Twitter’s 140-character limit forces people to spend a little more time thinking about and crafting their tweets. The task is made all the more challenging when including a photo or link, which, respectively, counts as 24 and 23 characters. Bloomberg reports today (May 16) that the social network plans to stop counting photos and links…
via Twitter will exclude links and photos from its 140-character count — Quartz
The best part about life is our ability to learn and adapt.
Source: Lessons.
I woke up this morning to a message that was sent to me around midnight telling me, “I know you were friends with Bart [not his real name]; just wanted to let you know that he died after a confrontation with the police Wednesday morning.”
I wasn’t awake to chat back and forth, so I had to do some searching of news articles when I saw the message. There was actually quite an extensive write-up as well as video clips so I was able to get a complete picture from the law enforcement’s viewpoint of what happened.
The hard part was seeing pictures of his dwelling and recognizing the side of his building. Bart was so proud of everything that he did to fix his place up. I still remember walking through his door and smelling his split pea soup.
Bart and I weren’t close friends; in fact, the person that notified me of his death had known him decades longer than I had and was the reason we had become acquainted. But we had gone to the Renaissance festival as part of a big group, and we always ended up attending the same get-togethers. Bart was friendly and jovial, though he definitely had issues with drinking too much. He also could not control his impulses or anger; this certainly fed into a never-ending cycle of joblessness and financial uncertainty.
From what has been published in the stories online, he got a DUI on Friday night and was sent home in a cab rather than sent to jail. On Saturday night he drove by a deputy and shot him and prompted a manhunt/search. On Wednesday morning the sheriff’s department knocked on his front door and he shot himself.
The county sheriff is proclaiming this man to be an obvious participant in the bigger war on cops. I’m calling bullshit on this. Bart was in an all-out war on his own life.
Did he drink to get drunk? Always. He couldn’t get together with a group without drinking. When you’re middle-aged and you’re drinking every weekend (and I am guessing for him, every day), it’s obviously a problem. He tried his luck with dating, but he was always stuck in his 20’s there too, referring to women as girls and only taking pictures with the pretty random strangers with their boobs propped up, never really being less than insulting. Bart was a smart guy and had loads of certifications and degrees in the tech field, so he should have had no problem with landing well-paying jobs. In fact, when I was laid off, I visited his place and we chatted about our resumes and wages, and I was quite impressed with his in both areas – he could have afforded to buy my house two or three times over with his salary. But Bart had done and said so many crappy things in his workplaces that he had been blackballed in his current state, and finding work out of state was proving to be just as difficult.
The friends who were much closer to him had relayed stories about how in recent years and months, he would suddenly become angry and take off, or disappear for hours. If they were all out of town for a trip and following each other in their cars, Bart would somehow manage to leave the caravan and insist on his own route and get completely lost. He would become belligerent if anyone tried to reason with him.
Not that this means a whole lot, but he and I used to debate his support of Trump as a presidential nominee. Bart definitely had prejudices against people who were anything except white middle-aged American men.
So here is this guy who is doing everything he can to make his own life as terrible as it possibly could be – ruled by alcohol, void of love and understanding, built on a foundation of fear and ignorance. He shot another human being because he wanted to blame someone for something. He shot himself because he saw no other way out of the pit he dug.
I have a hard time thinking about him no longer being on this earth. I saw the destructive behaviors in him, but Bart was mostly friendly towards me – maybe because I didn’t have a long or involved history with him, or because I knew exactly what to expect. I hope that now his soul is finally at peace. I think about this often, especially since death seems to be around me a lot more this year, and I wonder if souls review their lives and their lessons like I think they must. (I hope that Bart can see the humor in me saying that my wish for him is to finally understand why Trump would make a terrible president.)
In fact, I wish I could interview all of the people I knew who crossed over in the past ten months and ask them what they have learned. What were they surprised by? What was the biggest reveal? Was it all worth it, taking on this human body and signing this contract?
Sometimes nostalgia makes us remember things incorrectly, or forgive those who did us wrong. Sometimes when we re-watch movies we thought were once great, they fall flat and we figure out we should have just remembered them fondly instead of watching them one last time. I’m talking about “Bed of Roses,” people. Christian Slater was trying to soften up his image a bit after going through a darker phase (“Heathers” and “Pump Up the Volume,” anyone?), and Mary Stuart Masterson was trying to transition into more grown-up roles. Hell, I was trying to transition into more grown-up roles myself when this movie came out.
“Bed of Roses” was released just as I got my first job under the general umbrella of real estate, specifically for me in title work, throwing me into a 20-year career path. It was also the birth of my dating life as I never experienced it before. Men were actually pursuing me. One of them was an assistant to a very successful real estate agent who used my team for closings. I will call said young man Mr. Sweater (to be explained later). Mr. Sweater was a fast talker, demanding but charming, drove a BMW, tall, and good looking in an Izod-Polo-Gap kind of way. He asked me out, and I accepted. We went to see “Bed of Roses” and then went to eat at Albuquerque’s infamous Rainbow Cafe.
At the cafe, Mr. Sweater ordered me a fruit torte just to “watch my mouth” as I ate it. He talked about how he wanted to fall in love with a woman and send her thousands of roses and buy out a city. I talked about Jann Arden’s song “Insensitive” and that I recognized the song in the movie because I already owned the CD, and Mr. Sweater nearly danced on the table, asking if he could borrow it so he could memorize all of the songs like I had.
Apparently it didn’t take much to get in my pants, because we had sex to close out that first date. I don’t remember much about it, that’s how unremarkable it was. No fireworks. No heady thoughts that I had found my soul mate or that he suddenly cared about me. I certainly didn’t expect to have thousands of sterling roses show up on my doorstep. I did leave some CDs with him, though. My music has always been precious, and for any of you who grew up pre-MP3s, you know how difficult it sometimes was to replace stuff once it was gone (for instance, it took YEARS and YEARS to replace an imported EP of Nine Inch Nails “Get Down Make Love” that a friend gave me from England after it disappeared with an asshole ex who felt entitled to it). I expected to get the CDs back because we talked about future dates – they were definitely on loan, not a gift. The CDs included Jann Arden’s.
This is how different we were in our approaches: Mr. Sweater had a very idealized way of thinking about love and how it should look like a Hallmark commercial; I thought he should treat me like I am a living, breathing human being. Whenever I didn’t act in a way that he wanted me to, he would immediately get pissed and chastise me. Mr. Sweater was all about status and money. It was exhausting for me, because I’m the opposite. I mean, sheesh, yes, I LIKE money, but we seem to not be able to spend much time together – it’s more like a distant and divorced relative. Mr. Sweater would always talk about how much one article of clothing would cost, and I would say, “Gosh, that’s an entire month of rent for me.”
We were doomed. We barely had much in common bringing us together in the first place – in fact, that first date was our last, even though we talked on the phone many times after that. But the final straw was him talking about spending $350 on a sweater and then buying a very high-strung cocker spaniel for $800 (both in 1996 dollars, not adjusted to 2016 dollars). Said dog chewed the hell out of said sweater when Mr. Sweater imprisoned the dog in his apartment and barely took him out for a few minutes at a time – the dog was going fucking crazy. I finally laid it out for him and said, “Hey, how about if you stop talking about how fucking expensive everything is? That’s all you ever talk about, and it’s boring. By the way, take care of your dog or he’s going to keep acting out.”
That didn’t go over so well. Mr. Sweater kept talking about how important the price of the sweater was, and that I just didn’t understand because I didn’t own anything that expensive. From there we quickly progressed to “Fuck you” from both sides.
The problem was that he still had some of my music. That included my precious Jann Arden CD. Why didn’t I just go out and get another one? Well, besides music not always being easy to find (especially a Canadian artist in Albuquerque), I was also on a very tight budget – sometimes I only had $10 a week for groceries. (As a side note, my menu for weeks was 1 bag frozen veggies, 1 can cream of whatever soup, 1 bag cooked white rice, 1 can tuna, and I mixed that up for an entire week and a bowl was either my lunch or dinner – nothing else). For a week and a half, I asked him to bring my music back. Finally one night to shut me up he threw everything in a box and put it at my door located at the back, knocked and then ran. My roommate opened the door while I opened my window and yelled out the front, “YOU AND YOUR SWEATER CAN GO FUCK YOURSELVES!”
Yeah, not my best moment. My roommate had no idea the drama that was unfolding under our roof, and she certainly didn’t expect me to yell expletives out the window like we were living in Hell’s Kitchen on a 5th floor walk-up. One date. One lousy lay. Days and days angst over a guy who didn’t have a clue about how to truly invest himself into a loving relationship. I mean, how could he be so…insensitive?
“Bed of Roses” is available now so you can watch it on Netflix like I did this morning. It feels kind of lackluster, and I’m not really sure if it’s because we’ve seen better scripts come out since then, or if it’s because I know what it’s like to be in love and it’s not just about reciting a bunch of lines and hitting your marks and buying out an entire city’s supply of purple sterling roses. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not about the grand gestures. It’s about my boyfriend seeing my face and knowing that I either need to sit down, lay down, or be done for the rest of the day – even if it’s 2 pm. It’s about being able to let down your guard and have your inside jokes and sacred space, and celebrate laugh lines and hold each other through vulnerabilities.
The Jann Arden song that was in “Bed of Roses” was actually quite fitting for Mr. Sweater – Jann, seriously, did you know that guy?? I wonder if he ever figured it out or if he is like countless other men who are still stuck on empty.
What are the two most common symptoms of just about any chronic disease under the sun? Pain and fatigue. Sometimes pain interferes with my sleep, leading to even more fatigue. It’s a never-ending cycle. I jumped on the opportunity to try this product from ProHealth called FibroSleep, because let’s face it – even the best bubble baths, candles, teas and essential oils can’t fix everything every time. Specifically, I was given this product as part of a product review opportunity through the Chronic Illness Network. This item was a gift and I have been encouraged to give an honest opinion and review without any influence by the company. If you have read anything else I’ve written, you know I don’t hold back.
One of the problems that I run into with my additional strange, undiagnosed rare disease is that because of the increased pressure in my cranium, I get anxiety. Sometimes it feels like it comes out of nowhere. Sometimes I can blame it on specific events – like doctors who tell me that I am imagining my symptoms, or that my cluster of symptoms are actually unrelated to each other (even though the majority occur in my brain), or that there’s nothing that can be done and to never come back, etc. About every ten days I will have an entire night pass where my anxiety simply rules my entire body and I cannot fall asleep.
I received this product just in time for a particularly bad run of insomnia thanks to some discouraging appointments:
I always, always check labels to see what’s going to be invading my body, so here’s the ingredients:
This particular beef has come up for me before with me and labeling, but I would like to point out that if you have a camera on your phone that has a high pixel setting and can adequately blow up a picture so that you can read tiny writing, you may not see this as a problem. However, if you don’t, and you don’t carry a magnifying glass, you will not be able to read this label and figure out the ingredients. I’ve been told before that it’s a space issue – they simply don’t have enough – but here’s some blank space that’s not being used:
The size of the capsules are pretty standard:
I tried the capsules for three nights in a row and nearly gave up completely. I have had previous experience with 5-HTP and melatonin (both included in this product) and figured that it would be a slam-dunk, but anxiety that was prompted by doctors with big egos and closed minds completely overruled any compounds I was consuming, so I got zero sleep. I didn’t even get a weird, loopy feeling that I sometimes get with those two ingredients the morning after.
Which brings me to an important point: with both 5-HTP and melatonin, you will give yourself the best chance at getting good sleep if you cut out ALL light because light messes with your REM patterns. Look around your sleeping area and address all sources of light, including your phone, your laptop/tablet, your router/modem and your TV. Okay, so I just named off everything in my sleeping area – because it’s my bedroom and also my living room since I have a studio apartment. Even my sun therapy lamp has a bright red light that glows when I turn off my room light at night that would otherwise mess with my sleep if I didn’t somehow cover it up (I used black electrical tape).
I put FibroSleep in a drawer for a week and a half and resigned myself to terrible nights (and days) while I struggled with the politics of navigating the good ol’ boys’ club of male doctors. When I felt like I had put enough space between them and me, I tried again. Boy, did I sleep – like a rock. I did have some funky dreams because apparently my brain had a lot to work out. Also, each night I took the FibroSleep I dreamed that I was physically going through the motions of going to the bathroom, which I have learned over the years that that is my own personal signal to wake up pronto because my bladder is full and no joke, IT’S TIME TO GO. It conked me out so fast that I forgot to use the facilities before falling asleep. Most of the times I woke up to use the bathroom I also could not fall back asleep, so I only clocked about 4-5 hours of sleep total. On those nights I was loopy. This is definitely not the fault of FibroSleep. I have always had a hard time falling asleep after waking up to do things like running to the bathroom, so I broke the cardinal rule of not interrupting the sleep so that I could reap the benefits fully. I have always envied those people who can easily go right back to where they left off.
I have had fibromyalgia for about 18 years, and sleep is always a big challenge. Even if you don’t have fibromyalgia but you are like about 70% of the adult population at any given time and you are going through an especially extended and rough patch of chronic insomnia, FibroSleep may be worth checking out. Currently (May 2016) they are offering a 20% discount on FibroSleep orders here: https://www.prohealth.com/shop/product.cfm?product__code=PH311FB&B1=BLGGPH311
Also, if you are interested, they are giving you the opportunity to enter in a chance to win on their giveaway: http://fibrosleep-giveaway-bloggers.instapage.com/
Lastly, ProHealth offers a number of products. They actually have done something quite handy with their site and divided it up by conditions and topics, so you can read articles and shop for products specific to your condition: http://www.ProHealth.com
Prince was actively seeking the help of opioid addiction specialists in the days leading up to his death, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The morning his body was found, on April 21, he was scheduled to meet with Andrew Kornfeld, a staff member from Recovery Without Walls, a rehabilitation facility in California, according to…
via Will Prince finally get us talking about the prescription pill epidemic in America? — Quartz
Yesterday I was picked up by the short bus for back-to-back appointments at the health crisis center. I was the only one on the bus and so I felt comfortable chatting with the driver, unhindered by eavesdroppers or joiners. First I asked if he was a Prince fan. Hey, why not? He didn’t look to be much younger than me, and it’s still big news around here since it’s Prince’s home base. Rumors are still flying and spreading like wildfire. How did he actually die? How will his estate be handled? Will his family completely melt down and will it get ugly like it so often does when there is money involved?
The guy admitted he wasn’t much of a Prince fan. Our conversation wandered around the world of entertainment, and he talked about how dissatisfied he was with staying hooked up with satellite TV, but he kept it for sports. But then he said that he really didn’t enjoy watching any sports either. I asked him if he liked to see games in person as opposed to seeing them on TV and he said he kind of did, but he couldn’t afford to go to games. I asked him if he liked to go to shows like theater or dance, and he said he’d rather be burned alive. He also didn’t really “get into” movies or music.
A 20-minute bus ride isn’t really the place to offer life coaching. I also can’t make people feel what I feel, which can’t necessarily be put into words. A sense of urgency, maybe, or finality? It could be that my bullshit meter goes off a lot more than it ever has before. What I wanted to tell him is that he needs to find his joy. I cannot say this loudly enough, though, but this cannot be confused with finding his next fix. So many men are stuck in this cycle of seeking thrills and the adrenaline wears off and they are onto the next conquest while constantly feeling empty and wondering why they do. Where is their humanity?
Before connecting with The Saint Paul, I talked to a few men through OKCupid by text and/or phone who made excuses to play stupid games with me or not respect boundaries. I changed their identifiers in my phone to start with “Asshole ______” and programmed my phone to automatically send their calls and messages into my spam folders. I don’t even think about these folders unless I get weird calls like I have been for the past three days from recruiters based on resumes I put out in the universe over a year ago when I got laid off of my job in Phoenix before I had my last surgery. I went to update the blocks and thought to myself, “I should check my spam folder.” Lo and behold, there were some messages.
The first was from the Christian asshole who had no respect for my boundaries, and who previously tried to bait me into talking to him again by randomly telling me he had arrived at his hotel room. This time he just said, “Hey stranger how are you?” Of course, it’s been almost three months since we’ve texted, and we never even talked on the phone – but by God, he’s not gonna give up!!!! Answer, bitch!!!
The other two were from the last guy I talked to on the phone and texted with before I met The Saint Paul who abruptly said he met someone and cut off all communication after he tried to sext, which I guessed to be a lie since he was constantly logging into OKCupid still when I had an account before mine was deactivated. After two months of silence, he sent texts saying, “How have you been? Just wanted to say hi.” Gawd, please – I am not new. He didn’t “just” want to say hi. We were not casually keeping in contact and staying friends. He’s trying to keep his options open in case whomever he is currently trying to bang doesn’t work out.
I resisted the urge to reply to both of these messages because really, neither one of them deserve a response. I really, really like this phone I purchased on New Year’s just for this blocking feature alone.
There are a couple of great lines in this song by Sean Rowe that I think applies to these guys (and really, listen to the whole song because it fucking rocks): “I’m a man, I am the world, I’m a man, I am the Lord” and “He puts out the lights and jerks off alone.”
I can’t save everyone. They need to figure this shit out.
Reblogged on WordPress.com
Source: *Reblog* Monday Funnies. . .
Reblogged on WordPress.com
Source: *Reblog* Blessed are the geeks
I cried a lot yesterday. I never used to – it was a bragging point for me, that I would shed tears once a year, tops. But yesterday I started by spending an hour on my counselor’s couch recounting my dehumanizing neurologist’s appointment on Tuesday with big, fat tears rolling down my cheeks the entire time. It actually took me days to process what happened in the visit, and is the reason why I still have to write part two now.
I barely got five words out before the tears started. They were angry tears. I’m pissed. It’s not just that the doctor was a dick – because he was – but it’s that his actions could affect my life for the next few years to come. It’s not an exaggeration. I’ve been through this before too. When I had my very first shunt placed and experienced abdominal pains from day one, the neurosurgeon and general surgeon passed me back and forth for a couple of months and blamed each other for causing me pain before finally throwing up their hands and telling me that it was my imagination and there was nothing wrong with me before they had to do a large cut on me two and a half years later and discovered my abdomen was grossly inflamed from an allergic reaction to the shunt. Two and a half years before they admitted there was a problem.
The problem with this neurologist now is that he is saying that I have spasms in my face, and that I just need to stretch my muscles. He’s going to put that on my records too – and the records are going to the NIH and Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt will either take his word as gospel or dismiss his diagnosis and study me, and I have no idea which way they will tilt, but if they decide not to accept my case, it could mean YEARS of more testing before they will consider my case again.
The most insulting part of the visit with this douchebag is that he spent more time demanding to know why I wasn’t on antipsychotic meds. I am having some issues with word recall, which apparently he views as a clear sign of being psychotic. Well, that and I have this condition that no one can seem to name up to this point. He performed physical tests including forcing me to fall, all the while holding onto my hips to assist me to the next starting point because my legs shudder and I list to the right during any physical activity and I wasn’t allowed to use my cane. Then he had the balls to tell me that I was just having facial spasms. I couldn’t believe it. I said, “But you were holding me up because I couldn’t stand!” He acted as if I didn’t say anything.
This neurologist gave me the standard statement on my discharge papers saying basically “don’t come back.” I don’t make this up, people – it was there in writing. The list of doctors who will let me through their doors is tiny at this point. I would have to go through the effort of finding all new doctors to try this all over again if I wanted to get another referral to the rare diseases unit if Vanderbilt denies me this time.
I’m not crazy. I just need doctors to set aside their preconceived notions and overinflated egos and listen to me, because I have had six years of this, compared to their one hour with me and my pages of documentation that they won’t read anyway.
I sat down on Thursday night and wrote this to the doctor and his nurse. I don’t think it will change what goes in my chart but I wanted to say it anyway:
“Regarding Dx of Facial Spasm:
Just to be clear, my primary dx should NOT be functional facial spasm. I am preparing documentation to submit to the NIH through Vanderbilt and I would like it to be accurate. My symptoms have always followed the same pattern, in this order: vertigo, fatigue, slurred speech, uncoordinated walking and then ptosis. Every shunt revision has been performed after all of the symptoms have presented indicating that the shunt has clogged or broken. My shunt has been clogged since it was placed on May 11, 2015. The symptoms resolve when I lie flat, which is why I don’t have permanent damage on an EMG (and why the test was unnecessary). When I lie flat, I can feel the fluid move away from the area that it’s pressing on, as if an orange peel is slowly being removed, and the pressure is relieved from my brain. That is why my eyes open and all of the other symptoms resolve. When I am upright, the fluid pools and the symptoms return. I demonstrated this in person on Tuesday, including laying flat as well as turning my head to the far left to open the shunt to drain off fluid so I could open my eyes fully.
The printout regarding functional facial spasm does not address CSF pooling in the brain or how doing stretching of facial muscles is going to help pooling of CSF in the brain. Since I have to travel hundreds of miles in the near future to continue research on my medical mystery, it would be helpful if my records were as accurate as possible and did not contain information that does not apply to me.
Thank you.”
Next week I’ll see my primary doc and will find out if I stirred up any shit or if I have been completely ignored.
What a difference having someone who loves me and who is in my corner makes in my life, though! The Saint Paul is like my hallelujah clouds during a shit storm. I promised not to spill all of our personal details, but there are things that I feel are safe to share. The Saint Paul has a big brain and is humble, which makes me weak in the knees. He’s also a good listener. I mean this in a very specific context: If I say that I need to be touched in a certain way, he doesn’t try to correct me and say that “every woman likes” what he’s doing and he’s not going to change it. Instead, he listens and makes the adjustment, and the reward is that I don’t have to fake anything and do the crab crawl backward.
I don’t know if he noticed last night but my eyes were leaking. It was for a much different reason than 12 hours prior when I was parked on my counselor’s couch, but it felt infinitely better.
The Sick and the Dating 