#ROW80 1st QTR 2013 POST 1 - GOALS REDUX

I wasn’t entirely sure there was going to be a post today. Y’see I went and broke my blog yesterday. I started monkeying around with the widths. In Blogger in the “Live Blogger” settings, whatever those are, once you do that, you’re toast. At one point, instead of 2 columns, I had 3 columns and the center column was so skinny, that the rows had only one letter per row. Boy, did that suck. Legally blind, confuse-a-what, purple and black background swirls. All of the Orienteering in ROTC in High School couldn’t have found their way out of that. So, I did what any good computer science tecchy person does. I hid it for a while until I could figure it out. Actually, this just required some patience, which I have barrels of. I have a seriously sucky-looking blog, but we’ve grown together, so it’s cool. It at least works.

Can you find the title and have I become my own meme?

Today being the very, very first day of #ROW80 1^st Qtr 2013, post 1, I am going to announce my intended goals. Working within my own limitations, which I have kind of, sort of come to some hand-shake truce with. Not because of any real support from my own doctors and not to slam them, but through the wonderful support and optimism from folks and groups, like YumaBev, Jim Adams, Penny Adams, CyndeeBowen, Sherry @inspireme39, P.A.N.D.A., and National Parkinson’s Foundation. Without their wonderful presence, this would either be a different post, or non-existent.

My goals are this; I have enough material to self-publish an e-book. In five sections, early life, my study and career in music, how I ended up in computers and my career at IBM and Verizon, how I became homeless and the aftermath and my present life. I had started to try and put this all together during NaNo, but 2 things interfered.

Thing number one was a disastrous clash with some “neurologists” during a two hour appointment, which was an exercise in botched communication, frustration and humiliation, because I appeared to not “understand” what a very heavily-accented Chinese intern was directing me to perform. The attending physician, rather than greeting me upon entering the patient suite like a normal person, BARKED “why are you here?” Not convinced I wasn’t “faking," or it wasn't my bipolar symptoms I was sent away in shame. I also have Asperger; they didn't listen to me tell them that my bipolar diagnosis was in March after a psychotic break; my more severe onset of PD symptoms was in June and again, in October of last year. They were completely deaf to that. 

Convinced I was not wrong, but frustrated led to an almost-melt-down on my part that following weekend. My meltdowns are pretty spectacular. Luckily, I have a good support system; the Tampa Police Department are kind; the Tampa General Hospital ER docs rock. The attending in the ER couldn’t understand my agitation. Until we both agreed that we would agree on what we both were saying; I had an appointment the following Tuesday that had been set up in advance with my primary care doctor.

This was the previous Sunday. He couldn’t figure out why I was there. Piece by piece, I was able to tell him. He carefully noted it in my chart, as we agreed on each point. By this time, I had the worst headache of my life. This happens when I become so severely frustrated. With the tremors and the other pain from the “Parkinson’s Disease, or not-Parkinson’s Disease, that is the question,” I begin to stutter and have trouble talking. He was able to get me calmed down enough and give me an IV for the headache. I went home that night. JC was frantic.

My primary care doctor was understandably pissed, but not at me. I am on a regimen of vitamins, cinnamon, and eating. I’ve felt remarkably good, but trying to write got to be too hard and I was hating it, so I stopped shortly after that episode. I’ve had one other visit from my municipal support friends in the form of Tampa Fire Rescue. I had a little shock when my good friend decided my ex who put me in the hospital (it’s complicated) could come and stay with her.

Bam! The worst chest pains imaginable! Radiating through the center, around my back and shoulders, cold sweat, everything. I was eating scrambled eggs at the time I was talking to her. Quick! Call 911! RRRRRRRR! Blood pressure, all the whole megilla. They got nothing; I’m A-OK. JC had put an aspirin under my tongue. The eye-candy guy (and why do all the fire-guys look like a hunka hunka burnin’ love?) who had driven the red ambulance looks at my meds.

“Did you take your Xanax?” Me, sheepish. “nurm.” He says, “What? Why not?” “It makes me drowsy.” He just grins. “Ma’am, Mary, you’re supposed to take your meds and stuff.” Busted. “I’m feeling better,” I protest. “Take your pill.” Busted

So enough of that, I’ve been eating and also getting some exercise. Back to why NaNo was a bust. Two, was that I had not one clue about how to pull together any kind of novel or lengthy work. I had this idiotic idea that I should start at the beginning, but after listening to writers and authors discuss strategy, I hear myriad ways to bring their work to print. The real starting point for my story is somewhere closer to what I am assuming is the end of my life; when I was dumped off at the homeless shelter. It’s a terrific place to begin and would hook any reader. Any thoughts on that?

ROW 80 POST 29 – STRAY WONDERS AND OBSERVATIONS

Governor Sparkle, aka Scott - I would hire whoever Photo Shopped this, 'cause he looks like an actual       bi-ped here. Just sayin'. 

Well, after the events, alleged felonies, misdemeanors and crimes around here, and let’s face it, the rest of the world, I thought it might be time for a bit of reflection about What It All Means. Balls. It means what it always means. We can put as much meaning or as little import into the Signs and Wonders of the world as our current states of hearts and minds allow.

When someone starts waxing about the divine or Man’s Original Sin or as I saw last night, although in jest, how the “Mayan Calendar called it, because Twinks are Toast,” or something of the sort, I smell the same end-of-the-world bullshit that has been floating around since the world began. I believe the Mayans don’t actually come out and say we’ll all become a floating cinder, they have some other lingo. Until I see some actual terminology like, “melting earth,” or “3^rd planet from the sun is incinerated, on December 21, 2012 at 10:12 A.D.” I’m going to continue on in my own little orbit of whatever this is.

“This” can be whatever I want it to be. I designate it so. If that sounds batshit, so be it. It’ my “this.” You can go get your own “this,” whatever your “this” is. Eventually, if I keep this up, which is different than “this,” I am going to become well nigh unreadable, and I will lose my record high 15 followers. I hope not. I plan to start re-posting from my truly “Homeless” days, and expand on that craziness. Now that we have celebrity bank robbers, in our midst and who knows what else; but I digress.

This post is truly going nowhere. I was starting out with some observations, and this is an example of that. Firstly, my writing prowess exceeds my material at present; rather like Richard Strauss’ “Simfonia Domestica,” which, I mentioned to our conductor Kenneth Jean in Detroit, at the time; I compared Strauss’ tone poem to “taking your cat shit to the dump in your Rolls Royce.” Ken thought that a fine metaphor. “Simfonia Domestica” is a shitty programmatic piece of music, but beautifully written. I’m full of puffery like that. Observation one and one-and-a-half.

Observation two. How is it that as we tear along into the 21^st century that it seems all really is not fine and dandy? Or not getting finer and dandier? I make a shit-ton of jokes about how it’s déjà-vu all over again and I rather wondered for a while, where the rage of the 60s went. However, I think it is still there and I believe that its vectors have just changed. Rather than surging through the streets and closing universities and bombing federal buildings, the rage is being felt and expressed through the internet. 

I realize  that this is not a spectacularly original thought. However, with the immediacy of the internet and without having to deal with the logistics of moving people, materiél and supplies, cyber-rallies, cyber-demonstrations, cyber-vandalism and cyber-attacks can be planned and executed very quickly. It will also be easier and quicker to find allies, cutouts, back doors and sabotage big systems. Yipes. I just scared myself.

However, none of this will make a bit of difference if I can’t figure out how in the HELL I am supposed to open ANYTHING. This is where I channel YumaBev and all the rest of the Parkies I haunt. A plus, I do have my very own Parkie-Pedia! Check out www.parkinsonpanda.org. I swore to God I wasn’t gonna even mention them today; honest Injun. I sound like I’m stalking the Parkinson’s Disease people. Jim and his darling wife, Penny Adams. Maybe I need an intervention. Swell. Come and intervene. Please. Be my guest. I want to invite them all to my next grocery shopping trip. Everyone's invited!

This is the most hysterical thing since, I don’t know what. The 1 Stooge. I almost took out the wine aisle with my cart the other day. I jigged and the cart jagged. There was a couple sitting at the place where you take your high blood pressure. He was taking his. I bet it was eleventy billion over seven jillion, when I got through with them. They saw me bearing down on them with a cart full of shit.

I had about 3 X more shit, plus cat food, and no Rolls Royce!

I had to have had 300 pounds of groceries in that sucker. I’d been to the Dollar Store and had canned goods and a garbage can along with all my groceries. I weigh about 100 pounds, but I’m strong. I try to move fast in between the shake, rattle, and roll. So, here comes the Death Locomotive and it’s Blind, dead at them. I kissed that wine aisle, missed them and at the last minute, I executed a 90 ° left turn, and hollered out, “This is why Mary don’t drive!” And went clattering off to the Pharmacy, dragging Whackamole in my wake. They’re probably still praying.

ROW 80 WEDNESDAY CHECK IN - "NOT-PD" AWARENESS MONTH

Sometimes, we have to listen to our hearts

Okay, so here we are, day 7 of NaNoWriMo and Day "I Forget" of #ROW80. I have just discovered that today is the 7^th day of “Parkinson’s Awareness” month, which I knew nothing about. Because?

I’ve been having one hell of a writer’s block for NaNoWriMo. I know what I need to say, but it’s so goddamned painful, I can’t get there from here.

I’ve also been busy talking to national desks about All Things Political, here in Florida. Said ‘desks’ will remain unnamed for the time being; it seems someone has paid attention to my rantin’ and reasonin’ and I am going to be talking about it post-event, whatever said ‘event’ may be. Jeeze, now I sound like I have a tin foil hat and am channeling aliens on my fillings. Rest assured, I am not. It has to do with a petition I horked up like a hairball and some First Amendment gobbledy-gook trampling I whined about.

But, mainly, where we are is? I am having problems and maybe this is just my inner cry-baby, AGAIN! Like, when is it not? I hurt, I have pain. Yeah, we all do. I feel stupid and shitty and lower than low even talking about this. I’ve had and am having, really the most fabulous life, in spite of my start in life and is spite of the shit I brought down on my own head. I really can’t complain. So now, here I am, whining. Doesn’t it just drive you mad?

So, let me try and put it in non-whine terms. There’s lots of ow. Odd ow; sharp and bizarre, like a thousand and one little imps with pointy implements all over my body and in my organs. All of them, including eyes, ears, ear canals, brains, throat, gums, anyplace that has nerve endings. ANY place. I cannot emphasize that enough. Go wild with your imagination. And not just pains. Different sensations, too. Cold, hot, electricity. Everything, except? Nothing. There are times I’m NOT aware of some of the sensations, if I’m directed distracted (another thing I do; word substitution) by something else, or misdirected. Along with all of this is just plain numbness or tingling. If I injure myself, as I did when I burnt my hand on the grill, another part of my hand hurt, not the burnt part. Confused, much? So, I’m describing physical sensations, not whining here.

Lumped in with the physical, but a cross-over to the mental, are sensory inputs. My hearing is completely fucked up. I have always had absolute pitch and I trained my pitch memory in school. 35 years making a living in music has provided an ear that is more a pain in the ass than a gift. The worst thing in the world is listening to music that is out of tune; even a little bit. The basses in the open here are sharp and the tempo at the beginning is a bit fast (a minor quibble) and beside the point. I can’t understand certain things said or written.

Either words sound muffled and rushed; indistinct and slurred, or they have no meaning when I read them and I must read them again, sometimes several times to make sense of them. Sometimes I must ask people to repeat themselves, to the point where I’m embarrassed, or feel brain-damaged when they repeat ever… so… slow… ly. Gah!

So, ears, skin, they no work like they did. Check. Howz about time? Aah, yes, the old sense of time. Wait. Wait, wait. Sense of time is not a physical sense. So, sense of touch, check. Sense of hearing, oh yes. Did I mention the jungle that is constant in my head? The hooting and hollering? Check. Reminds me of the time I worked the swing shift at IBM. There were only about 20 of us at the time and we were scattered around this huge room in a cube farm.

One dead Friday night, around 11 o’clockish, someone hooted. Someone else, way on the other side of the room “awk-awk,” “eek-eek’ed” in return. Pretty soon, it sounded like a Tarzan movie set. I was, as I always seemed to be in these things, the one responsible engineer, on a call, trying to explain, to the caller why it sounded as if we were in the midst of a Jack Hanna extravaganza. I never muted these calls. Whoever had to listen to my calls for Quality Assurance deserved it. Anyway, I have all of that without the break-fix. Just the sound effects. They come and go.

All of this writin’ and rememberin’ is my way of sayin’ I’m tired. I’m tired and I’m sick and I cannot concentrate with the flair and fervor that I used to display. What took me 45 minutes to do, is now taking me 2 days and endless re-writes and backing ups and editings. I hate it. I have lost my lightning-in-a-bottle pizzazz when writing. Maybe, I never had it and I’m only fooling myself. I think not; I know myself pretty well. But, I’m beginning to hate writing and that is scaring me. So, for now, I will write as it “strikes” me. I will still follow and cheer on and participate in every other way. Admittedly, it hasn’t been much of late. But it’s because of “this,” whatever “this” is. I will still play around in SDBN (Now With Added Moms,) too. I love this, I just don’t want to start hating it and I want to do quality, not quantity.

I have recently come a bit farther in the whole “family saga and what do I think” thing, and as wonderful as I think my mother was, I think she wasn’t in many ways, if you get my drift. That’s my bale to tote and I’ll deal with it. I am not feeling bipolar-y in the psychotic break sense, just depressed. I’ll get over it. Depression is nothing new for me. I’ve dealt with it since I was 16. As long as I don’t stay up for a month and try to drink the Dawn dish soap, I’m good. I think sometimes, we need these little setbacks.

JC is 65 and we just got through what could have been a major health problem. He’s diabetic and he had an infection that ran “hot.” Within 24 hours, his right leg from just above his knee, down to his ankle was  swollen and infected. We initially thought it was due to our new Perm-a-Kitty scratching him; but no. She was the hero. He had and infection from the colonoscopy he had done at the local Medical School last June. They were a bit “rough.” WTF?!?!? Probably bumped something. When kitty kneaded his knee, extant infection, spread like wildfire. Of course, get the medical community to admit that. I have promised this man, that after all of his crappy, horrible life, he will end it in light and laughter, or I will make him wish he were dead, so I need to keep that promise. He’s doing ever so much better, but of course, I have to think up ways to keep him amused. I love him beyond reason. He’s a wonder

The other thing? I need to get a handle on this “PD or not-PD,” so to that end, I am going to be hangin’ with my PD buddies, and trying to support some of the stuff that’s going on. There are studies and I think if I push hard enough, through folks like Jim Adams and his wife, Penny Adams. They are founders of  P.A.N.D.A,, a new group that helps people with PD and other movement disorders. Israel Robledo, YumaBev, Parkinson’s Humor, Parkinson’s National Awareness Month and countless other groups and studies. Maybe one of these groups will listen to me. God knows I would love to participate in one of these Motor Disorder studies, preferably with a psychological, musical slant. 

I’d be a veritable Petri dish of interesting finds. I’m just tired of fighting ever-increasing symptoms and trying to keep abreast with everyone else, with all that's going on. It may not seem much, but let's face it. I'm getting old and I'm frayed around the edges, and probably in the middle, too, if we're honest. My sugar gets out of control and I have seizures now. Those are new. I won't get Medicare until March of next year. Just got the paperwork and entered the last 4 numbers of my SSN for my DOB. I believe in saving time. I'm a dumbass. Shit, now I have to interact with an actual person.

So, look at it this way; this isn’t goodbye, this is see ya… less. I hate indecisiveness. Asperger Syndrome, along with some type of stupid Spock bullshit; ain’t no cure for me.

P.S. I've just been informed by Penny Adams that this is Alzheimers/Dementia and Diabetes Awareness month; my bad. Still ain't no cure. I'm sure I have one of the 3.