A theme! A theme!

Is it really April-Eve already?

I was dismayed stunned when I realized late this evening that with the new month beginning tomorrow, A to Z Blogging kicks off as well.

I have been toying with the idea of sticking to a theme this time out with April's blogging event and have hit the now-or-never deadline for it.

Which went a little something like:

"Shit, I better figure out a blog topic for tomorrow." *slumped over hamsters on wheels and rusty gears expend great effort to produce thoughts* "Hey, didn't I want to do a unifying theme?" *remaining hamsters keel over, gears smoke but do not rotate*

So for what it's worth, this April's blogging theme for A to Z will be:

Bucket List.

Happy blogging to the rest of you participating!

Catching Up & Off to the (Writing) Races

I've been a little empty on the blogging inspiration side of writing this month. Which means my brain's been a little happy on the fiction side of things - so I'm not displeased. 

It's the end of March and I think I can safely declare my personal bullet journal experiment a solid 'enh' experience. I found myself playing catch up and filling in my daily to-dos after the fact, which is obviously hardly the point. However in fairness, trying to follow through and just seeing the brightly colored notebook on my nightstand helps to remind me of things I want to accomplish outside of daily shit-that-must-be-done. This rating of 'enh' is staunchly attributed to me, myself & I and I don't necessarily think it's not a great idea for other people. And at this point I'm glad I kept myself grounded and invested a Christmas gift card in the journal itself and didn't get all happy with special tapes, pens and the like that so many others suggest. I'll probably still try to give it a go for the next few months, but my expectations continue to be comfortably low. I may end up using half the pages in the thing for working on my A to Z blogging ideas anyway. 

April ushers in a potentially hectic writing time (for some). Last year I joined in a strange phenomenon called A to Z blogging, a letter a day (except for Sundays) to create a blog post. To my surprise, I stuck with it and saw it through to the end. So I think I'll tempt fate again and give it a second try. 

A to Z Blogging Challenge

And for those of you feeling bereft at NaNoWriMo being over, April 1 kicks off the first of two Camp NaNos (July being the second). Now I have not had mind blowing results from this less structured version of National Novel Writing Month (there is an argument that I don't have mind blowing results from NaNoWriMo either, but that's irrelevant here). I do like the idea of an invisible deadline to aim for to pad your word count on the project of your choice. I gave it a whirl last summer and didn't see much in the way of anything that kept me motivated to write more than I ordinarily would. I'm not exactly enticed to give this a go this time around, but if you're curious about what all this NaNo-this and NaNo-that is all about, here's a few links for you:

National Novel Writing Month

Camp NaNoWriMo

 

Tired

At the beginning of this year one of our local library branches announced 2 writing contests. My caustic cohorts merry band of writing friends decided to all submit a story for the second contest after one among us entered and earned an honorable mention in the first contest.

And it was all fun and games (which really boils down to snark) until I received the email that I'd gotten an honorable mention this time around.

Incidentally, my friend placed this time around and one day will be a Pulitzer prize winner, which is not currently relevant beyond my need to remind this person to write more. *cough*

I now, with literally a few days' notice, am to present myself in a library multi-purpose room and read the story I wrote. Aloud. In front of other people.

Instead of quietly rehearsing in my own private hell, I'm having to manage my mom completely coming undone. All because of the fact I'm getting a little paper certificate.

God help me, when I got the email notifying me I was at my desk with my mother hovering nearby. I was startled to see "Congratulations" in the body of the email and didn't think quick enough to take the proper precautions. Which means, as a general rule, keep my mouth shut until whoever I'd tell is in a more private area. And in an instant my mother knew. And demanded to attend the small award ceremony.

When I was little and would have school events and award ceremonies I never hesitated to want my mom to attend. She was, as far as I could see, perfectly together and didn't do anything weird. And at the time, social anxiety aside, she was a perfectly doting mother. Once I was a teenager and had finally witnessed her have a full breakdown, once her meds had been adjusting I still didn't have a second thought to her attending stuff.

We've crossed a bit of a burning bridge at this point though. And while I took a day to consider that she's on a new medicine and has seemingly had less problems as the week progressed (the amount of time she's been on this new medicine), today happened. Full meltdown where she all but told me I was a horrific mistake that never should have been born - or at least a really shitty daughter who has failed her miserably. The best part was when she started spitting out favorite sayings her predatory father apparently used to say. Nothing dirty, just sayings along the lines of 'right as rain' or 'more than one way to skin a cat'. I also enjoyed her shrieking swear words at me, telling me what a potty mouth I have.

If only.

Mom later told me her outburst was because she was overtired and NOT because the topic of the award ceremony and my story came up 15 seconds before it started.

I'm tired, folks. It's suddenly the night before what I hope is a quick and relatively painless event and I'd rather skip it and take a nap. Or drink a pitcher of margaritas. Or doze on a gently rocking boat with a paperback resting on my chest and a floppy hat covering my eyes.

Made possible by

My day was made possible by my TENS unit and my mom's psychiatrist.

A TENS unit, for those of you not in the know, is a magical little device that shocks the living hell out of your nerves to ease pain. That's a little dramatic, but that's the kind of mood I'm in so I'm going with it.

My electrode pads, those little white patches in the picture, don't typically stray from my spine. The basic idea of the unit is a current travels across the skin and along nerves to disrupt pain signals. The unit can also help increase your body's production of endorphins. Provided you don't crank that bad boy up to full strength immediately to imitate getting kicked by a mule at the same time you lick an electric fence, it doesn't hurt. It is, quite frankly, a miracle in my opinion. Long time readers may remember I have an issue or two I've inherited from my parents where the best solutions doctors offer are those nifty drugs advertised on tv as may cause cancer, tuberculosis or death.

And to those who have the delight of intense menstrual cramping? Give it a go. Seriously. Minimize your time in the fetal position of agony - unless that's your thing. Sciatica? Migraines? Chronic pain? It can help, though as with anything else, results vary. For me so far, it's worked like a champ. And it's a relatively inexpensive purchase from everyone's favorite on-line retailer.

My mother has been on a manic-y and hallucination-filled ride of late. She picks apart her food at every meal to look for things hidden within. Last week she claimed someone had etched a message on a chicken bone. She thought her chair was full of ants, but sat there anyway taking on imaginary bites. After a meal out with my father on Valentine's Day and a generally pleasant day, she ended February 14th asking my father if he wanted a divorce so he could be free of her. And she sees pencil shavings in ice cubes at the moment, so hold the ice for the time being. I won't even begin to explain the debacle that took place when she asked for hot chocolate and believed we'd given her something else.

"She claims that's what she gave me." This is what she told my father about 30 minutes in to what became a night-long event.

So, I was delighted when the psychiatrist's office moved her appointment up. Because these day's it's a constant weighing of each situation to decide if she needs to be seen ASAP or this is just the new normal.

He makes it look effortless.

In addition to adjusting Mom's medication this time (for about the 4th or 5th time in less than a year), the doctor gave me her personal cell phone number to keep her updated more easily.

Well that's gotta be a good sign. Right?

Yeah, I didn't think so either.

It's a difficult step to add another new medication to my mom's list and not one her doctor took lightly. Decades of being on heavy-duty anti-psychotics, some for far longer than is now recommended, have wrecked some of my mom's organs. It limits what she can take now. Gold standards in treatment have to be avoided because they would kill her.

So we add a new, fast acting prescription and wait and see if it helps control the rampant visual & tactile hallucinations, delusions and off the charts paranoia.