Confessions of a Sleep Addict

Post of grief, including a short list of his works found on the web, here.

I've been unfriended for the very first time by someone whom I didn't unfriend too — the only other time it was an obvious mismatch — and it's a very odd feeling. I have a compulsive need to ask "Why? What did I do? How can I change?" etc. I hope it's simply because this journal is in limbo right now, as I post elsewhere (but still infrequently). I do read my flist (journals only), though so having one now be missing chunks will be disorienting.

When my account expired from paid today, all my extra user pics become inactive (even though I still had almost a year's worth of time paid for those). Some LJprogram decides which ones become inactive, and there was no way for me to alter that, even though I could see all of them. So I started deleting the ones it named as active that I knew I didn't want. It seemed to then simply add new active ones from the bottom of the list. Ugh! So I deleted every user pic I knew I didn't want. Only later did I discover that all those would have remained visible in posts and comments had I not deleted them; they just weren't useable. ARGG!
All it would take is a simple option, "make inactive". Buggers. Now I'm down to seven, just to get to the six I wanted. And I still would rather have the 7th rather than 6th. Screw it.

I just turned off my automatic payments.
I finally caught up on what's been happening on LJ lately and it sickens me. Thank you,springheel_jack, for posting so extensively on it.
I'm not sure where I'll go. I do love my friends list. But I can't support this company.

I do have a zaadz account, as yet unused, as it is a wee bit omphaloskepsistic. (Or, in a phrase Ron Rosenbaum recently used in reference to something else, "all-kumbaya all the time". Love that.)

Oops. An hour or so later, evidently blogger is my choice. Why'd I check it out? Because that's where John Rogers posts, and I've always adored him, his style, and his blog's simplicity & functionality. Months ago I found my new community here, where, although Toby Stephens has served as a sort of nucleation site around which we've clustered, the bonds formed are much solid than mere fandom for a film & theatre actor, no matter how dashing he might be. [Edited to add: to all the Google Alert-ers ]

So I guess this is goodbye, of a sorts. I didn't expect it to be, when I sat down here five hours ago. (Christ, I'm thirsty! And I haven't slept more than three hours in the past 48. Going off the SSRI to see if eliminates the vertigo is not working.) Where was I? Oh yes. I expect I will still be reading/commenting on my Flist for quite a while, at least until you all have feeds I can subscribe to elsewhere. I am sorry that this LJ community experiment didn't turn out the way it seemed so many of us hoped, even those of us who arrived late to the party. If anyone does find a good place for sustaining this kind of environment (without the Stasi), please do invite me. I make absolutely wonderful appetizers.

This makes it easier to think about leaving. Although the only real reason would be to be closer to the kids as they grow up. I hate being so far from them. I nearly wept this morning when I channel-surfed past to Mighty Machines. (Jacob's favourite show, not this episode, a better one, with DIGGERS!)

The newest xkcd is more disturbing than funny (not a complaint!), but this comment thread cracks me up.

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Always suspicious of the accuracy of such tests, I can't help but try every one I come across. Strangely enough, they always have the same result.

Your Personality is Very Rare (INTP)

Your personality type is goofy, imaginative, relaxed, and brilliant. Only about 4% of all people have your personality, including 2% of all women and 6% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving.

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I am overwhelmed.


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A chocolate a day keeps the doctor away.
Daily morsel of dark chocolate cuts blood pressure.

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As seen on zed_pm
When you see this post, quote from Doctor Who on your LJ.

The Doctor: Aw, I wanted to be ginger! I've never been ginger! And you, Rose Tyler! Fat lot of good you were! You gave up on me! [Rose looks annoyed] Ooh, that's rude... Is that the sort of man I am now? Am I rude? Rude and not ginger.

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THe ENT did not stop the spinning. In fact, right now it is worse.

It's not Labyrinthitis. It isn't even Ménière's disease. He seems to think it is more central. Actually, that's what he kept repeating "It's more central." Being the internet junkie I am, of course I came home and did research. Sometimes I long for the days of ignorance.

CAUSES OF VERTIGO:

PERIPHERAL (ear)	CENTRAL (brain)
Vestibular Neuronitis Benign Positional Vertigo Link Meniere's Disease Ear Trauma Labyrinthitis Drugs (aminogycosides, quinine, ASA) Perilymph fistula Degenerated Otoconia (cupololithiasis) Autoimmune ear disease cholesteatoma	Stroke in Brainstem Tumor in brainstem Multiple Sclerosis Encephalitis Migraine (rare) Drugs (esp. sedatives) Seizures (rare) Anxiety and Panic Motion Sickness Acoustic Neuroma Head trauma

It ain't motion sickness.

The rest of those aren't exactly joy-inducers. I can't go off all the drugs, so even if it is that, I'm stuck, at least for now. The best I can hope for is anxiety and panic. So that's what I have decided it is. And I will conquer it with my geekiness. Thank you, Frank Herbert: “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear... And when it is gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear is gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Except that anxiety and panic don't explain the headaches, paraesthesia, tingling & numbness (especially around the mouth), ear pressure & fullness, and tinnitus.

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Home again. And freshly 40.

Strange, though. I just feel like a very tired & sore 24-year-old. Okay, maybe 34-year-old.

But, although it does still occasionally give me a stomach-clenching twinge when I think upon it unexpectedly, being 40 doesn't really bother me. I am still alive. I had the best visit with my family I've had in years. My niece and nephew are the most hilarious, intelligent, cute, brilliant creatures ever born, and I actually got along fine with my step-mother. (It helps that they live out at the beach this time of year and only came into town three days a week.) Most amazing of all she gave me compliments about how great my hair looks long, and that was immediately followed by this: my father called me beautiful. Without qualifications about needing to lose weight or get my life together, etc., (all of which I acknowledge). In fact he said it twice. I nearly fell off the couch. Instead I simply said "Thank you." I figured out later that it's because I look more and more like my mother, with my long, whitening (not greying) hair up in a knot. I wonder if he figured it out too.

Now a week of doctors' appointments: new shrink (one who specializes in health-related stress disorders; not covered by Canada's otherwise wonderful health care system nor by my work's supplementary health insurance beyond the first two or three sessions, damn it), dermatologist for multiple mole removals (not likely skin cancer this time, but just to be sure — hey, isn't it about time for a cancer on the presidency? Reagan, Clinton, who else had them? ); and then woohoo! the ENT on Friday. Good thing I double-checked. I thought the ENT wasn't until November and the other surgeon (for the lipomas) was Friday. I may get rid of the sinusitis & labyrinthitus sooner than I thought! I'd do a happy dance if I didn't think I'd fall over.

A good way to start a new year, I think.

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It wasn't a stranger that I hadn't met. She was my upstairs neighbour. A woman I knew. A woman whose number was on my phone. Who kept the same hours I did — I could hear when she moved around, turned off the TV and went to bed — probably because we shared the same disabilities: fibromyalgia & TMJ. She was on leave from work at Canada Post because of hers.

She had been given new medication. She fell. She couldn't get to a phone. She died. Because she lived alone, nobody noticed or found her for days.

I thought I was imagining things, making something out of nothing. I wish...well, it doesn't matter now.

Would be nice if I believed in God, though, so I could pray that doesn't happen to me.

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That's what I kept thinking this past week. My apartment just reeked. At first I figured it was just the occasional problem of sharing a common bathroom fan duct with other suites: sometimes you're gonna smell other people's shit. So I turned the fan on and closed the door. Lit matches. Even lit scented candles. But the stink kept coming back.

I took out every last piece of garbage I could find, did every dish, cleaned stuff that hadn't been cleaned in ages. Checked the weather network website to see where the wind was blowing from. (When it's from the east, it can carry the brutal scent from the pig farms & slaughter houses.) The stench was so bad it would wake me up from sleep. I have slept through ringing phones and five hours of my alarm going off. It takes a lot to wake me up.

Then I started noticing flies in the bathroom. And larvae, too! Wtf?!? I figured mice or maybe something larger had eaten the poison from the last time I had mice, long ago, and died in the walls. "I have been watching way too much CSI", I thought. It reminded me of the episode where Gill Grissom just knew there was a body hidden somewhere but couldn't find it.

So today when I walked out the front entrance and saw police cars and two guys stripping off protection suits, I nearly fell down the stairs. I'm on the apartment complex's emergency contact pager this weekend, filling in for the managers. Nobody called. I should have stopped to ask what was happening, but I was in a rush to catch a bus. (Errands to run before I go on vacation tomorrow.) I'm sure I'll find out soon enough. Wonder who the new neighbours will be.

At least the smell was gone when I got home.

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But what would it do to my fillings?

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I guess they really are loaded for bear.

As indicated on Mind Hacks, the 2007 winners of the Best Visual Illusion Contest have been announced. Some amazing brain/eye tricks there, and great inspiration for icon makers. I do hope someone does a variation of the Steel Magnolias and Breeze in the Trees one soon. But the Bouncing Brains didn't bounce for me; they merely wiggled a bit. I wonder if that's because my brain is a certain way or if the illusion wasn't working properly on the website.

As these all prove quite profoundly, you can't always trust your own eyes.

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Not only does she blog almost perfectly, she has the perfect life. How do I get that?!

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Just what do you do when there is a single gunshot somewhere outside your window at 12:57 a.m.?

I've been hunting with my father. I know what a shot sounds like. This was gunfire. It wasn't something else. If I had to guess, it was in the parking lot just east of my kitchen window, across the green space. (I can't dignify the empty chunk of lawn with the name "park".)

I didn't hear or see anything else. No screams or shouts. No cars. And it is very, very quiet now. Too quiet, as they say.

This neighbourhood has always been erratic like that. A girl kidnapped from the 7-11 just before I moved in, a pipe bomb at the high school about six years ago (I was awake when it went off at 2 or 3 in the morning then, too — shook my place), random drive-by shootings, mostly piddly gang stuff. But for the most part it is very benign, very safe. I used to go walking at all hours.

If I were male and/or healthy, I probably still would.

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