look at me still talking when there's science to do

i can have all the ice cream i want. which is a lot. they took out twelve salivary glands. cannot use straws. stitches feel weird and i must not bite down on them. pain just started and it's already awful. i can has loricet. oh god it fucking hurts.

Today's clickies are all pictures or sets of pictures (and one video). It's funny how that spontaneously happens. Brought to you by awils1, foxestacado and nightdog_barks.

flickr set of vintage clothing labels.

see jesus on the wall

which gigantic corporations own the various organic food brands

week in photos: fluorescent cats, seaweed lamps and more

rainbow jellyfish

whales trucked to safety

today: botox shots, pee in a cup (noted here for my reference) DMV, new coffee shop, home. Went down the hill between 3rd and 4th on Spring (about a 75 degree angle if i had to guess) and it was so goddamn steep i nearly puked (and i am not driven to vomiting from fear most of the time. never doing that again EVER.) ambien works really well (thanks be to god) and the new methadone dose is good (except for a bit of wooziness in the afternoon after the second pill). biggest pain issue today is my left hip which was only quieted with two percocet (and i try not to use breakthrough meds during the day unless the pain is really bad.) next botox/rehab appointment is 23 June which is the same day as the rheumatologist (in the same hospital) - good if i'm working by then.

how are you?

From the ever-fabulous adularia: James Joyce's dirty letters. whoa.

from brightflashes, who always finds fabulous stuff: brains of lonely people work differently and Katamari Damacy creator has new game. I'll be buying a PS3 just for this (well, that and the fact that my PS2 has mysteriously disappeared SOMEWHERE. it has my house s1 and s2 boxed sets. bah.)

eta: from the marvelous kightp: our first lady knows how to talk to children without talking down to them. she is so amazingly cool and smart. <3 <3 i may have to love her.

from the lovely and talented silenceleigh: Zack Arias talks about the artist, life and process. worksafe, audio required, vision not (but he's a photographer, there's some awesome stuff.)

This is seriously a must-watch for any creative person. It hit me hard because he's describing ME right now; a lot to think about. Definitely worth ten minutes of your day.

and from my beloved internet daughter, sunsetsinthewes: 71 odd things found in the subway. I LOVE THIS STUFF.

two days left of break. kid has wellchild visit later today. it's going to be so nice to have some time ALONE, jesus. too much mental and physical noise. i keep saying we need to find babysitting or a daycamp for these weeks and forgetting. kid got into a soap sample this morning and decided to stim with it. s'okay by me.

i actually saw the mystery cat come onto the balcony the other day. i was right; she does go around on that wee ledge.

i grated the skin off of one of my toes by catching it on the metal screen of the magazine rack. hurts like a bitch.

tired. celebrex is working alright but there's still some breakthrough pain, although less.

having an insane amount of trouble focusing in general, even when i have uninterrupted time. speaking of creative people: what do you do to focus?

i want a minivideocam. i love handling and splicing my own actual, physical film, but it's becoming harder and harder to find. video allows for certain things better and it's defininitely cheaper, but it's at the expense of the tactile, which is kind of sad. does anyone have one? what model might you reccomend?

i have water in my ear and it's driving me BUGNUTS.

there's a lot of good stuff on the intertubes these days. <3

thewlisian_afer has clickies posts that are much more awesome than mine a lot of the time, seriously. Here's a sample of today's best ones:

world's youngest divorcee takes on Paris and a real childhood. She's TEN. and seriously brave. what an amazing girl.

racoon bites off man's manhood in rape attack. dude. if you are stupid enough to try and rape a raccoon (there's a phrase I never thought I'd use) you DESERVE getting your tallywhacker severed. (tallywhacker ™ Chris's late grandmother, who I sorely regret not getting to meet. she liked the golden girls and law and order and old movies and coffee. we would have gotten along famously.)

redneck wedding cakes. just ... WHAT. the deer ones ...

my new favorite photo, from my girl: dolphin meets zebra I want this in a larger version. <3 SO CUTE OMG.

Once again, pain is up to eleven, although strongarmed down to a seven or so with the methadone and celebrex. Tried lidoderm patches on the worst parts last night, which helped to a certain extent. This is nucking futz. I think this is what people call a flare. ugh. I'm going to try and get some work done today regardless. Hopefully.

Via mactavish, who is entirely a fantastic person. the book that the president read to children today.

This is probably the best news story I've ever read.

also: neuro is satisfied with me; will see him again in 4 months. wrote me scrip for celebrex because i wasn't seeing anyone else for a month and he said that would be a better solution than the narcotics; scrip for klonopin (which i rarely take but like to have on hand) and for liquid paxil to finish off the taper. all good stuff. handing me over to shrink. Got to neuro fine; took cab back because appointment ran late.

and a fab link from my fab girl machineplay: the baby that refuses to grow.

I'm noticing my breakthrough pain getting worse. I made an appointment with my doctor in five weeks, figuring I can chart the pain between now and then to get a better idea of whether i need to increase my methadone or not. Anyone have any tips or tricks or handy ways to do that other than the scribble down semi-legibly in a notebook method?

<3

new study shows warming trends in antarctica. This makes me sad. I love Antarctica beyond all reason - it's an obsession of mine - and it provided source material for my favorite house/wilson friendship fic ever: extreme weather. (it's my pet. if i do remix this year, this would be the safe story. it makes me sad that it's not more popular, because i know it's much better than some things I've written. Bah. oh fandom, thou art a fickle mistress.)

From one of my dearest internet children, cueballex: anatomically correct model of the human brain - made of wool. You can even unzip it and see the two hemispheres. It's AMAZING.

Also, for Jeeves and Wooster fans:



Sound required, vision optional, worksafe. SO AMAZING. This is a middle school orchestra.

Reason I am proud of myself today: i had breakfast before noon, and I did the vacuuming and unloaded the groceries. Now I will rest, and later unload the dishwasher if I feel up to it.

I've started to taper off on my antispasticity meds; I can feel it helping. I'm still wrapping and assembling packages. I have two boxes of books n my living room (will move them to dining room after box of boxes goes down. Now I have to swap the laundry.

Yesterday when I was at PT there was a ridiculously adorable service chihuahua (i have no idea what service the dog provided, although I was terribly curious). Her name was Boo Boo and she had all matching pink accessories, plus pink sweater, AND a SQUEAKY RUBBER CHICKEN with a PIRATE COSTUME. Her owner was sitting on the floor in the lobby area, letting her play (she was tethered to her matching pink carrier, which at least slowed her down a bit) and she wanted to say HI to EVERYONE IN THE WORLD or at least the eighth floor. <3 It was ridiculously cute.

Pain in the ass of the moment: Sean's school is closing (the condition of the building isn't so great, and they're having to close schools to make budget or whatever). I'm annoyed at this for several reasons:

1. my little guy will probably not be near his friends. Of course he will make more, he's an extremely social little guy. But I'm still kind of sad for him. (nts: damnit, do not think about this for very long otherwise you'll end up crying AGAIN AUGH.)
2. we'll have to train ANOTHER teacher and set of therapists.
3. once again more of the focus during the move is on the APP program (gifted program). One of my biggest annoyances re: this school was that SO MUCH of the focus is/was ON the APP program and SPED programs seem like an afterthought. (they only have two demographics at this school - sped and gifted.)
4. One of the reasons we moved to this location was BECAUSE of his school.

Of course there are good points:
1. I have a feeling/ I want to push them so he'll end up at Green Lake, which we toured before and which I really, really liked: they have hot lunches for the SPED students and a therapy dog and the people were really welcoming - plus they have more of an internet presence AND it's not too far from Capitol Hill
2. Sean's school is by no means the only awesome thing in this neighborhood.

I am attempting to make knitted coffee cup sleeves for Seaners' teacher and aide. I'm hoping that if I start now I might be able to finish on time.

Today's dose of Lamactil only seems to be making me moderately tired instead of severely wrecked/tired. Also no rash. I still put Seaners' snack out early.

A link, from the always fantastic gokuma: regenerating a mammoth for 10 million dollars.

Things I want to do this weekend:
1. knit coffee sleeves
2. pack
3. possibly watch movies (we still have the Greencine ones unpacked and I want to watch them so we can send them back)
4. maybe catch up on House eps
5. write
6. cook dinner (dinner = tofurkey (i like them. really.), garlic mashed potatoes, mashed yams with maple syrup, cheesecake.)
7. see adularia to drop off clothing and foodbank supplies

What are you doing this weekend?

living room: mostly full of boxes. forty-two of them to be exact, thanks to hithah, who is amazing.

child: home due to a rash (it is actually a rash this time). going to peds doc at 2:30 today.

me: been to the neuro and back. Have perscriptions for several vitamins and buspar. Long term neuro is talking about me being off most meds or at lower doses. Am bloody terrified of this concept, actually. i do not like the person i was before my meds, and i am having a lot of trouble reconciling myself to the idea that i will not become that person again. yeah, i know i have this backwards and that most people don't want meds. don't care. apparently i have awesome blood sugar and a massive vitamin d deficiency (something I likely have in common with most people in Seattle).

me: somewhat sad, and angry at internet trolls who seem to think acting like spoiled three year olds is appropriate because 'it's just the internet' as though it made their behavior less real or something. ashamed to know people like this.

me: wearing an eeg on my head. I look vaguely alien as my head is the wrong shape.

me: frustrated about writing, or more accurately lack thereof. want a vacation, or really just not to deal with life at all.

me: figured out i'm terrified of working because this means that my job will suck up every moment of my free time and i will never do anything fun ever again. must stop using chris as example. also would love to stop taking things to the far extremes but have been doing that all my life, am not sure how possible it is to stop such a thing.

Today's lesson - do not take two tylenol 3's with codeine along with 25mg of nortriptaline unless you are really really serious about wanting to sleep. Because they create this magical cocktail that means even yours truly will be out for twelve freakin' hours plus. I just got up at twelve-thirty pst. That said I do feel significantly better than yesterday.

We have gone from too little sleep to far too damn much sleep. Good times! Good times. <3

So reannon, my sister in birthdays and vampire authoress extraordinaire, has both an awesome article out now and a new book coming out soon. I know there's at least one of you in St. Louis (hi, newtypeshadow!) so you should try and make it to her book release party tonight! I would go but, you know, the whole long distance thing, mountains in the way. Either way you should buy the book.

Tomorrow is the bigger boy's birthday (woo!). I am going to try and achieve cake for this. If I cannot achieve cake I will drag him down to Yummy House (god that sounds much pervier than it meant to) and we will have cake there. Or possibly both of these things will happen. I can't decide between their mango pudding cake and their tiramisu cheesecake, so I usually end up getting both anyway.

today's plan:

• possibly bake cake (depends on body and whether or not body is stupid about sitting on kitchen stool. boy would rather go out to lunch with me (ie: have me coherent) than insist on homebaked cake (boy has said as much), so perhaps no, but we will see.
  
• rp tags
  
• sweep floor
  
• scribble down some original ficthoughts
  
• organize fluff fics from stuffonmywilson (yes, I do plan to finish those. It may take me until next summer, but I AM going to finish those.)
  
• maybe pick away at fic-in-progress; scribble down notes/beginning of 'blackout' sequel I thought about while going to sleep
  
• hide boy's birthday presents before he gets home
  
• deal with boxes that need to be recycled
  
• avoid killing child (although if he snaps another debit card in half I make no guarantees.)
  

hi. how're you doing?

Well, at the hour of oh my god thirty, I'm off to prove I'm crippled enough for paratransit. Fabulous, just fabulous. I have to make them a list of my meds, which is always entertaining, especially when we get to the part where I'm taking two spastic muscle relaxants.

(person: "you do know that both of these do the same thing, right?)
(me: *sigh* "I am, yes.")
(person: "and do your doctors know about this?")
(me: "yes. it was the same guy that perscribed both of them. They don't really make much more than a dent in my spasticity, actually.)
(person: "ooooooooooooookay...")
(me: "can I have my pills please?")

I would also like to state that of all the side effects I've ever suffered, the methadone induced drymouth is the worst. My mouth sticks to itself. It's painful and horrible.

but enough of that, here are some clickies for you:

From the marvelous the_xtina: Sesame Street absorbed by the Department Of Homeland Security. Oh sure, it's all about disaster readiness, okay. It's not the Sandman at all...yet.

(god, you really do have to give them credit for propaganda. Seriously. This whole setup was incredible.)

From my incredibly gorgeous and talented girlfriend machineplay: GOP candidate was picked up by a woman, wakes up with $120,000 of his stuff missing. *cough. cough. smirk.* Um. That poor man... um... or something, anyway. *cough*

Bad day. Actually this is like, the third in the past four that I've had to pop klonopin to stay even remotely on an even keel. Damnit. Time to haul my broken self back to the shrink. (Yes, tallin, I already phoned and left a message with intake, before you ask me).

I don't even really know what's wrong this time. I'm just feeling unstable again.

Bah. Damned broken brain.

Kid is WHINING. Just under eighteen hours until school bus time.

Called rheumathology. Still no word on my file. Am getting sick of this crap. Plan on staging a sit-in next week if resolution is not forthcoming.

---

the odd shoes gallery, from my darling mirrormargaret.

tiny house blog, from the marvelous tsuki_no_bara. SO CUTE. there's part of me that wants to live in one. there's another part of me (the packrat part) that realizes the utter impossibility of this. I desperately love the artists' studios though. Do want.

This is absolutely fascinating: Japan's professional seducers. I'm enthralled and boggled. <3