i have to say...i'm in love with chanel no. 19. so ok, that wasn't a super important thing to report on. or is it?

ok so most (none?) of you know that i'm headed to LA around this time next month (which is fantastic...considering it's going to directly coincide with next month's time o' the month...fuck...more on that in a bit). anyway, set up for the show is on the 17th, i'm hoping to catch up with some friends on the 16th, shop a little (i'll buy my bday present for ME out there because, of course, there will be an AP near the hotel and i cannot WAIT to see what the have in store, especially since they have been unbelievably slow about posting the new collection on their new website (which is not firefox friendly...) and you all know that i'm an AP girl through and through since i was first introduced to it in london). yes, i have spent way too much on lingerie for myself -- and if you think victoria's secret is pricey...VS's secret is that they only WISH they could be AP because AP is high quality and amazing. seriously...every girl should have killer knickers...i wish that they had a charity or something because i'd donate to it. no, i don't think underwear is the most important thing ever. but there is something to be said about how it can make you feel when you are otherwise feeling like 100% crap.

anyway...now that i have gone on and on about that particular subject...back to LA. so, yeah, i'm going to the LA store. but the question is...do i get a tat while i'm there and if so should i get it from kat's store? ok, considering how sick i get...a tat probably isn't a super smart idea. that and is there anything that i want on me for, uh, the rest of my life (even with removal treatments, scarring remains). i've thought about a bar code...and that's about as far as i've gotten. well, besides my famous tree drawing...but i don't want a tattoo of it on me i've decided. i dunno. so maybe i'll come back with a tat...maybe i won't. but i will have something AP and undoubtedly a mega ton of tshirts from the convention, which i'll promptly give away to my students because, hell, i think our floor would collapse if i brought in any more gamer t-shirts.

but...anyway, the whole time of the month thing: today i was informed that mcKILLme would no longer treat me for endometriosis because i am not compliant with anything but pain killers (duh...all other solutions cause me to stroke out...i know...we've tried). but anyway my regular doc wasn't there so i saw this new bitch doctor (no, i didn't mean to say witch doctor) who practically called the cops on me to show that she means business when she says no painkillers. i've honestly never wished endo on anyone...but i sure would like to wish a month of it on people like her who seem to think because THEY don't feel like killing themselves to get away from the pain that no one ever feels more than an advil's worth of pain meds.

ugh. same old, same old. this is getting rather boring isn't it? i know i'm totally bored by having to go to the doctor every fucking month for a day's worth of medicine that i have to go through uber-discussion about each and every time. maybe it's good that it'll fall on the days i'm at e for all -- i can sure do a mean demo of a person in extreme pain...they need to make "trauma center: obgyn" i do believe...

yeah i know. i haven't been good about posting stuff in a reallllly long time. school's started, i started with some super fun in the hospital (i'm ok now)...i'm teaching a class that will probably get me fired (but, damn...i'd rather go out with a whole load of controversy. :) oh what's the class on? game design...with subthemes of sex and disability accessibility. maybe that doesn't seem all that crazy but we are in the midwest and...well the field trip i have planned is a little nuts. more later if i'm fired.

school's back in session and it's always hard for me to really feel like it's a school year until it's some time in october and it's not 100+ outside with 1000% humidity and you feel like you are going to pass out at any minute.

oh...i have so much work to do and i need a vacation badly so hopefully i'll get to experience something that feels like a vacation while at the austin game dev conf in a week? and october scares me because thanks to timing...i'm likely to be at my worst and given how bad things are right now...yeesh. maybe they could just hook me up to a morphine pump?

i cannot remember a more fucked up summer.

hahahahahaha



anyway...back from ann arbor and things don't look good at all but it's not me...this time. after losing so many friends in my 20s to cancer, accidents, strokes, aids, and much, much more...it's weird to revisit it all. hospitals don't scare me...they scare my dad but that has to do more with his psycho mother. i'm not sure death does either. but it seems like there's still so much more to do...and how does one prep to die in a month or two? i'm used to either immediate or long and lingering...not a calendar page or two.

who could see that she'd go in for something seemingly every day and end up way up stage and undergoing chemo? who could know that i could go in feeling heartbroken that the treatment wasn't working to leave knowing that my heart's really broken? why did we all have to grow up? or...maybe that's it. we haven't yet...we were just supposed to and time never did stop.

due to the technology graveyard that is our apartment, the only thing working is the mac mini...through a secondary drive because the mini (oh happy mac) can't see it's own hard drive...rrrr....

anyway...day 20 of 23 of the danazol trial and it would be REALLY AWESOME if the doctor could call back with WHAT THE FUCK i'm supposed to do next...and god...i'm sick of vaginal suppositories. yeah, i blogged vaginal suppositories. fuck you if you have a problem with that. they are gross, the danazol makes me cry 24/7, i feel like i'm losing my mind, that i'm a water retaining sea cow and damn...the last 20 days have felt like 4000. meanwhile...that time of the month...did the danazol work? seems like it takes three or four months until we'll see any difference. uh, i'll be institutionalized by then! expect this month ER spotting to be friday or saturday. rock on.

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

yes, i am having a panic attack at the moment...

almost a month passed by and so much has changed and the danazol makes me cry 30 times a day and i feel like may was the biggest waste of time ever -- obviously...no blogging here at all. i did some blogging over at terra nova and that was pretty much a disaster. then who knows where the panic attacks came from...and then i feel like i don't have a right to really say anything because well, shit, compared to that...

if i lay here...
if i just lay here...
would you lie with me and just forget the world?

too much to write but i've landed on a good idea...to pretend that i'm giving the long form of my accessibility talk and write it down as is...dissertation by powerpoint...something like that. at any rate...i'm writing at least.

i think i forgot to say that it was the 6th anniversary of my blog recently, which is even more depressing when you think back to all the years...but i can't think of that now...i can't, i can't...because if i do, i'll get stuck back there trying to figure out what doesn't even matter any more...and...after a while...it gets old.

i realized that i have one more thing to do at my old job before it's really done and done and i just hope that she hangs on...

it's hard to know what to say about last week other than to think that it was not really real and to remember thinking that each day took about a week to get through. and this week? kidney infection #3 -- third in three months -- and i'm wondering what the fuck is up with that, should i be worried, etc etc etc. so this is the THIRD antibiotic i've been on to try to clear this up and this one is nastier and stronger than the last...it's hard not to start freaking out about antibiotic resistance...and the fact that this one was prescribed without any idea if it was going to work because the culture takes two days to grow (is there no way of speeding that up? can i bring it to c's lab?).

so i'm going to take a nap now but i wrote everything down on a piece of paper just in case i get too sick to remember it.

local abc news caught me at the office earlier when i was pretty much there solely to avoid hearing any more of the news of vt...by that time it was just the same endless loop over and over and over again...i never bothered to watch the news...who cares if i was on it or not. i was simply their "local perspective/wow there's someone in this town who went to VT" go-to girl and i've gotta say...i'm really, really getting sick of the media.

so speaking of, i get this email from this comm prof here who decides that today's the day he's going to say that while the media was covering VT, there was a much more sinister plot in the making about some postal tax increase, "big media" crap, the government are a bunch of crack head whores. no, the prof didn't say that last bit but it was such a stupidly timed email by this guy that, yeah, bipolar superhero woman reacts by emailing him back and saying "you know...you are in JUST as bad taste as the right wing media who are taking advantage of the VT thing...you just did the same fucking thing on the left side...shame on you." and then i thought about why i was probably on his mailing list and i'm sure that any second now someone else from that department is going to say something "profound." i can hardly wait.

they are covering it still on the news, all night, all night and i woke up remembering the classes i had in norris and i remembered you all of the sudden...when we'd run out of class...off to drive around the drill field again, young and both still alive...i've heard from so many these last 24 hours but i know i won't hear from you and i'm wondering what you must be thinking about all this...what all of you who are "you" must be thinking about all this...

and aj...interesting that you are a part of the collective "you" with the same name...i heard from them, from all of them, those who are our children now...they must be our children...and the kids are alright. but they are scared and lost...more so than we ever were...

perhaps. i don't know. i don't know if it's fair to compare the surreal with the unreal...or know which is which.

ut prosim...that i may serve...

oh yeah...i was in an article in the chicago tribune the other day (if you can't access it with the link, search with my last name and avoid the articles about the "hinn" that isn't my relative who is apparently getting medical treatment somewhere in south africa and is getting flack for it...not sure why but i don't care that much to add any more to the story in my brain or on the blog).

and even my doctor was surprised to find out that pain clinics don't treat pain...

maybe the way this was all supposed to work was because we were in the same situation in so many ways and were the only ones who really could relate to it and neither expected anything from it...it always reminds me of that book, age of innocence...only this time it takes place later, much later...and none were wayward stations...

attention non-us readers -- do you know of any health clinics in your country that uses RU-486 for non-abortion uses? there are many studies that suggest that the RU-486 in low dosages can be a miracle for people like me with endometriosis. but...thanks to this damn country's puritan laws, we can hardly get it for abortion and you literally have to be dying (with "end of life" date on the books) to use it off-label and only for things like ovarian cancer.

anyway...let me know if you know of anything.

i ran into s at mckinley and i told her that whatever she chooses to do, do NOT feel that you'd be letting me down if you took the job...i hate the madness, the mad world...all around me are familiar faces
worn out places, worn out faces
bright and early for their daily races
going nowhere, going nowhere
and their tears are filling up their glasses
no expression, no expression
hide my head i want to drown my sorrow
no tomorrow, no tomorrow
and I find it kind of funny
i find it kind of sad
the dreams in which i'm dying
are the best I've ever had
i find it hard to tell you
'cos i find it hard to take
when people run in circles
it's a very, very
mad world
children waiting for the day they feel good
happy birthday, happy birthday
made to feel the way that every child should
sit and listen, sit and listen
went to school and i was very nervous
no one knew me, no one knew me
hello teacher tell me what's my lesson
look right through me, look right through me...i'm not sure how many lives have been saved and lost but this play is over for me...it makes no difference what the spin is, really...it doesn't...for once in my life i know that i made an impact and the ones who couldn't dare to stay an extra hour even when it literally made the difference between life and death...well, they lost what they never knew they had...it was easier to let me go than to admit that their house of cards was falling down around them.

i'm supposed to meet up with them to talk about everything that i know...but i think even if i did that...it wouldn't matter...because they can't hear it...they just can't hear it...

i can't get used to the idea that after the break is over, i'll still be on break...because i've been terminated, sacked, fired, and so forth. the thing that makes me the most sad is that i'd wanted to go out with some dignity, with some kind of "hey, thanks for all that time and all those things." it would have meant a lot to me. but it's not going to happen...burn out rather than fade away.

i can't take the sting any more and there's no one who really understands...i mean understand my life, know my life and know how much it depresses me. the world is ugly and cold so often and it'd hard not to blame yourself, it's hard to bear it. but all i can do is move, keeping moving and maybe it will stop hurting in time...until the next time.

right about now the londoners are getting ready to visit IBM, which took forever and a day to set up. it's true...i would have been in bed 24/7 had i gone on the trip but what can you do? and i have only a couple more days to move out of my office...wheeeeeee!

and it's 3:30am and i'm awake.

the main trouble is that i'm starting to lose my faith in the world...not that i really had a lot but i'd thought that i'd found some pockets of humanity only to see it turn around and hit me in the face...cold hard slap to remind me that things are often an illusion and the ones you trust the most can be the first to strike you down.

no, i'm not just talking about all the ugliness going on with wimse, with the sig...it seems that once one thing falls, everything falls...and anything that you had to look forward to is suddenly gone. i can feel it all crashing down and i don't know how to stop it or even if i should in some cases. greed is all around and in surprising directions and i sometimes can't believe that people even wonder why i never like to see myself in the media and why i sometimes wish i could just disappear. and then i see the comparisons to my mother and remember how my father is so ashamed of me because he sees me as useless...and it's hard not to believe it all when it matches how you feel inside, no matter how much work you've done to try and think of things and reasons why you can't believe that only the negative is true. but when someone doesn't know you...they can wound you without truly knowing what they've done.

i know...it's a downer of a post. but it's been a downer of a month with only one exception and there's no place on the map to locate you...

t-minus any minute now for the next episode of ER...reality edition. nausea, doubled over in pain...get some food into me now now now...i wrote a letter for the ER staff because i'm sick of saying the same thing every month. maybe they'll read it. maybe they'll see that i'm not a completely worthless piece of shit like they usually do...

sigh.