Basically Decent

What the title says. I'm off to NJ for an extended weekend. Safe and happy tidings to all.

Since things reached a level of intolerabilty hitherto unknown to my admittedly fragile mental state, I decided drug therapy was needed in addition to talk therapy to try and overcome this depression. Consequently, I have been taking citalopram (Celexa), an SSRI anti-depressant, for over two weeks. But in addition, the psychiatrist prescribed aripiprazole, Abilify, a drug that is supposed to intensify the effect of the anti-depressant, to make it work better.

Abilify is also an anti-psychotic. As in, prescribed to schizophrenics.

Now, I may have mentioned this in the distant past, but not recently. I have voices in my head. They aren't external voices, they are not "evil", they never kept me from concentrating and getting things done, and they don't order me around. It's more like the Greek Chorus of the various aspects of my personality - a Freudian would say the Id, the Ego, and the Superego - keeping a running, stream-of-consciousness commentary going on everything I sense and everything I think. It never stops, it's there every single moment I am conscious, even to the twilight, dozing-off sleep. I never thought of this as schizophrenic or a bad thing, I really believed everyone had these voices constantly critiquing, observing, commenting, as both part of you and as something separate from you at the same time.

Apparently, you don't. Or at least not to this extent.

And now, I don't have them all the time. It seems to be more unified in my head, as if my thoughts aren't going everywhere and thinking everything at once. It's as if I finally understand how people can meditate, which I have never, ever been able to do as such. It's not peaceful, per se, but it's...it's like a mountain stream bubbling over a rock. There are still the infinite variations of my thoughts, but they maintain a pattern, a steadiness, and they seem to flow over the rock that is me, slowly changing me, but never penetrating.

It's so different. Amazing how just a few milligrams, a bunch of molecules, can change how I think and who I am. There's such a long journey ahead, so many things I need to work on, so many problems to face, so many things to learn. But maybe I can.

It's official. I'm fucked in the head, beyond anything I ever thought. But then, what I think probably isn't very connected to reality! Hah!

As a life-long fan (my father took me to my first game when I was seven), I am so glad to see the New York Yankees in their proper role as champions. I am especially glad that one of the best baseball players in the world, Hideki Matsui, won the series MVP. And I am so happy that the Yankees played as a team and worked together for this. For once, they truly deserve it.

And to the Phillies fans who threw stuff at the Yankees and trash-talked? You are a bunch of classless assholes. Suck it.

He came late this morning to fix the leaky valve. Of course, such things are never as easy as they first appear, and he had to go to his son-in-law's to get a reciprocating saw to cut out the valve and the section of black iron pipe to which it was attached. Another trip to the plumbing supply store a few blocks away for new pipe and sundries, a borrowed pipe wrench, and about an hour of labor later, and the gas was back on with no leaks. I think I will get a plug-in carbon monoxide detector to put in the outlet right by the stove, though.

I am grateful he was able to take care of this so quickly. I had prepared myself for a few days without heat. It was amusing though, that he fielded a call on his cell phone from the sub-moron woman living below me just after he cut the pipe. She called to complain about all the noise from my apartment - she slept through the whole thing last night! Even more amusing, she is the one who has her sub-woofer so loud it shakes pictures off my walls in my living room!

He also heard the thundering toddler in the apartment above. "Does that noise go on all the time?" he asked.

"Every day. Sometimes at night, sometimes in the morning when I get ready for work. Usually constantly in the evenings." ThudthudthudthudthudTHUDcrashthudthudthudBOOMthudthudthudSCREAM accompanied my speech.

"How can you stand this? Why didn't you tell me it was this bad?"

"I don't want to be branded as a snitch and have my stuff vandalized or broken. When it gets really bad, I go over to Ed's."

So he made a trip upstairs. Had to leave himself in because no-one answered the door. And found, apparently, the woman was fast asleep while the kid was running around unsupervised, pounding some pots against the floor, and the kid had turned on the water in the kitchen sink by himself.

I think the landlord called CPS, but I'm not sure. I know that he isn't very happy about the shenanigans that go on in this place - being here during a typical day today without notice to the other tenants really opened his eyes. Usually he calls to make sure they have their rent checks for him (I guess I'm the only one who can actually afford stamps and envelopes to mail the rent) and everyone is quiet and on their best behavior. Today he heard the noise and the blaring bass music and the thuds and the screaming and the petty bitching. It can't be easy being a landlord in this area, and I feel for him, but he told me he's had some people, friends and relatives of previous tenants, asking him if he had any vacancies, so he doesn't need to hang onto these losers for income. We'll see what happens in the next few months.

This morning I woke up at 6:45 am, according to my cell phone. This would have been acceptable, only I was supposed to have been at work at 5:30. The alarm had been set for 4, I was positive...and why was my alarm clock blinking 3:30something? Well, that's what happens when the power goes out because four teenagers in a stolen car crash into a utility pole a few blocks away, bringing down the lines. I scramble, get to work two hours late, and get my ass reamed out. This is the first time I have been so much as one minute late in over a year. I was told that maybe I should have someone else wake me up; when I pointed out I live alone and that damn few people are up to give wake up calls at four in the morning, I was told that I should set *two* alarm clocks from now on, just in case. Whatever.

Because I had a dentist appointment already scheduled, I could not stay to make up the time, so there's strike two. Things went alright at the dentist(actually denturist), where the process to get a new set of teeth is already much farther along than I thought it would be. My old set of dentures still fits well enough that they could be used as the basis plates for new impressions, but the fitting was almost an hour long and involved a lot of poking, prodding, and stretching of my mouth and gums, leaving a fair amount of soreness and a considerable dent in my wallet. If I think about it rationally, I should get between 8 - 10 years out of this set, and it comes to less that 50 cents a day to have teeth, but it's still a bit of a financial hit and a few hundred more than I had budgeted for.

I spent a few hours over at Diana's listening to the Yankees lose, and then headed home for the evening. No sooner do I turn the lights off then suddenly there's an ambulance and two fire trucks in front of the apartment building. Are they taking someone to the hospital? No, somebody smelled gas. Soon the firemen knock on my door and come in to test the levels.

The meter goes insane at the gas valve behind my stove. Apparently I am the one with the gas leak. I was home all day yesterday, never smelled a thing, my carbon monoxide alarm is quiet, the cat was her normal self. The gas company is dispatched to investigate further. We are herded outside where I am given dirty looks by the other tenants and given the third degree from the fire department. No, I haven't touched anything ever - the landlord hooked up my stove, I don't even go in that corner except to sweep up the dust bunnies. No, I am sure I didn't smell or notice anything, No, I told you I didn't touch anything. The gas representative comes in; somehow the old valve has gone bad from just sitting there. Luckily they only have to shut the line off to my apartment, not to the whole building, so hopefully the other tenants won't hate me more than they already do. It is now past midnight. My gas is shut off; I have no heat or hot water but at least it's not the dead of winter.The landlord may or may not be able to replace the valve tomorrow; he's not very happy. I call into work to let them know I probably won't be in tomorrow morning; there's possible strike three because I already have a half-day of vacation scheduled Thursday and I have to leave early again on Friday for another appointment.

I'm a nervous wreck, my whole body is shaking, I feel nauseous. It may be a very low threshold of breaking point I have, but I am almost there.

I'm not the world's biggest Halloween fan. When I was a kid, more often than not I was sick over the holiday, so I only went Trick-or-Treating maybe five times, total. Still, if any of the little monsters in the building come to my door, I do have a bag of candy (mini-Hershey's bars - I'm not going to be a cheap shit when it comes to Halloween candy) at the ready. I doubt anyone will, though - I've already developed a reputation as the strange, quiet whitey, which is pretty true. "Crazy bitch" works, too.

Motivated myself to go out today to the Salvation Army Superstore. I found a very nice glass bowl to use for displaying what-nots on the coffee table (think gourds, Christmas balls, Easter eggs, etc.), two matching bud vases, and a Christmas wreath and swag for under $10, total. Didn't see any of the notoriously odd/ugly thrift store finds with the exception of an old LP called "The Cossacks!" full of Russian folk songs. $3.99 was too much for me, though I'm sure someone will find it amusing someday in that post-ironic way. I took Diana (formally known as Ed) along; she found a nice denim dress. I'm getting more used to her full-time female-ness, although there are times I have a sharp longing for what used to be, and times that are worse than that.

Busy week ahead. Have a dental appointment Monday to see about getting a new set of teeth or this set relined. Even those of us without our natural unhealthy smile undergo bone and tissue changes over the years that make the dentures not fit quite right any more, so it's time for me to bite the bullet (so to speak) and spend the money. Luckily I have decent dental insurance through work that will pay 50% of the cost (and trust me, good dentures cost $$$) so I might as well spend a little more of my inheritance and be comfortable for another decade. Psychologist Thursday, and hopefully some good will come of that. I don't want to sound like a pill whore, but I really need some help getting out of the misery, and will power and talk therapy aren't doing it alone. Then an appointment Friday with my therapist, where I want to go more in depth about my emotional immaturity. Namely, as she pointed out and I whole-heartedly agree, I don't know how to have emotions, and I don't know what to do when I have them. I wasn't allowed to have them as a child - my mother reserved all emotions for herself, as Borderlines so often do - and I learned to repress them so successfully most of the time that whenever I feel something strongly, it's always accompanied by guilt and shame and chastisement of myself for being so weak. My therapist keeps telling me I've been through a lot, but I don't feel like I've had anything any worse than everyone else does. Other people go through so much more shit with grace and serenity; why can't I do that too? I guess what I'm asking is what is it like to be a grown-up? How do you grow-up?

I just took a bubble bath, for the first time this decade. I forgot how nice it was to be surrounded by water, hot soft coconut-lime water. Maybe I won't wait another decade.

In other news, I have a psychologist appointment next week.

I just want to go to bed, pull the comforter up over my head, and never wake up again.

PS: Sorry for the whining.

Yes, I changed my LJ user name. With all the changes in my life and in my attitude, I realized a few weeks ago that I wasn't the same person anymore, and Aynthem no longer reflected the values most important to me.

I still believe that first and foremost we all must be true to ourselves, to our beliefs, values, hopes, and ideals, and that the point of being human is to be as true as possible to the best within us. But I have also learned that which is easy for some is impossible for others. I have come to believe that every person (well, I still have a few exceptions, but I'm working on them) has an intrinsic worth as a human being, and that every person is entitled to be treated with respect and dignity until such time as they prove to be harmful to one's continued health and reason - and even then, they are not to be harmed, but to be ignored at worst. I've spent 11 years living in Homestead among people who never had the opportunities and chances so many of us take for granted, and it has changed me. The bitterness and partisanship that has become a fact of life in this country has also affected me; I believe I can no longer align myself by default with people for whom tirades and screeds have replaced debate and discourse. I had always admired Ayn Rand more for her epistemology than her politics, understanding at an early point that she herself suffered from mental illness (depression?) much the same way I do, but as more and more about her personal beliefs has surfaced in recent years, I can no longer pay tribute to those ideas; they have become overshadowed with hatred, and I want as little hate and anger in my life as possible.

It seems as if everything I was, everything I believed in, has been stripped away from me in the past few years; some by my choice, some by the choices of others, and some by happenstance. It is up to me to find out who I am, and to navigate these uncharted waters successfully. My life map has big, blank areas right now - "Here There Be Monsters". I am trying to reach out to others for the help I need, starting with therapy and possibly anti-depressants, and to learn not to hide behind silence, but to be as open and honest about my problems and my needs as I can be, and hope that the people I care about will not run away when I reveal myself to be Only Human. In exchange, I can only offer my ears to listen and my eyes to see, my compassion and my caring, and my willingness to try.

The name Gentle Hum (I didn't want to use an underscore just because) comes from a Finn Brothers song of a few years back. The lyrics represent what I am trying to do and what I hope to find in my life - a path of enlightenment where I can accept the bitter with equanimity and always find another meaning.

This bird has to sing
My heart has to follow
A man with no soul
is wooden and hollow

This gentle hum
has just begun
This gentle hum will make us one

My wish is for you
An end to your sorrow
And if it comes true
You'll wake up tomorrow
Alone

With a gentle hum
has just begun
This gentle hum will make us one

There
For anyone who cares
Solemn faces in the courtroom stare

And this gentle hum
Will wake up tomorrow

With a gentle hum
This gentle hum

This gentle hum will make us one
This gentle hum is just begun

This gentle hum, coming up from before
Find a loving feeling, inside
This gentle hum, bringing it back to me
Find a loving feeling, in your life

I was packing for my trip to NJ later this week (to visit my father) when I heard an odd dripping noise, like the shower was spattering against the tub. I walk into the bathroom to find water coming through the ceiling tiles and running down my wall. Grab the cell phone, call the landlord as I head upstairs to knock on the door.

Greeted by clueless duhdee - "Yeah?"

"I live downstairs. There's water coming through my bathroom ceiling."

"Hold on." Close door in my face so toddler doesn't escape.

Landlord answers. Tell him problem. He tells me he's going to call upstairs couple. He'll call me right back.

Wait another minute or so. Mother comes to door (I can't call her a moo, it's obvious she's so overwhelmed and stressed from the two kids under the age of two that I wonder how she gets through the day. Clueless duhdee seems to spend most of his time away or playing video games. But I digress...). "The sink was overflowing. Sorry about that."

I'm not quite sure what to say...I thought the toddler hellion had flooded the bathroom, and I am somewhat relieved that it was water and not sewage. "Well, kids, they get into things pretty quickly, don't they?"

"Mmm."

"Ok...thanks for answering." I am not going to say that flooding my bathroom is just fine and dandy with me. Head back to my place, call landlord back. I have a short conversation; the ceiling tiles are soaked through and stained and will need replaced. (The drop ceiling exists in the bathroom to cover the duct work that was put in when the building was converted from hot water radiators to individual gas furnaces.) He is not happy with upstairs couple anyway because their place is a pigsty, as I could see when I caught a glimpse through the door. Carpets torn up and filthy, etc. etc. He says he will be by sometime in the next week or so to replace ceiling. I survey damage.



Not too bad, overall. It came down the wall above the shower head and the towel bars. Really the only bad damage is the cheap framed picture I had hanging on that wall. The towels and the bathroom rug will need to be washed, but they absorbed most of the water. I was planning on cleaning the bathroom anyway before I left for NJ, so I just did it a little earlier and a little more thoroughly than I had planned.

But what if this had happened while I was at work, or if I was at the computer with headphones on, or sleeping? Yeah, accidents happen (and I have renter's insurance), but as my landlord said, "maybe if I make them pay for fixing the damage to your place, they'll learn to keep a better eye on their kids." Somehow I doubt it.

ETA: Hard to tell from the picture, but the ceiling tiles are bulging downward and thoroughly waterlogged.

While most things in my life are whirling around in my head (more about that earlier, when I unlock the private post I wrote yesterday), there has been one thing I can control.

Paint. I am not quite done, still touch up and door hardware to do, but my bedroom is there:









And what it looked like before, in Beige! and NotNeatlyStraightened!:



I maintain that the border in the before picture was a crime against decor. Maybe my bedroom is way too green for most people, but at least there's nothing resembling piles of poop in it now.

- Boss at work has staph infection, other co-worker out with hernia surgery, three people have been doing work of five for past month, no end in sight.

- Depression is coming back with a vengeance, despite my best efforts. Believe I will have to restart drug therapy soon, especially as winter is coming.

- Had to cut someone who meant a lot to me completely out of my life as he refuses to accept any responsibility for his actions and cannot say "I'm sorry" without appending "you feel that way."

- Repainted bedroom this weekend and discovered why Germans and East Europeans can never remain allies for long. (Long story, but suffice to say there is a right way and many wrong ways to do things, and you do NOT use fabric first aid tape to tape in a light switch in a wall box, nor do you paint latex directly over oil, especially on a window sill.)

-Am disgustingly tired, still need to shower and get paint out of my hair, and be up for work at 4 am tomorrow.

When I was a kid, I had a little book by that title, a collection of Peanuts cartoons and pithy sayings. The book is long gone, but the title has stuck in my head for years. It's easy to kick yourself for doing or not doing, seeing or not seeing something then that seems so obvious now, but it doesn't serve much purpose. Part of my ongoing healing/learning process is to stop the endless recriminations on the coulda/shoulda/wouldas. Easy to say, hard to do, especially with the baggage I'm learning I've needlessly carried over the years. Simply put, most things weren't my fault.

What I am with now is learning where the line is - how responsible am I for how I feel, and how much responsibility do others have? The pat self-help book response is that only I can be responsible for my reactions, only I can be responsible for my feelings. But I think that's too simple. Sometimes people do rotten things to other people, deliberately or inadvertently. When there's no apology, remorse, or acknowledgment on the part of the "guilty" toward the "victim", how does the victim take responsibility for how he/she feels? How do you move past the pain and not keep reliving it in your head over and over, trying to figure out what you could have done differently, how you could have kept from being hurt?

Maybe these things are simple for other people. I can't tell you how many times I've been told in my life to just "let it go, get over it." If I could, I would. I don't know how. I never learned. I learned how to accept blame, how to be guilty, how to make myself believe it was my fault because I wasn't perfect. My therapist is helping me work through these issues, but I know it's going to take a lot of reprogramming on my part, and a lot of hard work. I just hope it isn't too late for me.

Today is one of the (maybe the very) first days since I moved where I don't have anything firmly scheduled. I took the luxury of laying in bed this morning, enjoying the sunshine streaming through the windows and the quiet loud purring of Ariel Kitty beside me. For once, the upstairs apartment was fairly quiet, so the children must still have been asleep. I bought a white noise machine in order to drown out the sounds of their television. (I will never, ever, as long as I live, understand the claim some people make that they need the television on and turned up in order to sleep; no, they don't, it's just a matter of training yourself differently just like I trained myself to sleep on a cervical pillow and with earplugs. These people never turn the damn TV off!) The machine seems to be a success; last night I had it set to "mountain stream" and I didn't wake up until the normal empty-bladder time. I don't like having any noise when I sleep, but it's a matter of the lesser evil, and if other people won't be my version of civilized I will just have to cope as best I can.

I'm still working on putting boxes of things away. I'm using Library Thing to organize and catalog my books, so I sprung for a Cuecat barcode reader, remember those? It works automatically with Library Thing and I'll sniff around to find something open-source to catalog the CDs and DVDs as well.

Once the books are shelved, and I have the furniture set up in the final-for-now configuration, then I can hang pictures. That's easier said than done because most of the walls are brick and masonry so it involves a hammer drill and lead anchors, rather than just driving a nail into drywall. I still don't have the stereo and DVD, ahem, home theater system in, but that's because I haven't felt like dicking around with the wiring after work. Maybe this week while baseball is on the All-Star hiatus.

I am in the midst of repainting my bathroom. Here's a tip: one of those little half-pint sample size paint cans will do the trim for an entire door with some left over, and costs less than 4 bucks. I found a color that matches the gold diamonds in the art-deco tile perfectly. I was also lucky enough to find two quarts of mis-tinted paint marked down in the exact lime green color I want the trim in the bedroom to be. Ed is going to help me take off the rest of the wallpaper border near the ceiling where I can't reach it easily. He's been surprisingly helpful; last weekend he put a new ceiling fan in the bedroom when I discovered that the old one couldn't be repaired. (It would stop spinning even though it was turned on and the motor was running, creating a fire hazard.) I may not even need to have an A/C in the bedroom with the new fan as it is doing a very effective job. Last night I even had to turn it down to the lowest setting because I got chilled! Ed is also going to help me install an outlet strip in the kitchen, The problem with older apartments is the lack of enough electrical outlets. There's one hidden behind the gas range; if I put in an outlet strip off the spare plug, I can put all the kitchen electrics on one wall (microwave, toaster oven, rice cooker, etc.) and make that the prep area. He already helped me modify a cheap pine dining table from IKEA into a kitchen island, by putting locking casters on the legs and laminating the top with Formica. I've been trying to repay him for his labor by feeding him and buying him a few replacements for things I took with me. I still feel like I got the better end of the deal.

It's beginning to feel like home, not just a place where I am staying.

Today I took part in the medical study I had signed up for a few months ago. It is a comparison of the progression of heart and circulatory system disease between pre-menopausal women with and without lupus. Turns out I am a near-perfect control because of my lack of any type of major physical illness/disease in my life and a family health history free of heart disease. In addition, I signed a consent form to have my information, particularly my blood, used in current and future genetic studies. So I suppose I will live on through karyotyping, if not reproduction.

Everyone I met today was so pleasant and kind; in particular, the woman who drew my blood (eight rather large vials!) and kept me calm and reassured throughout the whole prolonged process. I have only the slightest bruising, which I am very, very pleased about! I also have an accurate height and weight for the first time in years; I am 159.2 cm tall and weigh 76.5 kilos (which translates to being a whole 1/4 inch taller and ten-fifteen pounds lighter than I thought I was). After the blood draw, a rather extended mood/psychological questionnaire, and a free breakfast (yay for quality english muffins!), I proceeded to have a really nifty ultrasound of my carotid arteries. I usually get a little squeamish about the inside of my body, preferring as I do to keep the inside on the inside, but it was fascinating to me to actually see the blood pulsing through my body, and see the split where the carotid splits into the internal (to the brain) and external (to the face) arteries. According to the tech, there's not a trace of plaque that he could detect; the blood flow appears to be clear and strong, and my heart rhythm was textbook normal on the EKG.

So the signs appear to be strong that, approaching 40, I am free of heart disease and arterial plaque buildup, despite having always been overweight or obese. (Fat does NOT always equal unhealthy, people!) I will get a copy of the results of the blood work (lipid panel, cholesterol, etc.) in a few months, so the baseline now exists. This is one of those things you worry about a little bit in the back of your mind; now I know I have nothing to worry about, at least for the time being. The follow-up visit is in three years, so we'll see what normal aging does to a person.

And I made $50, too!

My mother died a year ago today.

So many changes, and all of them for the good. (I think)

Her death gave me the freedom to explore my life, and to go in new directions. I don't quite know where I'm going yet, and I sure as hell don't have any plans on how to get there or what I'm going to do, but I'm moving.

Thanks, mother. It's a pity and a shame you couldn't find more meaning and peace in your life so that I didn't have to find meaning after your death.

Ed McMahon died.

Walter Cronkite is "gravely ill."

And my turns-80-years-old-today father is due in for a visit in about 15 minutes.

I wanted to see what was underneath the ugly border in the bathroom -



And, lo and behold -



Yes, it shows the age, but I like it a whole lot better.

Ariel Kitty is unimpressed.

OK, so I asked for this. I couldn't find magenta and teal sheers (just wait for the pictures of my living room - presented by NBC in Living Color) anywhere else, so IKEA it was. But you have to cut & hem to length...

Fusible interfacing: handy aid to sewers or tool of Beelzebub? Discuss amongst yourselves...