trepidation darling. slow rumbly. but. ok. not all muddled inky shit. rumpled and weird. worried. waiting. mustn't wait. right? wait it. create it. something in between. sure. ok. a little bit of both. same old thing. flatten and fold. pile em up. pick em. send em. blah blah blah. eat. sleep. worry. get some exercise. missing dancing. sentence fragments. periods instead of commas. an of late problem. so this is ok. longer pauses. mild anticipation. resisting disappointment expectation. get back. eat less meat. carne asada treat. yum. gratuitous grocery store trips. i miss clay. pals. walking in streets. right right. getting back on the feet. pretending somewhat that i'll follow through on those polite little missives--oh really oh i hope you are ok call me when you get back. shly? well. willeye? well. oh well. i. oh. how i. hate the telephone. irrational anxieties. perhaps self imposed cognitive behavioral phone habituation reduction of distorted phone thinking expectation therapy. ha ha. when i get back. yes. right. soon. can i tell you. well i can. the rather itchy uncomfortable ick of crush continuance based upon the meager computer message, briefly happiness inducing due to the unexpected recognition of my absence? a crush on a name changer, see. one of those east coasters whose hippie tendencies deepened in the fine forests of california. so much so that he changed his name to something a little more nature wise. makes me squirm i tell you. squirm. positively. this may be the halted hub bub. it is nearly time for sleeping. adieu.

happy to be returning to sf soon. yes yes. though this week went more quickly than i expected. i finished my puzzle proudly. i was much too unproductive. my poor excuse is that my mummy's influence clouds my judgment. it is very frustrating to want to discuss plans and possibilities. and have to repress such talk for fear of fighting. yuck. i also must complain that my mom got all angry with me for wanting to have my sister drive her home since she had two martinis (after a beer or two at home) over dinner. she takes my worry as me declaring her stupidity and lack of capability in life in general. when really it is just me declaring the lack of motor skill and reaction time amongst intoxicated persons everywhere. but maybe she recognizes my general disapproval of her mild alcoholism. well. fuck. is really all i can say. she has accomplished more than most people and brought up two crazy daughters so perhaps i should overlook such things. but i do hate the overwhelming hypocrisy. mum yells at me endlessly for having gone on two uneventful walks outside when it was sunny enough that the snow turned shiny on top and ice mostly melted--yells at me for fear of my falling over and reherniating my disc (five percent chance they say). and after a while i get defensive because i am not totally idiotically without good judgment, and ultimately i concede because probably mum doesn't need more worry and i don't need all the bullshit repetitive yelling. but somehow my asking her politely to let my sister drive if she finishes that second martini inspires a tirade about how sad it is that i don't trust my mother to drive even after she has made it to 55, how sad it is that i don't think she is "capable" or "good enough." all of which makes no sense at all. though at least it is thoroughly clear to me where i get my overly defensive response to people worrying about me, yes? i tried to explain my interesting parallel but such things never really penetrate. oof. i suppose i ought to be a nice little muffin cake and overlook the dysfunction and appreciate the love and time and worry and all that. even if love and worry is expressed in irrational and negative ways. mum had not much in the way of good loving parenting to learn from. but how fucking frustrating it is. mum likes to tell me how she ought to have treated me like her father treated her--i.e. giving her money and never ever seeing her--so i might have turned out better. i don't like that. or that i am not worthy of her love. not nice either. what a bother. i'm a bad daughter. she's a bad mother. but we're doing the best we can, yes? i suppose. resignation. acceptance? i suppose once i am a more upstanding fully self supporting citizen. or getting some higher education. and maybe once sis pops out some little ones. we might be able to do a better job of not driving each other crazy.

glub glub glub. looks like one more week at home. i've acquired a 1000 piece puzzle picturing a crowd of buttons. and beer. finished reading a biography of howard hughes. knitted two hats and a scarf. contemplated applying to research jobs at ucsf. chatted with my roommates. my old summer camp pal. eaten an entire box of cereal. many cookies. consulted the i ching concerning my job career schooling future using special plastic sticks invented by some austrian guy (hexagram 23 (mountain over earth): destruction of the past--how appropriate). nearly mastered the art of putting on socks without bending over. received flowers twice. watched many episodes of friends, the simpsons, that 70s show, sex and the city, seinfeld, curb your enthusiasm, while you were out. too many movies. a few walks outside in the snow despite mum's excessive fear of me falling over. a few short trips in the car lying in the backseat. kerplunk kerplunk. family world is pretty peaceful. i am quite unproductive but not crazy just yet. yes indeed. glub glub glub.

well i am finding it difficult to escape fatigue. spending much time pacing mum's house, peering out at cold weather, knitting, watching the telly. quite hum drum. i think the main indication (aside from slow moving body) that i am in a recovery of sorts is that i am not too much going mad with all this sedentary indoor house confined beeswax. but of course i should appreciate the fine central heating, excellent water pressure and generally being taken care of which is rather hard to come by in my san francisco digs. yes yes. but of course, the occasional pre yelling conversation with mum dwelling on pre surgery how stupid i was to be so reluctant to come to cleveland for all the business. which is fairly infuriating (plus extra for it occurred to me this evening that perhaps today's grumpiness if the harbinger of hormonal doom). though i suspect the intra-abdominal pressure factor is not keen on me holding in anger or giving into desires to yell so my current preferred strategy to avert repeating ever repeated mutually misunderstanding angry conversations is to walk away and calm down in a closet. tut tut.

but anyway. crikey. worry plus motivation creeping over me. so i have to change my state i suppose. it seems to me to be a bad idea to return to running my body into the ground amongst the crazy kids. back to old times. returning to the hunt. plus old entertainings of ideas of school applications and such. plus it looks to me like i will be staying playing with my old mates and so a search for a new apartment as well. certainly a more settled something to the game. though i think mums will still want to initiate the screaming matches. though i think the silence walk away tactic will function well enough since i can't imagine that she would contest the fact that we have thoroughly exhausted those angry future conversations. yes? silly mums doesn't seem to realize that i am very good at internally acting out the angry future conversations with myself.

i do think i have a a tad of time to be tired though. not quite on the ball after all. non productivity not quite completely getting to me. the other day the sun streamed in and i communed with the soul of my old dead cat falling asleep in the sun just like him. and that was nice. i do appreciate the break from the usual things. but getting right back to it will be hard. especially once the tirades begin. and the strange sedating effect of being in this house. perhaps the winter or the television. it will be good to get back to the other home with pals in the cold cold flat, where i can walk with destinations, and the yuppie grocery stores are a-plenty, lie in parks, travel carlessly, pay visits to hot tubs, and all that. oof.

11:49

hello. the strange sort of slithery feeling of mild mental paralysis in a permissive sort of place and position. yes. convalescance. so i had my big chunk of disc removed thursday morning. we arrived at 5:30. impressive levels of fear of anxiety (helped along by the painful digging of the iv into my hand (i'm sorry she said jsut take deep breaths) then the very cold trip down the hall to the operating room amid the 7am hey theres and hellos of the hospital hallway) led to saying ok to general anaesthesia (versus spinal where they numb you from the waist down and chock you full of verset (a sedative) so you are vaguely sort of kind of awake as they cut retract and all that)). awakening in the first recovery room where apparently i awoke faster than then usual, shifty eyed, looking at the machinery, the same iv nurse appeared and iv'ed me pain meds and fed me a couple ice chips before shipping me to the next recovery room where mum could come. where they give you ginger ale and crackers. after awhile they help you stand up, take you to use the toilet, your face turns white as all the blood sinks into the bottoms of your body (who knew all the anaesthesia-inpired vasodilation caused _this_?), you feel light headed nauseated horrible like you must lie down down immediately and vomit awkwardly sideways all that ginger ale graham cracker into a quickly provided gigantic paper cup (like one perhaps used to take very large orders of soup from a deli). repeat this a time or two. lie on the plastic sounding hospital bed. half sleep mostly stupor. concerned mum. surgeon paid us a special visit. everything went very well. it was a _very_ big piece of disc he said. reassurances. reminders not to sit for too long.

12:03
12:06

mom dresses me. one more blood pressure drop. vomit scare. take a moment to lie down. but time to leave (otherwise it's time for another pain pill in twenty minutes. and then they make you wait half an hour before you can leave to make sure it works). so i am wheelchaired out with another paper bucket in my lap paying very close attention to keeping my eyes pointing straight ahead so i don't get nauseated again. mom meets us in the car. i slowly climb in amongst the pillows in the backseat for the journey home. the day before mom had my sister and her fellow move this age-old bed downstairs for me. where mom walks me and i topple in. nearly immobile. needing to be walked to the bathroom. propping myself up with an arm on the sink counter and an arm on the toilet paper holder to prevent toppling over or destraightening the frightfully taut well postured stiff sore back. ack. the mistake of homemade chicken broth inspires a fresh vomit from the still nonfunctional gut (it tastes the same coming up as when it went down). sleep in few hour portions. mom insists on sleeping on the nearby couch.

it seems it was a fairly more substantial event than i expected. oh my.

though i feel much better now. stiff and tired. not in pain. woefully confined to cleveland home. slow moving.

uh oh. 12:21. mustn't sit any longer. i meant to wax upon my mental state but instead told surgery tale. oh well. night night.

will write surgery story soon but can't sit more than fifteen minutes. bleep.

well apparently i did indeed make a mess of my back. the little worm-looking thing crawling out from between my L4 and L5 (as seem in my mri) is a herniated disc. a fairly large herniation that has managed to crowd my bundle of nerves into half of its usual space. so here comes surgery, tiny drill into my vertebrae and various microscopic tools chopping off the offending piece. so i will be left with a lesser disc with a little tiny hole which i have to take very good care to not let the rest of my disc's innards slip out of by running around, carrying heavy things, sitting for too long, etc for four to six weeks. eek. and the doc says usually he does the procedure with local and i'll be awake (though i can be drugged if i want to be). and so. a strange circumstance really. so now i am in cleveland unexpectedly for two weeks or so. quite poorly equipped with things to do and people to see. and once i get back to sf will be unable to work the old strenuous job. and probably should quit. but can't bring myself to do it just yet. so what a strange turn of events. i think my mother is all freaked out about the business. which she turns into lots of telling me what stupid choices i made...which results in me overreacting with lots of screaming because i am fairly constantly low level angry at the situation and progression of events and shitty doctors that led up to it and quite aware of stupid choices (though i would not say i am terribly regretful about putting too much effort into working with the crazy kids, because i liked them and i learned things). but how fucking annoying it is to have the old screaming conversations about the worthlessness of my job, the wasting of my time, how i ought to go to school with the added you have ruined your body forever what are you stupid kinds of phrases. i think my mother likes to think of this fucked up back as the best evidence for her being right and how i ought to have listened to her (and for her listen is synonymous with obey, the eternal mother daughter problem no doubt). but when not in the thick of it, mum is fairly nice. well. except when she was being all nice over dinner and then off handedly said how she can't help loving her children even though they just aren't worthy of it. arrrgh. i also do not like to be so angry all the time and have the added extra anger with all the mom stuff. but ok. ok. yes. i am grateful for all this caretaking. for cobra insurance. top notch orthopedic surgery. warm house. even if i have to declare it while hiding my gnashing teeth. rrr. unfortunately mother and daughter seem to much too easily translate worry into anger. tut tut.

anything else? knitting. hat after hat. too much tv. i think i will be growing in stature. my body will swell with its inactivity. i cannot be strenuous. i am too much reclined and immobile. something about this green couch. this suburban home. the inability to walk anywhere (not due to bodily complications but these long wide house lined streets). frustration with bodily positioning. boredom. feeling silly about the seeming trickiness of escaping boredom. more knitting. not feeling like reading but wanting to read. antsy. sleepy. erksome. guilty. angry. fairly useless. click click click. ok. i mustn't complain. mustn't. will attempt activity tomorrow. perhaps it will be easier when i am alone. ahoy.

conundrum venting! ack. a new conundrum to worry about. my apartment sucks. my roommates are fabulous. yay. my favorites in the town. talk of finding a fresh vacant place for three. but then. oho. so there was this acquaintance who said oh hey i am looking for three roommates. oh. convenient. good place. like it. central heating! washer and dryer! storage space! garage! yay! but then tragedy struck ten of his friends (some i am acquainted with) as they lost their living space. oh shit. presume three of those ten will enter in on the deal. but now he calls. he says you, just you. not three. the package will not fit. that's it. oh. shit. so one chooses between acquaintances (a few among this larger collective of pals who have always struck me as nice, interesting, creative people, but among whom i have always felt fairly uncomfortable (as one feels uncomfortable in large groups of people all already friends with one another, content in their bubble)...so i suspect i could become friends with these acquaintances in living-with setting eventually) with excellent living spaces aaaaand these fabulous ladies who have proven to be fabulous roommates with whom i would have to engage in the very very very unsavory process of apartment searching. so oh fuck. i am quite conflicted. it is so silly though. i think either option will ultimately prove to be quite pleasant. erp. i find myself projecting worst case scenarios into the future and imagining the depths of regret i will feel either way. what silly ways i try to make decisions. ok. to bed. i am in cleveland and must get up painfully early--especially by california time standards (6:45 minus three!). the current mental plan: apartment worry put aside until body worry can finally (at last!) be stayed with actual medical data! hooray! ahoy! adieu!

scarf and hat in my room tonight. right right. fairly absurd these words. i keep typing fairly and saying absurd. but anyway. today i had a very small chunk of my arm taken by a small boy biting my arm through his clothes. a bit peckish. like a bird or a snake. eek. ouch. not keen on it. no. fierce anger as i am asked about my doctor situation leading to me just jetting off to cleveland. then going to ask about vacation hours being put on my check shortly after (should appear after three months). and they tell me i am not working enough hours. which i consider bullshit. and i was all bitchy to the stupid office ladies who i imagine are stupid such that they know not quite what they do. but. arrgh. too many fucking stupid people. plus the fucking stupid people at work who do my job as well, do it badly and irresponsibly. and get fucking vacation hours. arrrgh. so. i shant complain anymore. possibly to be sorted out anyway. so i stopped at the hot tub to submerge all my tight bodied irritation in heat. and felt better.

now. i am annoyed happy and relieved to go to cleveland tomorrow. happy to not have to go to work. unhappy to spend the whole day on the airplane.

interesting: my father's concern. his dismay at my taking so long to update him. small effort not to make a too truthful remark about how i can't really feel bad about not keeping him updated as his involvement in my life and my situation has and is still quite small, silly billy. trapping truthful remarks in the throat since he has been fairly helpful with rationality and sympathy while i am being disturbed by body trouble. eerily i see how having his fatherly influence and less negative parenting style might have helped make me a little more emotionally healthy. but. oh but. might have ha ha ha. a bit tardy though. one wonders what comes of tardy father daughter relationships.

just about almost maybe bedtime. i love to qualify and tweak all manner of phrases with little turns of phrase little descriptors that turn and creak and nudge up against some ambiguous meaning so much that i manange to make sentences with little meaning at all. yes yes. i should be less wordy. to the point. get to it. yes yes. good night.

how strange. perhaps the combination of very cold room, anxiety about the return to work, generally poor adjustment back to early wake up schedule created the proper sleeping context for a nightmare. one which i do not remember, but i remember awakening and that sleepy uncomfortable sense of remembering. though i recall myself not being in it, but having an awful story of some sort unfold in front of me. perhaps some searingly obvious sign of my own lack of a sense of volition and control in various aspects of my life. ahoy. then wakeups every hour til time to get up. uggo. though a certain pleasure in the fleeting sense of having remembered, since i rarely ever remember my dreams or nightmares. but perhaps this is why one does not precede sleep effort with wordy recreations of unpleasant times.

but darling (i called the bratty girl i worked with today darling a few times which provided a vague amusement. i think if ever i have children they will be befuddled by the cuddly names i call them from time to time, ok, i ought to get to sleep. as this undersleeping is not a desirable destiny.

though it seems i am jetting off to the fam town. to cold cold cleveland come thursday to be mri'd and prodded and poked. hoping it is not absurdly superficial stuff gone wrong. it is funny to feel this simultaneous contradictory anxiety. worry that i've managed to quite damage something amidst the disc and terrible things are to be afoot. worry that i am mentally magically fabricating the strange sensations, that i make too much out of these things. that i let my mother's overblown worry exaggerate my own perspective. but anyway. yes yes. classic, darling. worry about worry. the hallmark of generalized anxiety disorder, i learned once upon a time.

truly truly to bed to bed

i feel as though i am just returning from a trip, having spent the week in a hotel twenty blocks from home. lots of rest plus one antirestful night (new years eve).

a mixed bag really. unfortunately my cognitive style is apt to encode the finest memories of the worst happenings...which actually only composed one singularly awful day. shall i tell you? yes. trying to not get to caught up. but i made the mistake of letting my mum come along to the worker's comp doc (read: shitty doctor). so maybe i am absurd, but i was curious if something at all helpful could come from the worker's comp folk despite terrible reputations of negligence in order to save money and the arrogant asshole that i had seen previously. so we go. my mother is already fuming just from the state of the little waiting room. where we wait for much too long. then this inexperienced little lady (her fumbling slowness to take my blood pressure, her asking me how to spell calf) comes to take the basic info. then i wait in the examining room for half an hour after which i start to wander out into the hall in my gown to find no one out there. but my mom sees me through the window in the door, calls my cell phone and yells at the doctor out there. rarely a good idea to see the doctor after your mother yells at him. though she later tells me that they had been spending twenty minutes discussing whether to get pizza or calzones. in any case, the doctor is an asshole. i tell him about the numbness in my leg and then he starts to snap at me about how my claim said something was wrong with my back and my problem is with my leg and snap snap how can this be on the same claim. which is just absurd since i had spoken with my primary care lady and my doctor parents and doctor parents had both spoken to the people they know who know about back problems and i have been reading about back problems ever since i started having them and everything, including my old xray, indicates something happening to a nerve root amidst my lumbar vertebrae. but in any case, shitface doctor did proceed to cursorily examine me after i babbled for a while. then he declares his big plan to compare my old xray with new xrays (ah, more radiation shot at my pelvic region). those fine xrays which show nothing of soft tissue where my problem obviously lies. so anyway, we spend four hours at st. luke's and i am telling my mom to leave for lunch but she refuses to (also doesn't have a cigarette, but just stews angrily). and we have eaten nothing all day. getting a little woozy. and ultimately, the radiologist writes "L4-L5 DDD." DDD=degenerative disc disease. which is what they call it when the space between two vertebrae is squinched so your disc must be mashed too. usually diagnosed in forty year olds and such. doc focuses in on the word degenerative and absolves himself from all responsibility: it's not work related. claims that degenerative implies that it surely happened over a great many years (which is bullshit, i thought, and mum confirmed). my back pain appearing after a few months of picking kids up off the floor having nothing to do with it. bleh. so that sucked. finally, after at least signing out all my xrays (the one thing useful from that day), we go to eat. i discover that my mother had told my sister and her fellow to wait for us to eat. our first meal of the day is at 4:30. i'm totally out of it, angry, stressed by my mother's various bouts of yelling at the doctor and his staff because they are incompetent (which they are, but no one gets anything done faster when they are being harrassed). we finally make it to eat. things are fine til the food comes. and my mother and sister find it necessary to repeat endlessly that i am makign all the wrong choices and i need to get back in school. now. right now. all wrong. terrible job. stupid. my mother's favorite phrase: "what are you...stupid?" over and over again. then the usual "when i was your age.." and the repeating and repeating criticize, be like me, you're being so stupid, just go to school. blah blah blah. the old stuff. plus some you don't appreciate me. you don't respect me. etc. quite the tirade. multiple strategies--the respond peacefully, i know, i'm trying to figure out my options (disbelief, you're taking too long, you will lose your chances of getting in anywhere if you wait anymore), the stop responding (repeating and more repeating), the draw attention to the repetition and how i do have the ability to remember things when said once maybe twice so let's move on now that i feel completely shitty and defeated (more repetition, plus the added bonus of how i may be hearing but not listening, and a smattering of what's wrong with yous), giving my advice on how to better approach giving me advice by not endlessly repetitively criticizing but offering potential courses of action to contemplate...seeing as how my self esteem is pounded into the ground and i am bursting into tears in a restaurant (then comes the tirade of what is wrong with yous, maybe you need antidepressants, you should have a more positive outlook (so tells my sister, as if this is something i don't realize and don't try to do, as if this is not difficult at all...especially when being criticized by the whole family team for an hour straight, for most of which putting my energy into remaining composed). and i tell her that i am not as crazy and unhappy when they are not around and yelling at me and repeatedly telling me the flaws in my life as if i don't tell myself these things enough. of course my mother takes this to mean that i don't like her and don't respect her and her multiple degrees. arrrrgh. what an awful awful mess. a very bad day.

well criky. i spent so long tapping about the one terrible day that i must go to bed now, leaving all good things left untold. tsk tsk. oh well. more things one day. in any case. i do feel myself in a happier place. the mates are back. recovery from new years and fairly finished. i went to a dinner party this evening which was fairly fun. alas. currently the thing that most irritates if the terror that will be tomorrow. the first day back to school amongst the crazy kidlings.

eek.