Day Two

This morning I woke up and put the patch on my right hip where it seems to be staying. It's not peeling, and because it's not moving around it's not itching nearly as badly as it was yesterday. The migratory path of the patch yesterday left me with red welts wherever it wandered, so I'm frankly delighted about this today.

I want a cigarette. BADLY. I grabbed Livvie this morning and threw her into the Jeep again and took her to the playground this time. She ate no sand on this trip, which is not usual, but she did get sand everywhere you can imagine, including her ears. I ate DumDums at the playground, and we left as The Stepford Moms arrived with their monsters in tow, so I would consider it a successful trip.

Speaking of these moms, how the fuck do they manage to dress in actual OUTFITS every day? I'm always out there (unshowered) in jeans and a T shirt and these chicks are wearing cotton capri pants and open toed shoes. AND THEIR TOENAILS ARE PAINTED. How the fuck are they managing pedicures with the whole Mom Thing?

Ok, so you might actually notice a bit of hostility. So the fuck what? I'm quitting smoking for crying out loud.

Day One

I woke up this morning and had BOTH cups of coffee without a cigarette. Shortly after Rich left for work I broke down and had a half a cigarette. Then I threw Livvie in the Jeep and we drove to Target where I purchased The Patch and a giant bag of DumDum lollypops. It is SO much easier to try to quit smoking during Halloween candy season.

When we got back out to the parking lot I opened a patch and put it on my arm. It promptly fell off. I lifted my shirt and put it on my stomach, above my waistband, instead. I hadn't even gotten a mile away from the store when the damn thing started to itch and burn like fire ants. I made it home without tearing myself apart.

Came inside and opened the DumDums, and they're somewhat gross. Instead of normal DumDums they have a chewy center which in some of them has the consistency of gum, and in others Tootsie Rolls. Not happy with DumDum purchase. Patch promptly fell off again. Not happy with patch.

Moved patch a couple of inches and waited. Opened and closed a baby barrette repeatedly to give my hands something to do. Ate FOUR DumDums. Paced the house. Walked in and out of the house. Barraged Rich with email to give myself something to do.

Patch peeled up a little but has not fallen off again.

Ate a 5th DumDum.

And it's only 10:47.

EDIT: Patch just fell off again.

Dear Baby- (part 2)

Tomorrow is your one year birthday and I can't believe it. SO much has changed and I've learned so many things. Mostly about myself.

A) Babies like having things their own way. Burger King was BUILT for babies. If things don't go their way, the entire county will hear them.

B) Too bad.

C) Babies don't necessarily LIKE being held all of the time. In fact, some babies would rather be held only when it's in their agenda. See A.

D) Too bad.

E) I don't like babies. Really. Now that you're even closer to toddlerhood I am SO happy I can't even express it. I was just never one of those people who wanted a "baby."

F) Too bad.

G) I think you're probably the best child I could have gotten. Your issues are actually MY issues, and I actually think you're turning me into a better person. I know I'm learning more patience than I ever have before.

So Happy Birthday kiddo.

I love you.

Co-Sleeping

When I was a little girl I primarily lived at my grandparent's house and had to sleep with my grandmom. I apparently used to roll over so much I would push her out of bed and she'd have to get up and switch sides many times overnight. I'm sure she didn't get much sleep, because I'm going through the same thing now.

I've slept with Livvie since she was born. When she was wee it was a lot easier. We had these things they call sleep positioners which are like little bumpers that you place on either side of the baby to prevent rolling. They also kept her in one spot. As she got larger the bumpers didn't work anymore, and that coincided with her overnight sleep issues developing, so we moved to the futon in the living room. For awhile it worked great. We even got a few nights where she slept for 7 hours straight. Then something happened. I don't know what. All I know is that recently the only way she'll sleep is nestled in one of my arms. This leads to...

My grandmom. Every night now Livvie fusses and kicks me all night trying to get herself some more space. I end up having to stand up over and over to switch her from side to side. I've experimented by standing up and leaving her there by herself to see if she'll sleep better, but eventually she realizes I'm not there and she wakes up. My grandmom is having her revenge. I'm positive of it.

Now one would think that all of this would sour me on co-sleeping, but it's not the case. There's something amazingly beautiful about sleeping with your child and having them reach out to touch you in the night that just can't be beat. Well, maybe not. A full night's sleep could make a good run for it.

Five more days

Five more days until we quit smoking.

I'm somewhat excited, but also somewhat sad. I love smoking. It's a nice little friend who is always there right when you need them. Bad day? Smoke. Something awful happens? Smoke. Not hungry? Smoke instead.

Smoking is lovely.

It's also disgusting, dirty, vile, and nauseating. IT KILLS PEOPLE.

I can't wait to smell and taste food again. I can't wait to get rid of my morning Gandalf voice and stop coughing all night long. I can't wait to NOT have to shell out $3.69 a pack for something that is as retarded as burning little pieces of paper and some weeds.

So wish us luck. We're gonna need it.

Baby Sea Turtle

Being Broke Sucks

And KNOWING, just KNOWING that something is gonna happen while you're in dire financial straits sucks too.

Yesterday a pipe burst under the house, spraying water up into the underside of the house. The plumber came today, and upwards of $200 later our pipe is fixed.

However, I had to use a charge card we had completely paid off. This sucks worst of all.

How the hell are you supposed to stay ahead? WE don't have enough cash to buy sufficient groceries, let alone have any in case of emergency.

Thank the gods we aren't planning a birthday party for Livvie for next week. I don't know where we'd come up with the funds.

Blessings

On October 31st my BFF and I will be doing Livvie's blessing ceremony. This is sometimes called a "Wiccaning" if one is a Wiccan. I'm more of a Pagan/Kitchen Witch so while we'll be doing the blessing there will be some Wiccan aspects we'll leave out.

I am excited about this, because she's now old enough where she can disrupt everything and lend some much needed humor to the proceedings.

Here's the other part I'm excited about:

"There are many paths, and each must find his/her own. Therefore I do not seek to bind (baby) to any one path while he/she is still too young to choose. I ask the Lord and Lady, who know all paths, and to whom all paths lead, to bless, protect, and prepare him/her through the years of childhood so that when at last he/she is truly grown, he/she shall know without doubt or fear which path is his/hers."

Righto. The blessing we are asking for is being done FOR her, not TO her. I will say those words above and mean every last one of them. She will have choice. She will have options. If she decides down the road to become a Christian I'll gladly send her off to do that.

So on Halloween my daughter (dressed as a baby sea turtle) and I will be standing outside with her Godmother and asking for goodness and light. Not a bad start to the New Year.

Lithium

I love Lithium.

That's all.

:)

Cats

Can ruin a house faster than any dog. Pee cats (cats who pee outside the box) can do thousands of dollars worth of damage. I love my cats, but yesterday after cleaning out the room that we're going to use for Livvie, I could cheerfully have killed all of them, or even sold them for medical research.

All it takes is for one cat to get the stupid notion in his head to pee outside the box. This is why, for your own sanity, you should never place a litter box on carpet. After the first cat pees it's fair game for the rest of them. And here's the kicker, cat pee can be smelled but not usually seen, and those enzyme cleaners rarely work.

Yesterday I also discovered that anything box like had been fair game for pee as well. The cats went into the closet (!) and peed on boxes that were stored in there and destroyed 2 full boxes of books, a box of clothing, and two quilts that were folded up and stored in there.

We ripped up the carpet and found multiple areas where the pee had gone through the padding and saturated the hardwoods underneath.

Now we have to paint the floor with a sealant to lock in the bacteria and odor, paint the floor white instead of having hardwoods in Livvie's room, and repaint all of the walls (which we were going to do anyway).

And after all of this I will never ever have carpet again. Ever.

Walking

Cheerful

Good things that happened this week-

We got a new vehicle. Rich found a 2005 Ford Escape that we purchased for a somewhat decent car payment each month with no money down. This is helpful because now I can drive our Jeep instead of the Nissan Death Trap.

Rich lost his debit card and put a hold on it, but it was found at the car dealership and they held it for us. I picked it up yesterday.

Livvie has taken decent naps every day but Tuesday, the day of the full moon when she behaved so awfully I thought I might have to sell her for parts.

Livvie also walked on her own again several times last night. This is after going several weeks now without walking because she apparently decided crawling was much faster.

I received lovely gifts via mail from some wonderful people who know me very well and chose incredibly perfect items for The Bean.

So, in all actuality it's been a pretty good week for us. Things aren't that bad outside of my brain chemistry, and I just wanted to let everyone know that.

Short update

Went to the headologist today, and we've added lithium to my cocktail after all.

Apparently what I've been experiencing is called "breakthrough mania." Lithium is the best anti-manic out there, so I'm on a very low dose now, as well as on my other drugs, to see if it helps. I can tell you that I was making my way through the stages today, and thinking things have gotta change. They just have to.

Let's ALL cross our fingers that this helps.

My brain

My brain is not happy with my current dosage of Abilify, the drug I take to keep from becoming a raving lunatic.

This is the med where I'm at my max dosage.

Owen Wilson allegedly tried to kill himself this week, and my friends and myself strongly suspect bipolar disorder. I would prefer that he become the poster child for the disease rather than Britney Spears, of whom I also suspect bipolar.

I'm going to explain what goes on in my brain at these times so that I might provide some understanding.

There's a stretching feeling. It feels like your brain is a rubber band that has reached its limit. It also feels like your brain is suddenly on the outside of your skull with your skull inside it. I believe that anyone who claims the brain has no nerve endings is a liar, because every bipolar person can feel their brain. When rubber band brain relaxes, it sends you into a deep well of despair that can very easily lead to suicide if you aren't medicated. Then rubber band brain stretches again, and one of several things happens.

It stretches just far enough to allow you to feel joy and happiness over everything. The world is your oyster. You can do anything, and often try to do EVERYTHING. Even things that might not sound like a good idea to other people. Spending money you don't have, boinking random strangers, etc.

It stretches to the skull itself. At this point you start doing everything at triple the speed of usual. You write more, paint more, compose more, talk faster, clean faster, drink more, smoke more, and possibly even run around in circles to expend some of the energy. This is the point that almost every bipolar person LOVES. The possibilities that erupt out of your own skull are invigorating, and you don't want it to end. However, if you're not under treatment/under the wrong type of treatment it leads to...

Stretching past the skull. The point where it feels like your skull is inside your brain banging around. This is when the irritability and rage begins. Hair trigger tempers. Sarcasm. Rage that every living creature runs from because they can sense the danger to come. This is when people kick their dogs, beat their children, and often take high powered weapons into heavily populated areas and start firing. This is NOT a good place to be obviously.

And here's the kicker. For people like myself, ALL OF THESE STAGES CAN HAPPEN IN ONE DAY.

And right now they are. Which means my meds are no longer cutting it. And in order to keep myself and my family safe, I need to find another option.

This, frankly, sucks ass.

Well great

There's a lot of drama going down at a Mommy Board I belong to. I don't understand why, other than when that much estrogen gets slinging around it's usually inevitable.

This is why I hate working with women as a general rule. Not always, but with most of the jobs I've had where the staff was predominantly female the shit hit the fan on a regular basis. I'm a person who keeps to herself and doesn't enjoy gossiping at work, so usually my only indication that anything was up would be when I was called into the "office" and asked about what was going on. I usually had to reply that I was unaware of anything, but once the floodgate opened suddenly ALL I was aware of was the crap going on.

And often that gossip involved me. Or the backstabbing. Or the general pissiness.

I remember at my very last job being called into the office all of the time and informed that I was not being friendly enough to my co-workers and that people were complaining. I was there to work, not to make friends, and the idea that someone would complain about me for not being cuddly enough was just amazing to me.

Now, granted, I wasn't on my meds at the time, but I can GUAR-AN-TEE you that if I were to be working there now I would have the same mindset. There to work, not to cuddle.

And to be blindsided by drama when you have no idea what's going on? It's just dreadful.

So I think that I might have to start really living my life instead of hanging out on the internet a lot. I love my internet friends very much, especially the ones that are "off board" if you will. However, I think I really need a break. Which is a shame, because I really thought that the purpose of these forums was community and support.

I need to edit this to include that there is one board I belong to that is completely drama-free. It's a board for care givers of diabetic cats. It's an amazing group of caring women and I would be lost without them, even though my diabetic is no longer on this earth. They still welcome me. They're wonderful. And again, lost without them.

OCD and Clumsy

There are 2 parts of my personality which provide endless amusement to those who know me.

The first is an OCD quality in which before having a child I couldn't handle food on myself. I also couldn't stand things scattered around on the floor. My best friend used to throw paper on the floor when I was mid-rant because she knew it would shut me up long enough to pick up the paper and throw it in the trash. At this point, I would forget what I was ranting about in the first place. Having a child has removed some of these quirks, but I discovered one more this morning. I had to take the pile of bills to the mailbox. Before walking them out there I stacked them in order from largest to smallest. Now, I used to do that when folding laundry without even looking at it, but it really hadn't crossed my mind in awhile. Until I noticed myself doing it today.

My second quality is complete and utter clumsiness. I have ZERO grace. I can walk, usually, and I can almost always manage to sit down without falling down, but other than that, you'd better watch out. I'm like Godzilla swishing his tail through Tokyo. I have fallen off sofas, fallen out of my car into a mud puddle while attempting to extract my X-Box from said car, and walked smack into door jambs. Last night I ended up tripping over a broken glass that I KNEW was outside. I had placed it there. I had been waiting to throw it out into the trash bag when the bag was closer to full so that it wouldn't slice through the bottom of the bag. I was stupid. I ended up trying to sever 3 toes from my foot, and bled everywhere. So I staggered up the steps to the kitchen door and pushed the door open and hollered to Darling Husband "I need a paper towel RIGHT NOW." His response?

"Why?"

My response?

"Just get me the fucking towel!!!!"

He brought me 5.

Today I have a sore foot and a perfectly stacked pile of bills. Good day or bad day? You tell me.

My truck

That's Haldir. yes, I named my truck after a dead Elf.

Haldir died yesterday. Haldir has been the best and most favorite vehicle of my adult life. He's fun to drive, and I can actually use the bed to haul things. That's been great fun. I once hauled 3 large tanks of rats from one end of town to the other when I was moving in here with Rich.

Yesterday while I was driving Livvie around on errands I started to lose control of the wheel. By that I mean that the entire truck attempted to get into the right lane repeatedly, when the safest thing to do was to stay in the left. I attempted to communicate this to Haldir by yanking back on the wheel and throwing all my weight into staying to the left.

When we reached the grocery store I smelled burning. I popped the hood and couldn't locate the source of the burning. While I was there I also checked the power steering and coolant levels and both are fine.

So there it is. My truck is no longer safe to drive, and I have no other vehicle.

Guess we'll stay inside and watch TV every day.

Back to the doc

Today I have to go back and pick up some more drugs so I can up my dosages even more. Yeah, she finally called me last night to find out why I was wigging. I let her know that I'm currently swinging as fast as Britney and that it doesn't seem like a great place to be.

The cool thing is that until we know these meds will work long term she'll keep giving me samples so that I don't have to pay for something that doesn't work.

The not so cool thing is that I really don't see this particular combo of drugs working. I really don't. Which leads to:

Lithium

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From Wikipedia:

Lithium salts such as lithium carbonate, lithium citrate, and lithium orotate are mood stabilizers. They are used in the treatment of bipolar disorder, since unlike most other mood altering drugs, they counteract both mania and depression. Lithium can also be used to augment other antidepressant drugs. It is also sometimes prescribed as a preventive treatment for migraine disease and cluster headaches.
The active principle in these salts is the lithium ion Li+, which interacts with the normal function of sodium ions to produce numerous changes in the neurotransmitter activity of the brain. Therapeutically useful amounts of lithium are only slightly lower than toxic amounts, so the blood levels of lithium must be carefully monitored during treatment.
Common side effects include muscle tremors, twitching, ataxia, nephrogenic diabetes insipidus (polyuria and polydipsia) and seizures. Most of the side-effects are a result caused by the increased elimination of potassium.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

And yes, this is the same chemical that is used in batteries and also nuclear weapons.

So please keep your fingers crossed that this dosage on my current meds works. I'm now at the max prescribed dosage of both.

Shoulda knocked wood

Yep.

Today sucks. I have a call in to the doc to talk about possibly changing my meds.

On the plus side my kid took her naps WHEN she was supposed to. She's sleeping now, in fact, or I wouldn't be typing this as she could have given Ripley a run for her money this morning.

I'll post more after I talk to the doc. Right now I'm just too pissed.

ETA-- Still pissed. No call back.

And away we go...

I saw the doc on Thursday and we bumped up the dosage on both of my ridiculously spendy drugs. It worked practically instantly. I am in the low level of mania now where everything seems just peachy and nothing is really bothering me. I actually like my kid for a change instead of feeling like I was given the biggest demon seed ever.

This is the dangerous part of the disease. When you feel like this it's very easy to decide not to take your meds because you feel so good. Also, once the meds REALLY kick in you won't feel nearly this amazing. You'll feel normal.

And who wants to be normal, right?

It's a hard thing to keep on keeping on even though you know the dire consequences if you don't.

But I'll be good and keep taking my meds and wait for these super duper happy dappy feelings to go away. It'll be a shame when it happens, but worse is what I was. And I was reaching the point of intolerable.

Thanks for your support, everyone. It's received with much love.