Home and so tired...

Family trip down to London, Ky., in the Appalachian foothills, this weekend.

Well, not all the family this time, just nine of us. 

It's still exhausting.

My mom is really from Blackwater, but since that is up and back in the holler, you can't find it on a map. It's just easier to say London.

We went to the cemetery:

Then we went into town for the World Chicken Festival and saw the World's Largest Skillet:

The kids had a great time at the fair with all the rides and booths...I went back to the car and had a nice little nap.

This morning, we stopped by one of my favorite places:

Chelsea and I got our pictures taken...I don't know why Chelsea has such a peculiar expression on her face - she's wearing a pretty skirt! 

We spent money inside...we always do:

We stopped at Berea...here's some painted hands:

We visited my favorite gallery:

We also stopped and got fudge but I didn't take a picture of that because it's not fair. No chocolate, no peanuts - I can't eat any of the good stuff :( .

Yay! That's where the story ends, because that's where my pictures stop. So, this is the abridged version. :)

Dwayne came over to babysit while I was gone; my kitty wasn't thrilled and Chelsea's bestie was less so. HAHAHAHAHA...

That really makes this whole exhausting effort so worthwhile...

Cephalopod Coffeehouse September: Between A Rock And A Hard Place

Aron Ralston's amazing story has already been told in the media and on the big screen, but in 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place' you get the whole story in his words. 

Ralston is a real-life adventurer, who quit his engineering job of five years to pursue mountaineering full time. As he describes in his book, he 'had to make a choice between following [his] bliss and keeping his job...In the end, it didn't even feel like a sacrifice.'

Almost a year later, on April 26, 2003, Ralston was hiking in Utah's Canyonlands National Park when a giant boulder fell on his right arm, pinning him to the wall in a remote slot canyon. 

On the fifth day of being trapped, he amputates his own arm, rappels (one-armed) 150 feet to the bottom of the canyon, and hikes, dehydrated, 40 pounds lighter than when he went in, and rapidly losing blood, five miles until he comes across a family who sends for help.

The book alternates between the days of being trapped and his years of mountain climbing, skiing, hiking, rafting, and search and rescue. I know nothing about mountain climbing, so constant talk of carabiners made my eyes glaze, but eventually I started to daydream about climbing Denali and watching the sunrise and still making it down the mountain in time for breakfast...

He ran out of water on the third day. His will to survive, even though he was sure he was going to die, was incredible. I highly recommend the book...

Go see The Armchair Squid for more reviews and to enter your blog for next month! :)

Images of broken light

I hardly ever watch TV anymore.

I just lost interest, like I lost interest in everything else.

But that doesn't sound right, because I LOVE TV, just like I LOVE playing piano, and drawing, and all the other things I stopped doing.

But anyway, my TV stays off.

I do, however, have the first three seasons of Glee on my iPod.

Let me just say, I was there first. First episode, first season onward. I'd be watching the show, and I'd say, "Chelsea, come here, come here!"

And she'd come running, and then turn away in disgust when she saw it was Glee I wanted her to see.

Then, last year, the brat decided all of a sudden that the show was cool, she downloaded all my episodes and all my Glee CD's - don't start, I know I'm a Gleek - and pretended like she'd been a fan all along.

Whatever.

So now, of course, because I don't watch anything anymore, she knows more than me. I didn't watch the last part of Season 3 or any of Season 4. I know what happens, but I haven't watched it. I just can't.

Here's the bad part.

This summer I was telling my mother about Cory Monteith's death and how perfect he was on Glee and how much he'll be missed, and my mom says, "That sounds like a show I would like, let me take it home."

So my mom took my precious iPod, and didn't give it back for three weeks.

It gets worse.

When she picked me up every morning, she was watching Glee on the iPod, with her little headphones in. Then she proceeded to drive me to work. While she watched Glee. Okay... wait. While she hypothetically watched Glee.

So there I am, a terrified passenger, "Mom, PLEASE, put that away, it's illegal."

Here's Mom's logic, "No, texting and driving is illegal. I'm not texting. I'm only watching."

Three weeks this went on. Okay wait...three weeks this allegedly went on.

She just turned 61. You would think that would be old enough for some sense, right?

So finally, she stops bringing it in the car, and I want it back. Every day, I want it back. Every day, she says, 'Oh sorry...I was watching the Michael episode, I forgot.'

Three days in a row of that. You know, I feel very sorry for Dwayne. This flaky, forgetful, personality trait was handed straight down to all three of us from Moma.

No wonder he looks so frustrated when we get in the car 45 minutes late sometimes.

FINALLY I get my iPod back, but not without us watching the Michael episode one more time. It's Mom's favorite because they sing the Jackson 5 song 'ABC' which she loves, and my favorite because they sing Michael's 'Man in the Mirror' which I love.

And now Goodman 1 and Goodman 3 are badgering Goodman 2 to get season 4 downloaded so they can watch in full for season 5 starting this week.

But...but...I don't even watch TV anymore! Well, hardly ever. Well, okay I watched the Emmy's. I sold out.

But I'm cancelling my cable...bye bye TV...

What day is it? Oh, it's Migraine Monday, as usual, nothing to see here, carry on...

I am overwhelmed.

I am...swimming in a silvery liquid that doesn't let me go very far.

I am crushed.

I can't breathe.

My heart is in my throat.

I want to crumble to the floor and weep.

I want to run, and run, and run, and never come back.

I don't want to be here anymore.

I don't want to be here anymore.

I am overwhelmed.

And now, finally, I am crying.

Fifteen pills.

I counted 'em. All in all, I will have swallowed fifteen pills today.

I say 'will have' because I haven't taken the Ambien yet.

I get made fun of often by my friends and family. I'm low-key, laid back, and I speak slowly. I have a southern slur. When I talk to customers over the phone who are from New York, I can hear their impatience. "Will she ever get this sentence out?!" LOL...

I say 'wow' and 'cool' a lot.

The point is, everyone thinks I'm on drugs. And I am. But not the kind that everyone thinks I'm on.

And the realization that today I will have swallowed fifteen pills has me just a little down.

Yes, I was hospitalized twice last year. But I'm getting stronger every day. I'm making a comeback. Do I REALLY need all this?

I don't want to be an idiot who starts feeling better, stops taking her medicine, and then has a catastrophe happen.

So...never mind then. Carry on.

On a completely unrelated note, I wonder if doctors get some kind of kickback from pharmaceutical companies?

Annie's Song

My beautiful Annie

I've rarely talked about my Annie in this blog, maybe a mention here or there...I've been remiss!

Every family has a black sheep, one who bucks the status quo and does her own thing, and that's my beautiful cousin Annie. I was always the oddball they didn't understand, but I was malleable. Annie, malleable? Never!

We have a family event every two weeks or so, or at least once a month. All 14 of us are expected to attend. The first time Annie didn't show up, I was shocked. You mean not showing up was an option?

Annie has tattoos. An ankh on her back, a huge tribal tattoo on her arm, a panther on her leg. I made the mistake of asking why she had a lizard tattoo on her leg and she didn't speak to me for hours. IT'S A PANTHER, NOT A LIZARD!!! 

Annie has a nose ring.

Only Annie is allowed any of these privileges. My grandmother would have spanked me with the yardstick for the second time in my life if I had showed up with a nose ring and tattoos. But I wouldn't, anyway, because long ago my grandfather told me I wasn't allowed. I guess Annie didn't get 'the talk'.

My mother and Annie's mother are sisters, so, due to the way my grandmother raised all of us, Annie and I might as well have been sisters, we grew up so close to each other. I was her maid of honor, and her beautiful little girl calls me 'Aunt Michelle'.

In the month that my grandmother died, Annie and I both ended up in the same treatment facility. Annie was admitted a few days before I was released. When I think back on it, our mothers had just lost their mother, and their daughters were in the hospital. We didn't make it easy on them, did we?

While my reaction to Moma's death was nearly killing myself by falling into the black hole of depression and never resurfacing, Annie's reaction was to dive deep into drugs to numb the pain.

We're both doing better now. I still have a ways to go, but I'm so much better than I was. Annie lives in the country in a bona fide farmhouse which is too far away for my liking, but she's become so capable, I'm so proud of her. She's a wonderful mother.

She'll be 29 in a couple weeks; and always my beautiful Annie.

My cube...no, really...

So, this is my desk at work. Doesn't it look cozy?

It has all the comforts of home: my astronaut, my kitty and NWF calendars, my UK stuff (Big Blue Madness is coming up and it'll be time to change out my poster-yay!), my diet Pepsi and of course my daughter and kitty pics. 

There's a weird thing about working in cubicle-land. We spend half of our awake time here, with our only reprieve the weekend. We spend more time with work people than we do with most of our friends and loved ones. 

If I need to remember something, I put it on my work calendar. If someone needs to email me something vitally important, I give my work email. I'm pretty on top of things at work. It's just the rest of the time that I'm such a disaster. 

I really love my job, my company and my co-workers, and it's really a dilemma. In the past couple years I've seen four of my friends get fired. FIRED! And these were all people with 20-25 years of seniority in the company. 

Granted, the firings were just. But now I'm so paranoid about everything I do, AND I look around at my friends and wonder, who's next?

(For the curious: 

Friends 1 and 2: Friend 1 borrowed a controlled substance. Friend 2 gave it back to her when she got her Rx refilled. ILLEGAL!, and this all happened on company property.

Friend 3: Missed work approximately 485 times in a 6-month period and got 484 warnings. That last time did her in. 

Friend 4: Her second job was as a realtor. Spent lots of time at work looking up listings, doing realtor stuff, etc., on company time. Big no-no.)

So yeah, I'm trying to be very good. 

I probably shouldn't be writing this at work. 

Oh my gosh, there's a bad person living inside me. 

I'M ON BREAK! I'M ON BREAK!

I have to go now...

Those days are gone...

Toast Strips

'We gotta do something about this food situation.'

Heh.

I am hungry.

I've always been a picky eater.

I grew up in Kentucky at my grandma's table and was expected to eat what she made. Luckily, my brother got there first and paved the way for me. There were epic battles between John and Moma at the table, Moma not letting him up until he ate his food, and John falling asleep at the table after sitting there for hours.

So by the time I came along, it was just much easier to let me eat my peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of argue about it.

I don't LIKE beans and cornbread.
I won't eat fried chicken.
I hate green beans.
I never, ever eat ham.
Just thinking about broccoli casserole makes me sick.
I don't eat barbecue.
I don't like spaghetti. I don't like ice cream. 
I don't like fruits and vegetables. 
I don't eat beef or pork.
And now my neurologist has taken me off of chocolate and any kind of nuts, including my all-time favorite, peanut butter.

So I've basically been living on strawberry Pop-Tarts and microwave popcorn.
And buttered toast.

Sometimes for supper I'll have a frozen Totino's cheese pizza.

See! We gotta do something about this food situation!

So okay. Let's make a shopping list of the things I will tolerate that might be more healthy than Pop-Tarts:

• Salmon (baked or grilled...both yummy)
• Tuna (I'll share with my cat, we both like this)
• Grapes (the one fruit I can actually tolerate)

Okay, I'm done. If anybody has any other suggestions, please let me know... because I really am very hungry.

We'll carry on...

ovarian.org

In July 2009, my grandmother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Just two years later, in July 2011, she was gone.

We knew nothing at all about ovarian cancer when she was first diagnosed. Then we learned more than we ever wanted.

She had complained of symptoms for months, and we had all thought they were something else. Had we known then...

We have no way of knowing what could have happened. But the fact is, when my grandma was diagnosed, she was already in Stage IV. There are millions of women in America today who still have misconceptions about ovarian cancer, its symptoms and how it's detected.

On Friday, I discovered one of my coworkers held the #1 misconception - I had to let her know there is currently no screening test for ovarian cancer.

Three things to know:

1. They do NOT screen for ovarian cancer during a pap test. 
2. It can be hereditary. It can be linked with breast cancer. Know your family history.
3. Symptoms: bloating, feeling full, abdominal pain, frequency of urination - if they last longer than two weeks, see your doctor immediately.

I don't want anyone else to go through the pain my grandmother went through, or the pain we felt as we watched her slowly slip away. Please communicate this information with your loved ones; please help beat this terrible disease.

Let time forgive the past...

One of my uncles posted a thing on Facebook a couple weeks ago, it said something like, 'People never remember the million times you've helped them, only the one time you don't.'

I told him that wasn't true. I remember all the help I've gotten to get me where I am today. Especially the help I never even asked for...

I've told a few stories already on this blog about how amazing people can be. NO ONE gets where they are by themselves.

When I went to pay for gas that one time with $.85 in change, and the lady in line behind me was horrified and put an extra $5 in my tank...I'll never forget that.

When I was forced up onto a curb and had a blowout right in front of Churchill Downs and a real-life jockey, strongly smelling of horse, came to my rescue...I'll never forget that.

When I had a meltdown at my desk a few years back, dissolved in tears, and no one knew what to do with me... I didn't know the lady who took me in her arms and kept murmuring, "Peace...peace...," until I calmed down...but I'll never forget her.

I'm terrible at interviews. Take my inability to look people in the eye, plus crippling shyness and terrible awkwardness...and that would explain it. But somehow I have a pretty good job that I actually like.

I will take responsibility for some of it...I did work hard to get my degree, even though it has nothing at all do with my job. Philosophy and accounting are about as far apart as you can get. HAHAHAHA...

But the main reason I am where I am today is because people have helped me along the way. I have failed a dozen interviews...but all of the jobs I have actually gotten have been because I knew somebody, and they knew I needed a job, and they recommended me to someone else.

Just little things, but vitally important to me. I remember them all. I wouldn't be here without them.

Michelle's Tales, Part Three, and please don't hate me...

In fact, why don't we go incognito...

So, HYPOTHETICALLY, in 1998, let's say I temporarily lost my mind, got blinded by dollar signs, and quit my job and school to go to work at an automotive factory.

I'd been working full time, going to U of L full time, being a single mom full time... and suddenly magical factory money was being offered to me on a silver platter. It seemed like a dream come true.

(sigh)

Factory work really isn't that hard. It can be very hot in the summer. You stand for up to 10-12 hours a day, so it's very hard on your feet. You can get carpal tunnel in all kinds of weird places based on what kind of job you might have on the line.

What I wasn't prepared for, though, was that it was MIND-NUMBINGLY BORING.

I've always been able to entertain myself. But not there. You couldn't drift off into your thoughts in the factory, because if you lost focus for a second you might get run over by a truck or sliced in half by some sheet metal or knocked out by an air gun.

So you had to stay alert the whole 12 hours you were trapped there in the most mind-numbingly boring job on the planet.

My first four weeks, I worked in all kinds of different places around the plant...driving trucks off the lot, stamping VINs on the engines, pulling carpets for the cabs, walking the aisles and collecting cardboard - really fun stuff.

My fifth week, they put me on the steering column.

This is where it gets good. Or sad.

There are some jobs that are more important than other jobs. Making sure the steering column is bolted in properly is one of the important jobs.

So important, in fact, that the line automatically shuts down if the air gun doesn't lock, signifying that the screw didn't bolt the column in.

So what's more important, making sure a bunch of steering columns get bolted in properly, or that the line does not shut down, because stopping the line means loss of production?

Hmmm...

Well, according to the foremans at this company that shall not be named, making sure the company did not lose money was more important than any possible future 'incident' that might be caused from faulty workmanship.

So there I am, struggling with the stupid airgun to get this stupid steering column locked in, and THE LINE STARTS MOVING AGAIN.

A foreman shows up next to me and hands me this tool-thingy and says, we can't have this line shut down. Stay with this truck and work your way back using this.

Excuse me? I had trouble using the airgun so you expect me to be able to do it manually with this ridiculous tool-thingy? (I still don't even know what the thing was!)

I'm really not incompetent. The line was stopped for less than a minute. I think the foreman had an issue with me.

But, I do the best I can with that truck, and then this truck, and this truck... I realize I may never get back to my station and none of these trucks have been properly 'locked' in. I ask Omar for help, and I get union-speak in return, "I'm sorry, that's not in my job description."

Hmph.

Finally, I get back to where I belong. I'm very upset. I finish out my shift. And that Friday, I'm officially laid off.

I was upset at first. I was off the whole summer. But it was really a blessing in disguise. I got hired back at my old company in a much better job. I went back to school and got my degree.

I got called back by the factory, they were officially hiring all the people they had laid off. I very happily told them 'NO'.

Then...

ABOUT A YEAR LATER, THERE WAS A BIG RECALL ON **** TRUCKS, DUE TO A PROBLEM WITH THE STEERING COLUMN NOT BEING PROPERLY BOLTED IN.

I am not kidding.

Throwback Thursday...

This is me, my mom and my brother, looking extremely tanned for some reason. That must have been the year we went outside. 

This is little Johnny and little Michelle. I'm the one in a dress. Everyone calls my brother Johnny, except for me. My nephew's name is Johnny, too. Yep, I always have to clarify, "Wait, do you mean Big Johnny or Little Johnny?"

This is one of my senior high school pictures. When Dwayne and I started dating, I remember him pulling his wallet out and I saw this picture in there. It was five years after graduation! I didn't even remember giving that to him...but he carried it five years, waiting for me. 

Another graduation picture. This one doesn't look like me at all. They made a huge thing of it and took it on their mall tour. That was my 15 minutes. 

This is my mom and my grandma being absolutely adorable. Every picture I see of my grandma, my heart seizes a little, I miss her so much. 

And one last one, because I am never done talking about Chelsea or my kitty on this journal, here they are! Both very young, and with very different reactions to the snow...

Love you all...

I hate boxes, part three

I am a dust speck...

It was hard to talk in The Place, and that's all they wanted me to do...talk talk talk all the time. How did this make me feel, how did that make me feel, and what did I think about that?

And god forbid I slipped and said something personal...they latched on to that like a dog with a bone.

For some reason they kept going back to my childhood, wanting to talk about me growing up with an alcoholic father.

It took a very long time for me to even admit that much about my family... and going into detail about it? NO. NEVER.

But they just kept at me, and kept at me.

Denial is a funny thing. I always knew, objectively, that my family was different. When my dad was out in the field, my mom, my brother and I breathed easy - we were happy. It wasn't like that when my dad was home.

So even when my dad missed my high school and college graduations, and several birthdays, and dropped off the face of the earth for a few years - even then, I still couldn't quite admit to myself that there was a problem.

And then one December he showed up again, terribly skinny, full of apologies as usual, but this time, with a different story, something about crack cocaine.

I distinctly remember now how my mind skipped right over that part. I understand now - that's how denial works. You hear it, you can even repeat it back to someone, but you don't really believe it.

The next month, in January 2001, my grandmother received a phone call from my uncle. He was at the University Hospital trauma center downtown, and he was calling because my father had been shot.

My brother, sister-in-law, Dwayne and I rushed downtown to the hospital. Uncle Gary met us down there...he had no idea how it happened. We were sitting in the E/R waiting room when the detectives came in.

One of the detectives said, "Do you know anything about your father and his association with A? Your father was found with This Substance in his possession."

That's when my world came crashing down. I don't remember anything else the detectives said. I didn't care what they said. I was broken. I had just come to the realization that my father was an alcoholic and a drug addict.

So you'd think after an epiphany like that, something would change, right? But nothing did, really, except for maybe my perception of my world.

I sat in the hospital room for days, waiting for my dad to wake up. It took a very long time. The doctors said it took longer than it should have because they had to keep him sedated due to dt's.

My brother and I had a visit while we were waiting...from Al-Anon. It seems everyone but me knew my father had a problem. They gave us literature. I was very excited but John said he wasn't going to any groups. Oh.

When my dad woke up, I told him about all the people who had visited and all the things they said. I explained his body was clean now and the hardest part, the dt's, was over.

My dad said he wasn't an alcoholic, he could quit whenever he wanted. He said he knew what an alcoholic was, because his father was one, and he was nothing like him. Oh.

So now my dad has a bullet lodged in his back, but he's otherwise recovered. We rarely talk. It's hard to talk to someone on the phone when their speech is so slurred from drinking you can't understand what they're saying.

My brother outright refuses to speak with my father at all. I've forgiven dad for what happened in our childhood. I don't think my brother ever will.

I don't know why The Place wanted to hear things like this. It's my story, but not really. It was just a turning point in my life...when the scales fell from my eyes and I saw some things as they really were.

I'm still probably blind in a lot of other areas.

If you'll believe in me I'll still believe

artwork by Eugene John Hughes

(sigh)
(sigh)
(sigh)

Chelsea the daughter went to the zoo and I don't have anyone to plaaaaay with.

All Josie the kitty wants to do is sleep.

Dwayne the boyfriend is complaining about not being able to move or some such nonsense. (Like RA and being confined to a wheelchair is such a big deal! ... Kidding...kidding!)

And Chelsea's best friend the front-room floor-sleeping computer bandwidth-stealer is, you guessed it, on the computer.

I'm loooooooooonely.

(sigh)

...

Okay, I'm back. I was interrupted by Dwayne, who decided to talk to me after all. I told him I was doing a blog post and he wanted to know my nom de plume... What? 

When Dwayne asks weird questions, he's always leading into something. This time, it's because he'd been watching Craig Ferguson talk about JK Rowling's new novel that she'd released under a different name. 

Dwayne said, "Why do you think she did that?"

I said, "Well obviously, because there is still a glass ceiling keeping women from making as much money as men, etc., etc."

I was on a roll, too, when Dwayne stopped me. 

"We are talking about JK Rowling, right? You do know she probably made more money off the Harry Potter books than any author has on any books, ever?"

I hate to lose, even if we're not having an argument.  So I feebly offered up,

"Well, why do you think she used initials instead of her real name to begin with? Huh?"

Dwayne bugs me. He's the only one who can consistently counter my arguments. Soooooo annoying.

He's my inspiration. A year ago at this time he was walking. Well limping, painfully, but still walking.

Today, he can't go anywhere without the wheelchair. He just turned 46 this week.

He lives in constant pain, but he's still always there for me.

Except...well, Patty Griffin is coming to town next month. I love Patty Griffin. If you've ever looked at my profile, there's three things listed under music...two I've already talked about, and Patty Griffin.

Anyway, he's there for me EXCEPT when it comes to things he doesn't want to do, then he pulls the RA card.

"I can't go. I can't walk down there."

"I'll push your wheelchair."

"I can't sit for that long."

"Well, crap."

That's usually where the discussion ends. :)

I love my Dwayne. You just wait until he gets his new knees...

I am what I am...

Metallica Through The Never

So I am really excited about this new Metallica film coming out, right? But I think I'm the only one...

I can usually depend on Chelsea to back me up on all things Metallica. I did raise her right, after all. But she went all bah, humbug on me...if it's not the real thing, she's not interested, apparently.

I dragged Dwayne out at midnight to see the last Metallica movie...this was like ten years ago or something and he is still complaining about it. Dwayne's music tastes are more toward Stevie Wonder, James Brown, and other things that I don't like. My tastes are more eclectic, I like a lot of indie music, songwriter stuff. And Metallica.

Way, way, way before Dwayne and I started dating...I was just a 16-year old girl who was only allowed to go to concerts if I went with my big brother. Now that I think about it, my poor brother! He was 21 years old, going to concerts with his best friends Rich and Dwayne, and being forced to take his little sister and her friends.

That's how we saw Aerosmith back in the day, and Bon Jovi...and how I distinctly remember a drunken 21-year old Dwayne hitting on one of my 16-year old friends (my brother had made it clear that I was off limits, LOL). Ugh.

Concerts. You go to so many in your life, it's hard to keep track of all that you've been to, right? I believe the last one I went to was last summer, when I saw Kris Kristofferson at the Iroquois Amphitheatre. It was outside. In the summer. Meaning I would never have voluntarily chosen to go, but my grandpa had bought the tickets and asked me specifically to go with him...so I went, and it was awesome spending some one-on-one time with him.

The only time I've seen Metallica in concert was in 1992. They happened to come to town when I was four months pregnant with Chelsea. I had no choice. I had to go. What if it was my only chance? Is that scandalous? A pregnant unwed teenager at a Metallica concert?

Sounds like a show on MTV.

But anyway, this has been a very rambling post, and I think I had a point... I have two great musical loves. My first is and always will be Dolly Parton - I've seen her in concert three times, her music makes me happy. My second is Metallica - for 25 years and counting their music has made me happy (don't ask me how), and I'm going to see the movie if I have to go BY MYSELF.

So there.

The nightingale won't sing for us; or, I'm baaack...

Did I mention I'm seeing a new neurologist? This is my third one and I'm really hoping she'll be The One.

On my first appointment, the doctor gave me SIX new prescriptions, told me to throw out my Excedrin Migraine and Advil, and no more peanut butter. At all.

That's right, I said NO MORE PEANUT BUTTER.

Since then, I've also had to cut out chocolate, cut out any kind of nut or nut product altogether, cut down Diet Pepsi to two a day, and increase water to at least four bottles a day, but eight would be better.

But who cares, my mind got stuck on no peanut butter and I still haven't recovered.

If one could have a food religion, mine would be peanut butter. JIF Crunchy Peanut Butter, to be exact.

I had at least three jars of it stashed in my room for emergencies. A couple of days after the doctor's verdict, I was tearing through the kitchen in the middle of the night. Cabinets opening and closing, pots rattling, you name it...and in walks Chelsea.

"Mommy...what are you doing?"

"I KNOW there's some peanut butter in here! WHERE IS IT?!"

Poor Chelsea. I wonder what it's like to have a crazy mother?

"Mommy, I got rid of all the peanut butter. I know you have no self control. It's all gone."

(sob) "I don't believe youuuuuuuu."

So yeah...she somehow found all the peanut butter and got rid of it. Including all the jars I'd hidden away in my room.

I'm very unhappy about this dietary change.

Anyway, second appointment with the doctor this week, she wrote me MORE prescriptions, AND she took over my Vicodin RX from my primary care doctor. Which meant I had to sign a contract stating I won't sell my pills on the backside of Churchill Downs anymore.

Bummer...my new doctor is taking away all my favorite things.

But really, let's hope my migraines get better, because if I don't show improvement by next appointment, she's going to discuss BOTOX with me.

They use botox to treat migraines now.

Not on me, I don't think. Injecting toxin right into my brain? I'm already kind of...you know... It's just not a good idea.

So I'm following all the rules.

But I really, really miss Reese's Cups.