When Your Belief Systems Don't Believe In You

Since my diagnosis I have been having a spiritual crisis. At first I was too angry with God (or the gods, whichever you prefer) to go to church or even talk to him. I know that may not be rational, but that is where I was. I tried to go to church because I thought maybe if I went I would have an epiphany and get over my issues with God. It didn't work. While there I fidgeted, doodled on the cards where you write your name and such on, and thought about all the other things I could be doing and what a waste of hair products and makeup it was for me to go there and think about how soon I could leave. So I gave up on church until I could go for the right reasons. Yesterday Princess said that we needed to start going to church again and I tried to explain to her why I don't go. I feel it is worse to go and not want to be there than to skip it altogether -- whether that is the right answer or not I can't say. I'll let you know after I leave this world, if I can. I even stopped going on Easter and Christmas, to my little sister's horror. She is a C & E church goer and thinks it is sacrilegious to not go on those 2 holidays. I think I would rather stay home and trim my nose hairs than go, so it is better for me to stay home. I felt like my belief systems no longer believed in me and didn't know where to turn for comfort. I was so angry at God and so ashamed for being angry at God, that I didn't feel worthy of approaching him in any way. My aunt, who is deeply religious/spiritual, told me that I may have gotten away from God but he hasn't left me -- a comforting thought, but I still have deep doubts about it.

I was raised in a non-denominational church that we went to every week unless you were on your deathbed and even then my mom would wheel us in regardless of how sick we were. I was first taken to church at 3 weeks of age and attended every week until I was 18. The only way we ever missed church was if you were so ill you puked out your stomach, pooped out your innards, or if your Aunt Flo was so horrible the cramps incapacitated you, and even then it was a crap shoot -- if my mom thought you were still able to make it through, you went. Being raised non-denominational I don't understand the trappings of a lot of religions. We didn't have any certain things that we always did, or rituals or different saints. My husband was raised Catholic and his mom is such a strict Catholic that even though she has been married to a drunk bastard for over 40 years of hell (as she says) she still won't leave him because that would be a sin: marriage is forever. When my husband and I were planning our wedding, she told me I couldn't wear white because I couldn't fool God. I told her that I wasn't trying to fool God because he had been with me over the years and knows I'm not a virgin. She didn't want my husband to marry me because:

1. My parents are divorced. Because I had a say in all that. Why it is held against the children is beyond me. My parents didn't ask us our opinion of what they should do in their marriage. My dad didn't consult us when he walked out on us. She (my ex mother-in-law) felt that my ex husband should have married his ex girlfriend because she "came from a good family," ie her parents are still together. Never mind that her father was unfaithful to her mother for almost the whole duration of their marriage, that is irrelevant. The important thing is that they are still married; not what the marriage is.

2. I'm not Catholic. (Cue the sound of a shrill woman's voice shrieking EEEEEEK!) Time to pray to the patron saint of making heretics see the error of their ways! She can't comprehend that somebody could not be Catholic and still function. She was forever foisting blessed figurines on me and whenever something would happen she would tell me which saint I should pray to. I let my husband keep the figurines because they mean nothing to me and I really didn't want them. She had all these different effigies of saints for different things that she would give to us for different situations; they remind me of baseball cards and I refer to them as "Jesus coasters" because that is what they look like. My ex, who is about as interested in going to church as I am in having a sex change, couldn't fully shake his Catholic upbringing and put a lot of the different coasters in the cars to protect us when driving. I have to admit that I love the idea of a saint for everything and being married to a Catholic has given me more ammunition than I would have thought possible. Whenever something goes wrong for him I ask him if he had his Jesus coaster on him or if he prayed to the patron saint of ______? Reading about the lives of the saints is one of my favorite subjects, it being fascinating stuff. I have nothing against any religion as long as you are not hurting anyone else and it makes you try to better yourself; so if Jesus coasters and saints trading cards make you feel better and try to be a better person, more power to you.

3. My "boy" haircut. This has been a bone of contention for her since she first saw me, and if I had a dollar for every time I have heard about my boy's haircut, I wouldn't have to fight the SSA anymore. No matter what the subject is, she can always work it back around to my boy's haircut. "Well, I thought it would be a problem because you don't like to eat meat and you have a boy's haircut." "It reminds me of the first time I saw you! We went to where you worked and he said, 'There she is' and I was surprised by your boy's haircut." "Its amazing you guys worked out, he never dated anyone with a boy's haircut before." "All his other girlfriends didn't have boy's haircuts; who knew he liked that?" "Thanks for the birthday meal! I'm glad you took me out with your boy's haircut." And so on. For the record, my ex liked my short hair and didn't want me to grow it out -- even an inch -- and I never thought much of it until my ex mother-in-law became obsessed with it.

So where does all this leave me? Disillusioned and still struggling to find a belief system that believes in me. Even after 3.5 years of knowing I have MS, I still get so angry some days that I am not fit to talk to anyone, especially if it requires worship and thanks giving. I try to be thankful for the things in my life because I truly am thankful for a lot of things, but sometimes this anger overwhelms me and I lose sight of the good. In the stages of grief, isn't anger pretty low on the list? Like one of the earlier stages? That makes me wonder how long one should be stuck in one stage, but I refuse to force it. If anger is where I am, so be it. Acceptance, if one can ever truly accept something that is always changing and rarely for the better, is a pipe dream for me. Honestly, I am not sure I will ever get there and I'm not sure I really care. I don't want to become complacent about this. I would rather not be what people expect when they see someone handicapped -- a benign, accepting, not-quite-a-person type being. Maybe I am projecting my own feelings on others. I feel like I get treated that way, but maybe I am being overly sensitive on this. Regardless of which one it is, I intend to continue on this path life gave me, being with my feelings and looking for a belief system that believes in me.

Which Came First, The Crazy Or The MS?

Lately I have been fighting off the urge to drape my lazy, boneless, apathetic self on the couch and not do anything. And my house shows it. It is so messy and horrible I'm embarrassed to admit I live here and am not just visiting. While lounging about like a Greek goddess, I have been pondering the whole Crazy Or MS thing. I know that the vast majority of people with MS will suffer depression at some point in their lives (or the whole point of their lives, in my case) but I have been wondering if maybe my mental disturbances had more to do with whatever causes one to get MS than my own defective brain, or maybe that is the same thing? Maybe I had so many mental problems because my brain was predisposed to MS, or is that just crazy talk? To me it only makes sense that one would have different mental problems (like anxiety, depression, "mood disorders" etcetera) when the fluid on the brain is... different -- not the best word but the best I can come up with at this time. I was reading Weeble Girl's blog http://messystuffalifewithms.blogspot.com/2008/09/birthday-time-and-depression.html and could relate to it. I first contemplated suicide in the 5th grade. I stock piled a bunch of different pills and even cut my wrist, which I still have the scars from. My mom found my pills and took them away, so I started drinking the cough syrup, which was then taken away too. I dabbled with anorexia, but didn't like the light-headedness or the sick feeling of being too hungry. I couldn't do bulimia because I never throw up and to try and make myself would be way too much effort, having a very weak gag reflex. The main difference between her story and mine is that my family, while knowing I had issues, thought they were of no great consequence and that I was just going through a phase or doing it for attention (duh, isn't that the ultimate cry for help?). At the time my family was struggling financially and my parents' marriage, while never good, was at an all time low point. Our family life was so bad nobody had time to notice that I was having major issues because everybody was struggling. I learned to keep my feelings to myself and not talk about my problems and never, under any circumstances, trust anybody else. They had shown me that they either could not or would not be able to help me. I don't fault my parents though. My dad made it clear that he never wanted kids so we were our mother's problem, which has severely influenced my opinion of men. My mother was working 2 jobs, trying to keep our heads above water and we even had to get food from the church a few times because we were so poor. I have a very hard time letting anyone in or even close to me, I learned to rely only on myself. That is the major difference between Weeble Girl and I: she wanted closeness and I am scared of intimacy, and I mean that on every level. One of the results of all this is that I am not as kind as I would like to be. I tend to be more hard hearted than the average rock pile and my emotions are not easily touched. That has some pros and cons. I am not easily hurt by other people and do not give my emotions easily . A major con is that I can't give much of myself and feel like I'm missing out by being so reticent.

I hate being so serious and telling so much about myself, but I am trying to leave my "comfort zone" more often and challenge myself in the hopes of personal growth. I hate personal growth -- it can be so painful and uncomfortable. But I also hate being mired down by my own limitations and want to break out of the prison of my own making. So to that end, I am going Halloween shopping with Princess today in an effort to get out of the house more and mingle with the natives. Mingling with the natives is hard for me. I feel so insecure about the way I walk and etcetera... but here is where leaving my comfort zone may behoove me.

Gross Out

*Author's Note: What is wrong with me today? I feel like a blow up doll that someone left the air-blow-up-nozzle-thingy open on and all my air drained out. Is there an epidemic of lethargy sweeping the nation or just my house? We are all lazy and sprawled out like we are boneless. Ugh, trying to muster up energy to do anything but can't seem to. Princess claims she is tired and lazy but she hasn't stopped talking since her eyes popped open this morning; think her constant chatter is adding to my lethargy -- can't get out from under this mountain of words.


You guys crack me up! I have a very high thresh hold for what grosses me out -- it takes a lot. Precious little will truly make my innards churn, which is why I am always the one to clean up animal/kid vomit, or anything else others gag over. Even shock sites like rotten.com and others of that ilk do nothing for me. It doesn't bother me, except for the empathy I feel for those who suffered such a hideous fate. In fact, the other day my little sister was looking at rotten.com and came across a picture of a man who died in his bathtub because he put his heater on the edge of the tub, which then fell into the tub electrocuting him and they did not find him until quite awhile later, by which time he had become a sort of human soup. I found it funny -- not him dying that way, even though its hard to feel too much sympathy for someone who would put a heater on the tub -- but because of the whole soup thing and my little sister's horror at it. I tried not to laugh, but every time I thought about it I would start to snicker and my little sister would become grossed out all over again. I know karma is going to off me in a hideous fashion that will give amusement to the other sickos out there like me, and I am okay with that. I know I deserve it, so I hope it gives a good laugh to someone. That's why I don't go to those sites, because, believe it or not, it does make me feel bad to laugh at that stuff, but I cannot find it in me to feel pity for someone who died because of their own stupidity -- like trying to steal cable and getting fried by the power lines. Did nothing go off in your head that said, "this may not be a good idea, messing with these power lines?" I do stupid stuff all the time, but even I know better than that. My ex husband was so easily grossed out that it caused so much merriment in me. The man had the lowest gross out thresh hold of anyone I've ever known. So here are a few of my favorite things that will make him gag and/or throw up if anyone mentions them:

The Ice Bucket
He works for UPRR and stays in a lot of hotels/motels. One time a guy he was working with brought some food from home that he insisted on sharing with the other guys in the gang. He put the food (I think is was scalloped ham and potatoes) in an ice bucket to heat it up and my ex husband had to choke down some to be polite. He can't even talk about it without gagging so hard his eyes water because he is scandalized that someone would eat out of an ice bucket. All he can say about it, without throwing up, is "do you know what people do in ice buckets?!" I don't know about you but the only thing I have ever done with an ice bucket is get ice. But he is convinced that there were manifold hideous, gross things done in that ice bucket that makes him sick to even think that he ate something out of it. When I am feeling irritable with him I will ask him what people do with ice buckets just to watch his reaction. It is a source of endless fun.

The Booger.
This one has to be my favorite. Princess has bunk beds and her little brother sometimes spends the night. He is now 7 and getting over his obsession with his boogers, but for awhile there we had to keep a sharp eye on him to remind him to get a Kleenex. I don't think that is anything unusual, most kids go through the booger stage, I will only gag when they eat them -- YUCK!! So one day my ex was in Princess's room to check on how well she cleaned it up, when he noticed a booger on the wall by the bed her little brother sleeps in. Her little brother, Pumpkin, was about 5 at the time and at the height of his booger obsession. The booger was nothing horrible, not anything but a small little booger -- I've seen much worse from my dog -- but my ex reacted like it was the most gross, horrible, nasty booger ever. He ran out of the room to tell me I needed to clean it off the wall but couldn't get all the words out. He was so grossed out that he threw up in the drain in the basement laundry room -- all over a little booger! It was right after Thanksgiving and he had had a turkey sandwich for lunch, which he was bitterly disappointed to lose to the drain in the basement. He can't even talk about that booger without getting sick at the memory. What a baby! You would never know that he can gut a deer and eat a sandwich at the same time with the way he acts -- and that makes me sick.

The Messy House.
This was the first story he told me that he gagged his whole way through and I laughed until I cried about. One of his friends was dating a girl that needed help moving some of the larger things in her house. Having a truck can be a huge disadvantage at such times -- everyone wants you to help. He went to help move her washer and dryer, but the house was such a mess and smelled so bad (according to him) that he couldn't go into the house without dry heaving. I'm sure she was loving him for that, but I have no pity for her -- clean up your damn house if you don't want to sicken people! He had to wrap a towel around his head to go into her house! That was the only way he could help them move anything. And the towel was one he had in his truck for cleaning it (the truck). I tried to get him to tell me what was so messy and smelly that he had to wrap his head up to go into the house, but he can't even talk about it. The best I have been able to gather is that she had crap everywhere and it smelled like dirty diapers and rotten cat boxes. He can't talk about it beyond that. I have seen some darn messy houses before, but I can't imagine one so bad as he claims that one was.

I probably shouldn't laugh at what makes others sick because the things that make me sick are probably nothing to others. Like anything with too many or not enough legs makes me SICK! There was a strange, hairy centipede in the bathroom the other day and even though my bladder was in distress, I still had to kill it with my little sister's hairspray before I could bare my bottom to it and tempt it to attack. I can't let the animals eat off of any dishes because then I will never touch that dish again and am paranoid that I may inadvertently get that one and eat off of it. It doesn't matter if it went through the dishwasher a million times, it will always be tainted to me. Strange the things people find disgusting...

Clean Cat Boxes, Stinky Breath

*Author's Note II: Your comments amused me so much I laughed so hard I choked. Having put my lungs back in my body, I thought maybe I should add that growing up with a mom who has always worked in the medical field in one capacity or another has made me rather thick skinned to petty things like poop, and boogers, and blood or anything else gross you can think of. Eating dinner she will tell us a story about some old guy's diarrhea, or someone being so constipated they needed.... well, never mind what they needed. Its pretty gross. So I enjoy a good bodily-function-related story as much as a teenage boy does -- farts will always make me laugh, sadly. *Sigh* Sometimes I wish I was more of a lady, but then somebody will toot and I lose it.

*Author's Note: I posted this on my other blog too, but felt it needed to be shared with more than just my family. I have a blog brewing right now, it may be ready later today or maybe tomorrow. But until then, I hope the following does not happen to you.

I love having help around the house. It gives me warm fuzzies that I can't even begin to put words to. Like yesterday, my little sister ran the vacuum and folded laundry while I was napping (on the couch but slept through it as always). Her bf/f took out the trash and put some of his stuff around the house away. It was GREAT! But I don't really need help cleaning the cat boxes; I have it down to a science and can clean those things in a few minutes flat. Apparently the little dog didn't get the memo. This was mostly my own fault: I forgot to put the kid gate back up to block the basement from the dogs. My dog, old and set in his ways, doesn't venture into the basement. He is not overly fond of stairs and knows that it is usually blocked off so any efforts to get down there are futile. Besides, there is a couch to hold down and that is more important that what the cats are doing down there. But not the new little dog. He is such a pot-bellied pig he scrounges for food constantly. We think his food issues stem from his puppy hood. He and his litter mates were kept in a chicken wire cage and were rescued by the Humane Society. He has scars from where the chicken wire rubbed up against him and we think food was scarce and that is why he is so aggressive about food. So me forgetting the kid gate + full cat boxes that the dogs see as horderves = one little dog with the SH*TTIEST breath you can imagine. Literally. My little sister came home from work last night and was greeted at the door by the dogs. I was laying in bed reading (the new Eragon; I'm an addict) when she came home. As soon as she was in the door she barked out, "What smells like CAT SH*T in here?!" I figured the cat boxes must be worse than usual, even though it is not time to change them. She brought home Taco Bell, which is the only thing that could possibly pry my butt out of bed at that time, so I went to scavenge off of her. While we were sitting at the table, the two dogs were panting at our feet; panting the most horrendous odor of cat turds that almost made me lose my appetite. We sniffed towards the big dog; just regular dog breath. We sniffed towards the little dog and he panted cat poop in our faces, just about knocking us out and making us vomit at the same time. My little sister asked if I had put the kid gate back up after doing laundry, and we soon discovered why the little dog snacked out of the cat boxes like they were a delicious buffet. I stuffed his butt in his kennel -- no way he was sleeping in my bed with that breath! -- and felt like I needed a hot shower and a tub full of bleach. That is one chore I do not want help with and I hope to never smell anything that horrible ever again!

A Story

Yesterday was almost a black day for me. Almost. It started out in the usual way: pop awake at 5am (I only have 2 states, awake or asleep), stumble over the obstacle course of pets and stuff others who can lift their legs leave lying around to trip those of us who are not so blessed, let the dogs out and start my coffee. After brushing my teeth, taking my handful of morning meds, and sitting down with my coffee to play some text twist, Princess stumbled out to take her chances with the obstacle course and informed me that my dog, my precious baby, was having a seizure. That is nothing out of the ordinary, he has been having them since he was a puppy so we know how to deal with them: keep him safe and let it run its course. He is now 7.5 years old and getting very white, which saddens me but I know the seizures take their toll on those who suffer from them. Anyhoo, he kept seizing from 5am until almost 7am. He would start to look like he was coming out of it, then another would start up. I was scared to death of losing him because I know what status epilepticus means, and it is nothing good. I wanted Princess out of the house before I called the vet because if he had to be put down I didn't want to ruin her day at school. I sent her to my older sister's house a little early (she living just down the street from us and works at the elementary school) and called the vet. I got my little sister and her bf/f up, which is no small feat, they being unable to get up anytime before noon without turning into dust, and had them help me get my dog into my truck to take to the vets. I was crying and sobbing with the abandon of a child; my sinuses and eyes were working over time so that I was soaking one Kleenex after another. The vet put some diazapam up his... rectum as a last ditch effort to see if we could bring him out of it or if he needed to be put down. He came out of it, thank all the gods, and the vet gave me some anti-seizure meds for the future and some diazapam and a syringe to put that stuff up his butt if it happens again, which I hope it does not, I am not too hip on squirting something up his behind but will do it if need be. The vet talked and talked and gave me advice on what to feed him, how to inject the stuff up his rear, the importance of making sure he gets his anti-seizure meds every 12 hours and so on. We were there for over an hour and a half and near the end my nose was feeling itchy. I scratched my nose and realized I had a big, crusty booger stuck to the outside of my nostril that had been there long enough to dry out and become itchy. How gross. I couldn't help but be amused by what the vet must have been thinking the whole time he was talking to me and looking at that thing. If I have to walk around with boogers all over my face to have a little more time with my baby, I will do it with a sign around my neck that says, "I wipe my nose with my sleeve" and a big smile on my face. When I thought for sure that he was leaving me, I kept praying that his spirit would not leave me and that brings me to the second part of my usual long-winded story.

Before I launch into this story I have to give a little background information for it to all make sense. I don't believe in ghosts or aliens or the Ouija board or things that go bump in the night. I believe that there are things in this world that can't be explained, and that there may be some ghosts out there, but I think 99.9999999% of it is people seeing what they want to see. When something thumps in the night or something happens that I can't explain, I don't assume it is a ghost, I assume it is something practical like the pets, the house settling, or the heating ducts, something along those lines. I am a literal kind of girl and unless a ghost hit me upside the head with its chains, I probably wouldn't believe there was one there, which makes the following all the more perplexing.

The first time I did the steroids, and every other time, I never stay in the hospital for the whole 5 days. I do it outpatient; that was our compromise for me consenting to do them. My neurologist won't budge on how many days I have to do it (I was arguing for less, he wouldn't come down any) so every day I checked in and paced for 6 hours until they sprung me. If they tried to keep me I would probably claw my way out of there. I don't know how people do it! They rev me up to the point that I would have to be straight jacketed to keep from running away -- and even then I would probably run anyway. It was the second day of my doing the steroids and it fell on a weekend so the outpatient center was closed. They put me in ICU because that was the only available bed at that time. The ICU nurses were not used to having a patient not needing intensive care so they left me alone for the most part (to my pleasure. I hate being watched too closely, like an animal in a cage). I was lying in bed, keeping company with my horrible heartburn, pondering the whole "I-have-MS" thing (being newly diagnosed and still reeling) when I saw come through the door our family's dog when I was growing up. This dog died, practically in my arms, when I was in the 10th grade. He was a mutt, a mix of, what we could only guess at, German Shepard and Saint Bernard, along with others too, but those were the main ones. I hadn't really thought about him in a long time, so I was pleasantly surprised to see him come in. I had forgotten how big he was, his very fluffy, big tail, the swayed back with a large black patch almost like a saddle on it. He came over to the bed, I moved my legs over and he climbed up and laid down with me. I figured he was there for a reason and feeling very safe, I decided to take a nap with him. I told my mom this story and she cried. I don't have any close relatives that could have come "visited" me, so she thinks he was sent to comfort me and show me that he is watching over us still. And as much as I am a disbeliever in such things, I can't see any other explanation other than him coming to show me that he was still with us, especially at a time when I needed it the most. Funny thing is, the day I went "crazy" and cut my wrists, I was waiting for him to come take me home. When he didn't show, I knew it was wrong and called my mom. So chalk this up to whatever you would like. I can't even pretend to understand it. But I now keep an old picture of him in my room to remind me that I am not alone in all this.

Writer's Block

What is wrong with me? I can't seem to get on here and get a coherent post to save my rotten pelt right now. I have different ideas rattling around my head, but nothing at the stage where I have thought about it enough to really talk about it. The thing most on my mind right now is my little sister's plans for her marriage in about a year and her desire for me to be the matron-of-dishonor. And I mean dishonor. I am so soured towards marriage that I cannot muster up any enthusiasm for somebody planning to take such a rash and careless move. This will be her second marriage and I am shocked that she didn't learn her lesson the first time. True, this guy is a complete 180 from her ex husband, but I still do not trust marriage. Not one bit. She tried to talk me into going to a bridal expo, but even the mention of it made me break out in hives and want to go back to bed with a hot toddy and an ice pack on my head. She has dragged me to bridal stores where the sight of all that happily-ever-after-fairy-tale crap made me want to go on a rampage and picket outside the store. I had to fight the urge to projectile vomit split pea soup all over the mountains of tulle and fluff in Exorcist style. They tried to stuff me into some bride's maids dresses, but I was reluctant (to say the least) to tell them that I needed the bottom-heavy-gourd size. And I really hate those strapless bra things they have you wear to try that stuff on. I tried to play nice and helped her into different dresses, even took a bajillion pictures for her to ooh and ahh over later, but I had to put my foot down about trying on too many bride's maids dresses. She got a bunch of different catalogs with different bride's maids dresses that she has been pouring over and trying to get me interested in. Frankly, they all look about the same to me and I do not care about a ribbon over here instead of over there, so I told her to pick what she liked and I will wear it. My only request was that I cannot wear heels so choose accordingly. Me with heels on is like a pig on ice -- with stilettos on. It ain't pretty and is only good for a laugh. Not only do we have bride's maid catalogs, but the other day she got a catalog all about invitations. This thing is THICK, probably a good 100 pages or more and with several invitation styles on each page. She went through and circled the ones she liked! This patience from a woman who only cleans her room when I threaten bad things to her person. She tried to get my opinion on invitations, but I cannot care about all that nit-picky stuff. Pick one and be done with it! Who cares if the hearts are embossed or have your initials or are concave with only the last name initial?! And don't get me started on the cake or what colors she should go with. I'm sick to death of pondering whether these colors or those colors will go best with whatever else she has planned. I'm not trying to rain on her parade, but I am still hurting over the demise of my own marriage so it is hard to be thrilled about these things. To her credit, she is aware of this and tries to be sensitive when she can. But then she see mountains of tulle and fluff and all rational thoughts leave her head and are replaced with fairy tale wedding crap.

The Tide Has Turned

*Update: I am going to take a half dose of the antibiotics on days I have to leave the house and have committed myself to the full dose on days I don't have to go anywhere. I wish I could stop them, but being raised by a nurse I can't do it -- she would (as the old cliche goes) poop twice and die. Come back from the dead and poop twice and die again. So to spare her the trouble I am just going to suck it up and do the right thing.

Thank the gods and all false idols for that! I was getting tired of the foul stench of low tide that came with my rotten mood. My little sister and I made up. I apologized for being a warty rag ass and she apologized for treating me like a servant and agreed to try to pay me back on a more regular basis. Her bf/f didn't know what to do when we were fighting; he didn't realize that she and I have been fighting since she was 2 years old, as my mother says and she should know, so we know how to fight and make up. He was scared of me, like the wrong word or look would bring my wrath down on him and would barely make eye contact with me. He is a very passive person and not at all as vocal as my sisters and I. I'm not a silent bitch. When I am mad I make no bones about it -- if you piss me off I say so. There is no gray area there with me. I told him so, so that he would know where he stands with me because I will tell him when his life may be in danger. A few other highlights from my boring life to make you feel better about yours:

*I can't take these antibiotics anymore. I usually am very strict about taking the full prescription of antibiotics but these are killing me. I think the sickness was preferable to this. I know the dangers of not taking all the medicine, but this is ripping up my guts. We were running around yesterday and had to go order my little sister's birthday cake (tomorrow being her 30th and she is boo-hooing about it. Being 34, I have no pity. The 30's are not that bad.). I skidded into Walmart's parking lot on two wheels, raced out of the car before I could even turn it off and had to push women and children out of my way to get to the restroom. It used to always annoy me that the restrooms at Walmart smelled like old lady poo all the time, and I had/have a theory that they go to Walmart to pinch one off because they don't want to stink up their own houses. Well, yesterday I had to join the ranks of old-ladies-stinking-up-Walmart-so-their-own-houses-don't-stink. Although mine was not premeditated. If I had gotten pulled over I would have had to let loose on the side of the road and would have gladly taken my ticket for indecent exposure over doing it in my car. I have too many things to do today and do not feel like strapping a bucket to my ass to get them done, that and they give me a horrible taste in my mouth and indigestion. I will take the risks of not finishing my antibiotics even though my mom will have a fit. Its just not worth it.

*I am so glad Denver Refashionista has gotten some meds for her depression and anxiety. Everyone in my family (except my mother) has a problem with depression. My sisters' get the kind of depression that makes them lethargic and not want to get out of bed. My depression only operates with anxiety so I can't relate to the lethargic kind. I get horrible panic attacks that make life torture, and unless you have had one, it is hard to imagine the sheer terror of one. My arms could fall off, but if I'm having a panic attack I wouldn't notice. I never knew there were meds for such things and suffered with them for years before I finally broke down and saw a doctor -- after not sleeping or eating for almost a week. People can say whatever they want to say about these meds being "brain-washing" and such, but anyone who knows me knows I am not brain washed in any way. These meds took away the overwhelming anxiety and depression so I could live again without irrational fears ruling my life. I could sing the praises of Paxil and Xanax all day and never get tired of it. And I am not an addict either (I've heard that one too -- that if you take Xanax you will become an addict and end up giving b.j.s to get more.). I have been taking the same dose of Xanax for almost 7 years and so far I haven't had to suck d*ck for more.

*I've been adopted by my little sister's/Princess's dog. This really has nothing to do with MS or anything like that, but it is currently a hot topic in this house. I didn't want another dog. I have a dog. I have a 7.5 year old yellow lab that is my baby. He has grand mal seizures that he has had since a tiny puppy and I don't leave him with anyone without a list of how to handle them and how to treat him. I have never hit him, at most I may push his butt with my foot when he is really naughty, but that is rare. When we were doing foster care the kids could climb on him and pull his fur and he would only move away when it was too much, but if a strange man comes around he will growl and not let them near me. He is so protective of me that one time when a man was walking down our street, he sat on me, pinning me down, until the guy was gone. So I am perfectly content with my baby who is so spoiled he cannot lay his precious golden pelt on the floor but must be on the furniture or in a bed. My little sister/Princess wanted a dog like that for themselves, a dog to sleep in their beds at night and be dedicated to them, so they got a corgi for themselves. I prefer big dogs; little dogs aren't really my thing, but Princess loves corgies so that is what they got. They named him Widget, which I wouldn't have picked out, but, hey its not my dog. He sleeps in my bed and protects my chastity all night -- he won't let anything on my bed when I'm in there. Where ever I go, there he is, under foot. And God forbid I close the bathroom door to shower or use the toilet, he will be at the door scratching and whining. If someone tries to take him off my bed he growls at them and comes running back to me as soon as they let him go. I really did not want 2 dogs but now I have a guardian to make sure I keep to my vow of celibacy -- not sure how thrilled I am about that. I decided that since he adopted me, he needs a better name. Because he has such short little legs and is such a little sh*t still (only a few months old. We are still working on making him mind) I have renamed him Midget Poo Poo Platter. It was originally Midget Sh*t Head, but Princess can't say sh*t, so I changed it. I'm glad animals like me, but damn, sometimes I feel like the pied piper who gets followed around by a herd of pets.

That is all that is going on with me, but it is preferable to being in such a foul mood I pollute everyone and everything around me. Today my goal is to get my errands done and get to others' blogs to see what they are up to, hopefully your lives are at high tide. Oh, I almost forgot, I am thrilled that Ms. Brain Cheese is back (I originally typed Brian -- big difference). What a long, dry, serious time it is without her. I need her humor and unique outlook to spice up my dull life!