Monday, February 28, 2011

More of the Eastern Glow Rising

My old friend just landed a 3-book deal with an e-publisher.
I'm tellin ya, the Great Leap Forwards is gonna come in thousands of individual jumps. Like a herd of frogs.

Can Gandalf and the Rohirrim be far away? ;)

Farewell Friggin February

With this last day of February, we mark the one-year date since Tommy T-Bone Wolk died. His is the last of the deaths of the First Death Month of the Calendar Year at Austanspace. He is still missed quite sharply.

As I stare out these Dickensian windows it has turned to slush world. This is Ingmar Bergman weather, for most people. It's runoff time, almost sugaring time. If you can just make it to early March, you'll live thru another winter. If you can get to June without breaking anything, you'll be fine til the fall. I don't make these rules.


In my 51 Februaries, this is second only to the February of 1986 in brutality. That was so bad that my friend Evan and I stayed in our respective beds for the whole month. Sober, too.


Still, with all the thrills and chills, hard times, bad news...there was good in this month, too. Nobody ever told me good was easy. I don't expect it to be anymore. Sometimes you even need a wall to charge at to get you off your ass again. The impact, however, will rock you back for a while. With all my head injuries I should be used to it. I should also put some padding in that helmet.


It seems I've traded my opiate addiction for Led Zep. I just can't listen to anything else right now. A little ELP on the side. But nothing soothes me, somehow, like Zep. Go figure. To the best of my knowledge, we are all ending February alive this year. That's a good start to March.

St. Billy's Cynicism Speech

Yanno, no matter how politically active you are, no matter how you tend your hope, here and there it's good to get a pep talk. In the clip here is St. Billy Bragg speaking to a younger generation. It's one of his best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p847qTCmX0

Non-Attitude Adjustments

Bit off in what makes for comfort thru the night; I woke at 1 a.m. as usual, but it's too warm in here to breathe and the pain is thru the roof. I'm not used to heat and my body is rebelling. It's clear that what works for easing pain while awake is not what works when trying to sleep. At least while my nose is still in this shape. And I really gotta start wondering- is this regular detox nose or are my sinuses all fucked up? This is a "sick" building, as they say; the ventilation is practically non-existent and it's nearly 150 years old. The owners don't invest much. Never had to take benadryl til I moved in here. I'm so glad I'll be out of here- 4 short weeks.

I tried to get back to sleep for 2 hours, then gave up. Watched a good PBS doc about Roman British Legions and the reign of Septimus Severus, all thru a discovered archeological dig in York and the piecing together of how and who these bodies were that ended up with their heads off and puposely buried apart from the shoulders they belonged with. Seems the incoming co-Emperor (Severus' son) didn't want to share the throne, so killed off all he knew, had them beheaded and buried untraditionally, including his brother. He then proceeded to wipe his brother's existence from the record. By such ilk is history written. I won't honor him by mentioning his name.

It sucks to go short on sleep when you have pain issues; not only are you starting off the day at a deficit but unrested joints are super cranky. The whole reason we sleep is to give our bodies time to recharge. When you have bad joints it's a balancing act. Sometimes the more rest you give it the worse it gets, and sometimes it won't relieve until it gets the rest it wants. It can be hard to tell which way to go with it. And sometimes, like now, I can be in hellpain and just unable to sleep no matter what it wants. But the drugs will be gone forever and the pain will be dealt with, somehow. A lot bigger brains than mine have been thinking on it a lot longer and only came up with opiates. Quite by accident, I took my NSAID just a bit before the benadryl, and my hip (an hour later) is cooled down a bit. Hmmm. Not saying, just noticing. It's far from a miracle, and could be just the NSAID doing what it's supposed to do.

I'm wondering a lot in this- is there a better way to sit, stand, etc.? Should I be working on gettting my left leg straight, or leave it bent forward as it's going on its own? Am I making matters worse by sleeping in that position, even though it's the only comfortable way to sleep?

So far, 3 things I'm learning in pain resolution: deep breathing is a must all your waking time, and you need airways clear to rest properly; anything that aggravates you without release will come out in pain; while awake, keep moving. Even if it's only reaching or bending from your desk chair, keep moving something all the time. The more you move, the more you'll be able to move. If you pull a Camille and take to the bed, that's all your life will be. You've got to be better than your pain.

A long time ago, my hero, Wilma J. Meyers, told me to "rise above it all and circumvent it all". It's the best all-occasion advice ever.

It's 10 a.m. now and pouring a miserable rain. Explains a lot about why we have today's pain. I used to think that was a myth! Ha!

Sunday, February 27, 2011

The New Reality: Pain

For a couple of days I've been meaning to address this. But so much keeps happening this February! Jesus!

Pain is back and worse than I recall it was when this all started. Of course, it's 4 years later and our illustrious health system has done nothing about the Cause for all these years. Part of that is my fault, for being shell-shocked and then drugged, and for having the audacity to live.

So where this all leads is, is to how to live with the pain. I'm dealing with it by just acknowledging it's there and ignoring it as much as possible. Anything can be gotten used to. Oh yeah, sometimes it's a damn hot furnace in my hip. Or my back, or leg, or whatever. But I don't have to let it effect anything else about me, do I?

Also, by chance, I'm moving next month and so I don't have to stretch the LIHEAP grant over 3 months now, just 2. So I turned the heat up to 68' and it feels so toasty in here that even my muscles are more relaxed. There's a huge difference between 55 and 68.

Aside from that, I'm giving my body time to adjust. There's gonna be a time really soon when The Push will be on, but it's not today. We and pain will be together forever, so I might as well get used to it. But I damn near took myself out a couple weeks back, and I'm an old bitch, so it takes a little time to heal now. The NSAID I take will just have to be enough. I'll try to stay as humored as possible, focus on goals and treat the pain as an annoyance. It's controlled my life for way too long. Pain doesn't get personhood in my queendom. I'm not losing another minute of my life to it if I can help it. But you don't get there overnight.