UTIs and other crap - August Minirants!

The BBQ Pit
201

I pit my fucking broken brain, which I hate and am starting to feel like I would be better off if I stabbed it with a Q-tip. Or a pick-ax.

I cannot get it straightened out. If it’s not the ADD wherein I wander through the house, picking things up, getting distracted by the next shiny thing, forgetting half the things I promised to do, it’s the depression, where I sit and stare at the walls and can remember perfectly all the things I am currently failing to do, because all I can manage is to sit and stare at the wall.

I am a flake. Not because I want to be, not because I don’t care or recognize the importance of things, not because when I tell a friend “sure I’ll do this”, but because my brain can’t seem to hold on to an idea for longer than five minutes, or I get so anxious, I actually make myself sick and can’t meet the obligation I accepted. Yes, I suck. I have alienated friends and frustrated loved ones, and that just reinforces the self-loathing.

Nights are bad. Either I’m exhausted from actually doing things but I can’t sleep OR my body is pretty much in sleep mode, but my brain is running like a hamster on crack in its little wheel. And it’s never happy thoughts. It’s always “fucked that up”, “fucked this up”, “wonder what I’ll fuck up next”.

I’ve got the depression, I’ve got the whacked out hormones (for which I can no longer take any hormonal birth control because I’m now contraindicated), I’ve got the gluten intolerance, and I’ve got the fun-fun unidentified sub-clinical “yeah, the tests indicate there’s something going on, but it’s probably all in your head” auto-immune whatsit.

I know exactly what I need to do - exercise, go completely gluten free and never give into another craving, get on a regular sleep schedule, volunteer, exercise some more - and . . . I can’t. It’s like trying to roll a boulder up a hill, and I’ve got neither traction nor strength. You know what I need? I need to be four or five years old again. “Time to get up, phouka!” “Okay, make a bowl of cereal, tie your shoes, we’re going for a walk!”

Or a drill sergeant. With a cattle prod. Maybe a border collie. Something.

202

Here’s my minirant:

There are currently polling threads in Cafe Society asking who people’s favorite cast members were on various old TV shows: MASH, Cheers, etc. My gripe is that they’re not really asking about cast members, they’re asking about characters. Hawkeye wasn’t a cast member on MASH, he was a character. Alan Alda was the cast member who portrayed Hawkeye.

Thanks for letting me vent. I now return you to your regular minirant thread.

203

God damn it, gentleman boss. I respect the hell out of you and work really hard to make sure I always have your respect and admiration. I have, in the past, told you that projects I’ve been given are going to be difficult, time consuming, and otherwise hard to do. I don’t recall the last time I told you a project would be straight up impossible. So why, when I told you this morning that the latest one is very impossible did you not respect me enough to just believe me? I thought I had earned that, but I guess not.

204

I had a lot of the same issues before I went gluten-free. The brain fog is quite likely related. My short-term memory was shit before I went gluten-free. It’s gotten so much better lately. Plus the horrific fatigue is gone. It’s hard at first- really hard. But it gets easier, and there’s a lot of us.
Yes, the cravings suck. There are days when I’d sell my soul for a good baguette. But the trade off is worth it.

My mini-rant:
I want a Kit-Kat dammit! That stupid commercial got me craving a Kit-Kat but it contains fucking gluten so I can never have it again without getting sick for about 2-3 days. Sometimes feeling good can really suck!

205

Start with just one thing. Exercise. Then choose the next thing. Don’t try to change you entire life at once. Just go for a walk tonight.

Darn it, carimwc, now I want a KitKat too.

206

Not only are we seeing more remedial and pre-literate students of all ages coming into college, but some of them have actually held management and supervisory positions. How in the blue bloody hell do they get hired, and how do they maintain their positions?

I give up.

207

I… think I may have worked under a couple of these pre-literate idjits!

208

I don’t know what it is, but we’ve got them too. I was watching TV on the couch a couple nights ago and heard a loud twack against the window. It was one of those guys on the screen. I’ve never seen a beetle that big before, I mean Jesus, it was as thick as my thumb and nearly as long!

I’m sorry yours came inside. I suspect we should kill them with fire. It’s the only way to be sure.

209

What phouka said, plus maybe I forgot to spell out that her description of Opus Dei as “sometimes resembling a devilspawn cult” would be delivered in a low voice but in chopped tones that would make a Sergeant stand straighter and salute. The woman didn’t use cursewords (she described my uncle’s character-butchering of another doctor as “he used words a lady does not understand, the cleanest was ‘you murderer’”) but she had a way with the clean ones… oh boy did she.
phouka, I hope things get better soon, it sounds like one of those “things can only go up from here (I hope)” times.

210

People who are very loud and cheery in the early morning should be ostracized.

211

To somewhere where they have no way to annoy us normal people. A black hole would do nicely.

212

Ummm, I have similar problems and they are related to a manic-depressive disorder. I would suggest getting checked out and maybe some talk therapy (which has worked in the past for me since it is ‘mild’ but sure doesn’t feel mild when I am at the top of my manic or the bottom of my depressive).

The thing that has worked the best is 'mantra’ing. Wherein I repeat over and over to myself the messages that my brain should be delivering until I hear myself. (You can handle this is a frequent flyer.)

213

My husband sings in the morning.

214

Can we have an age-related exception for this? If you MUST be woken up at 5:30 AM (this is the rant portion) every day (when your normal wake-up is 7AM), it helps if the person waking you up giggles madly as soon as she sees your bleary-eyed face and yells DADA!

215

Note to self - next time you fly somewhere check the shuttle schedule BEFORE you make plane reservations. Then maybe you won’t be kicking your heels for over an hour and a half on both ends of the trip. Dipshit.

216

OK. Anyone past puberty who is cheerful in the morning, though, goes into the black hole.

217

Anybody doing this to me had better be prepared for a solid beating.

218

Seconded. phouka there’s a lot of guilt and self-torture in your post. I feel for you - please stop beating yourself up over something you can’t control.

219

I just realized we’re five whole pages into a mini-rants thread, and there’s not one single multi-quoted snark post from Shot From Guns. I feel … a disturbance in the force.

220

Let’s hope it’s because she’s having a good week.

I’ve got two mini-rants today:

First up, the wreck in the tunnel that turned my 40 minute trip home into a lovely hour and a half excursion up and down that car-killer known as Mt. Washington.

Second, the cop who was in the wrong lane (the turn only lane) in the Liberty tubes and used his flashing lights to cross a double yellow line and get over because the rules don’t apply to them. Look officer, I know there was no “emergency” because you never turned on your siren (which would be logged) and you killed your cop lights right after you cut us all off. If you expect the average citizen to respect the law then you need to follow it yourselves.

Bri2k