26 posts from February 2008

Brian's been promising since we moved here he'd get around to the closet of doom someday.  The closet of doom being the closet where he put all of our boxes when we moved.  We moved using giant rubbermaid containers instead of boxes, you know so they'd hold up, be easy to move etc.  Well the closet is full of them.  Crammed so full of them when you open it stuff may fall on you. 

The problem?  He had a ton of stuff, 95% of the stuff is his.  My 5% ended up buried.  My 5% can mostly be buried as I don't really need pictures, old paperwork, etc.  But part of my 5% is my box of desk/craft stuff.  Stitching stuff, crafty stuff, pens, pencils, sketchbooks - I asked him to not bury that one box but he lost track of which was which and said we'd go through it once we got settled.  We're beyond settled and my little sketchbook is about full and the coloured pencils I have are fine but the regular pencils I have are crap.  So twice now I've tried on my own to get through that closet.  But I overheat (which is bad for MS) and end up in severe pain and can barely move.  Ohh and the cats try to "help". 

After today's attempt (the furthest I've gotten at about 1/3 of the boxes) and somehow getting them back in without crying while barely being able to move, I went to DickBlick.com and ordered me 3 new but cheap sketch books and a set of pencils!   I know Brian is busy and he does a lot for me, but I think I've waited long enough so HA, after how many years here I broke down and replaced a few of the things I may never see again until we move out of this apartment (as cheaply and painlessly as I could without dragging him to an actual Dick Blick store again).

Sooo... mom apparently tricked them into telling her over the phone what they're looking at based on her MRI results as she can't really afford a doctor visit co-pay at the moment.  She's a copycat!  They suspect MS based on her MRI and want her to have  spinal MRI based on what they found on the two head MRIs.  She doesn't  want to go have it done as she knows what an MS diagnosis means: the shots (which she'd likely decide against),  medications for symptoms (which she can get without a diagnosis), and a diagnosis aka a pre-existing condition making her un-insurable.  Her line of work means she could lose her insurance at any time and then be re-insured, etc.  Pre-existing condition then is bad.  So now she knows she might have MS but can't really find out or it could be more trouble for her than the diagnosis itself could be.  Welcome to the American health care system.  Don't get sick my friends and if your body betrays you through no fault of your own, good friggin luck.  We're now at three in my family with neurological issues.  Eeek.  Me with definite MS, mom probably, uncle with unknown causes.  If someone in your family shows up with these probs pray you're adopted :P

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Drawing People Illustrated and Paiting Faeries in Watercolour both arrived today and Paiting Dragons in Watercolour should be here any day.  Gotta say the fairy one is ok and pretty fairies but as far as how to books go I suspect my other faerie ones are better, but only because they're bigger and far more detailed.  Then again I haven't read this one yet, just skimmed it, but it's small and well seems to be lacking compared to the other two I have though the art in it is beautiful.  The idiot's guide though = appears to be made of much YaY!  Just skimming it already makes me happy.  Even Brian wants to look at it as he peeked at it when I was skimming it and thought he could use it too.  My mom had sent me a drawing book that had some decent exercises in it but the book was like hundreds of pages of text and a few images so I just couldn't get into it.  This Idiot's guide is crammed with pics and text explaining them too, nice balance. 

And on that note, here's my current work in progress that is killing me as I can't get the nose or chin or well most of it to look right...  I think I need to find something new to work on and go back to her, been trying for days and just not happy...

WIP - Vampira

Pain is not my friend.  The good news is that pain alien mostly isn't in my head, the bad news is that he's in most every other inch of my body.  OUCHIE! 

Also mom heard from her doctor, all they'd tell her over the phone without an appointment was that it was inconclusive.  Which leads us to believe they're leaning towards MS.  I THINK maybe stroke damage is more easy to identify on an MRI than MS, which a lot of places won't diagnose without a spinal tap and/or a history or MRIs to review.  But we won't know for sure until mom can see the doctor and she's not in the mood to go see the doctor to find out "we don't know" so I told her find out if they can at least start prescribing you meds for your symptoms as she'll go in if they'll HELP her :P  Guess I see her point, why pay $20 to hear we don't know when she already heard that and can't afford more tests at the moment, but still they know what they can rule out and what to consider, she should at least hear THAT... They did tell her she won't be dropping dead, so that's good :)

You know if it weren't for the internet, who knows where I'd be.  I woke up at 5 friggin AM crying out in pain from leg neuropathy.  This first happened when I was a teenager.  My family doctor then chalked it up to a fluke she couldn't explain as only pregnant women get woken up with severe leg pain and I'd not even had sex yet so it clearly wasn't THAT!  She said if it happened again to come back, it didn't until I was in my 20s.  It's happened a handful of times hough I have "neuropathy" pain (tingles, etc) often this is way way beyond that.  This is if I were a loud person not afraid to wake the neighbors I'd scream a nice horror movie scream, as it is, I woke up Brian.  He thought it was a leg cramp so suggested I stand up and walk it off or whatever.  We were both too asleep for me to remind him it's not muscles and oh yeah I can't MOVE. 

So I looked up Neuropathy stuff again and found this stuff on Sciatica.  Hmm I've vaguely heard of that before, so my question is how did my doctor not know to consider that when I was a teen?  My symptoms fit it to a tee.  And hey systemic diseases can be the cause and since I have lesions on my spine and MS is a systemic disease and my knee IS weak enough they've done x-rays and found no causes, it's probably all related.  DUH!  Of course I already knew it was "neuropathy"  because when I was diagnosed the first time my doctor said if I looked back I'd find MS related stuff going back to my teen years likely, etc.  And that was the only thing that stood out. 

Thanks internet, you've made me smarter than some of my old doctors.  Still, since it's so rare I'll probably forget to ask the neuro when I go to my next appointment in July.

Anyway, I went back to sleep until noon and have been a zombie all day between pain and just not sleeping well.  Ugh.   But tomorrow is possibly the last Clinton / Obama debate so w00t!

I just read that Maila Nurmi died last month :(

You've probably don't know the name -- though I suppose Plan 9 has a following for being horrible, or so I hear as I've never seen it.   I first knew of her because she was often mentioned in James Dean books I read as a teenager.  In the 50s she hosted The Vampira Show and without it there would, I guarantee you, be no Elvira.   A  few months ago I'd seen a  Halloween  interview she'd done, I'd remembered the name from the James Dean books, so I actually paid attention  and  found I just loved her spirit.  Enough so that I ended up doing a search for her at that time.  When I did that Elvira picture, I'd actually originally planned to try a Vampira one but link after link after link somehow distracted me and I ended up going with Elvira instead thinking it'd be easier.  Now I'm wanting to attempt a Vampira one.  

You can still see pictures of her and her art on her website http://www.vampirasattic.com/

Vote for a city to end up on the new Monopoly game

Protesters break into US Embassy in Belgrade and set fires.  We're so loved :P

*UPDATE*
Serbian press is now reporting a charred body was found in the U.S. Embassy building.

So the  NY Times McCain Ethics Story seems sort of like it's being sold by some as a sex scandal.  The NY Times doesn't seem to be selling it that way.  It seems to be more like his campaign people during his 2000 run thought it looked bad and tried to keep them apart based on appearances.  But I'm thinking it's more of appearances based upon his high road stance on political ethics rather than fear of a sex scandal. 

McCain being buddy buddy with lobbyists would hurt him far more than any sex scandal could.  In fact why do sex scandals even matter anymore?  Sleep with who you want, I don't care, let your hubby/wife/partner/family/friends  deal with that.  Sex scandals should only matter if you're one of those idiots verbally bashing gays and voting on legislature that affects them in negative ways -  while you're screwing everyone of your own gender that you can find.  Or if you end up on To Catch a Predator, trying to sex up little girls, hey free game.  Otherwise I don't care.

But if you're buddying up with people who are coming before you wanting political favors while claiming you're Mr. Ethical, THAT is a story.  In fact didn't he make a slight jab at Obama yesterday implying he probably won't be willing to run during the general election on just public money as he'd promised before?  Trying to imply he wasn't a man of his word? 

Ohh and yeah, I realize this story is a few years old, but for some reason his people are talking now.