so last night, internets, mark went loony again and we had another fight! okay, i may have had a hand in it, but whatevs. so, yeah, we are going on thirteen years of marriage which is remarkable since i don’t know anyone else who has been married that long, minus my mom and dad. wait, my aunt and uncle have been married that long too. but i’m not sure it counts because she held a knife to him at one time. i may have chased mark around the center island of our last house with one once, but i didn’t hold it up to him and shit. so, anyway, after all these years i think we must be doing something right. either that or we are gluttons for punishment.

so, yeah, he came home from work completely stressed out. when it was time for bed, i made a comment about how i hoped he was actually going to go to sleep when he said he was (which was me bringing up our other fight) and that i hoped he was going to tuck me in. see, i sleep on my stomach with the heating pad across my back. putting that into place and grabbing all the covers involves a lot of twisting, and he helps me out by just doing all of that for me. so i had made him mad with the fight reference and he just didn’t want to have to help me out in any way. he started flipping out about all the things he does and all that is involved in taking care of me AND accused me of not listening to him. i HATE when he says that because i WILL listen to him – usually. i won’t if it’s 11pm and he’s screaming at me. i guess i won’t ask him to do one more goddamned thing for me anymore? i don’t know. i’m not mad any longer, and he seems fine too. he got me my ifrogz code so i could order my case, and he’s on his way home. he’s going to work from home tomorrow so that he can also get the stuff we need before the 12-18 inches (YAY) of snow hits. i want snow boots too, but he actually has to work when he’s home (GASP) so i won’t be able to go all over looking for them. the goal is to actually GO OUTSIDE on saturday and enjoy the snow some. if my back lets me, that’s a different story.

speaking of, i just saw the mom from little house on the prairie selling bathtubs. it was so weird. she has totally aged well, so good for her. some of the tubs looked really awesome for people with disabilities, and i coveted a few of the designs i saw, like the ones with tons of bars and ledges that help you get in and sit down and stuff. that kind of thing would TOTALLY help me out, but i am not putting another cent into this house.

so tuesday mark took me to my pain management doctor. i was having a bad day, so it was a perfect day to go there. my least favorite receptionist was there. her voice GRATES and she was yapping her head off. the sliding window thing that separates the office from the waiting area was open and i asked mark if i should close it. he just laughed at me, but i was totally serious. I CAN’T STAND HER OR HER ATTITUDE. and then we got hit with a new form from them – they now charge $10 each time we pick up a prescription from their office. WHAT. apparently them answering a call and writing a scrip is a whole bunch of work that they now want to have a fee for. they don’t even call the pharmacy! it made us DIE LAUGHING because in the past year they have “lost” my scrip calls/requests MULTIPLE times. he and i agree that if they fuck up one more time that we will consider again switching to a closer doctor. we decided staying there was better since i’m filing for disability and we didn’t want to create any extra paperwork that could cause confusion. ANYWAY. they want to CHARGE the patient money for something that gets PICKED UP by the patient. that just sounds crazy, right?

so when we were sitting in one of the rooms, mark said to me I CAN TELL YOU ANYTHING, RIGHT? i didn’t know what that meant at all and was like OMG. it ended up being a gross story that i’m not going to post (shocking, since i have no real filter). the point is, my doctor walked in right as i had the most freaked-out look on my face. i was also stretched out on the table because i was dying from pain. so she and i decided to take me off the lyrica slowly. every five days i take one less pill until i’m done. i told her i needed something to help me because i was done. the percocet/oxycodone works for me and may not be a long-acting drug like the others we’ve tried, but it usually helps. so she doubled the strength of it. i think the next visit i may try to come off the oxycontin. she says there’s another pathway we can try to attack, but that involves a pill that i can’t take with the percocet/oxycodone. we didn’t want to fiddle with that since i’m coming off of one thing already. she wants to watch how i react and said i could be edgy with the increase. SO MUCH FUN. but it occurred to me that basically i am NO BETTER OFF than i was 2.5 years ago. i started out on a lesser drug but it’s the same idea really. no long-acting drug helped. injections didn’t help. aquatic therapy that helps everyone hurt me. yuck. oh, i got a back brace ages ago that fit me too high up and didn’t offer me any relief or comfort. she said they have a new style out that actually can conform to the lower part of the back better (where my pain and discomfort reside). they are supposed to call me to set up an exchange. i’ll try it, of course. beyond that, i’m not sure what my next step is.

she also mentioned that my psych exam thing came back fine and mark and i both were like NO WAY, NOT POSSIBLE. i told her that he and i talked about how i should have texted the questions to him so he could advise me as to what a normal person would say. anyway, then she started looking at my responses closer and said I DON’T REMEMBER SEEING THAT, and mark and i started laughing uncontrollably. she said that most of the responses made sense with the type of pain i’m in and how long i’ve had it. then i explained to her that i’ve always been negative and that i would have given the same answers when i was sixteen. i actually told her a story of how when i was in high school that i joked in spanish class about how i wanted to be buried in a bridal gown as my friends and i were flipping through a bridal magazine. HAHAH, yes? my teacher was alarmed, i guess. all i know is that the next day i was asked to go see the nurse, and the school psychologist was in there. as soon as i realized what this was about, and i did almost immediately, i put up my hand and said I WAS KIDDING and that i had nothing to talk about. five minutes later i was back in class where i asked my teacher why she sent me to the shrink. i mean, she KNEW i was joking. she said she couldn’t take chances with that kind of thing, which i now understand because i was a teacher once too. but she was the same teacher who lent her house out for keg parties and let her students drive her car. she shouldn’t have even been allowed to teach. but i digress. i think my main thing was that i didn’t want that shit to be in my goddamned permanent file. ANYWAY, i relayed this story to my doctor before i could even think about how inappropriate it was. it made more sense in my head. hmmm. i wonder what she says about me when i leave the office. GAH. so she asked me if i thought i needed to talk to someone for extra help since i’m suffering and such, but i said no. anyway, mark and i declared this THE BEST DOCTOR’S APPOINTMENT EVERS.

and that’s it for me. i need to settle in and get ready for OMG! SO MUCH TV! OMG! and then tomorrow night the snow starts and it SHOULD be a picture perfect snowy weekend. i remember the time when mark and i were at our first house (we are now at our third) and we were watching the weather because a MAJOR MEGA SNOWSTORM was coming. i was teaching at the time and it totally meant many days off and such. so the snow totals were originally like 24-28 inches and shit which was EPIC and then those totals kept falling throughout the day. they kept predicting less and less. we didn’t even get one goddamned snowflake. i was so pissed. hahah.

yesterday i took a break from work and didn’t sign in or check my email once. it was FABULOUS and today i was totally ready to work when the time came to do some stuff. i was so stressed out from last week’s insanity that i was losing my mind. we had that big project and i kept expecting to get the revisions for it, and they never came. i was told we had to have it done by friday so the publication could go out in monday’s mail. also due on monday was a thing i do every two weeks that goes out via email. that’s a pain in the ass too, and those revisions didn’t come either. i kept checking my email and freaking out because i worry about being physically able to do these things. i like to have a few days to work on them, if the extra time is needed. so what happened was that sunday both things needed to be done then and there because that’s when she got around to looking at them, and i think i spent about 5.5 hours doing all of that. by the time i signed out, i was crying from the pain, CRYING so much so that i couldn’t eat. i had to curl up in a ball on the ottoman to rest before i could keep eating my dinner. it was terrible. i texted my boss to tell her i was dying AFTER i thought we were done, but she had found two more typos she wanted fixed and asked if i would do them. WHAT. i felt like i had no sympathy or understanding from her whatsoever. i didn’t respond and she said she would just do it. i was shocked and flabbergasted that she could read what i sent her and respond with another request. i totally paid the price for these assignments not being spaced out. at one point i was like WTF I THOUGHT I WAS GETTING REVISIONS DAYS AGO and she told me she thought i would do some of them on my own which wasn’t what was decided at all. in fact, to be honest, i didn’t even get any revisions at first. she hadn’t made one modification which really made the whole day harder. i had to work with no initial changes and no info on what was to go on the last page, and i had to wing it. this project was a disaster this month.

and mark had been a total and complete asshole over the weekend. i just felt like he was being distant at times and then nasty and mean at other times. at one point he screamed at me for miscommunication that was his goddamned fault. see, i wanted to watch the tough love finale and knew he didn’t. he was sitting there in his snuggie (hahah) and i ASKED him to pick something else to watch. he said he was tired and was going to finish watching something he had already started, and i was like FINE. well, he was up another hour and a half and i was like WTF. i asked him about it and he screamed at me and said i was “nagging” and not his mom and shit like that. he said he never said he was tired (bullshit) but that he was BORED. so i flipped my shit and called him a liar because that’s what he was. had he said he was BORED, i would have looked harder so we could watch something together. but i ASSUMED he was going to sleep, so i settled in with my show. he, of course, apologized because he was totally in the wrong. GAH. also, he went out for a haircut and brought me back a coffee that i had asked for, and he basically accused me of treating him like a servant. WTH. so between his insensitivity and the work shit, i spent my sunday night bawling like a baby. i know he was supposedly stressed out from all the shit he has to do around here, but he had time to watch a hockey game and play the wii five thousand times, so fucking whatever. everything is fine now, but i didn’t deserve any of that fucking nonsense.

that aside, remember how it took almost a year for pacey to appear on stuffonmycat? well, i just submitted eva last week and TODAY i got an email that said she will be on their site on the 10th of this month. WHAT? i don’t quite understand, but YAY! they still haven’t fixed pacey’s name, though.

my first ifrogz case for my iphone faded and a part of it is scratched, so we’re getting me a new one. i just discovered that you can get the top and bottom to be the same color, so we are totally ordering that shit! mine was pink and black, but i can get an all pink one? YAY! and i like them because the bottom slips off easily for my charger.

so my mom has been doing exactly what i thought she would. i gave her an inch, and she’s taking a mile. i said i would indulge her pain talk conversation, and now she’s constantly calling here. today she called to see what happened at yesterday’s appointment with my pain management doctor, and i told her i was still not going to discuss those things with her – to which she replied something like OKAY, FINE and hung up, as i was still talking. FABULOUS. she’s supposed to come up next week for THE TALK, so i’ve begged for snow (she won’t drive in it or in any traces of it) – and this weekend there’s a possibility of us getting 12+ inches! and there’s talk of even more on tuesday too! fingers crossed that mother nature loves me. i won’t count on it, though. we weren’t supposed to get anything the other day and we got about 3 inches. last night we were supposed to get 2-4 and ended up with a dusting. so who knows.

my cousin has been emailing me a lot lately about stuff going on with her husband. i guess him getting a facebook account and her asking me to stalk it was just a sign of bigger issues. did i ever mention that? i don’t remember. anyway, i guess they are doing more and more things separately and she’s concerned. i don’t know what to say, really. i think separate interests are a good thing. and as long as he’s still spending money on her and not some girlfriend, i’d say things are fine. okay, that part might not be an appropriate thing to say, but isn’t it slightly true? as long as he’s paying the bills and keeping their home a home, he’s invested.

moving on, the winner of my haiku contest is new zealand tim! tim, i will be emailing you today. congratulations! here was his entry:

a girl far away
from discontent she appeared
to brighten my day

speaking of site stuff, here is where i will be working on my new pink layout, if you are so inclined to track my progress. it’s mark’s old baseball site. i wanted to fuck around someplace without ruining this design. hopefully one day it will get pretty and i can upload it here. fyi – there will never be any entries over there. it’s just for color stuff. and, if you go there now, you will see that i haven’t done jack shit except stare at the wordpress theme he uploaded for me.

tomorrow i hope to make a mini entry and talk about yesterday’s funny-to-us appointment with my pain management doctor before i forget all of it.

my health is crazy. yesterday morning i woke up and felt NO PAIN. like nothing. no sharpness, no weirdness. i was like WOW – because i usually feel something. a few hours later i couldn’t move. it kicked into high gear and i was like WTF. today i’m still feeling terribly. also, i didn’t take my meds at 5am because my body didn’t wake me up like it normally does. so at 7:30 i woke up and i thought i was going to die. i had to throw pepto down my throat because i was so sick. anyway, right now i hurt and i’m tired, and that’s the usual.

so work has been making me crazy. there were a lot of communications submissions this week, and i’m in charge of all of that which is fine. BUT the major monthly work project i fret about still isn’t done. i spent over 4 hours doing it and sent it to my boss, only to be told that i should take out like 4 things, combine 3, etc. WHAT. i wish i had been told to do that the first time. this is done in publisher and the sizes are never set in stone. so she wanted to see the size of something before she continued her editing and i was like HUH. because moving all that shit around before getting the final edits makes more work for me, so i’m just waiting to get them all at once. she wanted it done today for folding purposes sunday. and i’m nervous because i hurt and what if in a few hours i can’t stand up? all week i’ve been fretting about when i’m going to get this and if i can do it – and the stress makes me hurt more. gah. if it were a regular flyer with no time demands, i wouldn’t care. BUT.

the other night i thought we should get the black light out to check the rooms where kip has been staying for any “accidents” that might have gone unnoticed – not that cat pee is hard to miss, but i just wanted to be sure. anyway, the room was all clear, thankfully. the cute thing was that while we were going over the room that kip was hanging out on the bed and kept meowing at us like UMMM, HELLO, I’M A GOOD BOY & YOU WILL NOT FIND SHIT. YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME.

i haven’t talked to my mom in a long time, as you know, so when she called two times in an hour the other day, well, i thought someone had died. nobody died, though. so, yeah, i picked up on the second call and she was very polite and calm which was odd but good. she brought up what she did months ago when she mentioned that she wanted to come over here and talk to me about managing pain techniques, the tips & tricks she’s learned over the years to make doing some things easier. of course, i don’t know why she didn’t share these with me at any other time over the past two years i’ve been struggling, but whatevs. so she asked me when would work for me. GODDAMN. so i debated on whether or not she can be nice for a whole visit and not stress me out AND thought about my dad’s unhappiness over me not talking to her and called her back and said fine. no definite date is set, but we have the general week (two weeks from now) in mind. cutting her out of my life is just easier on me, but i have my dad to consider. maybe now she will seriously watch how she says things and what she says since i blew off thanksgiving and christmas to be alone. i don’t know.

i submitted pacey to stuffonmycat last APRIL and he was finally added yesterday, but they spelled his name wrong. it sucks to wait that long for a typo. GAH. i contacted them numerous ways, but they haven’t fixed it yet. at least he looks cute. i added eva yesterday into their system. mark and i were joking around last night about what she would end up being called. ava? eta? and i told mark it was his job to select a photo of spenser for stuffonmymutt.

so my high school is having its 20 year reunion, which i would never go to in a million years. but apparently the time & place that was decided upon wasn’t really run past people for ideas and was just randomly chosen. so some people are pissed. yesterday there were two facebook reunion groups who were talking smack about each other. it’s like high school all over again and makes me LOL. i just might go to facebook more often so i can check in on this shit.

time is running out for my haiku contest! you could win a $10 gift card to itunes!

also, you can ask me anything, internets!

i still haven’t left the house or worn my new coat and new coach bag yet. i think between the work projects and me still feeling so tired and like shit that i won’t be going out this weekend either. eep. i go to the doctor tuesday for more pill adjustments, so THEN i’ll be all in pink! speaking of, i hope to start designing a pink site this weekend. but who knows.

i have decided i want to talk about my furbabies:

spenser – old & grey and has lots of lumps that the vet makes fun of (there’s nothing “bad” about them). at night he gets worked up and takes forever to settle down, because he wants biscuit after biscuit. loves chest rubs now, which is a new thing. his ears smell fabulous, and always have.

kip – a big baby, looks like a teddy bear, loves head butts & getting kisses on his forehead, and is very jealous. loves bright colored pom pom toys and snuggling. seems ok to be in his new bedroom/bathroom-only surroundings.

pacey – very smart, looks at us like we’re stupid, likes to talk back to us, and is currently obsessed with my purple hairband. he’s the boss of everyone.

sam – we think he’s a bombay. has big, vacant eyes, likes to stare, & is a meathead. loves the kitchen and food scraps. likes to chase his sisters & play with the living room lamp which annoys us. the biggest of all of them, but is also the biggest baby & a sissy.

lulu – mommy’s girl. has no desire to leave the bedroom, follows me around the bedroom/bathroom, and lays on me at night. has one white whisker. is very sweet.

eva – wild, crazy, a tomboy. kicks herself in the face when playing. likes to play rough. has the world’s biggest belly. is so much fun to watch.

basia – daddy’s girl. old & cranky. has no coordination & has delayed responses when she plays. lays on mark, loves mark, follows mark. i rarely see her.

mark’s valentine’s day present will be here today and OMG i want to give it to him now, now, now. it’s nothing much, but i think he will like it.

i am so hungry i could die, so i wish my cleaner would hurry up and leave. she needs to GO so i can make a sandwich and settle in for soaps and last night’s real housewives.

gah, internets, i’m struggling with my website. i want to make it pink but not have to do a lot of rearranging. this site’s theme was done all in images, so it just sucks. it isn’t an easy css fix as far as i can tell. i want it to be the pink color of my coach bag because lately i’m all about pink, pink, pink. apparently i’m sixteen again.

yesterday i woke up in severe pain and had a serious meltdown. i couldn’t find a phone number i needed on my iphone and i couldn’t get to my pc because of the pain, so i broke down. today i’m doing some crying too, but it’s mainly from the heavy duty pain i am in, not from me attempting to do anything. i guess i had a good few days and got cocky. i was planning on going to work but hahah. this is crazy fucking pain right now, and i’m a goddamned mess over it.

yesterday mark wasn’t very supportive of my freakout because he was swamped at work, so i hated him and didn’t get his valentine’s day present like i was going to. that aside, now i’m not sure what i was going to get him was a very good idea after all. i need to think of something else AND not forget to buy it.

what i am not forgetting about is my huge monthly work project that needs to be done soon. i ‘m getting nervous because i still haven’t gotten back the excel doc from my boss that i need before i can start it, and i’ve asked for it twice now. tick tock. i like to have lots of time to be able to do it in because if i get days like this, i can’t exactly work on it. sigh.

i called my disability advocate yesterday again (i left her a message earlier in the week and didn’t hear back) and at first i got routed to voicemail. gah. so i called back and asked to speak to an actual person. i wanted to make sure they had on file that my doctor doubled my lyrica dosage. they told me they would make a note of it but that disability wouldn’t need that for my reconsideration process. i don’t understand why. doesn’t that show that they are still trying to get me out of the pain i’m in? how wouldn’t that impact their decision? doesn’t that indicate how i’m dealing with day-to-day life tasks as well as my ability to work more – the things the forms i fill out ask about? then i called social security and they told me to notify my local office and i gave up at that point because i was in so much pain and i felt like nobody was helping me. mark said to trust in my advocate because she’s supposed to know what to do and what is best and so on. i guess i have a hard time with relinquishing all of that to someone i’ve never met – because this is MY LIFE. at the end of the day my advocate actually called me back and she said what the other person said, that this information wouldn’t impact their decision. they don’t look at medications. so fine. now i just wait to hear back from the reconsideration people. more tick tock.

the goal today was to go see avatar, get a haircut, and get dinner. i went to bed last night wondering if i’d be able to do any of that. the simple, sweet things married couples do i have to plan for, not that they can be planned for really. and i woke up dying, so i’m staying here trying to write this and hoping i can do my site redesign quickly since i hurt so goddamned much. i want a back transplant. JESUS. anyway, mark’s going to see the movie on his own. he’s okay with doing things by himself, but i wish it didn’t have to be that way. that aside, apparently this is a long fucking movie, and i’d never be able to sit through that anyway, not even on a good day. so whatever.

what was funny was that i said i was going to get my hair trimmed at the place next to starbucks and mark was like NO, NO, YOU’RE GOING TO A SALON – and i was like WTF. the last salon i went to butchered my bangs (it took six months for them to grow back out to the length i asked her to cut them to in the first place), burned my skin twice during eyebrow waxings, and gave me two toe infections via pedicures (i needed to get them because of bending issues with my back). anyway, he wants me to go where he goes, so i guess i will. whenever i can manage it.

i’m so high on pills right now. and i’m on the heating pad too. i feel somewhat better, like 10% better than earlier. hmf. mark went out to get me some girl scout cookies and a coffee, and i have soapnet on. lalalalala.

i’ve been so sleepy lately. it’s been, like, WOW. where am i? who am i? just now i pulled the blankets off the bed because kip threw up a hairball on the sheets and it was like an out-of-body experience. and then my back was like HELLO WHY DID YOU DO THAT? i’m sure i’ll get used to my new dosage soon. i develop a quick tolerance for meds, but CHRIST. hurry up, lyrica. yeah. and i also feel dizzy and loopy and seem to have trouble breathing at times. this is SO MUCH FUN.

we took down our christmas tree over the weekend. and by we, i mean mark. and now the house looks bare. i am absolutely a minimalist, but i miss my snowmen. i’d keep the tree and my decorations up all year if mark would let me.

ummm, what else. i was too sick to go to the coach outlet over the weekend and mark wanted me to shut up about the PINK BAG, so i ordered if off of their main website. gah. i’m not happy with myself for doing that. it came yesterday and it’s very pretty and cute and matches my pink winter coat/scarf/gloves perfectly. but the money! eep. and the keychain i bought apparently is not in stock (it was when i ordered them both, but i later got a SCREW YOU, WE’RE OUT email), so i was like OH NOES and twittered my coach friends and asked them when they were going to their local outlets next. then i remembered EBAY! there is an awesome seller with great 100% positive feedback and all that shit who sells name brand stuff, so i got it from her. it ended up being like $10 more than if i had gotten it on the coach website! i am ashamed i spent that money. my outlet didn’t have it in stock, so i wouldn’t have gotten anything to match it had i gone anyway. but, the thing is, I DON’T DRIVE. so why do i need a keychain? we’re getting rid of my car when the lease runs out in august so WTF IS WRONG WITH ME. honestly, i am ridiculous. so according to delivery records, it’s sitting in our mailbox. mark is the only one with the mailbox key so i’m screwed. i wish he’d come home soon because i want to see it. and thank goodness it got here. last night our nice new silverware from overstock arrived, so now all my shipments are here. i get nervous when stuff is floating around who knows where. come home to mama.

so i’ve been thinking if my back gets better and this hazy daze wears off that maybe i could go back to work like one day a week. my hours would end up being the same overall, but i’d like to help them out since they’ve been so good to me. but if i start that up, it can’t continue long. i mean, i won’t even have a car beyond august, and i’m certainly not getting up at 7am to take mark to the train station just so i can have his car for three hours of work. and then pick him back up at 6? um, no. so i guess it’s just good in theory. unless my back is like OMG YES from the new pills and i can go back full-time. but they won’t even be able to afford to have me back like that, i don’t believe. i don’t know. my head is spinning at the possibilities. it always does that when i get new meds. i’d just like to see my friends there, stop at hollywood tans now and again (fat looks better tan), and come home to walk on the treadmill every day – and not pay for it at night. seems simple enough. why can’t that happen? maybe it can, right? baby steps. first i need to lose this LALALALness.

speaking of, i’m too dizzy to keep writing, so i’m going to lay back down and catch up on the dvr. if you’re trying to keep up with me, i hope you’re following me on twitter (see the menu on the right side of the page for the link). even when i’m feeling crappy, i post there. it’s my most favorite addiction ever. ever. did i say ever?

the past few days have gone by so quickly that i don’t even remember what happened. i say that a lot, huh?

mark’s been sick since last weekend and has spent most of his time grumbling. i’ve tried to be as helpful as i can be, but that’s obviously not saying much. this whole experience has taught me a huge lesson: everything comes to a GRINDING HALT when mark is sick, and it blows. also, i go back and forth between thinking i’m catching the flu from him and then not. i have a little cough, runny nose, and watery eye thing going on, but it isn’t close to what he’s battling, so fingers crossed it doesn’t blow up. he hopes to go back to work tomorrow (he’s been able to do SOME work from here).

today i went to see my pain management doctor. first i had to pee in a cup for my drug test (this never fails to make me feel like an addict), and then i took a psychological exam which i called “the nutty test” when i handed it back to her. she said ALL patients are required to take one now and that it helps them determine how they are doing as doctors – but i’m convinced i’m the ONLY ONE ON EARTH who has to fill it out. mark stayed in the car to be on a conference call, so i had nobody to make sure i didn’t check off inappropriate things. he said he is my SANE AND RATIONAL meter which is true. i had to stop and think at each question to make sure i wasn’t answering things how i normally would but instead how another person would. i come from a negative standpoint, obviously, but i don’t need to advertise it. like, one of the questions was about my view on people – do i think everyone is nice, do i think some people are nice, or do i not like anyone. well, naturally i gravitate towards the third option, but i put down the second. also, i erased at least two answers so i could revise them with better choices.

anyway, she revised the lyrica. for one week i double up my morning dosage, and in two weeks i double up both in the morning and in the evening. then she wants me to come back in three weeks so she can see how i am. i suggested coming off the oxycontin because it’s a narcotic and i don’t believe a helpful one at that. so in three weeks she said we may start the process of taking me off of that. oh, and i got more oxycodone. ummm, i do think lyrica has helped me to SOME degree, but not in any major way – yet. so the process continues.

after the appointment we stopped at panera bread and grabbed enough food for lunch and dinner. unfortunately my chocolate chip muffie was stale which was TOTALLY NOT FAIR, INTERNETS, especially after i was almost taken to a psych ward. in all seriousness, i totally can’t wait to see my results! i wonder if i’ll get another lecture from her about how it’s just not normal to be a homebody or whatever else. UMMM.

so right now mark’s napping on the couch, and i keep clearing my throat and wiping my nose. i’m glamorous. it’s time to head upstairs and watch bad girls club. mark watched it without me last night when i watched teen mom (which is all kinds of awesome) instead, and i’m pissed that he did that. MEN. first he makes me mini-sick and now he’s going to make me watch those screaming sluts all by myself. GAH.

so mark is sick with the flu, internets. the timing is suspect because we were supposed to go shopping yesterday for my coach bag. convenient, don’t you think? anyway, yeah, he’s been stuck on the couch for two days now and he’s definitely not a person who likes to be stationary, unlike yours truly. he’s drinking tea like it’s going out of style. i don’t think i’ve EVER seen him drink tea.

jersey shore fans will appreciate this: the other night he called eva “snookie” because she’s short, chunky, and orange. hahaha.

meanwhile, the tolerable back pain stopped. sharp, stabbing pain woke me up this morning and hasn’t stopped since. i am dying. holy smokes. i’m now even more totally grateful for the days this week when i could be more mobile. wow.

don’t forget to enter my first contest! you have a chance to win a $10 gift card to itunes!

i did some stuff on my site yesterday. i redid the “connect” portion of my sidebar AND added in an “ask me a question” link, courtesy of formspring.me.

i also added in a new comments service, courtesy of disqus.com. it is AlMOST tweaked to look how i’d like it to. mark is helping me mess around with the css. hopefully you people will start commenting more often. HINT. it seems easier now, since you can sign in with twitter and yahoo and openid. i am still trying to figure it out, like how the “reactions” work and such. if you use it and have any problems, please let me know.

the other day i reorganized my iphone apps, and i was so RELIEVED afterwards. now i can actually find shit. it may have taken me a ridiculous amount of time, but it was so totally worth it in the end.

also worth it? making twitter lists. i FINALLY made lists and put everyone where i wanted them – and it makes catching up on tweets soooo much easier. speaking of twitter, the new echofon app is BEYOND fabulous and totally enhances my twitter experience ALL THE TIME. i highly recommend it. mark refuses to switch. he uses tweetdeck and won’t budge. shit, he won’t even look at it. i know it’s because i’ve asked him to at least a billion times and he just wants to be stubborn. anything i suggest he has to be resistant towards.

and on that note, i’m done being on the pc for today. i did some work stuff and wrote here, and now i need to lay down and take another pain pill. also, i have to watch tough love and frank the entertainer. yes indeed.

i’ll leave you with this cute photo. four of my babies are in the sunroom. can you spot all of them?

internets, let’s get this party started!

would you like to win a $10 gift card to itunes?

what you need to do is write a haiku about me.

don’t be mean bitches because that shit will just get you blocked and banned.

one entry per person.

mark and i will read through all the submissions, and the one we deem the funniest will win.

all submissions must be received via email by january 31, 2010, and the prize will be announced here, on twitter, and on facebook by february 6, 2010. i will contact the winner via email by that date as well.

LET’S ALL HAVE FUN WITH THIS.

(this is the first of many contests i plan on having, but i need contest ideas too! if you have any suggestions, please send them to me via email as well.)

i had stuff to write about earlier in the week, but then i forgot what i was going to say. consider yourself lucky, internets.

i swear to god today the cats are just trying to kill me. i’ve never had to be like OMG STOP or OH NOES so often like i have had to today. i’ve needed to usher three cats down from above the kitchen cabinets and keep kip from going to the first floor and stop sam from chasing basia and then get sam to stop rubbing his face against my new lampshade and clean up kip’s puke and tell kip to stop chewing on the christmas tree lights and ask sam to not knock my tweezers to the floor. it can be a ZOO.

i heard that an ex-friend of mine adopted ANOTHER dog and cat and is having problems with them. i’m not sure why she isn’t on her local shelter’s NOT ALLOWED TO ADOPT list because she’s literally had about 25 cats since i’ve known her, and she’s casually discarded them all. i think there were 2 other dogs in the mix at some point too. anyway, her meathead toddler is smacking the shit out of the dog, so instead of teaching him to not abuse animals, she’s giving the dog away on craigslist. there are no words for how fucking gross she is.

i’m letting mark handle something even though i don’t agree with how he’s doing it. i can’t talk about it here (shocking I KNOW since i don’t normally even know what the word FILTER means), and i did what he asked me to – but i’d be doing things A LOT differently if i had my way. when he says to let him handle things or to trust him, i just don’t have that ability to “let go” like that. maybe that’s because when he usually says TRUST ME it means he’s either lying or not going to see something through like i would. oh, marriage.

actually, he’s been a big dick for days now. i understand he’s back to work and under a lot of stress here and doing more than he signed up for when we first got married (due to my health and such), but he really needs to learn how to process his frustrations in ways other than, say, screaming. and why does he think everything i say is a nag? i’m trying harder to be nicer too, so this blows. i am a screamer and a crier myself – BUT there’s a time and a place. if i’m in bed in pain, shut your fucking mouth. think about if the tables were reversed and you were in bed with the flu or if you threw your back out. would hearing someone’s frustrations add anything to your day? no. would they make you tense up and feel worse? yes.

anyway, speaking of pain, the past two days or so haven’t been so terrible, and i’ve been incredibly thankful for that. i need a break. also, i got another letter from disability the other day that said they didn’t get the medical records from two of the places i put down on my reconsideration form. so i had to call those places and they both said they had just sent them out. WTF. i hate chasing all this shit around. can’t someone who’s sitting at a desk make these goddamned calls? like i need to dig through forms and sit on hold when i can’t put on my own socks.

we had some drama with spenser’s meds earlier in the week which sucked because we just increased his pill dosage. anyway, we couldn’t get them online any longer because they were discontinued. we called the vet, and they got the same info we did which i knew they would but for whatever reason mark was convinced they wouldn’t. then they initially said they’d try to find a place that could make a compound but if that didn’t happen then he’d need re-tested for cushing’s disease – and i guess the tests she was talking about need done three times at $350 a pop. HOLY WHAT NOW. anyway, thank god they found a place that makes the compound and it’s actually cheaper than what we were paying. the pills just got dropped off via ups, so fingers crossed they work just as well.

i’m feel semi-edgy and cranky. my period is sort of late by my old standards. i used to always get it around every 24-25 days and now it’s closer to the actual 28, probably due to all the pain meds i’m on. was that tmi?

yesterday i decided that i needed to start getting out of bed earlier. i’ve been sleeping in until 12:30 usually, and i just didn’t think that was very productive of me. it’s great in the sense that i’m asleep and can’t feel the pain longer than i need to, but i just was beginning to feel like a major slacker. so today i got up at 11 because i half expected my boss to want to talk on the phone about the work stuff she wanted to talk on the phone about yesterday, but apparently i was wrong since she hasn’t emailed me back and it’s now 4:30. SIGH. so i fucked around a bit more today than usual. the pain now feels like it’s starting to set in, so i need to head back upstairs to the bedroom and knock out some of the stuff on my dvr.

i’m hoping tomorrow i can handle whatever pain i have so we can go out for a bit. since the steelers have blown their chances, mark’s sundays are free. i was HOPING to go out tomorrow for some shopping & dinner and then to go out on sunday to breakfast & the movies. we shall see. going out two days in a row hasn’t been possible in years, so i know i’m thinking “big” or whatever. oh, we also need to put away our xmas decorations, but i’m thinking that could be a sunday thing too. i don’t know.

hello, internets! it’s been so long that i hardly recognize you!

i just got done watching one tree hill and wondered how HARD it must have been for millie to say to mouth that she wanted to attack him sexually because REALLY WHAT. she successfully did it with a straight face, so i hope her pay was like DOUBLE her usual rate or whatever.

the sweater i rigged for spenser wasn’t an ideal garment as it kept falling off of him, so we bought him a new one at petsmart. the large looked ridiculously small and the xl looked perfect. well, now the xl is falling off of him and we have it pinned. we are terrible pet parents, obvs. unfortunately, he’s been having some peeing accidents, but at least they are on things that can be washed. we got nervous and called the vet, and they said to increase the pills he’s already on for this problem from three a night to four. and since we have, things have been fine. mark even slept downstairs by the door (on the couch in his man cave) a few nights in case he was accidentally sleeping through spenser telling us he needed to go potty. or maybe spenser is simply getting lazy like his mom (to clarify: i do not pee myself and i mean lazy in the general sense). for now, though, there have been no additional issues. anyway, we tried to order more of his pills online, but they have been discontinued. WHAT. the vet is supposed to call us tomorrow with other options, and hopefully they will fucking work just as well.

the neighbor saw my naked ass today, and i think we need to move now rather than later. see, he was outside with his puppy and i was sitting in the chair next to the window. naked. i got up to walk to the bathroom and i looked out just as he looked up and OMG. i am pretty sure we are both scarred. anyway, i wish he had seen my boobs because they are my assets.

i made a note to write about kip, and i don’t remember why. he seems fine. all the cats seem fine. they are really the best part of my day, next to the dog and i guess mark.

KIDDING. that was a JOKE. we have seriously been getting along better than ever, and i am not sure how to process that – because we NEVER get along for more than five minutes. JOKE AGAIN. maybe. if he could stop using the banister as a coat rack and stop thinking that every single thing i say is a nag, we might be like perfectly perfect! but we spent five straight days together over christmas and six over new years and we are both alive. i actually told him just last night that this holiday season was the best i’ve ever had. there was no drama and no stress.

on nye i felt okay enough to go out shopping, so we did. i can’t even remember what stores we hit, but i do remember panera, target (we bought a wii FINALLY and i can sorta manage the bowling without needing to kill myself from the pain), old navy (MORE JAMMIES YAY), harry & david (no wolfermans bagels i liked in stock), jake’s doghouse, ll bean (ummm, no coats in the store or online that fit my fatass), coach (just looking), burlington coat factory (a total dump), petsmart, barnes & noble, and a local mall! i can’t believe i did all of that and wasn’t in total bedrest type of pain afterwards. i FINALLY found a puffy pink coat (52% off too) and matching gloves, hat, and scarf. YAY! now i’d looove a pair of pink boots to match. oh, and a coach bag. but keep reading on for that part.

lastly, we went to chilis because i wanted something i had there the last time we were there TWO YEARS AGO, but those bastards didn’t have it on the menu anymore. GASP. but i found something that wasn’t too spicy (seriously, i can’t stand any sort of spice whatsoever) and was happy. we got cheesecake at the cheesecake factory for the next morning and came home and drank and watched tv. it was NICE.

the only thing not nice was a convo i had with my dad yesterday. i called to wish him a happy new year and he sounded like he didn’t want to talk to me. he’s still mad at me for not talking to my mom, perhaps even angrier than he was before. he said he isn’t happy with me or what i’m doing, and the phone call was pretty much done at that point. and, of course, i bawled after we hung up. i don’t want my dad disappointed in me. that always has been and always will be the ultimate worst for me. but i’ve felt less negative energy around me overall now that i don’t have to talk to my mom. i don’t hear her nasty tones and she doesn’t call here anymore to give opinions i don’t want to hear. i wish i had a tv family, one of the ones that all get along and enjoy being around each other. she just has never changed and always has been negative, and i don’t have to be around that. but my relationship with my dad is a casualty. and i’m not happy about that. luckily for me, mark supports me and understands my decision – he knows her and has lived through this madness for years, though he also has said before that it wouldn’t be so terrible if i sucked it up for my dad’s sake. i mean, i am better off now in a sense…and in some senses not. i don’t know.

anyway, speaking of tv, this is what i watched this weekend which i think you should find impressive:

10 episodes of one tree hill (a soapnet marathon)
4 episodes of teen mom
2 episodes of gilmore girls
1 episode of frank the entertainer
1 episode of tough love
1 episode of giuliana and bill

i think i’m forgetting some other stuff too. FUCK MY MEMORY, especially when i’m trying to blow you away with my tv watching skills. and laziness.

ummm, yesterday as i was taking a pill in the mirror and bawling because i wasn’t getting a break from the pain, i had a fleeting thought about how i’m never going to be one to change the world. i wanted to make a difference, especially when i was teaching. i don’t do that anymore obviously, and i wonder if i’ll ever be mobile enough to do something like that again. it makes me sad, like i’m a shell of my former self. well, that’s exactly what i am. HELLO PMS. or reality. either/or.

that being said, there’s no need for me to do a “year in review” type of thing. most everything is still the same. my back is a bit worse, sure. i have the same part-time job, though doing it is much more difficult this year than last. i’m still hitched. i didn’t get any more cats. i lost a best friend which sucked when happening, but in no way was that a bad thing overall. i’m better for the knowledge i have of what a SKANK WHORE LYING SLUT she is and actually always has been and undoubtedly always will be. let’s see. we had a health scare with the dog last year, but THANK GOD he’s fine. we had and have issues with kip, but that is what it is. mark is doing phenomenally well with his career. and i bought more pajamas. THE END. as for resolutions? i don’t much buy into them. ideally, sure, i’d like to be a nicer person and kinder to mark. i don’t have much faith in myself, though. see, when i am in pain, I LASH OUT. what i can do is apologize a lot quicker – or apologize AT ALL since i’m not a big “i’m sorry” type of person.

someone i knew from high school died on nye. i wasn’t close to him in any way; in fact, he was an asshole to me back in the day. later, after college, he asked me out on a date and i was like HUH WHAT YOU’RE KIDDING. but he wasn’t. and, no, i didn’t go. if i die, mark is to IMMEDIATELY delete my twitter, facebook, and website. i don’t want people who i’ve never talked to (high school people i’ve added as “friends” on facebook or whatever) to talk about how nice i was and how sorry they were. I’D CALL BULLSHIT FROM THE BEYOND. but, i would find it semi-awesome to have someone say they remember in the fourth grade when i did such-and-such and have them be actually confusing me with someone else.

anyway, i’m going to leave you all with a poll because i love you so much. see, since i now have a pink winter ensemble, i need a bag to match, right? no, of course i don’t. spending any kind of money on another coach purse when i already have two just because this one is pink is beyond RIDICULOUS – especially because i NEVER leave the house and don’t bring in much bacon. i SHOULD go to the outlet store next weekend or whenever i am feeling up to it and look around if i’m still on the hunt for my perfect pink coach bag. to be fair to myself in a weird way, i’ve been stupidly wanting a pink one for months now, even before i had the coat. okay, so vote! should i get the MADISON OP ART SATEEN TOP HANDLE POUCH or the PEYTON SIGNATURE SATEEN TOP HANDLE POUCH? click this link! they are the ones that are BOTH priced at $148. you can comment on twitter, my facebook fan page, here, or in email. also, do you think they are big enough to hold my brush, compact, and iphone? THANK YOU, INTERNETS.

i’ve been kinda down the past few days which isn’t an ideal way to ring in a new year. but i’m mostly over it now, thankfully.

one thing that got to me this weekend is my online friend’s friendship with a soap star. i almost got to meet this person too years ago, and it would have been cool to have done that. now i’m just jealous over how close they are – they’re even travelling across the country right now. i wouldn’t have been able to go out and party and do all the young 20-something stuff they do together anyway because of my back and my antisocial personality, so i don’t know why it upset me to hear about them doing this when they’ve already done so much else together. it’s ridiculous, really. so this weekend said soap star commented on my friend’s facebook, and i clicked the link over to her facebook and saw that all her private photos were public – ones with her drinking and flipping off the camera and stuff like that. so i mentioned in the thread that they were public and anyone could see them. within like thirty minutes they were all locked down, but i didn’t even get a GEE, THANKS FOR THAT. and that sucks too. ack. whatever. i shouldn’t have said anything, i guess. jealousy and resentment are pathetic and ugly emotions, and i got caught up in them in a major way.

also over the weekend i noticed that we had an injured deer really close to our backyard, and that upset me too. he’s a young guy, not a a baby (i don’t think). it might have been him that was here when it was snowing the other day, but he didn’t look like he was hurt then. anyway, he was eating and then when he started to move back towards the woods, well, that’s when we noticed his leg. and i started bawling, and i was a mess the rest of the day basically. i brought up calling animal control, and mark thought they’d shoot him. i just wonder if he was hurting and if he’d make it through the winter and so on. he was long gone back in the woods pretty quickly, so i don’t think they’d even be able to find him. mark looked up wildlife info and came across this:

one broken leg (dangling or missing). as long as the deer can get around with the other three legs to get food and water, we leave it alone. the deer has a better chance of survival if it is left alone to heal on its own in familiar surroundings.

and that gave me some hope that he could get better. i hate that there’s nothing i can do. and i’m half afraid of looking out the window. i mean, i’d like to see him still alive and around, but the other part of me wants to bring him into my yard and baby him. WHAT.

mark says i’m sensitive towards animals and that i don’t like people which is all true.

speaking of animal stuff, my cousin emailed me this story today:

then, my boss from spca calls me to tell me that christmas morning a terrible accident happened with chester, our spca cat mascot. one of the nasty pitbull-mix dogs managed to get out of the kennnel while someone was cleaning it; and he even got out into the hallway and got ahold of poor chester who had climbed on top of the cat-tree. everyone was beating on this dog but it wouldnt let go and chester had to be taken to an emergency hospital… my boss was back and forth on christmas and then they decided chester just had to be put down.

how awful, right?

mark is home until next monday. he decided to work from home today which meant he’d be around for SIX days, not five like i originally flipped out about. EEP. i had BIG PLANS for new year’s eve which involved spending the entire day drunk on mimosas and other stuff while watching movies, but he doesn’t seem thrilled with that idea and mentioned going out. WHAT. maybe my back will let me do that, but i don’t know. if it were today, i might be able to handle it. but still.

speaking of, we got new forms from disability to fill out, so we did. actually, mark got a form because he is considered a person familiar with my condition and i got one too that basically updates what i can/can’t do since the last time i filled something out for them. actually none of that information has really changed for me, i don’t believe. I CAN’T DO ANYTHING. HELLO. anyway, we completed them last night, and i guess the reconsideration process moves forward.

that’s all i can think of. i was sick this morning, like so barfy that i needed to drink the pink stuff. the only thing “off” that i could think of was that i usually take my oxycontin at 5:30 and i didn’t take it today until 7:30 – my body ALWAYS wakes up between 5:30 – 6:00 (and then i go back to sleep) and for some reason today it didn’t. so maybe my system was like OMG WTF? who knows.

more songs that just really make me sad:

patrick park – life is a song

gavin degraw – we belong together

rachael yamagata – worn me down

just linking to three sad songs. not sure when i became an angsty teen again, but whatevs. ummm, ignore the videos. i’m just focusing on the songs themselves.

kate voegele – devil in me

joseph arthur – honey and the moon

coldplay – fix you

christmas morning didn’t go exactly how i had planned. the babies just weren’t all THAT interested in the gifts at first. BRATS. kip sat in the new kitty tower in the other room. lulu wanted to be upstairs. basia hung out on a kitchen chair and ignored us. the rest SORTA hung out, but not really. bummer, right?

after some time had passed, i sat back down on the living room floor and all of them (except for basia) came out and played with mark and me. WHEW. basia came from my jewish friend yariv and we call her our jewish cat, so we just figured that she was mad at us because we didn’t get her anything for chanukah.

click here to see christmas pics of my babies!

i’ll write more soon, internets. i’m drinking wine and i hate wine – and i’m semi-drunk.

UPDATE: i guess i’m more than semi-drunk because i’ve had to rewrite this thing five times. no joke.

last night santa came down our street in a firetruck. there were tons of firetrucks out and about with their sirens going, so it really sounded like something was wrong. and as they got closer, i sorta got nervous. then mark screamed my name and told me to go look out the window and i was like OMG WHAT. inside i was thinking we were going to have to gather up all the pets and do it quickly and run like hell. but, it wasn’t anything like that THANK GOD. and if something were seriously wrong, well, i would like to think his tone would have been more like JESUS CHRIST. so i yelled out my window HEY SANTA WOOHOO while waving and he waved back and said WOOHOO too. awesome, right? and eva, my ever-curious orange little kitty girl, was at the window watching while the others ran off at the first sound of the sirens. i think she was like DUDE, WHERE ARE MY PRESENTS?

speaking of, santa mark did so-so for me this year. i finally got my gifts. up first was a shirt that said “welcome to the oc, bitch” but it didn’t fit. he got it in a girl’s size, not a woman’s. UHHH. then i got coconut macaroons that are too lemony. don’t get me wrong – i’ll woof them down. then i got an upright iphone charger which i’ve wanted since the summer. usually i just charge it on the bathroom vanity because when the cord was out on my dresser, well, kip chewed on it. not to mention that cord was too short anyway and i could barely reach it. nothing stops him from chewing on it in the bathroom, but he just doesn’t seem to. anyway, now that it’s where he’s used to gnawing on shit, i wonder if he will pick that bad habit back up. it’s just more convenient for me and my back to have it on the dresser so i don’t have to keep getting up. oh, i can’t keep my cute pink cover/case on it anymore because it won’t fit on the charger, and that’s a bummer. but at least i still have a screen cover. also, forget jareds, ladies. i don’t get diamonds – i get a mega heating pad that is weighted down, long, and conforms to the body. it’s a thermophore. it is absolutely fabulous, my friends. it’s the BEST heating pad thing i’ve ever had. and i’ve gone through MANY. the only problem with it is that the switch has to be HELD DOWN in order for it to run – because it gets soooo goddamned hot. it’s hard to explain just how hot it gets and how it fits me. so, yeah, overall he did okay. i didn’t get the dvds or cheesecake i wanted, but that’s what credit cards and a rainy day are for.

kip’s lip seems to be healing fine. there’s just a little scab there, so it looks like he’s getting used to his new mouth and that he won’t need his bottom tooth removed. whew! i can’t see his lip myself which bugs me, but i’ll live. see, i hold him while mark checks him out. that’s usually our system with all the babies.

i got a call yesterday about one of the doctors i saw a few months ago regarding my condition. anyway, he’s retiring, and they wanted to know if i wanted my records sent to me. i do, but i think they will be inaccurate as fuck. see, what he told mark and me at my appointment directly contradicted with what he wrote up in his report that went back to my pain management doctor. so based on that alone, yeah, i would say it’s about time for him to call it a day.

mark went shopping today and now we are so stocked up on food that it’s crazy. christmas eve we will have ravioli and christmas day we will make crockpot meatball sandwiches. it’s our thing to go pasta-ish during the holidays. plus we have cookies and cheese & crackers and such, and it’s just the two of us! i WAS going to mention riding around and looking at lights tonight, but there’s still so much snow on the sides of the roads that the melting and ice aspect makes me too nervous. is that crazy?

work made an error today that went out in a mass mailing (totally not my fault), and i got emails and phone calls saying i had to redo it and how critical it was and how someone was already complaining. they send out condolences and in this one they got the name of the dead person’s son wrong. EEP.

just a reminder that i constantly post stuff to my flickr account, so be sure to check it out often, internets!

what a weekend! i can’t believe we had three whole days together and that not one major fight was had! WHAT? I KNOW, RIGHT?!

what can i recall, internets? let’s see.

friday i saw my doctor, and it was another decent visit. in the end she decided to keep the dosage the same but to increase the number of times i take it. so now i’m taking my lyrica two times a day. i started that on saturday and thought i was actually seeing an improvement because the pain wasn’t so terrible. sunday, though, horrific pain kicked in – and it hasn’t left yet. that frustrates me, but maybe it just needs more time to get into my system. i like how tired it makes me because now i can nap again (for some reason i stopped being able to do that after i started taking ambien).

the goal friday was to grab food at the cheesecake factory and then go get groceries at wegmans. honestly, i don’t know why i bother trying to eat a meal there because their food just doesn’t appeal to me. the cheesecake is where it’s at, baby! and their pineapple cheesecake? OMG. during the so-so meal, well, my back became terrible, so i just needed to come home. i tried to nap but my boss wanted me to show her how to update the website for inclement weather, so sleeping was out.

later on, mark and i kept to our plans and went driving around to look at christmas lights. that’s HIS favorite thing to do. i suggested going online to find the ones deemed “the best” or whatever, and that was a mistake. so was going to mcdonalds for a coffee because i got a “bad” lid and stuff went everywhere (not to mention my burger tasted like it was ten days old). see, i agree to go as long as i am covered in a blanket and can drink yummy coffee. after a quick stop at dunkin donuts, we were back on track. unfortunately, we ended up spending too much time driving to these destinations that ended up not being all THAT special. i’m not impressed with yards that are STUFFED with blowup ornaments. i like seeing lots of lights, not a plastic casper in a santa hat. i like what we’ve done in other years, which is just randomly driving around. so now we know. one place was kinda cool, though. if it had been a touch warmer and my back wasn’t screaming GO HOME, i would have spent more time there. it was an actual place you walk through, and they had various areas decorated in different ways. i’d go back there for sure.

SATURDAY WAS THE BEST DAY EVERS! the expected snow totals kept climbing on friday, so we knew we were in for a day of awesomeness. when all was said and done, we got the biggest snowfall on record for the month of december AND the second biggest snowfall on record EVER. usually snow seems to fall at night, and i miss getting to see it actually happen. but this was like a 24 hour event, so i got to watch and soak it all in. mark did so much shovelling that it was ridiculous. my back was on my side so i was doing ok – and i call that fate. i actually was upset i didn’t have snowboots because i REALLY wanted to go out and walk around in the storm. they are now on my shopping list. i can’t imagine why i got rid of my last pair, though. hmf. so, yeah, we hung out and made cookies and had fun being snowed in together.

random stuff: some dude walked through our house for a house/tax assessment thing months ago, and it turns out we will now be saving around $1150 a year. that’s helpful. what else. sam is now loving the new cat tower, so whew! i put him on it and pet him and told him what a good boy he was – and he laid down. later i sprinkled catnip on it. and now he’s all over the thing every time i look, mostly at the tippy top!

we took lots of pics over the weekend of the babies and the snow, so check them out here. a good portion of the photos are of the babies in their christmas costumes! spenser’s reindeer costume is made of fleece and was mother fucking expensive. gah. anyway, it fits him perfectly. we ended up cutting off the reindeer head part, and now it’s like he’s walking around with a blanket attached! it has two velcro pieces that keep it on him pretty well, not to mention it has a hood (what the antlers were a part of)! this was one of my best ideas. and he looks ridiculously adorable in it. you can’t even tell it was a costume or has been cut!

i don’t remember much about sunday, which i guess is due to pills. there was more of mark shovelling & taking photos. i watched a lot of tv – and was incredibly disappointed in the ending of survivor. what the hell was THAT about? today i slept in really late and somehow did 30 minutes of stuff for work. now i’m on my stomach with a heating pad on my back while writing this. the things i do for you guys.

i mentioned how work called me friday to get info on how to update the homepage for weather updates. well, i ended up getting calls saturday morning, saturday night, sunday morning, and sunday night because they just couldn’t figure out how to do it. gah. it wasn’t an issue saturday as much as it was sunday because that’s when my back got worse. i did little stuff today, but i have that big monthly project coming up, and i’m so worried i won’t be able to do it because i’m in such goddamned pain. rationally i know it’ll let up and i’ll be able to do it, but my irrational side usually wins out – so right now i’m freaking out about timelines and such.

my mom called to thank me for their present. i was looking at the phone as it was ringing thinking SHOULD I ANSWER IT? but it was a quick call and she was very subdued.

i totally forgot mark is going to be home wednesday-sunday this week AND next week. WILL WE SURVIVE? we were just fine this weekend, but that’s not usually the way it goes around here. also, how could i even forget THAT? eep. i guess it just FELT like christmas this PAST saturday, with the snow and the tree on all day and the cookies.

and that’s it for me. i wish there was stuff to watch on tv tonight. damn you, winter breaks. times like these i wish i could sit up and/or have the pc on me. i’d be able to catch up on all the online clips i’m missing. i want to see the jersey shore skit from snl, etc.

i leave you with this, a video i took saturday night of spenser. pacey, sam, and mark make an appearance. and please forgive all the babytalk i do.

gah. yesterday i tried to help mark hoist the new kitty tower upstairs and i’m dying in pain right now. DYING i knew better, but i wanted to do SOMETHING. anyway, the freight company delivery dude dragged it inside and left it in our foyer which was more than fine because he isn’t really “allowed” to do anything but leave items at the door. so when mark came home he was like OMG when he saw the box. i KNEW weeks ago that he wouldn’t be able to get it upstairs without help even though he thought he would be able to. UMMM. so the neighbor wasn’t home and my brother didn’t answer and his friend was still at work so there we were with this huge cat tower in the middle of our stairway. before i forget, here is the photo from the website and here is a glimpse of it with three of my babies on it. then he decided to take the top part off with a ratchet or whatever. that worked, and we finally got it upstairs in two pieces and then settled where i wanted it to go. eva, basia, and pacey all like it. kip and lulu haven’t seen it yet and are okay with their mini version anyway. sam was scared until today when i placed him in the middle of it and gave him constant reassurance. then he laid down for a bit. it figures that the one cat i thought would be swinging from it and throwing himself at it is a wuss. i haven’t seen any of the others in it today. they were in the SAME room but preferred the ottoman and couch (which had the sunlight). maybe later?

my breakfast trio from wolferman’s came early and i wasn’t pleased. i asked for it to be here on the 24th and it was indeed in their system as such. they asked if i wanted a reorder, but how many scones and english muffins do two people need? actually, i’d take more of their blueberry scones because they are awesome as fuck, but they only sell them in big gift package things. so they kindly let us keep what we had and refunded us for their mistake. that’s good customer service.

speaking of, as soon as petsmart made good on my issue, i complimented them on their facebook page. it was the least i could do after i complained there – since they got right on finding it for me and such. again, good customer service happened in the end.

mark and i have three whole days together again, starting tomorrow. eep. i hope for a better weekend than last when all i wanted to do was shoot him in the face. tomorrow the cleaner comes and we go to see my pain management doctor – where i hope to get the okay to take the lyrica twice a day at an increased dosage because i think i may be better on this and can even come off the oxycontin at some point. beyond that? i don’t know. one of his favorite things to do is to drive around and look at christmas lights, and i think that’s slated for saturday night. hopefully we can manage to act like adults the rest of the time. we’ve been perfectly fine since monday, so fingers crossed.

as for christmas, i gave him his gifts like a week ago (i think) because i couldn’t stand the suspense. we don’t spend much on each other because we are past that stage. so i got him this and this to show him i support his hobby and because we’ve always liked the life is good products – but i have NO idea what he got me. i keep asking for some of the dvds that are on my wishlist, but he keeps saying FUCK YOU NO because we never finished the felicity dvds he got me last year. anyway, since our breakfast stuff came early, we will probably make apple french toast based on a recipe we got from the chestnut inn in niagara falls when we stayed there many moons ago.

i had decided that i wanted to spend christmas alone with mark and the babies, and i sorta thought it was understood with my family because we didn’t spend thanksgiving with them. i guess not since my dad called here last night and asked us what we were doing, if we wanted them to come up here or if we wanted to go down there. i stumbled over my words and said i’d call him back. my mom knew exactly what she was doing in getting my dad to call me. i don’t have anything against my dad, with the exception of the fact that he stayed married to that toxic bitch. i thought about what i was going to say that would sound the least hurtful and called back to say that mark and i wanted to spend it alone together and that their gift is in the mail. he told me whatever i wanted to do was fine. of course after i hung up, well, i felt that this wasn’t my finest hour. mark said perhaps i should suck up the two hours with my mom so that i could see my dad. and, yeah, i still feel TERRIBLE. i love my dad, and i guess i should have done that. i don’t want him to be upset and it is a holiday. but she ruined mother’s day and father’s day and countless others. she opens her mouth and i just want to kill myself. i’ve said over and over that i want less stress in my life and she just brings it in massive quantities. either way i am the bad daughter or would end up being wrong in some fashion.

tonight mark’s going to another penguins/flyers game, and i’m going to settle under the covers with a heating pad, pills, chocolate, and survivor & real housewives. don’t be too jealous.

mark and i had another not-so-great weekend. i may be the one with the period, but he’s the one who showed signs of pms. saturday morning, for instance, i came down to the second floor when i woke up and was like HEY HI I’M UP, and he got all pissy and said i was “announcing” myself, like i was going to start asking him to do shit. ummm. he just had a nasty attitude and kept misinterpreting shit all weekend long. by the time saturday night rolled around, i lost my temper and screamed. then at bed he literally tried to pull out “his” pillow from between my knees after i had my back all settled for sleep. and sunday was more of the same. i’ll get to that in a bit.

also on saturday we attempted to go out and do some stuff together. as i said, it didn’t go well. marriage is tough, but i’d like to see some of the good parts now and again. he’s cranky from taking care of me and feeling like i don’t do enough and i am broken down from not being able to do much. it sucks. before being disabled, i never thought about it or people who suffer or the caretakers or any of that. it’s truly eye-opening.

so our first stop was our new vet where we picked up some christmas toys and some dry food for kip. his diarrhea was back for a bit, but he seems good now. the babies get yummy wet food at night for a treat and that’s when we first discovered that his belly doesn’t like that stuff. so he gets this special wet food at night. and now we have the new dry food for him to replace the regular dry food the rest munch on during the day. does that make sense? this lyrica has me OUT OF IT. let me try this again. he gets special wet AND dry food now and the rest keep getting what they were getting. anyway, it’s been three days now and kip seems better. i hope he stays okay because it’s an easy fix. the food isn’t cheap, but i’m not the one who bitches about that. anyway, while we were there, they had a cute little kitty girl out and i was like OMG AWWW and they let me hold her. they said she was a wild one – and you could see that was true in her eyes.

then we went to get my eyebrows waxed at hello gorgeous and that dumb bitch fucked up one of my eyes AGAIN. last time it was my left eye, and saturday it was my right one. THAT WHORE. she ripped some of the skin off of it, leaving a lengthy patch of red behind. it’s still red today, actually. i’ve been going there for two (or so) years now, and i’ve only had this problem the past two times. mark suggested that maybe they switched the wax. i don’t know. what i do know is that they conveniently don’t have a contact form on their website but they do have a blog. i left a comment that was kept in moderation. someone emailed me yesterday and left me a voicemail today when i was attempting to nap. where do i start? your place SUCKS? i’ve gotten TWO toe infections from pedicures, some bitch hacked off too much of my bangs after i specifically told her to be careful because my hair is naturally curly and shrinks up, and now this? i deserve it, i guess, for repeatedly going back there. but to have ALL these services be fucked up? WTF.

then we hit the first of four petsmart stores. i decided i wanted a cat tower for the master bedroom too because that’s where kip and lulu spend a majority of their time. i saw an ad that one of their towers was like $60 off with the petsmart card, so that seemed perfect. it’s tall and has two perches and something for them to smack at that hangs down. so the first stop had one out but it was junk. the platform thing was shaky and the one wooden part wasn’t sanded. EW. so then we went to our second store and found one we liked. mark said it wouldn’t fit in my car and i thought it would. so, okay, it didn’t. he flipped and i was like OOPS. we had to turn around and bring it right back in. there we were in the parking lot with this thing half hanging out of my car while i’m googling from my iphone how to lower the backseats. we also got the rest of their presents, as well as two other things for the bedroom, one being this thing that sounds
like a bird when smacked that hangs from the door. my bedroom may look ridiculous now, but it’s for them, so ultimately i’m okay with it.

speaking of petsmart, there is still no sign of that HUGE tower we bought for the sunroom. for some reason we got a tracking number for the freight company (it weighs too much to come via ups or fedex), but they don’t even use them. WHAT. so i called petsmart twice, only to be told they don’t know what warehouse it was shipped out of, where it is, or when i can expect it. UMMM. they have NO WAY of tracking it, apparently. so what if it gets lost? that’s a HUGE amount of money to spend and then not be able to track. it’s poor customer service, actually. i think the website said it would be here in 7-14 days, but one rep said it would be here within 4 weeks. EW. this is their major christmas present and i am PISSED that there’s a chance it won’t get here in time. i left a facebook message on their company website and someone said she would look into it and get back to me. it’s only been a day, but nobody has. and i don’t even know what they can do since such a shitty non-existing tracking system is in place. i don’t take comfort in the fact that it’s supposedly on its way. YUCK.

let’s see. after that, we checked out the container store. we found an ornament for our tree, believe it or not. we always buy an ornament a year. then we went to crate and barrel where i tried out a BILLION couches since i’m on a casual hunt for a STIFF chair and couch combo that will be better for my back. i’d spend more time in the living room if we had that, but i may prefer to just wait until we move – WHENEVER THAT IS – to get a different color. i expected more from crate & barrel overall and i was highly impressed with the container store – exact opposite reactions than i thought i would have.

we were going to go to maggianos but time was running out and my back was like GO HOME, but i still didn’t have the other cat tower. we went to the third petsmart which was out of them, and i didn’t get to eat at fridays like i wanted (hello, cheesecake). so we went to the fourth place, found it, and then hit up applebees for the grossest, greasiest meal i couldn’t even eat much of.

what else? so i’ve been dreading doing the model’s site for ages now because the photo gallery/slide show she likes is based on code from years ago. back then she didn’t want anyone to be able to grab the photos, so i couldn’t use flickr or other sites. i don’t know if any of them now offer that ability without going completely private. do they? i didn’t want to add more pictures or move everything over. no amount of money would have made the effort worth it. and the fact that i can’t spend huge chunks of time online except from my phone doesn’t help any either. so i just decided i didn’t want to do it any longer, and this infuriated mark. INFURIATED. and this was sunday’s main drama. he said he always does stuff he doesn’t want to do like all the shit involved with taking care of me (nice statement, huh) and that me dropping her wasn’t fair. well, first of all, my main reason was that there were over a dozen more photos to add and i just can’t do that because of my back. the code is terrible and old, and it isn’t easy on me. the focus i am going for is to make things less stressful because i am in so much consistent pain. if he wants to say it’s because of anything else, he is wrong. and i shouldn’t have to suck it up and hurt because he’s angry. how about when i was angry when he dropped my client who became a friend, someone we went to nyc to see play? her band wanted their site updated and i was too busy then (i forget why), so he said he would do it. and he didn’t. and he was passive-aggressive about the whole thing. he let it go for a month (longer maybe) without doing it until her manager said she would like to take it over. i personally was hurt and humiliated. at least i told the model immediately that i wouldn’t be doing her site any longer. there wasn’t deception or any of that. so, yeah, mark flipped out and made this bigger than it needed to be and made it about things it wasn’t. there was a lot of mature door slamming too, if i recall correctly. AWESOME.

things are better now. i don’t know what to say about it. we just never have done well when faced with spending long stretches of time around the other. i dread weekends, basically. i think back to that couple we used to be when we first met and how exciting each phone call was and how awesome it was when we could see each other – and wonder what it would be like to feel that way again. i know that doesn’t really last, but it’s what hooks us, isn’t it? the newness? i guess that’s why i talked to that one guy i did. he thought i was so funny and interesting and made me feel special. i understand why people cheat, whether it’s online or in real life. we need to feel adored, anything to momentarily not feel like we are in a rut or unappreciated or whatever. i feel like i try to get that back here with mark, but how desirable can i possibly be when i have dark circles (more than i ever did) from the nagging pain and when i need him to put my socks on for me?

oh, i got a letter from social security that stated they got my reconsideration stuff. on it was what i thought to be a mistake. it said that i wasn’t submitting any new information which wasn’t true because i am on a new medication. i talked to my advocate who isn’t sure that it not appearing there is a bad thing. on her end the med list IS updated, and she mentioned having one of her staff follow up.

i did find some more crazy stats, though.

initial application
3 to 6 month average wait period | 35% of applications from all sources approved nationally

third appeal / appeals council
8 months average wait period | 3% of third appeals from all sources approved nationally

lastly, i spoke with an old friend today, and i think this reconnection is a great way to end the year. i don’t normally do a lot of the end-of-the-year evaulations/assessments usually. i can’t even think of the last resolution i made, actually. but the back stuff makes me stop and look around every now and again. she and i kissed and made up and it’s all good. it’s sad to think i dismissed her so easily, someone who may have been distant for a stretch of time but is overall an amazing human being. we all know smart people with character don’t fall off of trees. i learned that the hard way this year.

it’s been a tough year emotionally and physically. next year i hope to do better and be better. and maybe eat better. and be less nagging. and more affectionate. and less mean. i don’t know.

UPDATE: petsmart called mark’s cell and said the delivery of the mega cat tower will be tomorrow between 3-5. hmmm. suddenly they could find it? i thought the freight company was supposed to call me two days prior to delivery? i guess we shall see. i said to mark I GET THE JOB DONE. and he said YOU ALWAYS GET RESULTS. haha. so, yeah, fingers crossed.

lulu had one white whisker, the only white thing on her little body, which fell out. i didn’t know if it would grow back or not, but it did. it’s not as long as her other ones just yet, and it’s just as cute as she is.

i let kip out for a bit today. he wanted to go everywhere, and i couldn’t keep up with him. in two seconds he had jumped up on top of the kitchen cabinets and i had to haul a chair over to them to usher him down. GAH. oh, also it seems as if his diarrhea is back. THAT POOR GUY. mark thinks it’s because i gave him too many treats last night. but, see, he went to jump from the bed to the bureau and missed. i felt terrible for him and gave him yummies and smooches. it’s not like i gave him a pound of them or anything. anyway, time will tell. maybe he needs more of that powder stuff for his food that helped out last time. this mom gig is hard and confusing.

so this year we went with colored lights instead of white lights. shocking, right? for years i thought colored lights were tacky and that there was something warm and inviting and classy about white lights. for some reason i just had to switch it up. it’s a nice change, and mark’s commented on how much he likes them too when he didn’t think he would.

when we were putting stuff out, i was going to display this wooden sleigh and reindeer that i had – until mark said it looked cheap. EW. i got that years ago when i was teaching. some kid left it behind in the main office after making it in shop class. i took it home and painted it. that reminds me, i used to have stockings for the babies where i’d take them and do the glitter and glue thing to put their name at the top. i stopped doing that when we accumulated our herd. point is, i used to be all crafty and shit with my painting and glitter. okay, i wasn’t ever all THAT crafty, but i was much more than i am now. if you told me today that i had to paint something, i’d fucking turn around and throw it in the trash.

mark’s presents came today. he doesn’t want them until christmas morning which makes sense, but i have been badgering him daily to guess what i could have gotten him – and, frankly, i doubt i CAN wait that long. i want to give them to him NOW, NOW, NOW. gah. our cat tower finally shipped and is coming via a service i’ve never heard of. i called their local facility, and they told me their guys don’t bring stuff into the house, but maybe into the garage. i’m wondering if they would if i tipped them like $10 each or something. it’s 150 pounds and it needs to go on the second floor! mark is confident he can slide the box up the stairs and that it won’t be any kind of issue, but the stairs aren’t a straight shot and i just don’t want him to have to do extra stuff like that.

i haven’t noticed anything new with the lyrica yet, with the exception of some extra sleepiness. BUMMER. i take so much shit that i’m wondering when i’m going to sprout a third ear.

i love winter, that it gets darker earlier, that everything seems so cozy. it fits my mood better, definitely – but spring and summer just don’t agree with me. i remember when i went tanning all the time two summers ago prior to mike’s wedding that i felt so much better in the sunlight. sure, that can cause cancer and such, but i already have so much wrong that if temporary happiness comes from standing in a booth for 10 minutes, why not? it’s not like i want to live forever with this fucking back pain anyway. i still have visits left on my card, so it’s definitely something to consider in the spring if i’m feeling so WOE AS ME from my pain like i was last year. sure, getting dressed and undressed and redressed is difficult for me to do, so who knows for sure if i’ll use my remaining time or not. did this paragraph even make sense? I’M SOOOO DROWSY.

last night i had my phone appointment with my disability advocate. she called an hour before she was supposed to, and i was looking forward to mark being here to help with my memory lapses. i did fine, though. she didn’t even get my whole medical history which surprised me really. it was about a 45-minute conversation in all, i guess. by the end of it, my request for reconsideration was filed. i think she said that it could take 1-2 months before i hear anything. if rejected, the next step is that my advocate will request all my records from social security for their review. if they choose to keep going forward with me, then we move to a hearing. and i hope it doesn’t come to that. oh, and i didn’t know they had the option to dump me after agreeing to this much of it. they said i DID have a case for this whole reconsideration thing, so i’m confused. i guess i don’t understand all of this so well, but i AM flying blind after all.

i’m a football widow tonight. it’s okay because i have stuff to watch and even more things to add to the dvr. it never ends! i think tonight i’ll watch survivor live and million dollar listing off the dvr. then i’ll tape real housewives and jersey shore, but i don’t know when i’ll get to see them (sunday, if i had to wager a guess). tomorrow night we will knock out glee and ghost hunters academy. WHAT HAVE I BECOME?

the model sent me like five pictures to add to her website, and i have no desire to do that whatsoever. i’m just not a web design person anymore in any regard. besides not being able to deal with sitting or with a pc on my legs/lap for any length of time, i just don’t know the latest design stuff anymore – not that she’s asking for anything i can’t do, but still. and being lazy doesn’t help matters any.

oh, and my friend told me he couldn’t access my site from where he was the other day because it had been blocked as PORNOGRAPHY. that is AWESOME.