When I Have My Own Band (Again)

I just came up with my hitherto nonexistent band's name! The Vacillators. How Fucking Bad-Ass! It came to me in a burst of early morning homemaking mocha genius. Okay, honestly I was sipping a mocha-like drink and in the middle of calling a Med Clinic to see if I could pick up my TB test result from two months ago to prove to my new employer that I am not sick with a highly contagious, gross me out disease when it just appeared before me. This apparition of awesome flitted around briefly before I got my mental butterfly catcher net out and brought that sucker in. Now gassed and pinned down for inspection the name is really showing its potential. I am going to go google search to make sure it isn't already taken and my excitement isn't for naught.

SWEET! I am golden. Now I shall copyright, stake my claim, and otherwise completely pwn this name.

If it isn't obvious why this title to my notational future is so effing candy-sweet then you are not so bright. I feel for you and will thus explain. The definition:

vac·il·late (vs-lt)

intr.v. vac·il·lat·ed, vac·il·lat·ing, vac·il·lates
1. To sway from one side to the other; oscillate.
2. To swing indecisively from one course of action or opinion to another. See Synonyms at hesitate.
[Latin vacillre, vacillt-, to waver.]
vacil·lating·ly adv.
vacil·lation n.
vacil·lator n.

The way I see it is this allows my imaginary band to cash in on multiple aspects of the term. Number 1 is of course the implied changing of course that would frequently occur. If a producer of sounds vacillates it would indicate the styles of songs are likely to shift on a intermittent basis and the freedom to explore new arenas of noise is implicate. No pigeon-holing here. Number 2 is that the definition of vacillate has a rhythmic quality to it. The swaying, movement oriented vibe is good all around. Number 3 is it is fun to say: The Vacillators. Seriously, try it out-loud and tell me it doesn't feel good in a sexy, slippery way.

Look for us on iTunes in the very far, distant, maybe never future.

Copout Post

I have some post I am working on, but mostly they suck and I am refuse to compromise the quality of this blog that has so clearly been established in the past months. SO. Instead I am going to put up a YouTube streaming musical number that I feel summarizes my entire existence. Seat-belts buckled?



You're welcome.

(An actual post that required effort on my part instead of letting the genius of others reflect on me simply because I have indicated a connection of sorts is in fact in the works. Mostly I am lazy.)

Trans-Octave Burps

Among my many unemployable skills is the ability to produce multi-tonal gaseous exertions. And I wonder why I don't have a job. Again. Hard learned advice is don't get uncontrollably sick without first notifying your employer weeks in advance and creating "health accommodations." What is that you say? How could I possibly know I was going to be ill and miss chunks of work ahead of time? I know, I thought it was rather demanding and unreasonable too, but as it turns out I have no legal recourse.

So today included continued general malaise, discovering a bump in my armpit that seems to be disconcertingly rapidly developing (probably just a swollen gland), and practicing my burps. I am aiming to be able to hit two different notes as well as whistle. Who wouldn't want to employ this hot mess!?!

Unrelated: Are blogs just an outlet for all of our unvoiced complaints and worries? Supplemental: if so, is that such a bad thing?

Unrelated #2: I am going to start writing music again. It will be moody and tell stories about nightly visions and robots bucking the system. Nothing new on the music scene. Gotta fill the day somehow. Perhaps I will use my mad burping skills and loop it as percussion on GarageBand.

Cure for Pain

Favorite band and a lovely encore set to be sure. Just enjoy...

Could you be the most beautiful room in the world

Here are some furniture pieces I am pretty sure exist in my imaginary beach house in the world of unicorns and lost socks.
In no particular order, other than this is how I loaded them onto blogger. Enjoy!

Weird Bumps Under the Bed-sheets (a.k.a. your feet)

You know how cats never seem to tire of the "bed-micees!!" game?  Every other night they scamper up into bed as you snuggle down to rest and pretty soon your toes are being nommed on by a wily cat in no mood to sleep.  And so begins the process of gentle shooing away, verbal threats to de-claw, flinging of slippers at the cat's body and then the ultimate kitteh insult, room removal.  This usually results in a ticked off feline meowing and scratching to be let back into the bedroom in short order and the foot-atackee breaking their previously asserted iron-will. Thus the cycle may begin again until sleep overtakes all involved.

I mention this as an analogy for how my brain seems to work sometimes.  Bear with me, I swear it makes sense.  Sort of.  

The part of me that wants to stop thinking and get some quality rest = Owner of Cat

The part of me that constantly brings up new and useless topics to think about at obscene hours and won't let go until all ideas and options have been considered = Predatory Cat

If you followed that (as I know you did because my late night logic never fails) then you can also understand the following 1) I do not feel fully in control of my brain, insofar as I cannot shut it off even with cups of tea, threats of auto-lobotomy, or counting backward from 899 when the clock clearly says it is bedtime.  2) It seems to happen incredibly frequently and I have not got any better at dealing with it over the years.  3) I have managed to conceptually separate parts of my brain and brain function from one another, even as I know it is all one mushy mass of fatty grey matter and electric connections.  

Thinking about thinking is called metacognition and it is one of my favorite words as well as a generally fun activity It is possible that this is especially when you are a psych nerd as I consider myself.  However, I must raise objection to it when I am just reaching full-speed at 3am.  Ultimately, I would like to reconcile my joy at having an active and fairly free-association thinking style with being able to exert some control over the operating hours.  

I used to be concerned if the wackiness of all the stuff I spend time mentally sifting through was normal.  Like, do other people create a pros and cons list of buying generic brand condiments that is as frightfully exhaustive as mine?  You'll notice the pass tense thing going on.  That is because I am thankfully over deciding what parts of me are crazy.  I'm pretty sure the answer is yes in all cases.  Now I am focused on adjusting the volume/timing of the nuttiness.  Or learning to effectively respond to the intensity of the feline ferocity that is pouncing on my feets.  

-and she ends with the same metaphor she started with.  Shwing!

Never for money/Always for love

YES.

Self-Injury: A reflection

**Warning: this post may include some graphic content, including physical descriptions and emotional vomit.  Tread carefully.**

There was a time when so much of my body was obsessed and reliant upon markings.  These marks were of a rather depressing, self-loathing nature and yet they also allowed me to live.  I had to leave them on arms and hips and ankles so that I could make it to tomorrow.   Each time I cut, burnt, hit had its very special reasons.  Slightly raised white scars and red depressions on my epidermis last long past the moments that seemed so necessary and required for me to go on living are now uneven hints I don't fully get anymore.  The ritual, the cadence of a life linked so closely to pain has become more and more distant.  Flashes come and I reel.  The lightening sears through my mind.  I can feel it radiating through my neurons and as the electric storm rages I struggle to see beyond the currents.  I repeat the mantra "this too shall pass."  I know in time it will stop, or at least fade and then I can go limp.  My diligent resistance can break the constant flexing of will against will.  

It is with great pride that I have built up the knowledge that I can make it through, particularly when this knowledge stays in moments of mania.  It is not a lovely lucid conversation I have with myself in those times.  Rather it a translated transference.  I have not learned the language of mania, but still I manage now to insert into that rapid, swirling place the voice, the words, the feeling of pause.  And that pause is enough.  

What challenges me the most are the places the anger, desire to hurt comes from.  There is a primal element to it.  Half the time when I try to come up with words all I get are urges.  Urges to scream, or throw a bottle... watch it shatter.  But what does that communicate?  To what what end am I heading?  Divining the answers often leaves me with just as many if not more questions.  

One element has become clearer to me after much personal introspection, embracing the desire to move on, to love myself just a little bit more.  The one unifying piece to the self-injury has been guilt.  A strong belief that I don't deserve and I have done things so wrong that self-flagellation seems the only option.  And yes, it did develop alongside, intertwined with my screwy relationship with religion.  The confessions of sins part of church apparently really resonated with me as a small child and repentance loomed over me.  You'd think I was catholic the way I talk about it, but in a way I think if someone had given me the sentence of two Hail Mary's and one Our Father to wipe the slate clean perhaps it may have been easier.  

Of course me punching the stucco wall of our rental house until my hand was swollen and the thin layer of skin over my knuckles had split open wasn't so much a conscious begging for forgiveness, but an act of a mind in the clutches of bipolar.  Logic is not a requirement, but entire commitment seems to be.  (perhaps it was more like religion than I realise...)  

Not too long ago I had a very manic evening.  I didn't see it coming and when it hit I was not prepared.  The bird of prey (I have always felt possessed or captured by something foreign when the mania comes) swooped down and dug its claws into my back.  Yanked suddenly up I soared for a moment before the talons, pierced so deep, began to ache.  I tried to shake free, knowing a fall awaited me.  That bird, that hawk didn't want to lose its meal, but I yanked and yanked.  Open air rushed past me.  

Upon finding/smashing into the ground I encountered the nearly inevitable urge to hurt myself.  I had to literally shake myself, cry, vomit words, holler out to get past it.  But I did.  It is with this positive note that I want to conclude.  I don't pretend to understand why all of this has happened the way it has, but I can at least say I am learning how to address it and more often let the part of me that cares for my wellbeing be my voice.  Thunder, lightening, sins of ommision and comission, entrapment by neurotransmitters do not have to speak for me.  The whisper of hope I emit in crisis has become more powerful than the amplified booming of my torturer.  

Saving the best for last and other faulty logic

As a kid I always saved the best bite of food for the last bite.  The spot on the cracker with the most peanut-butter during snack-time in preschool, all the cookie-dough bits in the ice cream for one last heaping spoonful, and of course the cheesiest nacho in the heap.  I understood this to be a very important part of food consumption and even though sometimes the cracker would break into a million sticky crumbs on the way to my mouth or the nacho was no longer melty goodness, but had turned into a soggy chip with lukewarm guacamole and stiff cheese I felt it was a good character trait to have.  I mean I assumed being able to wait for the tastiest part was a sign of saintliness, or enviable self-control.  In fact it was all part of my growing sense of self-righteousness paired with self-inflicted martyrdom.  I picked it up from the odd combination of church, my incorrect interpretation of various civil-rights movements (my mom was working on her Master's thesis when I was seven, so things were a little heavy-handed when it came to politics around our house), and a developing desire to control something, anything.  In retrospect I am fairly impressed that I only flirted with an eating disorder during high-school.  What doesn't surprise of course are some of the other maladaptive behaviors I picked up, but that is not the point of this story.  (In fact, this story has no point as of yet.  This is a case of just started writing.)  

So here I am 20 some years later and I still have to remind myself it is okay to eat the middle of the PB&J sandwich when I get there, actually savoring each bite of those life-changing sardines, not scoping out my plate before I eat to divide it into order-of-bites.  And you know what?  By golly my peers do not stone me because I indulged and it seems food tastes much friendlier.  

This translates to other areas of life pretty easily and helps remind me to get a bit more "in the moment" when I can.  

And now, to get a little Jerry Seinfeld on you, What's with biological clocks?!  Why is it that randomly I see baby gear (such as the little get-ups below) and I feel a nearly tangible tug in the pit of my stomach?  And no, no, NO.  There are no babies today, tomorrow or next year in my body.  However, even though I state this very vehemently at times I still lose my shit when a cute kid goes by and I have to fight the remarkably strong urge I get to place it in my mouth and carry it around like a damn mama-cat.  Logically, I refuse to seriously consider making tiny humans until both AM and I have some more therapy under our respective belts, there is a back yard to send a rambunctious dog/kid/unruly chia-pet to go get grass stains in, and I have spent more time playing with my still perky funbags.  Apparently this is one of those seemingly more frequent cases where evolution of humankind trumps the evolution of my internal monologue.  The nerve.

And

In other news I am wearing a bra that is so comfortable today I forgot I was wearing it for hours. This pretty much never happens because 34DDs, though entertaining to look at (or so I have surmised over the years) are often hard to strap in for 12-14 hours a day.  And to make this bra even more awesome?  Its leopard print and has a 1950's structural element to it that just won't quit.  WIN.  

Night Burglar

It's almost 4:30 a.m.  Do you know where your good night's sleep is?  Cause I sure as shit can't find mine.  

In a vaguely related note, the moon seems to be shining way too brightly tonight.  Yeah, we get it, you look awesome with a mist shroud around you.  Stop finding the cracks in my mini-blinds and assaulting me with your ego already.  Sheesh!

Completely unrelated, a friend and I decided to start a book club and promptly agreed that only she and I could be members because we can't put up with other people's shit-opinions.  That and this way each of us gets to pick way more books as we go along and there are less people to have to share the wine with at the meetings.  I am super excited to engage in literary elitism with her.

Lastly, I ate smoked sardines out of the can today as I stood in my kitchen, watching the cats argue over which bowl of tuna belonged to whom (fish-tastic, I know) and I just about had an food-gasm right then and there.  Actual moans of tastebud pleasure escaped my lips and I found myself whispering racy things about Portuguese fishermen and smoke-houses.  A little creepy?  Maybe, but you don't know sardines like I do.  

It's Getting Better All the Time

I slept well for the first time in weeks last night and magically I feel much better.  The Beatles said it well and I stole the words for my blog title.  It is funny how just 48 hours can effect a person.  I hope this lasts for a while.  I think it will.

I am not going to rush into posting the million things I have brewing tonight because I am very near sleep (two nights in a row!) and am aiming to do a nice job of posting when I do.  I might even proof read for grammatical errors before I click the publish button.  

These two pictures are exactly how I felt/feel:

click here for a link to the fellows website.

Pity, Party of One? Your Table is Ready.

Wow.  It has been a whole month and a half since I wrote anything here.  And this directly after stating I was going to aim for a once a week minimum.   I have a million and one catch-up items to post.  Cat stories, depression/sleep issues, food recipes, books, employment complaints, Sacramento joys, and all the rest.  

But.  

I am experiencing some serious withdrawal symptoms from Xanax,  which by the way is now my least favorite way to bring about sleep second only to concussive brain activity.  As I go through the chills, heart palpitations and general dysphoria I am also doing a bang-up job of avoiding functional actions and feeling terribly sorry for myself.  

So for now I am going to shut my pie-hole until I can come up with something that doesn't centrally address how hard it is to be me.  It may be a while again, but when I come back it will be with gongs a' banging and rhythm ribbons a' swirling.  Hoo-boy, I know you are excited!!