Annabelle Speaks

Going On A Bear Hunt

I'm on my way to the airport; heading to Minnesota (pronounced Minnesoooooota) for a weekend at the Cabarage. Will I fall in the lake? Photograph Bigfoot? Be chased by a mosquito the size of my head? ONLY TIME WILL TELL. See ya'll next week.

Ghosts Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Right Round, Like A Record...

Last night T and I were watching some Haunted History episodes when it occurred to me that the vast majority of "true" ghost story TV shows, documentaries, and books I consume seem to concern ghosts from the late 1800s.  Why are there not more ghost sightings from other periods in history?  By a simple years-on-this-continent standard there should be far more Native American ghosts than there are rich people from the 1800s.  And yet.  Was there something about the late 1800s that produced more ghosts than other time periods?  Do ghosts wear out after a time, so in the late 1800s there were primarily ghosts from the late 1700s, now we have the late 1800s/early 1900s ghosts, etc?  Does that mean that circa 2085 there will be nothing but ghosts with big bangs drinking New Coke?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Blogher: Laughter, Baby Snot, and New Friends

This past weekend was the much anticipated Blogher.  I have known about Blogher for years, but it was only this year that I ended up going, and it was one of the best weekends I've had in a long time.

 

I don't think I was at any of the parties described as "the place to be".  I walked away with almost no swag.  I didn't go out to any clubs or off-site parties.  But what I did get is worth so much to me.  I had dinner conversations discussing the pros of creating a bacon cheddar cheese sented baby shampoo.  I mostly managed to refrain from making a fangirl-fool of myself, except for Friday night when I ran up and hugged Linda and only belatedly thought "hey, maybe I should introduce myself first" (sorry about that!).  I met bloggers I'd never heard of as well as those I've read for years.  And oh, the stories.  I could try to retell them here, but I don't think I could do justice to other peoples' stories.  I loved just sitting and listening to everyone.  That was probably my favorite unexpected joy of blogher; being around hundreds of natural born story tellers meant spending the entire weekend with my sides aching from laughter.

 

I was also blessed to spend a big portion of the weekend with Amy and Ezra.  I've read Amy's blog for years now, though we hadn't hung out together before this weekend.  She is just as funny and delightful in person as she seems online, possibly more so.  And as if spending time hanging out with her wasn't enough, she also let me repeatedly abscond with Ezra.  It is news to exactly no one that my baby cravings are probably strong enough to power the city of Chicago for a month.  I can't have my own kids just yet (my doctors would kill me), so I jumped at the chance to babysit when Amy's late-night babysitter fell through.  Sure, I missed out on seeing the unicorn cake, and I have exactly zero pictures of people with McDonald's bags on their heads.  But I crawled around the hotel floor making VRROOM noises playing with cars, I nommed baby fingers and toes and was rewarded with gleeful shreiks and giggles, I had some awesome baby snuggles, and I read my book listening to baby sleep noises.  What more could I ask for, really?  I walked out of Amy's room on Saturday night covered in baby-snot, but happy.  I soaked up the joy that is a Ezra, and I made a new friend in Amy.

 

All in all, a very, very good weekend.

Who Needs Sleep?

Man, I have to tell you, I am in the middle of the WORST insomnia I have ever had.  And I have had some pretty spectacular insomnia in the last few years.  Show up at work at 4am because I'm just THAT BORED kind of insomnia.  I come by it naturally, of course, as my Mom sleeps about as well as I do on average.  She said once that she was well into adulthood before she realized that some people actually sleep through the night.  Like, really?  You don't wake up AT ALL?  Not even to eat peanuts and make a grocery list at two in the morning?  Huh.

 

Anyway, as a fellow never-slept-through-the-night person, I long ago resigned myself to the fact that I will always be a bad sleeper and I will periodically have near deadly bouts of insomnia.  Generally I can deal.  But oh, this particular one might just do me in.  Because I am obsessive and have far too much time on my hands, I have a nice little tracking spreadsheet that tells me I have slept a grand total of 22 hours in the last seven nights.  For those not mathematically gifted, that averages to around three hours and ten minutes per night.  And honestly about a third of that came in the form of naps over the weekend.  I am currently grabbing sleep whenever I think I can manage in hopes of not completely losing my damn mind from being awake so much.  Last night I only slept for an hour and a half.  And that is WITH sleep medication.  If my wife were in town I'd be resorting to the cast-iron-skillet-to-the-head method of getting to sleep, but my aim isn't good enough to try that on my own; I'd probably just end up taking out one of the cats.

 

At any rate, at least I am getting a lot of stuff done before I die from insomnia.  In the last week I have accomplished the following, all between the hours of 11pm and 4am:

01.  Baked blueberry muffins

02.  Talked to the cats about life

03.  Played 8,821 games of Set on my iPhone

04.  Washed many loads of laundry

05.  Cleaned the apartment, including dusting the ceiling fans

06.  Updated every program on my computer that needed updating

07.  Cleaned out my messenger bags

08.  Studied for my upcoming final exam

09.  Played many hours of The Sims

10.  Re-organized my craft room

11.  Hemmed pants

12.  Wrote this post

 

I'm running out of ideas.  I think next I might organize the hall closet or something. 

 

If anyone wants to come over and thwack me over the head with a cast iron skillet, I'd appreciate it.

OMGWTFBBQ

Someone please kindly tell Hallmark that it is July 14th.  This is really not the time for selling Christmas stuff.

My wife tends to get a bit annoyed* when people put Christmas decorations up before her birthday (November 28th), but I never thought I'd see Christmas ornaments, even in retail, quite this early.

(*I would use stronger language than "a bit annoyed", but she reads this blog and I do have to live with her.)

This Is My Brain. This Is My Brain On The Wrong Drugs. Any Questions?

Thanks to a recent rash-induced medication change, I may be getting a new diagnosis for my particular brand of crazy-cakes.  Personally, I don't care much for diagnoses.  I understand that a diagnosis gives my doctors (in three different offices) a common language in which to speak, and I certainly don't resist being diagnosed as whatever for that reason.  But I don't particularly care what my diagnosis is.  I am never a fan of "boxes" and "labels", preferring instead to put myself on a continuum.  I don't care if someone diagnoses me as depressed or anxious or suffering from panic attacks; I care HOW depressed I am, HOW anxious I am, and HOW MANY panic attacks I'm having, and that's how I want my treatment to ultimately be arranged.  And I'm lucky in that I have found doctors and caregivers supportive of that.

But anyway, this pending potential change in diagnosis has brought a new term to me, a new label, that has been astoundingly useful.  Since this whole mental downslide and recovery process started I've had trouble describing exactly what it is I am feeling.  I thought it was because I'm just not particularly good at that, having had more practice at denial and avoidance than emotional expression as a kid.  And while that certainly plays a part, I'm finding that a big part of the problem is that I was missing a key word that would make things a lot clearer.

Hypomanic.

See, the best description I had for my caregivers before this was that I flip between super anxious and super depressed in a heartbeat, and both are always RIGHT THERE.  I didn't get that they could co-exist, and that that had an actual name.  So after a year and a half of working at it, here is my best description of what hypomanic feels like.  Welcome to my head.

First, start with the dazed and confused fuzzy-mind like when you wake up from a really deep sleep, so deep that upon waking you don't know your name or where you are or what day it is.  Add to that so much caffeine that you can't stop your hands from shaking and your stomach is upset.  Throw in a solid dose of general anxiety and worry and a big pile of apathy.  Then remove all motivation for things like "eating" and "breathing", forcing yourself to resurrect the internal cheerleader normally only needed to push yourself to do things like exercise and use said cheerleader to help accomplish such amazing feats as walking all the way to the bathroom without lying down on the floor, chewing and swallowing at least 1/3rd of your breakfast, and taking a drink of water.  Then add in a few songs that will play on repeat in your head 24/7, preferably songs that clash with each other.  Yesterday for me it was the theme song to Mr Ed, the McDonald's Menu Song from the mid-80s, and Ave Maria.  Throw in a rapid-fire never-ending slide show of random memories and pictures of toys you haven't thought of since you were five, an inability to concentrate on anything for more than three minutes, and a profound lack of ability to sleep AT ALL, and you have my hypomania.  Sounds fun, huh?

Uncomfortable?  Absolutely.  It hurts to be in my own skin right now.  I'm actually writing this a full two hours after I should have been sleeping, but after staring at the ceiling for an hour and a half I couldn't take the boredom anymore.  It sucks.  But you know what?  Maybe a new diagnosis, and a new treatment plan, will finally make this all a bit less crazy. 

I miss just being me.

This Post Is Not Well Thought Out At All

Happy (late) 4th of July, everyone!

T and I had a nice long weekend, full of many naps, much relaxing, and some very, very cool amature fireworks at a park near our house.  Of course I only had my iPhone with me, and fireworks are hard to photograph anyway, but the pitcure above shows well enough that these were some SERIOUS fireworks, and not the "amature" show I was expecting.  They went on for well over an hour, eventually obscuring the park in so much smoke that I couldn't even see the polls of the streetlight fifteen feet away from me. The glowing orb in this picture? Is said street light.

I really don't have anything else of interest to share, but I knew if I didn't make myself post SOMETHING that the apathy would continue to eat my life, so a few random iPhone pictures it is.  Just be glad I'm not photographing the rash I just showed to my dermatologist or something.  It could be a lot worse, trust me.

Thirty Days. Thirty LONG days.

I made it all the way through June flossing EVERY SINGLE DAY.  30 days IN A ROW.  And two of those nights were camping in Wisconsin.  Who flosses while camping?  Me, obviously.  Awesomely, I am pretty sure that is roughly 28 more days in a row than I have ever managed to floss before.  Some smart lady (hi Mom!) told me that it takes thirty days to build a habit, and while I still think that is sort of BS (I'm quite sure I will dread flossing and have to work to talk myself into doing it tonight as I have every night for the last month), I am still quite proud of myself that I did something GOOD and RIGHT for a whole damn month.

 

And that brings me to July.  Obviously I want to keep up with the flossing, no matter how torturous it is.  But I think I'll add something else into the mix, too, and see if I can make it through the month of July.  This month I've decided to add in evening stretches that my massage therapist has shown me.  My legs/hips have a whole host of strangeness, bending easily in ways normal people can't bend at all and being super inflexible in ways normal people have no trouble moving, and these stretches are supposed to help.  But have I done them with any consistency in the year I've been seeing said massage therapist?  I'll give you one guess, and a hint that the correct answer only has two letters.

 

So.  That is where I am.  Well flossed, and hoping to manage a month of stretches.  If I make it through July maybe I should reward myself by making the goal for August to eat ice cream every day.