Maybe the Last Warm Day

It is supposed to be clear and warm today and then get much colder. I think this could be the beginning of winter here. I just picked Jeremy up from work and hope we can get out and go to the lake or something later when he gets up to celebrate.
I went to see Dr. Gold yesterday and passed my piss test adn got put back on my pain meds so I feel much better. Sure was a long month!!!!!
Alicia caught a mouse this morning. She kept playing with it so I finally killed it and put it out in the trash. I'm glad she is a good mouser because I hear them trying to get into the house already and when this cold spell hits they will be here with their little suitcases.

Psych Meds

I've never thought much about phsych meds. I remember the days when it was all valium, elavil, triavil, lithium, and thorazine. Then the new meds came out. The ones that effect the seratonin uptake in the brain like Prozac. I saw first hand what a person who absolutely shouldn't take prozac was like. My ex was prescribed it and became a completely different person out chasing 19 year olds and masturbating constantly. Then I got talked into trying Paxil, the less evil cousin of Prozac. It was advertised as non-addictive and safe. I noticed good things at first. I became more organized in my thinking and a little less depressed. Then I tried to stop taking it. Whenever I skipped a dose it would feel like I was getting electric shocks through my head that actually hurt. I called the company and they acted like they had never heard of such a thing. Then later I got online and found many, many, others with the same problem. Then I noticed they quit saying it was non-addictive in their commercials. Now I don't see any commercials for it. I got a doctor to switch me to another newer cousin of Paxil called Effexor and I am still stuck taking it. Not for depression, but to stop the horrible withdrawal. My current doctor is planning to find a way to wean me off but it is slow going.
On a better note for psych meds, now they are making many of them that also control pain. I am taking one for bipolar disorder that keeps me on an even keel but I have no clue yet what will happen if I ever want off of it. I do believe it is helping with the pain I live with, too, as I can take less Morphine than I used to to get by. I'm taking Abilify, don't you love the cutesy names they come up with!! At least I'm not gaining weight on this one. Almost all of the others have put weight on me, number one for that being Zyprexa, the makers of whom are in lawsuits for various side effects as are many psych drugs. Who knows. Abilify might be the next class action law suit for making people sit up at night and write blogs...
I do know that I was very much more depressed before starting the Abilify BUT I still wonder about taking it because, truthfully, I live a pretty depressing life. Have lived a depressing life. Only an idiot of someone on drugs would be happy with what I've been through and am going through right now. I take the meds to enjoy what I can of the few good things in my life. I have the love of my children, grandchildren, and a good man. I also have been disowned by a large family for false reasons and am poor and disabled and have a daughter who is junkie with all the problems that entails for the family. My faith in God and an afterlife is shaky and I don't believe in human beings at all. I'm too old and sick now to reach most of my life dreams and I know it.
So..... I take the little blue pills that stop the drying and give me the facade at least of a happy person. Ain't life funny.

The Missing Muse

I stopped writing when I was sick over the summer and mu Muse won't come home now. I have some hope that if I just start writing about it she will come back. Without my Muse my writing is flat and without a real voice or anything to say. It's just me sitting here writing the nonsense in my head.. or is that what I always do??
My main battle right now is still the addiction of my daughter. I went through another time of her being in jail, this time for thirty days, and went through the pain of seeing her off of drugs and clear while in there and then back to her being on drugs and losing the bloom she was getting even in jail from being off of drugs. I wish I had the magic to just make this nightmare end. Only she holds that wand and I'm not sure even she can wave it the right way any more. If she had a magic wand she would likely just create more heroin with it right now. It totally mystifies me that she and women like her can and do choose drugs over their own children. Her daughters are growing up without a mother and she without them and the oldest is twelve and very, very, hurt and bitter. The oldest lives in Florida and the younger two in Minnesota so I can't even see them either right now. I do talk to all of them on the phone whenever I can and it all just breaks my heart. I could go on a spree of busting all of the drug dealers I know of but it's done no good in the past and will just likely get me killed someday.
I'm depressing. No wonder my muse is hiding. If anyone sees her please send her please send her home and I will try to be more upbeat!!!!!

Methadone Clinics

There is a new pay Methadone clinic in town that I think should be shut down. They charge twelve dollars a day, and they don't drug test like the free clinic, but the biggest crime going on is the amount of Methadone they are putting these people on. I have heard of them going as high as 200 mg a day and that is outrageous. They are taking semi-functional heroin addicts and turning them into drooling, non-functional, Methadone addicts, and the withdrawals from Methadone are more painful and dangerous that heroin withdrawal. I have given my daughter and her boyfriend Methadone to help them get off of heroin and found that just ten mgs will stop their withdrawals from heroin, and then the withdrawal from there is still gruesome, Methadone withdrawal is one of the very worst, but 10 mg is at least doable. I can't fathom withdrawal from 200 mg. I feel sure that this "clinic" is an opportunistic money maker for someone although it makes no sense that they spend what they do to dose their patients so high. I have an appointment with one of the doctors in town rumored to be involved with the clinic and hope to get some answers from him or at least just make him nervous by asking my questions about it.
Truthfully, I suspect that a lot of things about the drug laws and rules in this country are designed to make money for the government. Even though we all know it is less destructive than alcohol, Marijuanna will never be legalized because "they" make too much money by it being illegal and would make very little if it were legal. Too many people would just grow their own.
Twelve dollars a day doesn't sound like too much until you know how many heroin addicts there are around here. And most of them were created by the now jailed Dr. Rosario, who was prescribing huge dose of Oxicontin to anyone who asked for years before he got caught and all of his patients turned to Heroin, which is in short supply and expensive in this part of the country. My daughter was a patient of Dr. Rosario for Fibromyalgia for three years so I have first hand knowledge of all of this.
So, we will see how much noise I can make about this and end or fix it. See ya.

By His Own Mother

He sat on the end of his mattress on the floor with his voice filled
head in his hands. Why was he here? The hated answer was always there. Always the same from all of the voices.
Because there was no where else for him.
Wait, his sister said. She would be back to get him. His love for her almost over ran the other disclaiming voices trying to remind him that all women were evil. Hadn't he known that even before when he was alone in his head? He wasn't sure any more. The voices had started speaking when he turned thirty and as he approached forty they were a part of him, only muted when he smoked marijuana, which he could no longer afford. Could no longer keep his life together to work to get. See! the voices exclaimed. Even our sweet sister betrays us there! He shook his head in disagreement and acceptance of the fact that her help was in fact a betrayal.
"It's just to help you," she said in that reasonable pleading voice. "We just have to claim you are insane to get disability payment for you from that evil government. You know I don't really think you're crazy."
Was she lying? Just trying to placate him pretending to know as he did that the government was an evil institution? Was it all a trick? Did she, too, really believe he was schizophrenic? Would she ever really come to rescue him from her?
Mom. Bad Mommy. All her money and she hated that she had to take care of her own son. He had heard Sis telling her it was her turn, her responsibility to help until the SSI started.
He looked around his room grudgingly given in Mom's house. A mattress on the floor. A garage sale radio.
Bitch. She had kept all the money their father had left for their care and shut them all out when Sis was ten and he just thirteen. The rest of the house was filled with her treasures from Japan and grace. Like a beautiful person lived there. The voices started screaming like jungle animals and he started rocking back and forth in pain. So much pain in this world and he was born without armor.
He still loved his mother but it was just pain.
Hunger overcame any shred of pride again and he slipped out of his room passing her locked door to go to the kitchen where he found a half loaf of stale bread. He skipped the first dry piece and took the next two and, after a deep breath, he approached the locked door and knocked. Here rough voice, reserved for the children her husband had forced on her and then deserted her with, growled through the door. "What! What do you want?"
"Please," he said, with the voices clamoring at his begging tone.
"Please can I have a little peanut butter for some bread, Mommy?"
She seethed on the other side of the door. She hated him calling
her Mommy. Knew he did it at his age just to try to make her feel he was her responsibility somehow. She knew he had complained to his sister about her neglect because her daughter had dared to call and ask if she were starving him just that morning. She got the peanut butter from the pile of foods in her room and opened her door just enough for him to scoop a little out for his bread.
"Thank you, thank you!" he said fervently so she would feel guilty. Ha! She owed these grown children nothing. But her daughter's love for her brother frightened her. She had no understanding of such passion and believed it could hurt her even from a thousand miles away if she didn't feed him a little.
Herbert took his thin sandwich to his bedroom eating it slowly and
carefully trying to get it to feed his gaunt six foot body. His stomach and the voices cried out for more but that was all there would be for now.
He rummaged under his mattress and found a pack of beans he had found on his walk yesterday hoping to grow some food. It was getting cooler out as the Texas sun was setting so they all agreed it was time to go plant them. Her door was still locked tight so he dared to use the restroom. Not that she denied him the restroom but he had to leave the door open to any room. Enclosed places terrified him. He couldn't breathe let alone pee with the door closed and she hated that.
He stopped in the kitchen to dig out a beer he had hidden in the
vegetable drawer in the fridge. Foul stuff but he had bummed it from a guy in the store parking lot for emergency use if he needed the voices quieter. Her garden tools were piled by the back door and he took a shovel and went out into the twilight with his spirits lifting immediately to be out of the house.
He started digging along the side of the detached garage out back
preparing the soil for a row of beans. After turning the soil he took a break sitting on a broken chair and carefully rolled a cigarette from the tobacco of other people's butts he gathered outside of the convenience store near by and he opened the cold beer. Maybe Mom would be happy to see the beans growing. Be happy with him for the moment.
She loved to see things bloom. Blooms always reminded her of her precious cherry blossoms left back in Japan. She might smile her big dimpled smile like his own and speak in that sweet voice reserved for phone conversations with her Japanese friends and even help him pick the beans. He would cook them for her with his special talent for seasoning and they would sit back satisfied that it came from their own yard.
Whistling softly now he went back to work planting each bean with care, the voices not still but drifting around on the slight breeze lifting the curls off his forehead.
He hated the thought of going back in just yet so he opened the garage where his little car Sis had given him was parked. It was old and rusted but it still started up and the radio worked. He loved music above all things and couldn't turn his tinny radio in the bedroom up above a whisper without upsetting Mom. He folded his large frame into the small front seat with it as far back as it would go and set his warm beer between his legs and searched for a radio station playing his kind of rock and roll and then leaned back listening, going back in time to teenage years when everything still seemed to make sense. When he could still grasp hope.
When it was getting close to midnight he started the car to recharge the battery for next time, always amazed that the little motor still purred. He'd kept forgetting to tell Sis that the little car was still running. He knew she'd be surprised. But she said two months. Two more months with Mom and his SSI would come in and he could go back to live by her in Nebraska. Only two more months. He fell asleep picturing the hilly farm where he had lived with Sis before and all the fun they had there.
His mother inside was curious at the silence in the house and came out of her room to find the house empty. She looked out back and was immediately filled with black rage. The yard light was on, costing her money. They always cost her money! She opened the back door and her ears were assaulted by the noise Herbert called music coming from the garage. She saw her good shovel propped against the garage and her rage was jet black with red sparks as she saw that he had dared to dig in her yard without permission.
She approached the car in the garage and saw him sitting head back in the driver's seat. She called his name and he didn't respond. Either he couldn't hear above his rock and roll and the engine running or he was ignoring her. That thought stuck and fueled her rage even further. This was it! She was done. Not even her frightening daughter could make her put up with this!
She had to strain to reach the garage door handle and then yanked hard letting it slam to the ground. Ha! That would get his attention.
She stomped back to the house going in and locking the door behind her. Let him sleep out there with his stupid music!
And he did.

Black Jack

I went to a casino and played at a black Jack table for the first time on my birthday. I have played Black Jack among friends before but never professional like this. I really enjoyed it because of the interaction between the players at the table. I suppose it is different from any other poker game in that the players are usually playing against each other as well as the dealer. In Black Jack everyone is rooting for everyone else, and if you have a nice dealer even he is rooting for the players. Players advise each other on every play and offer a quick Good Luck when an ace is dealt and then cheer for the Black Jack. I won four hundred dollars the first night and didn't even notice because I was having so much fun just enjoying being with a group of friendly strangers. I don't think I could be one to get addicted to winning the money but I sure could get addicted to the fellowship! I will definitely play again although I won't have the amount of money I was playing with again any time soon, but I saw people who would just come with twenty dollars and sit down for a bit and try their luck. I recommend Black Jack to anyone who enjoys pleasant interaction with strangers. :-)

Waiting

I hate waiting for people to show up. I hate waiting for anything. but I especially hate waiting on people who are late and don't call or anything. It drives me nuts because you always have to deal with that touch of guilt for getting pissed as you think Oh my! Something might have happened to them! And then my own reaction when they finally do show up infuriates me. I say something stupid and dismissive like, Oh, that's OK., I knew you would show up eventually! Just once I'd like to feel right to greet them with a shotgun, not be here, or at least tell them what a pain in the ass it was waiting for them. Yea... I'm waiting on someone right now with an impatient five year old who has been waiting all day for Daddy to pick her up and he is two and a half hours late. Not only am I answering When will Daddy get here? every two minutes, again just now!, but I had a big shopping trip planned as well a a visit to one of my daughters after shopping which I will be late for but I have already called her and warned her. His cell phone rings four times and goes to voice mail or rings twice and goes to voice mail. No other choice and I'm too polite to leave more than one message. What if something horrific has happened to him? There he will be in the hospital getting both legs amputated and my rude, impatient, fed up, messages will be floating out here for him to get when he is well enough. Or will I just leave and take little Jessalynn with me shopping in about five more minutes???
I'm getting my shoes on.