Throwing pebbles in the pool of blood

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 07:49:44 GMT

After something like a year of not being sick at all, I've suddenly come down with something that's probably not bad enough to be a flu, but still feels much worse than a regular cold. On Thursday the weather suddenly got awfully cold, the temperature at work was somewhere around 11 C, and on Friday night I woke up with a sore throat that didn't get better as the night proceeded. Coming home, I didn't manage to stay up for long and would have fallen asleep as soon as I went to bed if I hadn't been a) shaking uncontrollably and b) in absolute agony from some weird hip pain (bad enough that I was nauseous and crying unless I lay completely still and halfway over on my stomach on my left side). I remain forever indebted to whichever kind soul invented paracetamol and am much better now, happily.

I bought my sister a new digital camera for her birthday. It is awesome* and I am envious.

*Awesomeness not accurately represented in the random selection of silly and poorly lit macro and otherwise photos displayed henceforth.

(Ears are pretty gross up close like that. Who knew mine were so fuzzy?)

Happy Christmas, y'all. I'm going to sleep a little before the family stuff this evening - I'm up late, not early, contrary to what one might perhaps otherwise believe.

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 15:47:42 GMT

And of course, just after I'd posted my previous entry the stuff I'd ordered arrived, and my sister got the first two Pirates-films from the library.

'Osteonecrosis' is a fun word. Apparently it is also what is going on with my right hip, along with a potential 'segmental collapse,' presumably of the femoral head. (Explains why it hurts like buggery, I guess.) I tried looking up osteonecrosis on Wikipedia, and found an article illustrated with an x-ray that looked utterly normal to me, but apparently was displaying lots of signs of the aforementioned condition. I guess I could never have a job that required me to interpret x-rays.
I showed my sister the article and we agreed that I need to ask to keep the old femoral head and any other parts that may be salvaged when I go in for surgery. She suggested I boil it (as, apparently, is done with skulls and antlers that are kept as hunting trophies) and we then launched into a lengthy and increasingly distasteful discussion on the usefulness of human femoral heads as soup ingredients. I think, however, that I'm gonna stick with my original plan, which was asking to get it in formaldehyde.

Now to see if I can get through what I had planned for my five days off (laundry and Christmas cards) in the one and a half that's left. I'm not holding my breath...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:22:24 GMT

I have cookies, but I don't have milk. This makes me sad. Apple juice is just not the same.

The Obamas are in town! So far, we've been informed that they've met the royal family, they've chatted with the prime minister and his wife, Barack's accepted some Nobel prize, the leader of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has been mocked for his English (by the press, that is) and forgot to pull the chair out for Michelle, and the latter has also changed clothes a lot. If there's been anything else going on in the world, nobody here has had any chance of knowing about it.

I bought my sister's birthday/Christmas gifts (season 1, 4 and 5 of The Tribe if anybody cares - she got season 2 and 3 two years ago, so I figured it was time) on Play.com and apparently they were shipped on November 27th. The problem is, they're not here yet. (Nor are the CDs I ordered for myself, but they were shipped some time later.) I've never had trouble with them before, but I guess it had to happen sometime. Grrr.

Speaking of my sister, she's borrowed the third of the Pirates of the Caribbean films from a friend and is intent on forcing me to watch it. Originally she was planning a bit of a Pirates-marathon, but her friend couldn't find the first two - thank goodness! I am really not that fond of Johnny Depp - or Orlando Bloom or Keira Knightley for that matter. (People always get this way with me for some reason, once they realise I haven't seen the majority of popular films released the past couple centuries. I once had a friend who planned to force-feed me Dirty Dancing [she dragged me along to see the sequel - which was absolute shit - squeeing all the while about how the original was, like, the ultimate chick-flick ever. *shudder*] as well as the entire Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series *double shudder*. Fortunately she moved away to Cambridge before she could put her plan into action.)

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:45:58 GMT

I just blew upwards of $100 on a vinyl record of Bollywood disco from 1982. It's supposed to be the same record my mother has a home-made cassette copy of (which is pretty awesome, but probably an acquired taste), but I have no means of verifying this since I currently don't have a turntable. (I suspect my Christmas gift for myself this year will be a USB turntable, plus speakers.)

I had a customer sleep in the bathroom at work from 2:30 to about 5:45 on Sunday morning. I'd just finished mopping the floor in there when he and his buddy came into the store; him rushing to the bathroom and the latter ordering food. Ten minutes later, the friend had nearly finished his panini and was knocking on the door and yelling at him: "Are you sleeping in there?! Get out!" Eventually he gave up and just left, while taxi drivers queued up and paced around the shop impatiently.

After about half an hour, I finally got the time to get out a flat-headed screwdriver and open the damned door. I was a little worried he'd be dead - or worse, half naked and unconsciously slumped over the toilet. Thankfully he was fully dressed and breathing, but lying in front of the door blocking it. After a few unsuccessful attempts at waking him up, I realised I'd probably need assistance in getting him out. On the other hand however, he's a regular customer (and usually a tad more sentient) and I wasn't really keen on humiliating him further by having him picked up by the police. Still, I called our security team to ask whether they would charge us extra for coming over and removing him, which they confirmed and recommended I call the police instead, so I did. The lady on the phone said they were very busy, but she'd transfer me and could I please hold the line?

I held. They didn't. I hung up and glared angrily at the phone, then decided I had other things to do and that nobody were gonna ask for the bathroom anyway, other than the taxi drivers who a) rarely buy anything regardless and b) are fully capable of relieving themselves elsewhere. And after all, he might just wake up and walk out on his own, right?
(He didn't.) Fortunately, the rest of the night was rather quiet, and I nearly forgot about the fella until around 5 AM when three teenaged boys came in ordering hamburgers and one went to use the bathroom, only to come back and tell me, concernedly, that "There's a man lying on the floor in your toilet!"
"Oh, right," said I; "I've called the police, but I guess they haven't had the time to come and pick him up yet." They all looked rather disturbed at this, so when they'd left I called the police again and this time was successfully transferred. Of course the two police officers had no problem getting him up, which was rather demotivating given that I'd tried waking him up again with absolutely no reaction just before calling them.

I am a little baffled at the number of guys that come into the store - in the middle of the night, on a weekend, with a cab waiting outside - just to ask for lip balm. It happens every weekend and sometimes they buy two. At first I thought it might be just the cold winter air giving people a sudden case of extremely dry lips, but really. There's so many of them, I'm beginning to wonder whether lip balm can be used for some illicit other purpose unimaginable to my innocent little mind...

My hemoglobin has crawled back up to just within the reference range. My doctor asked if I was noticing any difference, and I replied that I didn't really (which she seemed to find strange), other than not being quite as cold all the time. However, after the visit I realised the reason I'm not noticing much of a difference is that now I'm not *EXHAUSTED!!1!* all the time, I have even less of an incentive to go to bed at a decent time. I actually thought I'd matured out of the habit of staying awake way too long, but alas. When my hemoglobin was low, I'd be physically exhausted, but awake when I got up to go to work after 7-9 hours of sleep - and I HAD TO sleep, because I couldn't be arsed to do anything else. In the past week, the longest I've slept in one stretch was just under 6 hours and the low point was hit on Monday afternoon when I slept almost three hours, zonked out on both subway trains to and from work nearly missing my stops and, sitting on the laptop at home, fell asleep and dribbled on my t-shirt three times while writing one - 1 - comment. I am a little tempted to continue this as an experiment, to see just how big I can get those bags under my eyes...

Meme time!

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:47:39 GMT

You know how sometimes people on your friendslist post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when were they working THERE? Since when were they dating HIM/HER? Since when???" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you should already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

Please copy the topics below, erase my answers and put yours in their place, and then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration. One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out.

1. first name

Johanna. Not sure how to not make this a one-word answer, actually. I don't even have a nickname!

2. age

24, but I keep getting carded and people ask whether my sister and I are twins or whom of us is the oldest. Customers express disbelief when I tell them my age. I'm not sure if it's the zits or that I just age well...

3. location

A suburb with a (somewhat undeservedly) poor reputation in the very north-eastern part of Oslo, Norway (which is in Northern Europe, for the uninitiated). I also happen to be located in the same flat as my mother and sister. Why yes, I am a loser.

4. occupation

I dropped out of high school in the spring of 2005, sat around and moped for a long time, then started working in a pet shop, quit after 16 months and since November of last year work night shifts at a Shell/7-11. It is not a career course I would recommend, although I don't mind the job per se (it's the shoplifters I have beef with. And the hamburgers. Bloody hamburgers). At least I have a lot of time off.

5. partner

N/A

6. kids

I used to want lots of kids. When I was 10, I planned to have like, twenty of them (I was also certain I would be married by the time I'd reached the ripe old age of 20). At 20, however, I had adjusted the number down to two - they were going to be sons and I'd name them Rubin David Cornelis and Louis Jonathan Mycroft. Yeah...
Then, one fateful summer, I spent 11 days alone with the dog while the rest of the family went on vacation. The poor critter nearly went batty from missing them so much, and after 11 days wherein she'd been wailing and leaving puddles on the floors constantly, regardless of how much I tended to her, I was a) fucking frazzled and b) certain I'd never, ever take on the responsibility of caring for another living creature again. Between that and many other things, these days I am basically CHILD FREE 4 LYF!!1! and intend to remain that way. (With the exception of Borkus, that is.)

7. brothers/sisters

I have 'at least three' half siblings I do not know, and a sister who's turning 20. She's a militant vegetarian and environmentalist, currently working in two pet shops and a musical theatre. She is technically certified to be a lumberjack and has long since become desensitised to the rather inhumane methods of euthanasia employed by pet shop workers who are too cheap to pay a vet (although she doesn't partake of them herself). She insists that the world would be a better place if all humans were extinct, and firmly believes the non-white humans should go first. (Which is quite ironic, all things considered, but there you are.) Over the past couple of years, she has miraculously gone from being an immature spoilt brat all the time to occasionally showing her age.
She is probably the person who knows me best (disregarding anybody who's bothered reading through my entire journal - I'm much more private in person) and most of the time we're synchronised enough to finish each other's sentences, or reply to something in unison with the exact same wording, or know what the other refers to by something unspecific like "Hey, you remember that [song], with [that guy] and that [hat]?" Clearly we've spent too much time together.
People tend to say we look exactly the same, but that's just not true. We're both tall, dark-haired and quiet, talk and laugh the same way, have goofy smiles and near-indistinguishable voices, but that is really about it.

8. pets

9. 3-5 biggest things going on right now

I've been going on about this stuff for so long now that surely nobody can have missed it, but here goes:
- Going in for x-rays (on the 8th!) and then maybe MRI scans and then to a surgeon who will hopefully realise just how unsalvageable my hip joints are and give me the hip replacements already
- Still working to save up to move out
- ...
- ...
- ... It's December, so I'm like, uh, buying Christmas gifts and stuff? ... Yeah. This is how interesting I am, y'all.

10. parents

My father is from Pakistan and I can remember meeting him exactly twice, the last time when I was 7. His family forced him to marry a Pakistani woman instead of my mother, thus the half siblings alluded to earlier. My mother is incapable of taking responsibility for her finances; cannot hold down a job; likes to randomly and unmotivatedly spew long and hateful rants about how those filthy homosexuals groom young children, abuse animals (there's a new one!) and spread 'HIV and AIDS.' She used to steal my mail (and hide or throw away the bills she couldn't pay) and probably would have continued to do so if my sister hadn't hidden the mailbox key from her. Bizarrely, we have a lot in common as well - most notably poor relationships with our mothers, but also an unhealthy tendency towards apathy and depression; a fondness for solitude and independence; immense stubbornness; a love for drawing, T-Rex, Jimi Hendrix and ragtime.

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:53:04 GMT

I had a follow-up appointment with the rheumatologist this morning. Not holding my breath, but it did go rather well. He asked how I had been doing and I answered, truthfully, that the prednisone was making a difference, but only a very small one. Apparently the lab work from my last visit had come back showing very little sign of inflammation or disease activity at all - meaning that there really hadn't been much of a reason for me to go on prednisone in the first place, I'm guessing - but also, more importantly, that he finally was coming around to pretty much the same conclusion I had; i.e. 'hey, maybe we should look at those hip replacements after all!' Woo!

I'm going back in for x-rays sometime soon (I should have already, weeks ago in fact, but it would seem my referral never got where it was supposed to be, so I still haven't got that done); then possibly MR scans; then in January I'll be seeing a surgeon and talk shit through with them. In the meantime, I got a referral for physiotherapy so I can maintain (and improve) some muscle and flexibility until (hopefully) surgery. Yay!

I was not prescribed Enbrel, however. Both because of the elevated liver enzymes (they're pretty stable at around twice the maximum value of the reference range, but really shouldn't get much higher, he said) and because of the otherwise low disease activity. I totally agree with this - the hips are the only joints I have enough trouble with that it bothers me, and when prednisone is hardly touching the pain and stiffness, it's not likely that Enbrel will do any better. And with the hips hopefully gone before too long, I'm not gonna need it anyway.
I am a little bummed though. I feel so badass doing those subcutaneous injections...

Then for something entirely different: the Christmas party at work won't happen until January 16th. As it turns out, my sister's third job (in the wardrobe at some musical theatre downtown) will have theirs that day as well. I keep envisioning the horrors that will ensue when we bump into each other in town...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:20:42 GMT

Gotta love customers who are too drunk to figure out a) where on the ATM to insert their card; b) where the number keypad is; c) how to actually enter all the digits of their PIN; d) how to read the error message that inevitably results when they've only entered two digits and e) that the polite way of addressing somebody when asking for help is not by repeatedly going "Hey... Hey, you! Hey!"
The holiday season is definitely here.

My ears are still ringing and I'm lacking a sufficiently badass icon, so this'll have to do

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:12:01 GMT

I impressed myself by managing to buy both a new hoodie, a pair of jeans and new winter boots in less than an hour this afternoon, but that's neither here nor there in this context.

Prodigy was awesome. Utterly and fantastically so. Like, us Norwegians are generally not easily excitable, and I in particular am at the rather extreme end of... unexcitability? Normally I just feel dumb if I so much as raise my hands at a concert (yes, I am every performer's nightmare). But. I. Danced. Through the whole show. *I*!

I got there at about 7.15, and the ticket said 7.30, so I was certain I wasn't gonna get a good view. Which was a pity, cause I am a firm subscriber to the idea that 'if you can't be in front, why bother?' (This works excellently in [relatively] tiny Oslo, if you can be arsed to show up early and stay away from the really huge acts like Madonna or U2 or AC/DC.) Fortunately for me though, nobody seemed to be diehard enough fans to arrive hours in advance, so when I came strolling casually in I could just walk right up front, ending up on the right end (facing the stage) with only one 'row' of people in front of me.
The opening band were okay, I didn't get their name, but they said they were from 'London, UK' a lot. Hm. At one point during their set I was busy looking at the scaffolding surrounding the stage setup (erm, yeah) and suddenly found myself staring curiously at a man in a striped sweatshirt who seemed to be lurking behind some drapes near where I was standing. He saw me looking, grinned at me (well, technically I guess it could have been to somebody else in my vicinity who had also spotted him) and put a finger over his lips. I politely acted as if nothing was the matter and averted my eyes. A minute or so later, the three teenage girls in front of me exploded in raptures of delight, jumping up and down and squeeing "OMG IT'S KEITH! KEEIIITHHH!!!" pointing towards the same corner. He disappeared fairly quickly after that.

Prodigy still wasn't on by 9.12 (which was the last time I checked my mobile) and they finished well before 10.44, but it didn't really matter. We got all the hits (although I was missing Baby's Got A Temper) - even Out of Space as an encore. I got to be passive-aggressive and 'accidentally' elbow rude people in the chest when they kept shoving. Somebody hit my ear and I worried a little about the piercings, but they didn't even crust. I spent the show dividing my time between keeping my hair tie in (harder than you'd think), keeping myself upright, pushing pushy people back, dancing (as much as the meagre space would allow) and trying to keep the tiny girls around me from being squashed. It was all good.

Then I went out and drank four Vodka Battery/ies and got hit on by a creepy middle-aged woman. When I was subjected to Lady Gaga's Bad Romance for the second time in less than three hours and aforementioned creepy lady tried to kiss me (fortunately she was a lot shorter than me), I decided that enough was enough and extracted myself abruptly from the situation, brushing off a strange man that approached me outside and hobbling to the night bus as fast as I could.

Oh, and shitty pictures, because I can:

Keith Flint, left, and Maxim.

Again.

These boots were new and clean and yellow this afternoon. Not anymore...

Why yes, I am in fact composed of eighty per cent pure FAIL in aqueous solution

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:33:31 GMT

For the past three hours I've been hungry, but unable to decide whether I want my cereal with milk or yoghurt. The obvious answer would be to eat something different altogether, but I can't really think of anything else I want.

Today, to my amazement, I managed to find an important letter that I last saw five years ago (it states that I am entitled to get Enbrel subsidised, so I'll get three months' worth for ~$100 instead of two weeks' worth for ~$1000, very practical considering I'd otherwise spend my entire paycheck on meds) - and it was even pretty much where I thought it would be (in my bag that I last used in high school). Granted, it took me the best part of two hours to find it, but in the process I finally got through cleaning out of another bag as well.

Other things I found:
- Four packs of gum (one Stimorol Fusion that expired in July '08; two Extras, of which one unopened; one Juicy Fruit; expiration dates unknown)
- Seven pens
- Six badges
- £5.64 in UK coins
- A plastic bag of dried lavender (my entire schoolbag REEKS now)
- Two Christmas cards from ophelia_is_dead
- A broken dog collar
- The POCKET BOOK of MODERN AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, 'edited and with an introduction by Philip Van Doren Stern,' 8th printing, September 1945 (somewhat illicitly acquired from my high school library where I decided that nobody was appreciating it. Never mind that *I* haven't got through it yet in the five years or so since then...)
- Toni Morrison's Sula (also in paperback and not mine, but which I absolutely did not intend to keep, especially since I didn't like it as much as The Bluest Eye)
- A CD-ROM with a note from my Gramma's husband's daughter-in-law saying it contains pictures 'from the birthday, which [my uncle] will help you view.' Obviously I've no idea whose birthday it's from, in which year, or why it's in my bag
- Seven transparent plastic bags with those practical zip-locks (that's why I've kept them, I suspect)
- About fifty crappy sketches/doodles/drawings on the backs of envelopes/bills/bank statements
- Four free samples and one whole bag of throat lozenges, assorted brands, all expired
- Three movie tickets, the last from 2006
- Eight tickets for different jazz concerts
- Complete Plays, Sarah Kane
- Sarah Kane And The Theatre Of Extremes, Graham Saunders (unread)
- Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
- Our Man In Havana, Graham Greene (unread, I've only read the Norwegian translation... seven years ago)
- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (half-read since July, shamefully - I was trudging through the introductions and lost steam about 40 pages into the actual novel)
- Seven receipts from the pet shop, dated October 2007... for things I've never bought
- A Jefferson Airplane t-shirt bought because it was on sale, never worn
- Three copies of the David Bowie sampler that came with the Mail on Sunday in June 2008 (if anybody wants one, by all means gimme a shout)

... Etcetera. My sister occasionally claims I must be part hamster, and I'm starting to think she might be right.

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:08:25 GMT

Happy Birthday
ophelia_is_dead!
Happy Birthday
ophelia_is_dead!

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:59:42 GMT

I've got five days off in a row! Well, four now, as one has already passed. I'm also seeing Prodigy on Saturday. I'm telling you this just so I'll have an extra incentive to not chicken out and stay home. I don't know why I'm being so silly about that - I like going to gigs on my own, once I actually get there at least.

'Sudden and unforeseen expenses' have occurred. Of course! I was nearly broke for a while, but thankfully this is now remedied, to such an extent that I might actually go clothes shopping in the near future. And Christmas gifts shopping, and, and... !

We now have a shower that works! About time, too. The warm water tap in there finally broke last Tuesday (after being nearly broken for the past three years or so) and so we had to shut off the warm water until we got a plumber in on Friday. He had to change the whole thing because the old taps were from the 70s and apparently aren't supported anymore. More sudden and unforeseen expenses (although he hasn't sent a bill yet, so I'm not sure how much it's gonna be), but the joy of having a functioning shower outweighs that.

I'm losing weight, yet I feel flabbier somehow. Will be working on that... once I can be arsed to eat proper food, whenever that will see fit to occur.

My appointments with various branches of the healthcare system are all over the place. I ~~might~~ need to call people and sort that out.

I love this song so much. I'm very fond of the drone-y, sorta MGMT-esque sound that seems to be in vogue currently.

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:14:16 GMT

Taking a break from my whining to give you a list of Random Little Things I Like, an idea I shamelessly stole from angmonster. Here goes:

- Going to bed in clean bedsheets and fresh out of the shower (THE best feeling ever!)
- Sleeping for 15 hours straight on my days off
- Indoor plumbing
- How light my head feels when I've just cut my hair
- Going home from work on Sunday mornings, knowing that I survived the weekend drunks and it's almost two weeks until next time
- Walking the dog at 2AM (must do again soon!)
- Singing along to Paul Anka's Diana with my sister to see who can do the loudest, most over-the-top-enthusiastic rendition (hint: it's not Paul Anka)
- Being outside when it's snowing and pretending the whole world is a snow globe
- The smell of exhaust when it's raining
- Long train rides
- Food made by somebody other than me
- The taste of the glue on envelopes
- Ketchup with my fries (apparently a concept unfamiliar to people in Manchester, I had to make do with just salt the one time I ate at a Burger King there. When I got home and related the sad story to my sister she told me I should have asked for 'sauce'. Huh)
- Two-hour long showers
- Mayonnaise
- Being taller than most of my coworkers (it makes me feel strangely omnipotent, to the extent that I don't even mind when they keep asking me to do things they're too short for)
- Cycling downhill without having to brake
- Walking through dry leaves, dragging my feet
- Being just drunk enough to feel thoroughly, utterly carefree
- Raspberry soda

... I'm on a roll now and could think of tons more, but I've got to go to bed so I'll be able to wake up for work tonight. Have a poll instead!

View Poll: It's that time of year again!

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:37:44 GMT

It's hard to shave your legs when you can't reach your calves or ankles, I've discovered. Eventually I just decided that enough was enough and hoped the doctor's office would be as poorly lit as the bathroom. Then, I realised than I had no clean bras left and also no time to wash any. 'Ah well, I'll take the one I used last' I thought, 'the doctor's just gonna look at my legs anyway.'
... Of course, he turned out to be mostly interested in my shoulders and elbows (fuck them! They have no bearing on my barely being able to walk) and had me take off my t-shirt so he could look at them - he didn't even ask me to remove my jeans, he just pulled up one leg to check if my knee was swollen. Moral of the story: doctors never do what you expect them to. Next time, I guess I'll make sure to wash my hair extra thoroughly in case he suddenly decides to look for signs of psoriasis in my scalp or something.

I've been put back on prednisone for the time being, starting with 20+10mg a day for five days, then tapering to 20 for the next five and then continuing on 10 until my next appointment which is in 'less than three weeks.' Apparently my case has some priority.

I'm going in for x-rays this week or next, and likely back on Enbrel from my next appointment. That's all well and good, but I asked him about joint replacements and he said something vague about 'you're a young woman with your whole life ahead of you.' I was too baffled to reply as I should have, with 'So I'm gonna spend it battling with these stupid hips?'
I hope he was just trying not to 'scare' me with the prospect of major surgery, but it's definitely an issue I will be pushing unless the prednisone really is some kind of magical wonder-drug. I seem to recall it working excellently... back when I was 12, freshly diagnosed and with a disease history spanning four months rather than uh, half my life?

I am so bitter, it's not even funny. Anyway! I also asked him how high the values of the liver function tests can be before one needs to do something about it ('something' here meaning stopping the drugs that interfere with liver function, i.e. most of the ones I am/will be taking, which would be rather unfortunate) because I got a nifty print-out with my ('slightly elevated,' she said, but they were between 15-95% above the upper reference point) values on from my other doc and have been reading all sorts of scary stuff on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, while suggesting a whole lot of interesting potential causes for elevated values (such as blocked bile ducts! Osteosarcoma! Liver metastases!), this wonderful well of information did not clarify just at which point 'slightly elevated' would become 'dangerously elevated' and so I sort of regretted even looking for it. The rheumy, however, said that they wouldn't do anything until they were at about three times the upper reference value, so I have some leeway still. Now I totally feel like I am sharing in on some awesome secret knowledge that only doctors are supposed to have. Woo!

My uterus deserves mad props for being so considerate as to postpone its scheduled hemorrhaging until I got home. Now if I could only teach it to stop altogether...

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:25:32 GMT

Currently, I have in my possession the following food items:
- Half a kilo of plums
- Half a kilo of grapes
- Two cans of mackerel in tomato sauce
- Two cans of some sorta fish based patè
- A container of beetroot "salad" (basically beetroot and some other things in mayo)
- A (relatively) small bucket of pickled herring
- Half a litre of melon flavoured yoghurt
- One blue cheese
- Five(!) other cheeses (only three different brands though)
- A box of salted crackers
- A bag of müsli
- A jar of orange marmalade
- A lot of mayonnaise
- Two different types of sausages
- A lot of bananas
- Two different types of pickles
- Etc.

These are all things I've accumulated over the past couple of weeks, and most of them are unopened. I love it all, but I really can't see myself getting around to actually eating any of it anytime soon. I just don't have the appetite, despite obviously believing otherwise when grocery-shopping on an empty stomach. My goodness.

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:19:19 GMT

The thing about mobile phone photos is that they never look quite as good once you get to look at them on the 'puter. Five megapixels cannot really compensate for the absence of a proper lens. Obviously I need to get less shy about waving a big ol' camera around if I want to be able to post half-decent pics.

My sister has been camping out on the kitchen floor with the dog since she (the dog) had surgery on the 9th. This was the day after.

Dog and sister again. I was really just amused by the blood-dripping image on her (Iron Maiden) shirt contrasted with her caring for the dog. Very deep, if I may say so myself.

Somebody had stuck this onto a sign on the fence outside a construction site. Very random.

Yours truly in one of the horrible shirts we've had to wear at work for the past two and a half weeks, advertising pizza slices on special offer. (I flipped that one and upped the saturation a bit so the yellow would get a little closer to how it actually looks, but it's still considerably more garish in real life.)

Flower! (in case that wasn't obvious, which I fear it might not have been.)

I'm in love with sun flare. The mark of a shitty photographer...

And again!

Ugh, shitty bland colours. Tweaking them feels like cheating, and the results might not be so hot since these pics tend to be on the grainy side. Bah.

O HAI water damage. This is the bathroom wall as seen from the hallway (the one all our neighbours walk through, yes).

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:33:31 GMT

The exhaustion continues! Yesterday I was to the bathroom exactly once (wait, what do you actually care? Sorry, you guys. I'm telling you mostly for the anecdotal value[?!], I do not intend to bother you with further details from the visit), ate some müsli with milk and a yoghurt and would probably not have bothered with anything else if my sister hadn't taken pity on me and fed me vegetarian pizza and ditto hamburgers. I'm wondering whether it's psychosomatic and I just feel extra shitty because I have a 'reason' to, or if I was/am actually verging on going into a near-coma.
Anyway!
I found $160/almost £100 in change just lying around on the dining table, under some magazines and such. I'm like a squirrel, except I hoard money and not nuts (thank goodness).
I'm working tonight and should have gone to bed long ago, but I need to shower first.

I swear I thought I had something to write about when I started, but evidently I don't. What else is new?
Considering taking the flu vaccine, but I'm not sure how or if it'll interfere with the arthritis.

... This is turning into a rather boring journal on my disease, isn't it. I need input. What do you fine fellows want me to write about?

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:37:14 GMT

I've got an appointment with the rheumatologist on Nov 2nd. Hyperventilation commencing shortly.

This guy at work annoys the shit out of me simply by existing and acting dumb. Also because he keeps texting me to ask if I can come in 20 minutes early so he'll catch his bus. (The underground is a perfectly viable, easily available alternative, but he doesn't want to take it for some unfathomable reason.) Dude, what. Fortunately for me, others are annoyed by him as well and are looking to have him removed. Unfortunately, my despisal for him is such that I am overwhelmed by contempt whenever I see somebody that reminds me of him, and as he is a pretty, effeminate gay boy, this makes me feel horribly homophobic and fifty kinds of wrong.
(This rant courtesy of the fact that he texted me again this afternoon, obviously not even bothering to check if I was actually working tonight. Which, y'know, I'm not.)

The new guinea pig seems to be improving steadily. My sister has no intention of keeping it, but then that's what she said about the other one as well - which has now spent pretty much exactly six months with us. Neither of them have got any names yet, so if it stays we're gonna have to refer to them as Guinea Pig 1 and Guinea Pig 2, or Old/Young Guinea Pig, or perhaps Smooth/Curly Guinea Pig... we are sadly unable to agree on suitable names, and the first one has been just 'Guinea Pig' for so long now that we can't really get used to anything else.

I've paid our rent for the rest of 2009, all current bills are paid and I still have more than a regular month's paycheck in my account. There's one more electricity bill this year, in November, as well as one for my study loan, and the broadband bills for Nov and Dec, but that should be pretty much it. This means that, barring any sudden and unforeseen expenses, I can start looking for a place by next paycheck. Also, my sister owes me a bunch of money because I've been paying all our bills directly from my account and she's supposed to reimburse me for her half. Hooray!

I cut my hair yesterday and inadvertently lopped off more than planned. Now I can just barely get it in a ponytail, and one side is longer than the other. Hm.

I joined a labour union (oh, right! Union fees need to get paid each month as well) as a safety measure. I mean, no employer likes employees that go on sick leave for three months plus, which is what I'll have to in case of a hip replacement (are you sick of my blathering about that yet?), but I need my job to be secure. Speaking of which, I also need to find my contract to check if I have one or two months' notice. I have noble intentions of giving my boss as much time as possible to prepare for my disappearing, but I'd also really like to have surgery before (immediately before, preferably - goodbye, dreadful family gatherings!) Christmas - not least, I shall admit, to avoid the shit-ton of senselessly drunk assholes that come crawling out of the woodworks in the holiday season.
... Okay, it turns out that I can't find my contract any of the places I thought it might be, so I might have to scrap nobleness and just let the boss know whenever I've got a date, but hopefully I'll know at least one month in advance.
If it's up to me, I'll be long gone out of here by that time, but things have an unnerving tendency to not ever go as planned here chez the Strands, so who knows. It's a little frustrating having to wait for all the various bits to fall into place, but at least I seem to be moving forward.

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:05:41 GMT

Things!

- The dog survived the surgery, but was pretty out of it for a few days. Lately, however, she's been returning more and more to her normal, slightly hyperactive self, to the extent that we now worry that she'll rip her stitches and have her guts fall out.

- My doctor called me on Monday afternoon - after office hours, no less! - waking me from my sleep to inform me that my hemoglobin levels were very low. ("- Do you know what hemoglobin is?" "- Uh, yeah, the red stuff in the blood?" I am just that eloquent when half asleep.) I was ordered to start iron supplements immediately and come back for more bloodwork on Monday. I'm reading about anemia and assorted related subjects now and think I'm gonna mention the possible correlation with Methotrexate and B12/folic acid deficiency - I *know* I am or at least have been lacking in the latter as the MTX destroys it and I only started taking supplements recently-ish.

I hope she has or will be checking the serum transferrin/ferritin as well, though - somebody mentioned hemochromatosis when I was first hospitalised for the arthritis, so I'm a little worried about that. (In fact the belief that I might have that - although surely somebody would've told me if that was the case? - is why I've stupidly avoided iron supplements in the past 12 years or so.) That said, I've got most of the symptoms of iron deficiency anemia, including pica for ice(!) - heck, I've been craving ice near-constantly since I (at my sister's insistance) first tried chewing ice cubes about six years ago, although I would perhaps hesitate to describe it as compulsive.

This totally explains why I am cold all the time. And why sleeping currently (and increasingly) takes priority over practically anything. Coming home from work lately goes something like this:
Food or internet? (Internet!)
*hours later* Huh, maybe I should go to bed. Except that I'm kinda hungry... Food or sleep? (Sleep!)
But wait, maybe I should've been to the bathroom. (No!) Not even to pee? Pee or sleep? (Sleep!)
*hours later, alarm goes off* I really should get up now or I'll be late unless I skip something... Brush my teeth or sleep? (Sleep!)
Etcetera. I R GROSS, y'all.

- My sister's coworkers (at the other of Tommy's two pet shops, not the one I used to work in) are a bunch of useless cunts who literally cannot take care of guinea pigs to save their lives. We (or more correctly my sister, as I'm not really too keen on having much to do with it) now have yet another guinea pig pup in our custody, this too near-dead from scurvy. Fucking hell. They HAVE been reported, this summer, to the relevant authorities, which have not really done anything, since the guinea pigs affected back then were removed. (Tommy took some home(!) and fed them vit C - they are now healthy, astonishingly enough - while the one that got them reported was one they had taken to the vet to be put down because it was so sick. Good on the vet, I say. Scurvy in guinea pigs is SO common, SO horrible for the affected animals and SO SO SO easy to avoid that there's really no excuse, especially when you're working in a pet shop and supposed to KNOW what you're doing.) WTF is wrong with these people?!!

- I have five days off for the first time in like nine weeks. JOY!

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:46:07 GMT

The dog's got pyometra (hey look, a link that isn't Wikipedia for once!) and is having surgery about now-ish.
Round here it is uncommon - and in fact illegal - to have dogs spayed or neutered except for medical or behavioral reasons. So pyometra is rather frequent in older dogs - the vet said the surgery was the procedure they did most often on female dogs in the same age group as ours, and only one in 400 or so dies. But I'm worried sick still.
Positive thoughts are much appreciated.

Emo, ergo sum ("I mope, therefore I am")

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:30:31 GMT

Since I've still not heard back from the rheumatologist, I finally bit the bullet and went to my regular doctor to get a referral. Also got bloodwork done for the first time in, uh, five years? Maybe I should've done that before. The doctor shook her head at me (but didn't berate me like some do, so it was all good). She remained professionally unaffected by my not-so-shaven legs (I was running late, and also hoping I would get a referral without an actual physical examination. Ugh) and heaps upon heaps of varicose veins (I have more of them than most middle-aged women would be able to conjure up the possibility of even in their worst nightmares. Not kidding), but tried to diagnose me with Raynaud's (bollocks! My hands and feet are just regular cold and pale, not blue or painful) and also asked about my family history regarding diabetes, requiring a glucose level test (I'm unsure how useful that would be since I'd eaten three hours previously). Blech. She seemed quite unsettled by the lacking flexibility of my hip joints, so hopefully she'll put 'URGENT' all over the referral and I'll get surgery before I suddenly wake up one evening realising I cannot walk, much less actually, y'know, work.

Now to hope I haven't developed a Giant Liver Failure of Doom in these years...

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 11:43:42 GMT

I was walking onto the subway train today and looking in an entirely different direction, nobly trying to keep the door for some fellow who looked like he might not reach there in time. I got around to thinking "Hey wait, my foot's not moving, it must've snagged on somethiii--" before suddenly and abruptly encountering the floor.
It was not my greatest moment. The guy I was holding the door for stepped over me, while some woman eerily resembling Ms Trunchbull from the Matilda movie leapt to the rescue.
(Here, I learnt an important lesson that I will urge y'all to remember for possible future use: if you see somebody fall on their face and you're trying to help them get up, please, for the love of all that's holy, do NOT start pulling on their arms until they have at least got up on their knees - unless, of course, you are prepared to take on the weight of their entire upper body and not be thanked for your efforts. As a cripple, I can assure you* that most people are fully capable of getting themselves from a horizontal position to standing on their knees - it's the second part, actually getting on one's feet, that is troublesome - and moreover, that most people also need their arms for support to do just that. Pulling on their arms, while possibly making you feel that you're Doing Something Helpful, is utterly and completely counterproductive at this stage.)

I'd say I was not afflicted other than a bruised ego, but while my ego after years of torment has become impervious to practically anything (Common sense? Criticism? Embarrassment? You got it!), my physical self is actually feeling a little worse for wear. Time for ibuprofen and sleep, me thinks.

*Well, okay, I cannot really speak for others than myself. YMMV.

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:27:31 GMT

Not-so-dear self,

A couple things you might want to take note of:
- This is not the time of the month when you have any excuse to act like you're Holden Caulfield's female incarnation
- Green Day lyrics are not deep or meaningful. Seriously
- Have you taken your vitamins lately?
- ... That's what I thought. Then DO IT, FFS
- Stop whining and get yourself a decent meal
- Immediately thereafter, go to sleep damnit
- ... and stay off t'internet until you have something vaguely useful to post about k thx

No love,

Your poor battered common sense

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:57:35 GMT

Working as much as I'm doing currently is quite helpful in that it leaves no time for brooding - but of course, once I have a couple days off, the crash is proportionally harder.
I have been up since 5 AM (I dreamt that the shower drain was clogged again, yet my mother had turned the water on and it was spraying all over the bathroom, and then the plumber arrived right while I was showering. Most unsettling) and have done sod all, except paying one bill and eating a bag and a half(!) of chips and some fruit. I seem to have lost some weight, however (although I'm not sure exactly how much, as I weighed on an empty stomach, which I usually try to avoid), so it's not all bad.

I haven't heard back from my rheumatologist yet and it's been nearly two and a half weeks since I sent the letter. And over a month already since my birthday! I want time to slow down a little... or perhaps not; I'm not exactly grieving that the workdays pass quickly, I'd just like fewer of them.

On Saturday, arriving at work, I nearly stumbled over a huge cardboard box full of DVDs situated right inside the door in front of the stairs. Christine peeked in after me. "Are you strong?" she asked.
- ... Uhh, I replied hesitatingly.
- 'Cause Maria [assistant store manager w/superior attitude and anger management issues] was gonna haul it upstairs to the office, but just left it there, and I couldn't lift it.
I looked sceptically at the box.
- Or you can just leave it there, she continued, seeing my doubt. "I mean, Maria couldn't lift it either, and she's been in the Army - she's probably tougher than either of us. She can deal with it tomorrow," she finished, pulling out of the door again as a customer arrived.

That was probably the smartest thing she could have said. I couldn't let that pass, could I? I placed my hobo-esque plastic bag (containing my work shirt and assorted other belongings) on top of the (ridiculously flimsy for its size) box, tipped it so one end rested on the bottom step of the stairs, got a good grip around it and carried the motherfucker up the stairs and into the office. And then I felt ridiculously accomplished (even though it wasn't really heavy - 10-ish kg, if that, but admittedly very unstable and therefore hard to get a proper hold of).

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:09:46 GMT

~~Dear~~ family,

Although I understand that it is somewhat unusual for me to receive correspondence that is not bills, and I also understand that you are greatly mystified when I get postcards from people you do not know, I see absolutely no reason for you to place such communication at the very bottom of the month-old stack of otherwise business-related letters on my table. That stack is my 'Out' file; the bunch of payment receipts, paid(!) bills, paychecks, bank statements; all the things that I've finished dealing with and that are just waiting to get filed properly. I know you know this, bitches (for one, you'd never put a bill there). Placing new, unread correspondence at the bottom - as if this would somehow make me believe that I had received and read it weeks ago and just magically forgotten - is perhaps a trifle above downright stealing my mail, as at least one of you have resorted to in the past, but still pretty fucking low, if you ask me. (Here, a less composed person than myself would be tearing their hair out, stomping their feet and hyperventilating whilst shrieking hysterically through clenched teeth "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOUUUUU?!!" I know, cos I'm doing all of this inwardly.)

Seriously, you are both more than eager to get me the bills as soon as they arrive. Why are postcards any different? More importantly, what else are you keeping from me, and on which criteria do you base your judgement as to whether or not my mail is suitable for me to receive? I ask again; WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!

~~Yours~~ MY FUCKING OWN, seething with unholy rage,
jasmin_sane

To the lovely person on my friends list who sent me an absolutely adorable postcard of 'Springtime in a Japanese train station,' I am sorry to not have acknowledged receipt of your card sooner, but I am in fact not even quite sure exactly when it arrived due to reasons outlined above.

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:35:12 GMT

Apparently I was counting my chickens too soon (or however that proverb goes). My darling coworker Daniel is now on extended sick leave until Oct. 6th at the earliest. This time I've been asked to work "only" five nights a week, though. (Yay?)
Words cannot express how sick I am of this. The boss said to just "let [him] know" if I wanted more days off, but there are exactly two people (the store manager and shift manager-turned-assistant store manager, to be precise) that conceivably might be able to take on a couple of night shifts each, but they are both really busy during the day and would be highly inconvenienced if I'd asked them to take more than the two nights a week I've got off.
So. At least five more weekends. In a row.
(I'm feeling like such a wuss, whining about five-day weeks when that's what normal people work, and six-day weeks when that's how much people actually used to work back in ye olden days. But there you are.)

Last night on my way to work I saw a man with a septum piercing wearing a Utilikilt and carrying a ukulele. I've probably been reading too much DTWOF, because I almost felt like applauding him, but then I remembered that all bearded Utilikilt-wearers aren't necessarily gender conscious hippy feminists. (Although, if they were the über-macho type then why would they want to wear a garment that might so easily be interpreted as feminine?)

Anticimex put up horrid sticky traps under our shelves. The rat(/s?) have dragged a huge piece of cardboard (from where, I do not know) with it/them and laid it out over the traps, thereby avoiding getting stuck while still able to run around in there. Apparently Anticimex had discovered this clever manoeuvre during their latest visit.
While I'm not fond of the rat/s for sanitary reasons, I *did* laugh out loud when the store manager told me. AWESOME.