please vote for me
2. vote for me ... services free (ie my mom will pay for field trips)
3. please vote for me (with a flag on the poster)
4. It's like a cookie ... just voting

He'll make a good politician some day.

water

2004-05-14T09:45:00.000-05:00

The sky was incredibly blue. So deep blue with amazing puffs of white that drift along floating by. In resonance with the clouds, I bobbed up and down in the water, water that had that weedy mud smell that resovouirs seem to have. My little orange life vest hugged me and I bobbed with hair a mass of tentacles surrounding my head.

Off to one side giant cliffs of white limestone rose out of the water. lines of interspersed color splahed along the surface of the limestone. At the top of the cliffs, trees peered over to see us down below bobbing in the water. And of course always present was the buttery, golden, baking sun, an unchanging feature of the Texas landscape.

Funny thing about Texas. We only have two real lakes (so I've heard.) The rest were reservoirs created by damming up the ever flooding rivers that crisscross the state. It was amazing when I moved up north to see houses built right next to big broad thick rivers. In Texas our rivers are puny little dried up creatures. People throw trash in them, or fish out tiny rainbow colored perch, but certainly there are no barges or boats or drawbridges for that matter. And certainly no one builds houses next to our rivers. Our little puny rivers are caged by massive hills a hundred feet tall and at least a quarter of a mile on either side of the river. These massive hills surround a tiny puny dribble of a river-at least until it rains.

Within minutes during a big storm, the puny rivers becomes frothing, brown monsters. Before the hills in ft. Worth were built my grandmaw said she saw the entire downtown area flooded to the forth floor of the montgomery ward building. Downtown Ft.Worth was a lake just for a bit. If you ever drive through Dallas or Ft. Worth you will see the hugs hills that bank the various branches of the Trinity River. If you drive along 30 from one city to another, you'll encounter Arlington, shopping mecca with more retail establishments per square mile than any other city in America. Then you hit this empty zone. The highway stands out above it and it is kinda flat and empty of houses and such. When it rains you understand why as the whole place becomes a big mud puddle.

So at any rate, the rivers, and water itself, are slightly more menacing for the avarage Texan than say for the New Yorker or Michigander. Thus the resoviors were born, as a source of energy and a way to control the flooding rivers.

Funny thing about a resovior , is that far underneath the surface, you still kinda have a river. It comes in one side, and if the dam is open it goes out the other side. A bit like the jet stream only far below the water.

So there I sit in a resovoir, surrounded by family, both human and my Texan family made of rock sun and water.

My aunts are there. I don't know them very well. They like horses and I love horses so I think they are neat, but from a bit of a distance as I am really a very shy kid. My two cousins are there, floating in my vicinity. They are funny and friendly. Joy who is a bit more restrained and Marlina who later became a buety pagent contestant and laughed a lot. But they aren't laughing. They are crying. I can't find my dad. I know he is around somewhere, but you know how life jackets are. They push your head forward so it is hard to turn, especially when you are little. My sister is somewhere but I don't know where. She is smaller than me but I love her. Off to the far line of my vision my aunts fiance is in the water too. He was the first place I ever learned the word fiance. He seems very sick but I don't understand why.

Ahhh, the family reunion. It was the family reunion. The ever ubiquitous green bean cassarole, fried chicken, blood red beets and a never ending assortment of pasta and potato salads. All on the shores of the beautiful lake whitney, grateful resovior to the sweet Brazos River. Only one of many I assume. My dad loves boats and cars. He comes to pick us up from my mom in his blue truck mostly, but sometimes he comes in his white cadillac convertible. We always stop at Dairy Queen and get ice cream cones however. The ones dipped in chocolate. Mom said he would spend hours and hours in the old garage working on the cars. When they would fight, she would scream and scream, and even throw things at him. Off he would go to the shed to work on the cars, till she simmered a bit. Eventually she dumped him for some other guy who was more exciting.

Today my daddy brought out his new boat. It was white with red inside it. The last boat had been brown with blue interior I think. He had traded and borrowed to get the new boat, as I guess it was better. We run around the family reunion meeting all the odd, unfamiliar people. So many relatives. Then we all go out on the lake in the boat.

When you are in a boat, you fly across the water and if you hit the rough spots, where other boats have left wakes, you bounce up and down a bit. Always surrounded by the muddy resovior water smell. Funny thing about resoviors is that they just fill in the big valley around the river. They don't cut down the trees or move anything thing that is there, they stop the river and wait for the valley to fill, So sometimes, especially near the shallow areas, you see trees coming out of the water. Skeletal and dead of course but trees all the same. Seems on that day, that butter yellow family reunion day we might have met up with a tree. No one ever really knew.

Flying along in the water, but there was water by my feet. The floor was coming apart-into pieces. The square floorboard pieces were floating and we were no longer afloat. Soon we were all bobbing in the water, confused and enclosed by white rocks, blue sky and muddy grey blue water. Seems like my dadddy shoulda got a better boat. I vaguely recall the boat sinking below the surface. Only vaguely.

My daddy had been holding me while he drove. So he held me while we sank. At first as we bobbed he was behind me. That's why I couldn't see him. The water was in my mouth for a bit and I choked as I went under, then I popped back up. Somebody had their hand on my foot.

We all sat and waited. For what? I am far to little to know. I am scared but my family is close by and they will take care of me. The fiance is choking and gagging on the water. Turns out he wasn't wearing a lifejacket. He was lucky . he almost drowned. His mirror fiance held him up as she was wearing a lifejacket. It apprears that the river running under the surface of the lake was a bit close that day. It also turns out that Lake Whitney is well known for it's victims, like sacrifices it pulls them down, into the murky darkness, so calm and peaceful there.

A boat arrives. An old silver fishing boat. They pull up the drowning fiance first. Then we, being the future generation, are pulled in one by one, little soaked dolls with sraggely brown and blond tendils clinging to us. Another boat comes and gets all the aunts. So we all return to shore. They are crying and sobbing, which I don't understand. We have been saved, by the silver fishing baot. We are out of the water. Later it seems , upon counting heads thrirteen went out but only twelve returned. The cousins, the aunts, the sister and the fiance were accounted for. It seems the only two had been without lifejackets and one had a fiance to hold him up. The other only had a tiny little smidgen girl, in a tiny little lifevest only meant to hold up fifty pounds, not two hundred. When the river under the water came alive, and pulled at our feet as we sank into the water, all the swimming imaginable was useless.

What goes through your mind, in those slow, lightening fast seconds. You sink and you hold on to what will keep you afloat, realizing, you will pull it down with you. Maybe only a few feet, enough to save you as you kick and splutter to the surface for the occasional breath. It however doesn't understand and would need more than an occasionally breath. So you begin to release it and it pops back to the surface, inces higher as you sink inches lower. Do you decide to let go or does instinct (or the opposite of instict) take over and make you release her? What do you think as your hand runs across her toes and she rises higher while you are pulled lower? You sink down so fast and of course struggle to get back to the surface. How long before you can no longer hold your breath. Not very long, as you are very upset and your body demands oxygen. The water rushes in and fills your lungs, and you should cough, but how do you cough when every breath is filled with water. How long do you suffer with pain as you can no longer breath before you black out and are claimed by the beast river. What are your last thoughts as this happens. Do you realize that you are going to die and give in or do you fight till the last second. Do you think of us bobbing high above you? Do you even have time to consider us in those last few moments?

I often wonder, do you watch over us, do you exist somewhere else, keeping us out of trouble. (Watch that little sister-she needs more help than me I think.) Even with crazy mum, it seems we will end up okay. We miss you, even the dumpling who never knew you. I never understood how much you loved me until I held my son one day, close to me. I knew that this was the way me dad felt about me, an intense, powerful urge to give everything to keep me safe. You felt joy to watch me walk, and talk, and felt sad when I cried. Now I cry so many years after the fact, because I miss you.

interview questions

2004-05-11T14:13:00.000-05:00

What is it that you could bring to our company?

Hunger. My drive to succeed is directly proportional to my desire to eat. I like food. If you hire me I can eat. I think we'll be a great match. Of course you might also want to keep me in a state of semi starvation to keep up my work ethic, however don't we all want to look like supermodels?

2004-05-11T10:31:00.000-05:00

What is your greatest weakness?

Choosing the challenging, interesting, difficult, adventurous path over the boring, easy, routine, straightforward path just to see if I can do it. Sometimes I can't!

2004-05-11T09:03:00.000-05:00

tomatoes

I am so lax about posting in the blog. I think to myself that I would like to write but I get caught up doing other things and just don't get the chance.

I am writing from work and I just want to note that my UNIX sucks ass. It seriously has given me a window two inches wide to type into. On many web pages I get messages about "your browser does not meet basic internet standards". I tried to get a new netscape however it seems that nobody likes UNIX anymore and no new versions have been made in years.

The dandelions have been mowed and returned as tall as ever. On a wierd side note many of them seem to have undergone a very odd mutation developmentally. The flowers will grow on a stalk an inch wide and four flower heads will be morphed together into a single wide flower. I was going to make dandelion jam, however I am a bit scared that I live on a nuclear waste site. Wonder what the tomatoes will look like?

Interesteing non plant, semi plant observations. I can't keep my mind quiet. On ritalin (for ADHD), it will sit there quiet when I try and meditate. It observes my surroundings but there is little internal "talking"-you know the voice in your head sort of talking. Off the meds, the voice never stops. Idea after idea pops up and they merge and split. It is like a vast web of chaotic colors all blending together. Like a toddler given two pieces of a puzzle. It bangs them together over and over again in different ways, till something fits. My brain does this with ideas. They get blended and churned and brought to the surface over and over again.

At night when I dream this is most obvious. On meds I sleep like a rock. It is so funny that I take a stimulant and I sleep so deeply. I still dream but can't remember it. My guess is that it enhances, not REM sleep, (perhaps supresses REM?), rather the periods of deep sleep that surround REM sleep. If I drink a big cup of coffee or take sudafed before bed I also sleep much more deeply. When I don't take meds, I dream all night long and almost always remember my dreams. It is very easy to interact in my dream stste as I usually know that I am dreaming. If something scares me in my dream , I can choose to calm down and move away from it or morph it into something else. I can also see the same blending of ideas occuring in dreams even more than when I am awake. My brain will take unrelated ideas encountered during the day and force them to be mixed. It will sometimes get stuck in a rut and hash the same idea over and over again till I get up because I can't stand lying there dreaming about it anymore. It actually becomes mental draining after awhile.

Is it good or bad? When I meditate not haven taken any meds, my mind runs crazy, jabbing for a few minutes. I finally quiet most of the verbal chatter but I can feel it bursting from under the surface. It is like an ocean that is very wide and deep and dark, very calm, with little ripples now and then that perturb the surface. The funnest part is that if I just keep sitting there, all the energy that must be constantly being burned up by the chatterbox mind and spastic body gets refunneled. After a few minutes my whole body starts to glow, metaphorically of course. I have had the same experience doing katas or in yoga. I am blissful, spastic and still all at once. I also want to giggle-he hehe.

This same glow often comes to me during sex, or when I am in really painful yoga poses (awwww, the back bends) Perhaps it's an endorphin rush.

I feel close to god then, not jesus or god mind you, but siva. I feel closer to understanding what I am about and what the world is about.

Funnily enough, like in Siddhartha, I don't know if I can explain it to anyone else. However I see the same thing in my dumpling. He will run and dance about spastically and I see the glowing bliss-silliness all over him. He couldn't stop if he wanted to. I guess that's why he is ADD. Mental illness or mental advantage? I may never be rich but I can roll in the grass and feel siva around me and inside of me. I guess all those normal people miss out on that.

2004-04-27T07:02:00.000-05:00

Last night my husband worked on the lawnmower. He spent half an hour but couldn't get it fixed. So as I dreamed last night, I dreamed about mowing the lawn. It was so satisfying. I pushed it back and forth across my family's property and watched the grass all become even and trim. I was so happy and felt so accomplished-like I had finaaly gotton something right. I woke up at five and couldn't sleep anymore.

Yesterday sucked at work. It was pointed out that my efforts were not quite up to par. It was on something very minute but it really reinforced the fact that I am a failure at most things. All the right ingredients, just not added in the right order I guess. Thus the lawnmower dream. I have retreated into a fantasy world till it comes time to leave this job later this year, so I don't get terribly depressed about not really cutting it. I sort of daydream and work, and think about religion and life and all the stuff that seems more important than the job. You know you just keep telling yourself it doesn't matter till you convince yourself of it. It was wierd because for a bit I could feel. I actually had emotions.

So much of the time in my life has been spent behind some sort of wall. I can see what happens there but I can't really feel what happens. I don't feel joy, hope or sadness, just bland detachment. It is easy to be analytical that way and make choices that aren't influenced by emotion, when you don't feel emotions. The rest of my family is "crazy" because they can't make choices without impulsive emotions intruding. I am the opposite I guess. I guess in the past two years-since they told me I have ADHD-I have forgiven myself for fucking up so much stuff-I started to feel things. I feel joy and peace and I sit in the sun and feel it bask my body. I was reveling in emotion, sensuality, pain, pleasure, all of it because it seemed like I could feel. Granted perhaps a touch of hypomania, but still it was feeling.

Yesterday when I was -well-very mildly reprimanded-it was like my whole system shut down-somebody threw a breaker and shut off all emotional circuitry. I acknowledged what needed to be done and then left in a state of mild shock. I have this lump of nothing that clogs up my gut and makes me a bit bitter. I can feel the "depression cliff" lurking somewhere under foot, just out of site. If I step the wrong way, it is a deep deep plunge. Sometimes , before when I couldn't feel, it would be there and my foot would slip off the edge and make me stumble. It was the worst type of agony.

I think when normal people get depressed it is a mild lurch into melencholy. A friend told me that her dad was an alcoholic-for no reason- a couple of times a year-he would stop by a liquor store on his way home and drink an entire bottle of vodka. They would find him there passed out in his car. I tried to explain to her what I feel-it isn't a mild progression to sadder and sadder states-it is a plunge into despair-one moment everything seems okay, then you crash into catastrophy. It's the depression cliff, just waiting. We are the ones who go nuts one day and kill ourselves. (Don't worry-I'd never do that-got the dumpling to care for-family responsibilities keep me in line) In her dad's case , he snaps and gets drunk. I did this some when I was a teen.

In any case i can feel it under my feet, but I am being careful to step around it as I can't fall in there right now. I guess that is why i can't feel. It's better not to feel if it let's me walk around the edge of the cliff and not fall over. I will miss feeling though.

2004-04-25T15:22:00.000-05:00

My dandylions are looking so beautiful. Little yellow smiling faces scattered here and there all across the plain, overdone green of my neverending lawn. Together they end up being so much more striking than the pansies or the tulips and daffodils. The lawnmower the landlord lets us use is broken, hiding away in our shed, so it looks like nature is taking over our little plain-it's like liitle, tiny square house in the midst of a waving prarie. Out back my favorite spring flower is blooming. It is this little green weed that grows in little clusters when spring is just getting going. Tiny little purple tufts start growing out the edges, and it overtakes places where there isn't much grass. It doesn't smaell nice, but I always thought that faries would hide amongst it. It always seems to border those forgotten places that noone cares to look it. The landlord's son mowed the nighboring house yesterday and I sat inside , really sad as i thought my bountiful treasure would the next to get decimated. Fortunately , it got dark!

When I was very young I would hide in the space between my grandmother's house wall, fence and the nieghbors yard. The nieghbors kept there place up pretty well, but they let the fence get overgrown with honeysuckle as it gave them a barrier to the wrongs that went on in my grandmaw's house. To see through the fence, you had to pry back layers and layers of honeysuckle vines, and whatever other green delights grew in that shady spot. It had this thick, rich, wet, moist smell made up of old decaying plants. In the blasting Texas sun, being surrounded by that smell and the deep shadows was like a tiny bit of bliss.

I would sit there for hours during the summer, and in the spring I would find this little plant growing-little purple fey flowers. Nobody ever looked back there so I would just hide and dream. I had the ratty, stinky, chow mongrel Monkey as my companion. Her chain would get so tangled up, but she could still worm her way to my secret spot. She would join me, with her stinky dog smell and together we would cuddle. She too, wanted to escape.

It is rather funny that she was called monkey, as my grandmaw said monkey was a slang word for pussy. Yet she called the dog monkey. I think we at one point had another dog also named monkey. You see , my family has this way with names-it is a bad way. The border collie my GGrandmum got form the humane society was named Happy. He was the most unhappy dog I have ever seen. He sat on a chain for ten years and barked. I would try to pet him but he would jump on my legs and leave bloody claw marks. Occasionally my evil GGmum would wonder out to feed him and yell at him. When the old bitch died we took happy out to our place. he spent some time -a year or two-hanging out with my brother's bird dogs in our backyard. Eventually we got a little, tiny pink house at the top of a hill, centered on twenty acres of coastal pasture. We let the dogs loose and Happy disappered after two days. He was so old and arthritic but you could see this sad spark of excitement in his eyes. I can only hope Happy found a bit of happiness at the end.

If it was only dog names that went wrong it would be reasonable, however the names that were given to members of the family were the real tragedy. My mother's two brothers had real names-however they were known to all as Beaver and PeeWee. No wonder they are felons. My mum grew up being known by Delores Anne. Turns out this was her dad's old girlfriends name. Turn's out in ninth grade , he wasn't her real dad. She didn't know her real name or her real dad. The schhol insisted that she go by her real name. Unfortunatley my Gmum had named my mom after her uncle. My mother got stuck with the name Jimmie Jo. Why torture your kid that way? My poor mom got the holy crap beat out of her at school a lot as she was a pretty white girl with a boy's name at a school mostly populated with minorities.

So it only gets worse. My mum has kids. They spend quite a while trying to stick my brother with the nickname Pumkin. Thank god that didn't go over. My mom picks my middle name. It sounds all nice until I realize in high school that she thought it was Michelle, just spelled differently-nope. No wonder I never could spell it. Everone says what a beautiful middle name. I say "thanks. " I guess. My sister got cursed with the southern name problem. You want to name your little girl three or four names? Just cram them altogether. Marysue, bettyjo lynn alberts etc. So she has two first names and a middle name-none of which anybody actually calls her-she got stuck being little missy-missy to the day.

Oh yeah, I spelled my son's middle name incorrectly :) Issac rather than Isaac- It's the um, greek spelling. Don't make women who have just given birth name children! Especially with the genetic tendencies present in our family.

well back to lovin my little yellow dandies.
Puppy

2004-04-23T16:23:00.001-05:00

weeeeeeeeee! I have my very own tiny little blog now.
And this is my very first post on my very first blog.
Why am I always so far behind everybody else when it comes to technology?
I still love those stupid little 3" disks-I scratch the fuck out of CDs.

I am like a puppy. I love to roll and play and tear up your sneakers now and then. Then I will sit on the floor and peer up at you with big tear filled eyes and smile and hope you forgive me-or maybe you'll spank me. Sometimes I do stuff I likely shouldn't but it is so fun. At times I am very ill mannered and lazy because it is fun to watch what other people do, to see how truley upset you can make them over things that really don't matter. Sometimes I make people mad and push them to see if they have the courage to push back. So that's why I am a puppy. A naughty puppy, but still a puppy, that wants to play and run and roll in the grass.

I can't spell very well but I actually am pretty bright. Always remember that there are many types of intelligence-at least 12 or so-and we don't all have them in equal amounts. At some point I'm sure that I'll figure out how to spell check but till them please have patience (?).

My inability to spell stems from a rather poor memory for details. Rote memorization in general is not easy as my brain doesn't take info that doesn't have a place. It loves paths and connections and webs of information that all intersect. It enjoys logic and abstract intuitive jumps, not vowel combinations, just for the sake of vowels. For the same reasons I had a terrible time at arithmatic, but went on to do quite well in college calculus, DE, linear algebra...

I am Siva's puppy as Siva seems to be the best representation of God I can find. I looked pretty hard, and I finally picked one that seems reasonable. Sometimes I feel him surrounding me-I could almost breathe him in . So soft and sweet, I do indeed love siva.

So this blog is a place to record the random connections that arise when I mix up all the ideas that float together. We'll see where it goes.

puppy

2004-04-23T16:23:00.000-05:00

Today I busted out my car window. Not is some cool way like a fit of rage or an expression of disgust. More like an idiotic way. I went to rent a playstation game for dumpling and I locked my keys in the car. So normal for me. I stood outside the car, not even mad. I mean I do this so incredibly often-if it's not keys it is a hundred other stupid things-I don't even get pissed anymore. It is actually pretty funny. So I stood there with little dumpling, who insisted that a stick could be plugged in the keyhole, and stared remorsefully at the keys.

The lady from the pizza place next to the movie store saw me and said that one of her drivers might be able to help. He tried a bit with a hanger but it seems that Ford is intent on only letting car theifs with slim jims actually rob my stupid escort. A few times it almost looked like it would pop up but then it wouldn't. Damn. So at this point I started going back around the back of the car, looking for alternative entry points. We don't have triple A and I (classically) didn't want to wait for a tow truck to show up and then charge me fifty bucks or more for a five second task. I am so cheap.

So I start prying at the back window. In an escort it is like a triangle that points backwards away from the drivers seat and is held in place by a latch. I thought if I could get the window open I might be able to slide my arm through and unlock the door. As I tugged at it the whole window shattered outwards all over me. It just exploded. I got a couple of nicks on my fingers but they didn't hurt at all. The pizza guy just looked at me. There are those moments in life when you can tell what people are thinking . He was thinking "what a nut". I just started laughing. Shit, I mean at least I won't be locking my keys in the car anytime soon!

The car is a big piece of crap (I love you escort!) with 200K miles and this odd smell resulting from a run in it had with a gallon of milk several years back. One door hangs crooked and the dash lights work as a function of temperature and number of bumps encountered on the road. The winter before last the connection from the blower to the heater(?) went out and I had no blower for several months thus no heater. One day I hit a bump and it just started working again. The air conditioner amazingly still works but causes the car to die almost as soon as you turn it on. On long trips (ie 10 miles) the throttle tends to stick and in the summer it overheats in traffic. Nothing like it being 108 F and having the heater on. The amazing moment was realizing that the air outside was hotter than the air from the heater. All in all however it has been a good, loving little car. bought cheap and driven long and it just keeps going. I, of all people should have killed the car long ago, however it has never deserted me. We have a really nice Odessey, but I get the old escort.

As for the window it likely won't get fixed. We will be relocating soon and what is the point of dragging the poor thing halfway across the country. I was going to try and donate it to some poor mum in need but I am afraid by the time we leave there won't be much left of it.

Perhaps we can put my PC inside of it and douse it all with gasoline and have a bonfire. Invite all the neighbors over.