I'll never get used to it...

Meadow with Poppies, 1902 - Pal Szinyei-Merse

CAUTION: AMBIEN POST

I am trying to write with extra care and precision but my eyes are mostly shut and I'm thinking about puppies for some reason, which has nothing to do with my post...

Oh dear, it's already gone off the rails!

Anyway, just thought I'd provide a weekend update and a promise to do better in regards to my blog. :)

Update:

1. Still moving. I have to turn in my letter by Friday. I tend to procrastinate. I need to be out of here by April 1, yay!!!

2. Still sickly. I have discovered that I CANNOT eat dark chocolate. I was given bad information and so for Valentine's Day, certain people gave me some wonderful dark chocolate to eat. It was good. The ensuing migraine was very, very bad.

3. Dwayne finally got his letter on Friday, approving his disability. TWO YEARS and TWO DENIALS later, and two years of no income, before he could get this approval. Because he has not had access to good medicine during this whole time unless he paid for it out of pocket, he has deteriorated to where now he is in a wheelchair 99% of the time. His poor hands and fingers are permanently disfigured, the joints are twisted and knotted...he has the hands, knees and hips of a 90-year old. He is only 46.

4. It's hard not to be angry at the government in this kind of situation. His savings are gone.

5. But I guess all of us are in bad shape. I know the economy is supposed to be getting better (really?), but I'm not feeling it.

6. My brother, for instance, lived with my sister-in-law and their baby at a very nice house that he had owned for years. Then the Recession happened. The house got sold, and my brother moved his family into an apartment. They had another baby, and my brother moved his family again, into the apartments where I live. It's the WRONG WAY. As your family gets bigger, your house is supposed to get bigger...not smaller!

7. As for me, my rent here has gone up and up, but my pay stays the same. Oh excuse me, the company raises our hourly pay every year, but its minuscule, and insignificant since our health insurance goes way up every year and any raise we see is immediately swallowed up by the health insurance.

8. Okay, I gotta wrap this up because I forgot what my original mission was and I've fallen asleep 30 or 40 times now. Ambien 1, Michelle 0.

9. We'll continue later and see if I can stay awake for Round 2. Should be great fun.

Goodnightzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz................

10 years. 10 YEARS!

All of a sudden, ten years is today!, and I have to make a fabulous post, an hour after I've already taken my Ambien, which means...nooooo fabulous post is coming from me tonight! Maybe tomorrow...

But my ADD couldn't just leave this date empty, so this WILL be the official 10-year anniversary post! Sad, very sad, but true...

I've been trying and I can't really remember what prompted me to start blogging to begin with.

It was the days of AOL dial-up, so we had lots of open time while we were waiting 20 minutes to download one song at a time from Napster, and AOL started something called AOL Journals (it was blogging), and all us nerdy writer types signed up. And then we went from there.

And a lot of people quit along the way, or moved sites, but I stayed...I tend to stay somewhere until I'm forced from the building. Finally I was forced to move to Blogspot, and I've been here ever since. Yay!

I truly love my blog. It's a purely personal blog...when I started it, I was a young mom with a young daughter and we were having a sometimes difficult, sometimes wonderful life. 

As we both got older, our lives changed, and as Chelsea was able to take better care of herself, my grandmother got sick and my world fell apart. 

My blog became a record, and an outlet for the things I couldn't tell my family, because they were in as much pain as I was in.

So...I'm trying to gather my thoughts because the Ambien is kicking in big time! ... This blog has been a lifesaver for me. When I write down the things that have happened, the things that I have felt, I know them to be true. It's been cathartic. I think it's helped my mother and daughter, too, who've also read it.

I love my blog and I love the friends it has brought me, that's definitely the most important thing. Thank you all for sticking with me through my migraines and meltdowns and mild little freakouts; I'm totally appreciative (hope you don't stop now!), and you rock!, thanks y'all!!!

I'm still looking up...

Comet McNaught above Ashburton, NZ, 2007

I probably should have written this before I took the Ambien, because now my eyes are shutting and what I had intended to write about is gone...gone to wherever Ambienesia thoughts and acts go to die.

I keep drifting off and coming back, I hope I don't Ambien-say something completely inappropriate.

(six hours later)

I'm awake now! And now I don't really remember even writing those first two paragraphs, but, ooookay...

I mean, I'm sure I wrote it. It's not like I think a ghost did it. Chelsea believes that there is a ghost or spirit or entity or whatever that lives in this apartment. 

She says she talks to it.

I try not to think too hard about things like that.

Hmmm...

6:30 a.m. on a Friday. I have to start getting ready for work. I PROMISE I'll be fully present this weekend.

It's just been very hard this week, you know, going to work every day and stuff. LOLOL

I'm cracking myself up. I guess you had to be there.

So...as not to make this a wasted entry, I'll leave you with this:

It's tomorrow! Are you ready?

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?

The ambien effect...

I used to sit and watch my grandpa count out his pills every night and think, wow, old people need a lot of medicine.

And now I'm pretty sure I take more pills than he does.  He's 83, and I just turned 40 and am in denial about it.

I regularly swallow 9 pills every night.  That's not including any Benadryl or antibiotic or whatever else I might sporadically need.

My most important pill is, of course, the AMBIEN.  I can't go to sleep without it.  I also wouldn't be able to explain away all my strange middle of the night behavior without it.

"Michelle, why did you buy $500 worth of music from iTunes in the middle of the night!?"

Oh, wow, it must have been the Ambien...

"Mommy, I told you to get up and put these in the fridge and lock the door!"

Oh sorry, it was the Ambien...

"Why does the cat have all these bald spots?"

I was giving her a haircut...what...it seemed like a good idea with the Ambien!

So now I'm up because this one time the Ambien hasn't put me to sleep yet.  Which means everything is suspect.  My judgment is compromised and my memory will be faulty.  Everything I'm typing right now holds the potential for embarrassment.  But I really want to go get a diet Pepsi which is full of awesome caffeine so I'm gonna hit publish and blame it on the Ambien.  

Charade

    
I've taken the Ambien and am patiently waiting to fall asleep, fully expecting to not remember writing any of this in the morning. That stuff is scary.  And really scary when I take it with some Benadryl and a Vicodin.  But at least I don't wash it down with a whiskey...

Sleep eludes me anymore, without a pill.  Unless it's non-threatening catnaps, in the middle of the day.  Those are easy. The pressure of lying down to sleep 6-8 hours at night in the dark has gotten to be too much, without some help...

I'm not sure at what point I'm supposed to stand back up and do things on my own again.  The crazy place floated around the idea of a year...

It's been a short seven months and I miss Moma terribly.  I'll never get over the fact that she's not here anymore.  I was blessed with a very close relationship with the perfect grandma for the first 38 years of my life.  I wouldn't trade it for anything.