The Pink Bee Blog

I can’t sleep.

admin — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:39:09 +0000

I should be in a pretty good mood. Did my regular dog walking thing and took everyone on super long walks before the rain rolled in so I should be physically worn out enough to sleep well. Did preliminary interviews with two new clients: the two pugs from Colorado and some actual pet sitting for a corgi and terrier mix.

I picked up a bit of design work. I have my little plan for finding Three a home which also involves a tiny bit of design work and it generally makes me happy to piddle away with computer design stuff. I don’t have any new symptoms and the leg stuff seems to be slowly fading away. Tomorrow should be an easy day. Regular walks plus switching the yorkie to tomorrrow evening rather than Wednesday morning which actually helps me out a bit on Wednesday and I get to seem super nice and flexible. The pugs live in a very nice apartment complex that I had no idea allowed dogs so if I can’t add some more dogs to that walk then I will be very surprised.

I just have that sort of sick to your stomach worried feeling like you have when you didn’t study for a test or something. The news about the stem cell lines is not helping my state of mind but this is more of a general, something isn’t right feeling. I just feel sad. Like, the world just seems sad. Generally this isn’t that much of a problem for me. I’m mostly concerned with day to day stuff and can count a day successful if I did x, y and z. That’s how I used to get myself through major depression stuff really: I was awake x number of hours and I managed to accomplish 6 productive things or whatever. That’s why I keep to do lists and love my pedometer.

Life is fine. I’m not upset with anyone. I’m bummed that it has occurred to me that the majority of the people in my (off-line) life that I particularly care about don’t give a fuck about my having MS or about finding a cure for it. I’m a little apalled that I can convince people I’ve never met to reconsider their views on the subject but the people I care most about can’t be bothered. That really makes me sad but that’s a personal sad at the center of a much bigger, more general sadness. I don’t even know what I want to be different really. Just something.

This was going to be about something totally different, but it’s not.

admin — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 09:41:00 +0000

Obviously I’ve been feeling a bit blah for the last few days. I had basically put this down to the hot-humid-rainy-muggy weather and some PMS.

The MS is making itself more known than it has for months which always makes me anxious. It’s like when you’re in a dark house alone and you hear a noise. You’re just like, “shit, what was that?”

I’m a bit obsessive compulsive about doing random checks of my neurological system. This is dumb stuff not unlike a drunk driving test (which I could legally refuse to take because of the MS which makes me worry a bit about people with MS driving ;p) Close your eyes, touch your finger to your nose, hold your hands out in front of you with your eyes closed then see if they’re in the same place when you open your eyes (it’s REALLY creepy the first time you do this and your hands AREN’T in the same place and you didn’t intentionally move them!) Raise your eyebrows, smile really wide, scowl. You’re looking for differences from one side of your body to the other.

At any rate, the neuropathy (tingling or numbness in extremities) seemed slightly worse in the last couple of days and yesterday morning I saw a distinct difference in the left side of my face. Most people’s faces are slightly asymetrical so unless a doctor sees you all the time or unless the difference is really drastic they’re probably not going to be able to see it. But I can.

None of these are serious symptoms or at all debilitating. They are just an annoying reminder that the MS is there.

My symptoms seem to be fairly closely linked to weather and any stress I am under, either physical, mental or emotional. I don’t do heat. A lot of people with MS have major trouble with cold weather. It doesn’t seem to bother me but maybe it just doesn’t get cold enough in KY for it to be a problem. We’ve had a blessedly cool summer but this last week has been horribly hot and muggy. After a few weeks of that my body seems to adjust okay but major changes in the weather almost always prompt an increase in symptoms and unfortunately the entire week is supposed to be all hot and muggy.

My own general physical health also has a major impact on symptoms. Getting a cold, flu, etc. kicks my immune system into action and it’s just wonky so it doesn’t shut off correctly. The neuropathy is almost always more pronounced during PMS weeks.

Fortunately there is no discernable weakness and I’ve been telling myself not to panic for the last two days. That it’s just the weather and the PMS and that in another week both things will ummm, clear up. I have a mental “just hang in there” chant going.

I’m sorry but the idea of a full-fledged flare-up terrifies me in a way that nothing else does. It’s just so awful to have basic control of things (like your arms and legs!) taken away from you I can’t even explain. The only things that would terrify me more would be a stroke or becoming para or quadra palegic through an accident of some sort. Death…whatever. That doesn’t freak me out. Not being able to walk…major panic attack.

I wasn’t that freakin’ stable before the MS so I’m sure you can see how even a relatively minor flare-up might throw me into something of a depression.

Today it actually seems mildly better which is actually more than likely why I’m able to write about it. I think I have some sort of weird superstition that if I talk about it I’ll make it happen. And, I don’t like discussing it with close friends/family because then they worry and it makes me feel bad that they’re worried and that I’m adding more stress to their lives. When people are all freaked out about your health it makes you even more freaked out then you were to begin with. It makes it seem more serious and then I would have to deal with people telling me I should go to the doctor.

There really isn’t anything a doctor can do for me. If the symptoms were really bad, my neurologist would want to do three days of IV Solumedrol with a ten-day dose pack of Prednisone or something after. Steroids are bad for you. Eventually the steroids themselves will cause other problems. Same with the major MS drugs on the market which do seem to help with secondary-progressive. My MS is categorized as relapsing-remitting meaning that the symptoms come and go without any permanent effects. If the symptoms were to start leaving permanent effects I would get up(or down depending on your POV)-graded to secondary-progressive. Primary-progressive is when the symptoms start off kind of bad and just get worse and worse and always leave permanent effects. Primary-progressive sucks but secondary-progressives are more likely to committ suicide I think because they’ve had a really long lead-in to think about the possibility of what permanent disability might be like.

My point is, I think I’ll stick with the problems I have rather than switching them briefly for problems as a result of drugs I might take to make them go away for a short time. Why do the people in my life need to have that explained to them every time I say that my hands are more numb than usual? Can’t they just trust that it’s my body and I’m pretty damn aware of what is going on with it and when/if the trade-off seems reasonable I’ll know that it is time to ask for the stupid steroids or the interferons or whatever?

I’m okay with the fact that science doesn’t have a viable option for me at the moment. I’m not okay with Bush preventing science from pursuing the discovery of a viable option especially since if you don’t think that if one of his drunk-assed daughters got herself knocked up he wouldn’t get her a morning-after pill or an abortion you’re living in a fantasy world.

At any rate, I know my options. I’m fairly intelligent. I want to be able to say, “my hands are a little more numb than usual and it kinda freaks me out” without having to explain, again, why I don’t want to take Solumedrol or go on insanely expensive interferons and have awful side effects.

I want to be able to say the MS is acting up and have someone say, “I’m sorry, is there anything I can do?”

Maybe I need pre-printed index cards with a list of the correct responses to various MS things since I seem to have a consistent problem with this.

People are strange

admin — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 08:56:14 +0000

Question 120: Would you accept $10,000 to shave your head and continue your normal activities sans hat or wig without explaining the reason for your haircut?

I have a question about the question. What about when someone ASKS you why you shaved your head? Are you allowed to explain then? Do you have to lie? Do you have to just not respond?

I mean, my answer is the same regardless at the moment anyway: I could really use ten grand right now so absolutely! It’s hair, it grows back. But, I am curious what you are supposed to say when someone asks you about the shaved head thing ’cause if you have to lie I could come up with some good ones dammit!

matchingtracksuits.com (I love that blog name) is doing a question every week from The Book of Questions and has invited everyone to join in.

Next week’s Question 4:
If you could spend one year in perfect happiness but afterwards would remember nothing of the experience, would you do so? If not, why not? (Further question: Which is more important: actual experiences, or the memories that remain when the experiences are over?)

In other news…
Walked the pugs around the nasty parking lot with the icky boys. Left a note for pugs’ owner that I would like to start taking them to the park. Figured out that it’ll only cost about $50 to do postcards to each of the residents of the complex to see if they would also like their mutts to get to go to the park. Drove around the park in question and discovered two baseball fields which are both totally fenced in leading me to think about illegally letting the pugs off lead to run around in the nice field which of course I will make sure remains shit free unlike the nasty parking lot! How long do we think that’ll last before someone gets bent out of shape about dogs on the field even if no one is using it at that time?

Went to Meijer (just once I would like my groceries to have more human food than dog stuff!) and when I went to put my cart in the cart corral there was an employee gathering carts on the other side of the corral.

Employee: Bring that over here.
Me: Pardon me?
E: Bring that cart around to this side….long pause….please (very sarcastic tone)
Me: (raised eyebrows thinking “isn’t it your job to gather the carts? I kinda thought I was being good just to put it in the damn corral!”) rolls cart around to employee
E: thank you (very sarcastic tone)

I was sort of shocked honestly. I can’t imagine asking a customer to do something like that. I mean, seriously he’s going to be out there how many times during the day picking up carts? Just get it the next freakin’ time!

Tonight I went to walk a medium sized mixed breed female dog and a corgi, oddly in the apartment complex next door to the pugs. This one is clean and tidy. The apartments aren’t quite as nice but the people out walking their dogs seem fairly friendly (not icky adolescent boys) and they scoop dammit! I turn the corner around the building and a woman calls out: Ma’am, watch out!
Me: “…”
Woman: loose dog!
Me: Oh, thanks, is he yours?
Woman: No, I’m going to tell the manger he’s out here.
Me: He’s got to belong to someone who lives here, I wonder if he has a tag.
Me (to dog): hey sweetie, where’s your owner? Watcha doing out here all on your own, hunh? Want a piece of liver?
Dog: “…”
Woman: Be careful! He doensn’t have a tag, I can see he doesn’t have a collar. (she is growing increasingly alarmed and struggling to hold her chow puppy)
Me: it’s just a boxer.
Woman: I’m going to tell the manager!
Me: Okay.

So I start to continue around the building and of course our new friend follows us. Thinking I hear someone whistling for a dog behind me I turn and start back the other direction assuming the boxer will probably come with us. I get back to where the woman was and her friend pokes his head down from the balcony: ma’am, ma’am, are you okay?
Me: Uh, yeah, it’s just a boxer you all.

I get back to the apartment and there’s the woman and another man poking their heads around the corner of the building.
Me: Hey, did you find the owner?
Two heads dissappear back behind the building very rapidly. I go in and put the two dogs up and when I go to leave the boxer is gone.

People are strange.

Oh, and someone told me that I’m not a good liberal but that I would probably make a good lesbian.

Oh yeah, people are strange, did I say that?

I’m doing it again.

admin — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 09:10:16 +0000

No, not that. Although some quality time with Bob might not be a bad idea.

I’m stressing myself out about completely unimportant things.

Shhhh, don’t tell anyone but I HATE walking the pugs. Hate it, hate it, hate it! I was so pleased with myself for getting the job. I thought an apartment complex would be great because I would be able to pick up some other clients so I’d be getting paid by a bunch of clients for the same walk. It. Is. Awful. The complex is on a major road so there isn’t anywhere to walk the damn dogs but around the fucking parking lot and there are all these people. I dread the apartment complex. Just dread it. People do not scoop! It’s nasty and depressing and just grim to have to walk around the parking lot. And the dogs don’t really like to walk. So far I haven’t found anything the pugs really like to do.

I am apparently a subdivision person who likes kind of rowdy dogs.

I’m okay with that.

What makes me ill is that I had to turn down a one year old lab because of the damn apartment-dwelling pugs. The only solution I can come up with is to pack the damn dogs in Bubba and drive them less than a mile to a park. Stupid and time consuming but I cannot stand to walk around the nasty, adolescent boy infested parking lot. Yuck!

Okay, I’ll drive the damn dogs to a park even if it isn’t a park with a dog run where they could be off lead and play (those are always nasty and a major risk to your dog’s health anyway) and I’ll send out postcards to everyone in that complex to try to get them to sign up for the park trip so I can actually make money doing that instead of just wasting my time.

Problem solved. Well, it seemed like a bit of a crisis yesterday. Everything has seemed like a crisis for the last couple of weeks.

Next thing. I got all hung up on Three’s thing I was getting panicked about every thing I needed to do to get them out by Valentines day and I wasn’t happy with how some of it was turning out. Okay, it doesn’t have to be Valentines Day. I can change it to something more like, “Valentine’s Day didn’t live up to your expectations?” Or I can do President’s Day or whatever. It doesn’t matter. I will eventually find that damn dog a home and in the meantime she isn’t causing any problems and there is no reason for me to panic just because a couple of other people are upset that she is still here. She isn’t bothering them in any way or causing them any problems.

I don’t think people understand how stressed out I get about stupid shit like that when they say something off hand.

I need to equalize things a little bit. I’ve been so focused on building this daily walk thing to the point where it really pays the bills I have completely neglected the web design stuff. I’ve just been soooo tired. And constantly worried about money and doing constant risk/benefit analysis on every stupid dog walking job.

No agility this weekend because I have dogs to walk during practice but I have the design thing to deal with and work on Three’s thing and some stuff on the pet sitting site.

When did memes become sticks?

admin — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 10:17:04 +0000

Seriously, wouldn’t this have been a meme last month? Anyway, Brian sent this “stick” to me although I think I might be the last person in the world to do it and I hate the “what music do you listen to question.” It is one of my least favorite conversations in the world and has accounted for some of my worst relationships ever.

10 Random songs from the Party Shuffle in iTunes:

Long May You Run Neil Young
Politics, Oral Sex, And Lsd Lewis Black
Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover Paul Simon
Son Of A Preacher Man Dusty Springfield
Mega Dance Atomic Rave
blade techno opener DaRude vs Zombie Nation
Over The Hills And Far Away Led Zeppelin
Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover Melissa Etheridge / Sophie B Hawkins
New York City They Might Be Giants
Blame It On Your Heart Deborah Allen
Boom Boom Mancini Warren Zevon

1. What is the total amount of music files on your computer?
About 3 gigs

2. The last CD you bought is:
Real Gone (but it was a present for someone else)

3. What is the song you last listened to before this message?
I Don’t Have Enough Jennifer Daniels

4. Five songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.
Extraordinary
I Don’t Have To Be
I Don’t Wanna Grow Up
Lose It (go ahead and laugh at me, I know it is totally stupid but I always listen to this before running in agility)
If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out (just to keep you laughing but Harold and Maude has to be one of the best movies ever made!)

5. Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
Is there anyone left who hasn’t done it yet? Pup if you haven’t will you please? Has Kenna been subjected to this yet? Angie, are you done with your thing enough to do it?

Not about agility, embryonic stem cell research or general malaise

admin — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 10:13:18 +0000

Okay, I don’t really have anything to say that doesn’t have anything to do with any of those things.

I’m going to have to miss my agility practice on Saturday because I have two actual pet sits this weekend. Kind of a bummer because I had sort of gotten into having weekends off but I could use the cash so….

I’ve gotta get Three’s flyer done tomorrow so I can start putting them up on Thursday and Friday.

Is anyone else seriously disturbed by the new DQ popcorn shrimp commercial which implies shrimp cannabilism?

I took some Tylenol PM last night because I couldn’t sleep. Finally kicked in around two and I went pretty much comatose by three but I’ve felt all hung over all day. That always surprises me because I don’t get hang overs. Granted I don’t drink a whole lot but even when I do drink a lot I don’t really get hung over. Other stuff sometimes affects me to various degrees but I always feel like such a wuss when freakin’ Tylenol PM gives me a damn hangover?!?

Brit’s about to be a big half-sister. Her mom got bred again this morning. A different stud dog than Brit’s dad. Puppies should be here in April.

Tonight when I was driving home from walking the yorkie puppy there was a big, yellow lab in the road. I could see a tag hanging from its collar from 15′ away so I stopped to try to get ahold of the dog thinking it must live nearby and if someone didn’t get him out of the road he was going to get hit. It started barking and growling and generally pitching a very ungrateful fit. Good samaritanship is not for the faint of heart, dammit. I was just trying to get close enough to read the tags. A woman opened the door a few houses up after I chaperoned the dog back across the street figuring that at least people could see me and hopefully wouldn’t hit either me or the damn dog. The woman started screaming at the dog, wouldn’t step foot out of the house and never bothered to say, “thanks for not letting my dog get killed.”

Tomorrow: Three’s flyer, got to get something in the mail, do a special cracker for Deb, my two original dog walks and the pugs. Tomorrow night: my little design project if I can still even pretend to have enough energy to be creative.

I picked up some protein bars tonight so that I’ll quit going off to walk dogs without eating anything. A is right that that isn’t good for me and it does have a tendency to make me eat too much junky sort of stuff when I come back from the walks because I’m just starved at that point.

Ooops…I shined my client’s sink!

admin — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 10:05:55 +0000

I’ve been watching a little mutt and a corgi this weekend. In the apartment complex next door to the nasty one with the pugs. A college boy owns the dogs and he’s a total pig. His girlfriend lives there as well I believe which apalls me. Not that they’re living together but that any girl would live in that dirty, icky apartment. Now, I’m a slob. Seriously a total fucking slob but I would NEVER let someone come in my house if it were in that condition. The mutt has an incontinence problem and had an accident today and I discovered that one entire corner of the living room is aparently set aside for her bathroom needs. These are not new stains. So, if I’m going to bother cleaning the new stain I might as well scrub away at the old ones a bit too, right? And, if I’m going to have to clean out the sink to wash the dogs’ dishes I might as well shine it while I’m at it and if I’m going to have to clear off a spot on the counter to fix the dogs’ Kongs I might as well clear the whole counter off and wipe it down. Right? Now, the bathroom I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole but at least the smell didn’t knock me over when I went back this evening. I just hope they’re not mad that I straightened up or anything. I’m guessing they won’t mention it and I figure it’s gotta be nicer to come home to a reasonably clean living room and kitchen than the way that it was when they left. Right?

Confrontation

admin — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 19:05:55 +0000

Wow, there is nothing, and I do mean nothing that will make a princess feel quite so un-extradordinary as a conversation with Dog Trainer Dude. He managed to tell me that I’m dumb and untalented then asked me to watch the kennel for him this weekend for an event which I know has to have been on his calendar for months. Then? He asked me if I owed him money for the design project we’re working on! The only “money” anyone has spent on this design project is ME in hours and hours of MY working on it.

To top it off? The stupid dog agility email list I have quietly owned and moderated for two years is going nuts with people arguing all the sudden to the point where I had to dump a moderator :( And the other moderator is currently haranguing me in IM (I’m telling you, no one I ever want to talk to IM’s me…well that’s not fair, I do like this moderator and he’s an extremely well known agility person I just wish this argument would go away!)

And now I think I hurt WKAP’s feelings. Maybe it is true that INFP’s don’t like confrontation.

I just realized that my horoscope has already come true for the week though. I was offerred a busines opportunity (in the loosest sense of the word but the ONLY reason I would be willing to watch the kennel is the customary: I’m broke!) and someone tried to take advantage of me (and succeeded because of course I’m broke.)

If there is a moral to this story it is: girls, stay AWAY from dog trainers! ;p

I still love Monday mornings.

admin — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 13:09:17 +0000

I was clearly designed for a coolish, dampish climate.

Symptoms abated.

I weeded, dumped the water plants (except a couple of the cuter ones I put in a pretty bowl on a bookshelf because they make me happy), dusted and rearranged said bookshelf, repotted the Christmas catus that lives on aforementioned bookshelf (the one with not that many books since it also houses two griffin bookends, a jack russell paperweight a shillaleigh and some candles), transplanted some moss from one corner of my yard to the other, played with the dogs (did their nails yesterday), retied the clematis on its trellis and cut a bunch of brush in the back of my yard. I also put out a bit of a fire on an agility email list I run and called Business Parter Dude about a problem with Current Client’s project.

A relatively productive day so far. That always makes me happy. It also always makes me happy when it is cool and overcast with low humidity.

It occurred to me that if I just get the copy for the pet sitting site done and the javascript set up then I can go ahead and use the site while I’m working on the Flash movie. I know…duh, Barrie! At any rate, I’m feeling quite motivated to get the copy and javascript done by tomorrow.

I saw the longest worm I have ever seen while I was weeding today. I swear it was at least 8″ long! If I had a decent digital camera you would be getting images of the worm, my lovely moss, how nice and short and rounded my dogs’ nails are, the pile of brush in my backyard and my bookshelf. But, if I had a decent digital camera I was always taking pictures with for my blog then I probably wouldn’t get anything done to blog about.

Not that I really have anything to blog about other than the fact that the weather is nice (if you’re me and you like that kind of weather) and I got some stuff done and I feel pretty good today.

I think I am going to eat a tuna melt and read for a bit then tackle the pet sitting site again.

Happy buzzing :)

Biorhythms and Birth Control

admin — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 16:53:55 +0000

There was a lesbian folk singer in the early 90s* who had a great song with the line spent my last ten bucks on birth control and beer. That’s appropos of nothing really except that I thought I would rally the troops a bit and see if I could get some liberal support in my ongoing debate with Anthony over reproductive rights.

My first impulse was to apologize for my extraordinarily long-winded post about MS this morning. I do feel badly for dumping that kind of stuff on people which is why I don’t like to tell friends/family when I’m having a flare-up. Note that I am not, in fact, apologizing for the post because as much as I appreciate everyone’s support, comments, concern, etc. none of you guys HAVE to read anything I write :)

However, in the interest of lightheartedness, how cute is this:

And, if you’re interested, find out all about your biorhythms here. Mine kind of depressed me because it put me at the top of the physical parabola today for the next two weeks :(

*I can’t remember her name and I’m too lazy to look it up right now but she had another one about Martina Navartalova that was hilarious as well.