Poppy Z. Brite's Blog, page 72

Warning

While tweaking my profile, I added the following sentence:

Also, I mention Billy Joel far more often than you probably want to hear about him.

There. Now you can't say you haven't been warned.

My Friend -Pam

I can hear the filthy bastards in the kitchen, scrambling atop the cabinets, howling and smashing more of my tiki mugs, and I don't give a fuck. The bathroom closet door came off its hinges and fell on my head, and I don't give a fuck. I'm tired and I'm weary. While reading the ontdcreepy free-for-all post last night, I realized that I used to love pictures of creepy, dilapidated, abandoned houses, but now they only make me sad and give me occasional flashbacks. I think I'm catching a cold. I quit this job. Elvis, take me away!

Nah, I'll be all right. But I think it's a tranquilizer night for sure. I love my old friend -Pam.

RECENT PILLOW TALK

ME: I'm sorry I'm so much trouble.

CHRIS: Well, in case you haven't noticed, I'm a lot of trouble too.

ME: Yeah, but I bet when you started dancing with that cute chick at the 40 Watt Club twenty years ago, you never expected to end up living with a little old bald-headed man and 21 cats! Didja? Didja?

CHRIS: No, I gotta admit I didn't foresee that.

OK, give me Klonopin or kill me ...

Chronic Pain/Fibro Connection?

I've been reading the archives of dot_gimp_snark , my new favorite LJ community. It's comforting to find a group of people who've experienced so many of the same frustrations I have: not just pain and lack of energy, but self-disgust at not being able to do what "normal" people can, clueless and even cruel doctors, people who tell you you haven't really tried to get better, friends who don't understand why you can't go do that fun thing with them ... etc. You know. Or if you don't, lucky you.

Anyway, I found this interesting comment on an old post:

... some docs are now thinking that fibro occurs after one has been in badly or uncontrolled pain for a long period ...

Is this true, and if so, can someone point me to any studies or even anecdotal evidence about it? I'm often asked if I think I might have fibromyalgia, and I always figured not, since I have diagnosed spinal injuries/deterioration. However, I do sometimes have severe pain in parts of my body that wouldn't seem to be connected to the spinal damage, so ... I don't know. I've certainly been in uncontrolled/poorly controlled pain for a long time. I lack some of what seem to be the key symptoms: I don't have IBS, TMJ, jaw pain, or unusually frequent headaches. To be honest, I've not bothered doing much research on fibromyalgia because I've gotten the idea that many doctors don't even believe in it*, and if they won't take me seriously with diagnosed, documented, visible-on-an-MRI damage, why should I believe they're going to jump to help me with this other (possible) thing?

I highly recommend dot_gimp_snark for anyone with chronic pain or illness who's sick of all the usual shit we have to eat. Membership is moderated, but the community is quite active and my request was approved within 12 hours.

*Please note that I'm not doubting its existence. In general, doctors are among the last people I'm inclined to trust when it comes to human experience of illness.

Thank You & Happy New Year

Kind of scary-tired today. Lately it seems as if no amount of sleep is enough -- probably a side effect of the Tramadol, and one that experience suggests will lessen, but it's boring and annoying. Before I fall over, I wanted to thank a few people for wish list items they've sent me.

- Kenny Roberts for the Patti Smith book, which I haven't read yet but am curious to.

- Carl Kesner for the Madeleine L'Engle Time quintet box set. greygirlbeast got me started thinking about these books and made me want to reread them (well, reread the first three anyway -- I've never read the final two). I read A Wrinkle in Time last night and will read A Wind in the Door tonight, if I can stay awake.

- Whoever sent me Dan Simmons' The Crook Factory; Amazon didn't identify you by name.

I really prefer to send old-fashioned snail mail thank-you notes, but the thought of finding cards and addresses and stamps and all that business makes me want to pass out, and you probably wouldn't be able to read my handwriting right now anyway.

If you're going out tonight (I had actually hoped to, but it doesn't look likely), please be careful and have fun. See you next year.

Bones Like Peppermint Sticks

Something I can only confess now that (I hope) it's over: I had started actually preferring Chris' workdays to his days off, because I felt so guilty about not being able to do things with him on his days off. He never pressured me to do stuff or complained that I couldn't -- and usually he's pretty tired himself from a ±75-hour work week -- but we used to go for long drives all over southeast Louisiana, and do birdwatching, and explore places we hadn't been, and see friends, and eat out a lot more than we do now. While I miss these things, my energy had been so low that it made me tired to even think of actually doing them.

Last night I was at least able to drag my deteriorating corpus out to Our Italian Restaurant, a.k.a. A Mano, where we got a table near the street in our old familiar place and had a bottle of red, which I liked and probably had a bit too much of on top of the Tramadol. We were having a nice time and lingered in the restaurant a little too long; even comfortable restaurant chairs hurt after a couple of hours, and the old bones were letting me know about it by the time we walked back to the car. This morning, I may as well have built a bookcase or done some major garden project; thoughts of Tramadol and cannabis were all that got me out of bed. They worked, though, and I was able to get a couple of things done today. Nothing major: some cleaning up; rosary at OLGC; a trip to Home Depot. Unfortunately, while putting away the AC filters I'd bought at Home Depot, I slipped in some vile unspecified cat secretion and fell flat on my front. Caught most of my weight with my chest and the heels of my hands. Lay there unable to catch my breath for a minute. Chris wasn't home and I figured the cats weren't going to rescue me, so eventually I hauled myself up and limped off to clean my wounds. I expect I'll be feeling the results of that little escapade tomorrow.

Fuck a skeleton anyway. Where is M. Munigant when you need him?

I was going to share a small but heartwarming tale in thanks for all the wonderful ones you posted on this entry, but I need to stop typing now. I'll try to post it tomorrow. You know, I really need to get back out on that boat with Billy and Trollface. When we're out there, I feel no pain.

Holiday

It was a nice quiet holiday with Chris and my mother. I fixed a dish that was new to me, a roasted beef tenderloin. I made a dry(ish) rub of hickory-smoked salt, roasted garlic, black pepper, and olive oil, surrounded the roast with tiny root vegetables (cippolini onions, carrots, multicolored baby potatoes), and wrapped it in bacon for the first half hour of roasting so it wouldn't get dry, then pulled off the bacon and let it brown. I was happy with how it turned out -- rich brown on the outside shading to a lovely mid-rare pink on the inside, with intense beef flavor -- and was inordinately and repeatedly complimented by my fellow diners, so I guess it was a hit.

We also had salads made from lettuce that I grew. I got fancy and made poinsettia designs on them with thinly sliced Asian pears and pomegranate seeds, then a pear brandy dressing and some of Chris' pecan-pumpernickel "dust" from the Green Goddess.

And then I cleaned up everything afterward. They offered to help, but I was on a roll. Obviously the Tramadol is helping a lot. It's already showing some of its less pleasant side effects (e.g. I fell asleep at 9:30 on Christmas night and slept thirteen hours), but I definitely have more energy and less pain. This is a period where I have to be careful and figure out how much I can do, else I'll try to do too much (dig the beet bed! Replace the frozen plants! Clean ALL the things!) and backslide.

So last night I cast off responsibility and took myself to bed with the full run of Peter Bagge's HATE comics. I reread these every few years, and I think they stand the test of time a lot better than many of the other contemporary underground comics I was reading in the early/mid-'90s. One of the few things I miss about Athens is Bizarro Wuxtry, the great comix shop run by Devlin Thompson, who was always turning me on to new series and artists. Devlin, are you out there? Chris DeBarr and I miss you. [ETA: Here he is. Buy stuff from him, he's great!]

Peace in the Valley

Pain and energy levels are still shit. I've decided to go back on Tramadol for a while. The way I'm living now is untenable, and trying to medicate this with nothing but cannabis and acetaminophen has me frequently teetering on the edge of chronic bronchitis. (That's the smoking; God only knows what all the acetaminophen is doing.) I can't do most of the things I need to do. My family is constantly worried about me. I can't keep up with my friends. I'm afraid of being touched by people in case they accidentally hurt me. It hurts to type. I don't particularly like being on Tramadol, but it's an effective painkiller I am able to use responsibly, and it's almost got to be better than this.

At times like this I think of the hymn "Peace in the Valley." I love the version by Elvis, and especially the lines, "I will be changed, changed from this creature that I am." I don't want to die, but anyone with chronic pain will surely understand the allure of freedom from the physical body. Add a big splash of dysphoria to that and you've got yourself a winner.

Sorry for venting. The last couple of weeks have been difficult. Here, in partial compensation, is a picture of my tricolored hognose snakelet Koko eating a pinkie.

Thank You

I'm touched, overwhelmed, and thoroughly heartwarmed by the stories you all shared on my last entry. I want to respond to several of them, but my energy is still at a very low ebb, so please be patient.

Oh, and this: I'm very fond of Livejournal. I like the interface; I like the communities; I like the people. Folks have suggested that I switch to other, maybe-better blogging platforms, but I've been comfortable here for years, I keep in touch with lots of great people through my friends list and comments, and frankly, this journal is an important (if sometimes embarrassing) ongoing artifact for me. Neither trolls nor hours-long blackouts nor offensive "Writer's Block" prompts (which I never look at anyway, and only know about if someone on my FL answers/complains about them) have managed to drive me away.

However, I am getting VERY tired of deleting Russian spam. I can deal with a random one here and there, but lately I'm finding that if I take a day or two away from LJ, there will often be, like, 50 Russian spam comments to nuke, which is tiring and annoying. I'd still rather not leave LJ. Any tips for preventing/dealing with this (besides returning comments to friends only, which I really don't want to do)?

Tell Me Something Good

Today I am sad. I'm having a bad spell with my back, etc. and wasn't able to be as active as I would have liked while my mom was visiting earlier this week. Then someone I considered at least a friendly acquaintance said something so racist that I no longer want to know them at all. I won't post the gory details, but it was demeaning to my neighborhood and the majority of the people who live here. I'm almost a hundred percent sure that the person doesn't read this journal, and am not trying to be passive-aggressive or make anyone play the "oh no, was it me?" game. On the off-chance that they do see this entry, on behalf of my neighbors, Chris, and myself: Tough titty, said the kitty. Your bigotry sucks.

I'm tired of pain and so tired of people being uselessly ugly to each other. However, when I search the Internet for heartwarming tales that will renew my faith in humanity, they all seem to have the unswerving moral of "AND THAT'S WHY YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST LOVE JESUS (OR ELSE YOU'LL GO TO HELL)." I mean, I love Jesus, but even I don't want that shit. So how about some personal heartwarming tales? Did someone do you a kindness? Did you see something that made you think, "Hmmm, maybe the world isn't completely irredeemable?" Tell me about it; I want to know. Failing that, I'll take your favorite Trollface/Rage Guy comics.

I even tried taking some pictures of new kitten Alexa, but she would look dead, then jump up and do something adorable as soon as I turned the camera off. Sigh.

Sweet Dreams

Last night I dreamed that Slender Man left me two black kittens. I can't remember what the one's name was supposed to be -- Beaux? Boo? -- but he had left explicit instructions that the other one should be called Brad. This is the name of an ex-boyfriend of mine -- a good guy, but a very serious one, so it didn't seem like a suitable name for a kitten. Yet I was afraid Slender Man would be mad if I changed the name.

"I know!" I said, having an epiphany. "I'll call him B-RAD!" (pronounced Be-Rad)

And everyone was happy.

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