Category Archives: I Don’t Have A Category

Depression is a Bitch

Posted on by July 29, 2016

Hi,

This isn’t really a post, it’s a confession, one I hope helps someone else. At least then the struggle won’t be all for nothing. This is about something I’ve dealt with for a long time, over thirty years. It’s something I very rarely talk about because I feel it makes me somehow less acceptable as a person, broken, not good enough.

(No, this is not about Speck. The one bright spot this week is Speck has left the RV park and is no longer a constant reminder. I wish him well.)

This is how I feel, like a shadow of a whole person.

This is how I feel when I’m depressed, like the shadow of a person. Empty, hollow, without substance.

 

I started writing this over a year ago, but didn’t have the courage to finish it until today. I started writing it after Tim Ferriss wrote about his struggle and how he’s hidden it for a long time. I get it. I totally, completely get it.

Jennifer Aniston just spoke about her insecurities, the same ones we all deal with. Again, I get it, on a level I wish I didn’t, I get it. And I have a whole new respect and deep appreciation for Jennifer Aniston as a human being.

The Bloggess often writes about her battles. By her admission and openness, she comforts me and the entire interwebs. We know we aren’t really, even though we feel utterly, completely alone. I hope to be like her someday: brave, vulnerable, and to let someone else know they aren’t alone.

I identified with all of what they said, and applaud their bravery and honesty, their vulnerability. They have inspired me to admit my own struggles. But, wait! There’s more…

UPDATED: Surgery Update: She Lived To Tell About It

Posted on by March 2, 2015

Hello my Lovely Kernutties!

This is a quick note to update those of you who don’t follow me on Facebook or Twitter.

I survived surgery.

The end.

(Bwahahahaaa. I crack me up! Ok, so I’m probably the only one who found that funny, but whatever, it’s my blog. NO, dammit, it is not the pain meds that made me write that. Sheesh.)

They gave me socks in exchange for my uterus.

They gave me socks in exchange for my uterus.

Ok, so you want non-gory details… (gory details and pics are at the very bottom, beneath a huge warning.)

I got a pair of socks in exchange for my uterus. (See above photo for picture of socks, pictures of uterus available upon request.)

The long-awaited surgery FINALLY happened Tuesday morning. I got home late Wednesday night, and it is now Thursday afternoon.

My patient advocate is terrific! Besides being a truly kind and caring person, she really got things moving forward for me. She came to visit me right after surgery and again the next day. She is continuing to monitor my situation and report back to all involved. Knowing how much she has helped me when I had no one in my corner made me want to do that for others. I’m not sure what is required to be a Patient Advocate, but I would love to help others as she helped me when I needed it most.

And the nurses at But, wait! There’s more…

Trip to the Suburban Ecosystem: A Vision of Sameness

Posted on by July 3, 2014

Observations From the 30-Thousand-Foot View

Looking out the small window of the 737 as it flew into San Jose Airport I saw one thing: Sameness.

Miles and miles of sameness. It was as if someone took a house-shaped cookie cutter and laid out millions of identical little houses on cookie sheets made of grass, bordered by roads of concrete and asphalt. Hundreds of thousands of cars zoomed in between the green blocks of sameness.

Looking out that window, I felt surprise. Surprise I’d lived in the middle of all that sameness for so many years and never realized how “same” it looked from above. The “30-thousand-foot view”, to use an already overused term, is one of sameness. I was a small part of that sameness for so many years and never ever comprehended it; it all appears somewhat unique from street level.

The familiarity of the sameness was warm and comforting, like a favorite soft blanket. The traffic, not so much. The traffic was more like an itchy wool blanket with moth holes. The convenience of having all manner of stores and restaurants within a few miles of my location at any given time felt luxurious. But that convenience is a double-edged sword: When you don’t have to go far to get anything you need, you rarely, if ever, venture out of the sameness. All you ever experience is sameness.

A young man of about 17 But, wait! There’s more…

You can lead a horse to water, but some horses would rather have beer.

Posted on by July 16, 2013

You all know that saying “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”.

(This post isn’t going to be as funny as the title. It’s about the effects of alcoholism and addiction. Feel free to read another, happier post while this blog doubles as my therapist.)

You can show someone a better way of life, but sometimes they’d rather stick to their old ways – no matter how much they’ve already lost because of those old patterns of behavior.

The setting sun at the end of the road.

The setting sun at the end of the road.

If you’ve never been affected by someone’s alcoholism or drug addiction, or you’ve never had an alcohol or drug problem of your own, you are very fortunate. It is heartbreaking to see someone you care about return to drinking or drugs, simultaneously losing everything important in life. The willful self-destruction by a loved one is too much to witness. Sadly, I’ve seen this happen to people I care about several times. One time is too many. It never gets any easier.

Recently, I’ve encountered three alcoholic/addict friends who just couldn’t “drink the water” for more than a month or two at a time before returning to alcohol. It breaks my heart to know they are placing alcohol above family, friends, and their livelihood. One already lost all of those things once before because of his drinking, and he’s losing them all over again. Another (who is just that guy in the future), is a bit further along and has lost literally everything – he has no home, no livelihood, no possessions at all. Just a drinking problem to comfort him.

People, myself included, have tried to help these folks. But at some point you have to give up. There is only so much anyone can do to help someone who makes alcohol a priority above all else, even their family.

Many are just too proud and too stubborn to change. But I believe those I mentioned above secretly harbor a death wish.  They have other health issues they don’t address, they drink when it’s contraindicated with their medication, they continue drinking and using knowing how their changed personality hurts those who care about them, but they have even less regard for their own health. These folks are often very depressed but hide it well. (I know, I was one.) They seem to want to die. Continuing to drink and use, and ignoring serious health issues and warnings on medication, is a slow form of suicide.

There is a better way of life for But, wait! There’s more…

All hat and no cattle

Posted on by March 27, 2013

Your lesson for today is a Texas saying: All hat and no cattle.

It means pretentious. Like a guy who just bought himself an expensive cowboy hat, but doesn’t have any cattle.

Used in a sentence, generally after some pontificating dork has just left the building, in your best Texas accent, “That guy is all hat and no cattle. My family has known his family since his grand-pappy and my grand-pappy were toddlers and they ain’t never had a pot to piss in. There’s no way in God’s Creation that kid has sixteen oil wells on his property. He don’t have no property!”

All hat, looking for missing cattle.

All hat, looking for missing cattle.

That’s it, that’s the lesson for today. It has nothing to do with the rest of this post.

Then what am I writing about? A very serious matter: My visitor and blog stats have dropped by over fifty percent during the last month or so.

I agree, it’s tragic!

My writing isn’t the most scintillating or magnetic, but that hasn’t seemed to stop most of you from coming back anyway. So we can’t blame my writing – this time.

The drop in visitors to my blog is possibly due to a trojan. Sadly, I don’t mean the prophylactic trojan. I’m referring to the much less enjoyable internet trojan.

I swear But, wait! There’s more…

Pescetarian or Bacontarian, can’t I be both?

Posted on by March 4, 2013

Pescetarian: It’s like vegetarian, but with meat.

Pescetarian (from Wiki): (pron.: /ˌpɛskɨˈtɛəriən/) (also spelled pescatarianism) is the practice of a diet that includes seafood but not the flesh of other animals. A pescetarian diet shares many of its components with a vegetarian diet and includes vegetables, fruit, nuts, grains, beans, eggs, and dairy, but unlike a vegetarian diet also includes fish and shellfish. The Merriam-Webster dictionary dates the origin of the term “pescetarian” to 1993 and defines it to mean: “one whose diet includes fish but no other meat”.

Bacontarian: A person who supplements an otherwise normal diet – like the one above – with bacon. Lots of bacon.

Before coming to Texas, the land of red meat and BBQ, I ate bacon only once in a while. I was pretty much a healthy pescetarian (but with copious amounts of chocolate).

But in Texas? I was probably the only pescetarian – at least the only one in cow country. No one here has heard of that word. Before I stopped describing myself as a “pescetarian”, Texans gave me the strangest look whenever I uttered (and then had to explain) my diet.

So now I’m a bacontarian, something Texans can respect.

But I’m still adding copious amounts of chocolate to my diet. I heard there is chocolate covered bacon but I have yet to taste it. I looked it up on Amazon… what do you think??

Chocolate covered bacon

Chocolate covered bacon… mmmm.

Chocolate Covered Bacon on Amazon.com

Is there such thing as a Choco-bacontarian?

 

28 Days Later

Posted on by February 7, 2012
As soon as I saw you

"As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was going to happen." ~Winnie the Pooh

It’s been twenty-eight days with my rig/house guest.

Twenty-eight days straight. In about 200 square feet of living space.

Despite the zombie movie reference, we didn’t kill each other.

This is HUGE for two, long-time single people.

We spent time in two states (California and Arizona), and two countries (US and Mexico).

And we had a blast!

I also learned a lot about myself, most of it good. But, wait! There’s more…

I Thought About You Naked

Posted on by December 31, 2011

I thought about you naked.

Then I put some clothes on and thought about you some more.

(Right about now my parents are probably cringing and wishing I didn’t blog.)

To the rest of you I recommend condoms to prevent any blogging children.

(This isn’t a real post, it’s more a bit of emotional release about the holidays, inspired in part by Hiker Mike’s post. I have a real, media-intense post on Slab City coming this week. I promise.)

Sexy red shoes. Hooker heels. CFM pumps.

These are my "Ho Ho Ho" shoes. ahem.

This Christmas was bittersweet for me.

As my regular readers know, more often than not I’m quite content with being single. There are minuses, of course, but overall I enjoy it. (For more specifics, see: Ten Reasons Dating Sucks and Ten Things I Like About Being Single and Ten Things I Don’t.)

But sometimes I really But, wait! There’s more…

UPDATED: Woman vs. Machine x 2

Posted on by December 28, 2012

Or “The time my laptop died, and the windows let in the rain.”

Believe it or not, these things are not related.

Don’t worry, the post about the naked guy in Quartzsite is still coming, but there’s been a slight delay…

The Sacred Laptop, holder of all photos, articles, and videos, has decided to take a vacation… just when I have a deadline for a Yahoo! News article. All 200 photos of Slab City, the town on which the article is based, are on said dead laptop, along with the aforementioned, soon-to-be-due article.

I’ve rewritten the article from (what’s left of my) memory and notes. If worse comes to worst, I do have ONE back up photo. Just one photo for the article. I certainly would have preferred choosing several from the 200 photos, but at least I’ve got a Plan B.

Meanwhile, all is not lost. As a 30-year resident of Silicon Valley, some things you just learn by osmosis… like how to rescue your hard drive. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this, and some memories are hard to retrieve. Like what I had for breakfast this morning, never mind the basic programming I learned 20+ years ago. (And how do you get to the DOS prompt in Windows Vista??? Gees, it used to be so easy.)

The Yahoo! News article is due tomorrow (Tuesday). Yeah, no pressure.

As if The Universe thought that wasn’t enough, But, wait! There’s more…

Brain-eating Amoeba – I Think I Have This

Posted on by August 18, 2011

I just heard about this ‘brain-eating amoeba’ and I think I have it.

It sure would explain a lot.

Brain-eating amoeba zombie

Moments away, people. Moments away.

We’re all on well water at the place I’ve been RV camping for much of the last month. At first, I drank the water (after filtering it) thinking ‘Ooh, well water! This has to be better the city water I’ve been drinking for the last 20 years – the city water that has chromium six in it.’ (Chromium six is the toxic chemical featured in the Erin Brockovich movie.)

Within two days my cat got sick from the well water, so I immediately switched us to bottled water.

NOW everyone is quick to tell me ‘Don’t drink the water!’

Not sure why they didn’t mention that before I discovered it was toxic on my own.

There’s also a lovely creek here.

Hmm… do you think this is where they might be getting the well water?

Which brings me to the brain-eating amoeba…

But, wait! There’s more…