Posts Tagged “good thangs”When I fly, I almost always fly US Airways. They have at least one fantastic pilot and crew. Anyone who can land a huge plane safely in a river right after takeoff so that all 150 people can get off in one piece without going under is fantastic in my book. ![]() Babbled by Immi. Tags: good thangs …for all sorts of things. Awards, for one. Dano of Mental Motes has honored me with the Arte y Pico award. I always wondered if anyone read the random quotes at the top of my blog. Dano quoted one so now I know someone does. Thanks, Dano! Christmas is coming and I have no idea about the goose’s girth. But I do know I’ve done about all I’m going to do for the Christmas spending fracas. No money equals no Christmas spending fracas. I sent out a few holiday cards. And I did order a handmade gift for my mother, but fortunately I paid for that months ago. So I’ll go to the candlelight service at Meeting and eat a lot and that will be that. What I do wonder is why it’s not bothering me that I can’t do a lot of gifting and whatnot for Christmas, because I love everything about giving gifts and wrapping and all. I’ll take it not bothering me, though, whatever the reason. I don’t wonder why the family thing doesn’t bother me. Since my parents split up when I was 9, Christmas has always been a weird jumble of stuff. I end up having a lot of Christmases – with father, with mom, with grandmother, with grandfather. Slowly that’s fading out as people die off or get too old or too cranky to mess with it much. My mother and I will go to my Grandfather’s for Christmas dinner. I’ll give her her gift that morning. And I may go with her down to NC for the boxing day to see my brother if I feel up to it. And I may see my father there briefly, again, if I feel up to it. Somewhere along the line, I laid down my law that I would do what I wanted and felt up to and no more. So we’re all used to that and there’s no big flap about it. I’m glad for that. I feel for the many folks who have a hard time at the holidays. I used to… *blinkblinkblink* Whoa. I just remembered why the holidays don’t bother me any more. Weird. 1995, the year my grandmother died. Christmas was 3 months later. I had a big Christmas dinner for my whole family and everyone acted like they were at a funeral. I don’t think I’d ever cooked a turkey before. My dad and my brother just sat around and moped. God that hurt that no one really cared that I busted my ass to make a Christmas. I said then that I wouldn’t bother again since they didn’t give a shit what I did or didn’t do. I haven’t bothered since then. Not to cook or visit or much at all. When I have money I send gifts. As I said, I like giving gifts, but I’m well aware I’m doing it as much for me as anyone else. I like to make people smile. Trying to do Christmas doesn’t make my family smile, though, so no use messing with it. How odd I’d remember that now. (Gotta love blog therapy.) I’ll go have a cry and then be peaceful with it all again. And I’ll still go with Mom to dinner at Grandad’s for Christmas. She’s the only one who smiles when I do things like that. ![]() Babbled by Immi. Tags: good thangs, my life I was amazed and pleased to see that John of Storied Mind gave me an award. Like whoa, what? I didn’t know this beautiful writer knew MigraineChow existed even. I’m tickled both for the award and to see that folks I may not realize visit are getting something from this blog. Yay! Thanks, John. I love the idea of a Lemonade award in itself. It’s based on the idea that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I try to make lemonade here. Sometimes there are too darned many lemons and it’s just lemon juice. Sometimes I get sappy and it’s just sugar water. But mostly, I hope it turns into lemonade. There are so many of you other bloggers that make lemonade too. I’ll ponder the lemonade makers and get the award goodies together in the next few days. Raine commented on yesterday’s post that she hadn’t heard of anyone else having serious mental effects as my agitated suicidality when trying to quit smoking. I’ve heard of a few others, and read some about it. It seems that smoking is a “working” self-medication for bipolar disorder of some sort, as 60%+ of us smoke or did before we wrangled our way through quitting. By “working” I mean that it has beneficial effects in the area of calming or mood help. Obviously it doesn’t work in terms of what it does to our lungs, etc. It also seems that those of use with more frequent or severe psychotic symptoms are the heaviest smokers and have the worst time quitting. Oh joy. No wonder I go wacko when I try to quit. Bother and stuff. It seems that the nicotinic receptors getting plugged by the nicotine in cigarettes helps somehow, though I’m not sure anyone knows how. But always more to learn. I am sort of on the fly, but for folks who may be thinking they’re more nuts than usual to have a hellacious time trying to (or succeeding at) quitting smoking, here are some articles on it: here, here, here, here, here, and here. Not to say we shouldn’t quit smoking, but it looks like there are valid reasons why it can be real hell on us to do it. Yeah, I’ve got that on my mind as I still feel like crap from two asthma attacks this weekend that I probably wouldn’t have had if I didn’t smoke. Fardles. Oh well, pass the lemonade. I’m still kicking to type about it. ![]() Babbled by Immi. Tags: bipolar, good thangs, smoking Contrary to appearances, I do things other than ponder mental illness. This is a piece I made this weekend for a Valentine’s contest. I’m not sure I’ll enter this one. I may make and enter another. But we’ll see. ![]() Babbled by Immi. Tags: good thangs I woke up yesterday because I was having a hard time breathing. It was so cold in my room that my asthma was giving me trouble. My bedroom is on the northeast corner and I figured that with my door shut on the coldest night so far, the heat just wasn’t quite cutting it. We do cut it back a good bit at night. When I opened the bedroom door and felt a waft of warm air, I figured that was what happened and made a note to leave the door open when it’s that cold. It turned out the reason it was so cold was that the heat had gone off. The rest of the house was around 55 degrees which felt warm compared to my bedroom. I thought that was kind of funny. Luckily we have a service contract for the heat, and they got it fixed for us before 1pm at no charge. So this morning I didn’t wake up from having a hard time breathing. Yay for that.
I’m frustrated about my asthma. I’m frustrated that my Trileptal affects the Singulair that I take for asthma and allergies. It makes it less effective. If I could have gotten off the Trileptal this cold weather bronchospasm might not be happening. The psychiatrist at the time I started the Trileptal felt it was the lesser of the two evils, and at the time it really was. I’m doubly frustrated that I just can’t seem to quit smoking, too. I’m too scared of the agitated, crazed suicidality that trying always brings. If I could have quit smoking I no doubt would have less trouble with my asthma too. I feel like I have to crash my brain in order to breathe better, and that feels useless and frustrating. It seems I have less and less good to say about bipolar meds and me. Not seems, is so. Yes, I’m very frustrated with them. I’m frustrated that the Trileptal gives me severe gastritis and mucks with my asthma meds. I’m downright pissed off about it. I’m pissed off that the 10 or so weeks I spent adjusting to Lamictal didn’t get me anywhere, and the switch from brand to generic undid me so I can’t take it. I’m angry that the prednisone I had to take for my asthma caused psychosis so I had to take something for that and the something for that was Zyprexa that’s made me fatter and my blood sugar go up. There’s not much good to say about all that. In spite of all that, I haven’t given up on the idea of bipolar meds, or even the Trileptal in particular for the moment. The reason is simple. The bipolar mixed mania and psychosis I lived with for so long before I started it was so much worse than all this. It was worse than all this put together. I’m surprised I survived it, and if I can help it, I’m not going back there. So I’ll be back at the drawing board trying something else soon. That something else may be the generic of Lamictal without switching back and forth from brand name, since that switch is what seems to have undone me. Or it may be Topamax which acts on the temporal lobes, which Trileptal does and keeps me from feeling horrid, but isn’t an enzyme inducer like Trileptal so won’t have the Singulair side effects at least. It’s unlikely to be an anti-psychotic even though they work well for me, because they also side-effect me all to hell or interact with the only antibiotics I can take. I know I may well have to put up with some sort of side effects in order to stay away from that horrid mixed mania and psychosis. I’d just like to pick which ones and make the best of it. Life doesn’t suck these days in spite of the meds mess and the asthma. Amazing as it seems to me sometimes. *grin*
I got my papadum Friday night. And a mango lassi! *swoons* Mom took me out to eat Indian because I’ve been craving papadum for weeks. It was yummy. And yesterday I took it fairly easy again. I didn’t push myself to catch up on the work I missed Friday, at least. And I got a friend to help out with a project I’m working on as a volunteer. Yay for me! It made for a pretty good day, and hopefully gave me some resilience. I had fun running about with my mother yesterday too, in spite of the asthma attack. We went to Rostov’s Coffee shop which is always fun. Mom had decided to celebrate the Christmas season with good coffee. Since I just can’t drink cheap coffee because the acid eats my stomach and it tastes awful to boot, I was tickled. We got samples or pounds of 5 different coffees: Tanzanian Kilimanjaro, Sumatra Mandehling, Kenya AA, Guatemala Peaberry, and Hazelnut. The Hazelnut was for Mom alone, because she loves flavored coffees. She almost didn’t get it because I don’t like flavored coffees, but I insisted that she should buy herself treats even if I don’t like them much. We had fun poking about through the different coffee utensils too. They sure make some weird gadgets for making coffee of various sorts, and seeming 40 jillion sorts of cups. It was fun. Walmart and the other errands weren’t as much fun as Rostov’s but they were ok, and it was fun being out with Mom. That’s plenty of diarrhea of the fingers for this morning. ![]() Babbled by Immi. Tags: bipolar, good thangs, meds, my life
Nov
30
2008
No more blind broke bipolar with expensive eyeglassesPosted by Immi in good thangs, hodgepodgeIf you can see my pic over there, you can obviously see that I wear eyeglasses. I’ve worn prescription glasses since I was in kindergarten. And the price of them has clobbered first my mother then me all this time. The eye glasses I’m wearing now cost me almost $700. Not cheap. Not even remotely. And struggling with bipolar disorder and those hypomanic debt leftovers, I can’t afford to replace them at that price. Then what to my wondering eyes appear… noooooo not reindeer! Optical4Less.com. Oh. My. God. They actually have eyeglasses cheap. I’m astounded. The eyeglasses I paid $700 for, with all the same bells and whistles like progressive lenses and anti-glare coating, are only about $100 from them. Can I faint now? Nope, I can’t faint yet, but I can babble. I could actually afford to have more than one pair of glasses at these discount costs! You could too, no doubt. I could get prescription sunglasses, and different style eyeglasses and be fashionable for a change. Rhinestone glasses appeal to my blingy side, and all different colors appeal to the artist in me. I could get Mom new reading glasses for Christmas. I feel like a kid in a candy store! Candy store it is with this glasses shop. They have this way cool virtual try-on system. I think that’s amazing. But it makes good sense. You choose the shape of your face and it shows you the eyeglasses you’re looking at on someone with that shape face. W00t! I don’t know about you, but I think it’s a ton better than stumbling around a shop trying to guess what a pair of frames might look like on my blind, squinting face. Now I can have a clue. I am so totally psyched. Now that I’ve found this Optical4Less online shop, I can get new glasses. Yes, I’m paying off those hypomania debts, but even this broke bipolar artist can come up with with the money to get new glasses at these rates. And yes, I’m cool with ordering glasses from them online. They have a 30 day money back guarantee, so that’s all cool. What more can you ask for in that regard? Now I just have to call my optometrist and get a copy of my glasses prescription. Well, maybe I’ll wait ’til Monday. Somehow I doubt he’s there on Saturday night. ![]() Babbled by Immi. Tags: good thangs |











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