Mary Kay

07:48 pm: Walter Cronkite, 1916-2009
There are no words adequate to explain to those of a younger generation just how wrong a world without Walter Cronkite is.

I was 11 when I first noticed Walter Cronkite. I can just remember the news going from 15 to 30 minutes in fall of 1963. Of course, I remember quite clearly Cronkite's announcement and coverage of Kennedy's assassination a bit later that year. The story of the following days and funeral are all told in that deep baritone. The beginning of the end of the Viet Nam conflict was dominated by that voice. He retired from the evening news in 1981 when I was 29. From ages 11 to 29 he was the voice of the news, shaping my outlook on the world, reporters, and even space exploration. I was quite a space fan and that story is also narrated pretty much solely in that voice.

He never completely disappeared from public life, even after his retirement and was always around to give us the most important of the news. I've always been a news junkie and Walter was always there to feed me. One of the founding pillars of the public life of my time is gone and mortality lays its heavy hand on our hearts and minds.

02:11 pm: Dentist!
So last weekend my so-called permanent bridge fell off. (I only had it somewhere between 15 and 20 years!) It's right up front and noticeable so I was in the dentist's office Monday about fixing it. Needs a new bridge and a special kind of pin for the tooth that has had the root canal. Just over 2 hours of work that day left me completely shattered. Today was the last of the prep work and I spent a lot of time thinking about what I could do to make the experience less unpleasant. It worked too. I was completely relaxed and only flinched a couple of times after the shots.

So what's it take to get me to relax in the dentist's chair? To start with, I accidentally took a double dose of my pain med yesterday afternoon. Really - it was accidental! The pharmacist said I'd probably be ok and didn't need to go to the emergency room or anything. And I slept Really Well last night! This morning after showering and getting dressed, I mixed about half teaspoon of grapeseed oil with 2 drops of lavender oil, 1 drop of rose geranium oil, 1 drop of clary sage oil. Rub into lower jaw, hands, forearms, and soles of feet until fully absorbed. Put drop of rose oil on upper lip below the nose. Once at the dentist, put on earphones playing Bach's Brandenburg Concertos really loud. Breathe deep of lots of nitrous. Get 4 shots of local anesthetic. It all worked. For the first time in my life, I was relaxed and calm in the chair. Those essential oils I used are all supposed to be good for nerves and anxiety and the clary sage oil can be mildly sedative as well. And is there *anything* Bach doesn't make better? Whatever. I spent 1hour and 45 min in the dentist's chair and I feel ok, not completely shattered as usual.

If there's anyone else on my flist who has problems with dental anxiety, I'd like to mix up some oil for you and have you try it to see if it works for other people. I've been dabbling about with aromatherapy for some years and have decided to work more seriously at it. I have found it to be quite useful for a number of things. I don't *think* it's placebo effect, because I never expect it to work and am always a bit surprised when it does. So anyway, let me know if I can experiment on you!

Tags: aromatherapy, dentist

10:24 pm: Reportage
Crash. Thud. matociquala wins.

12:03 pm: Birthday Greetings!
Many happy returns to my evil twin womzilla!

And thank you to all my birthday well-wishers I've not had time to find yet. Life's a bit busy just now. Will write a post all about it at some time in the near-ish future.

03:36 pm: Alrighty then.
Well, somewhere between 9 and 10 hours of sleep and putting of the trip to Vancouver until Tuesday has helped me feel a lot better. I'm only coughing a couple of times a day and I feel much better. (I've been using aromatherapy to help and it really does. I don't think it's placebo effect because I'm always vaguely surprised that it does, but it really seems to help. In this case, lemon, eucalyptus, thyme, and rose geranium for the win!) matociquala is off touring the underground and the aquarium this afternoon and I'm thinking about a trip to the Sculpture Garden for sundown.

I had pumpernickel with goat cheese and strawberries with cream for breakfast. Yummy!

Now for some tidying up and figuring out dinner.

10:29 pm: Whew!
Last 24 hours about wiped me out. Plane arriving late. Up early for the farmers market where Bear and I really pillaged. Oh ghu, the fruit. The planned convertible top down tour of Seattle highlights ran afoul of the Pride Parade. There there were the Locus award and SF Hall of Fame ceremonies. Bear is off gothicking and I'm going to bed. Real Soon Now.

12:34 pm: Okay
Maybe a semi-hermit. But I'm done -- with a lot of stuff including giving people access to my vulnerabilities.

I just wish I were done being sick. Still coughing. Still exhausted. Have about 15 minutes of energy before I have to sit down and rest.

08:29 pm: No, really
If you people paid any attention to what I say, you'd remember I'm the least suicidal person you're likely to know. The only thing I'm more afraid of than death is Alzheimers. I am not suicidal. I'm just resigning from the human race and becoming a hermit. Really.

02:06 pm: Goodbye
Apparently I am incapable of normal social intercourse without (inadvertently) giving or receiving more pain than it's worth. That's it. I quit. I can't do this anymore.

03:34 pm: So
Not only am I sick with things to do (like this morning - I had to go see the rheumatologist because I needed the pain meds renewed (schedule 2 is *such* a pain - heh) and they couldn't cancel and reschedule for me because it takes like 6 weeks to get in to see him and what was that about horrible socialized medicine and its awful waiting times?) but everything I try to do turns to shit. My email was out for 24 hours. I was in a minor traffic accident Tuesday (like in I bumped a guys bumper as I was pulling out of a parking place and Some People have decided to be pissy about it). My computer is being very slow and everything I try to fix that makes it run even slower. Somebody hit my big red button labelled REJECTION really hard this morning. I'm sick, exhausted, and I can't stop crying. And my knee hurts. The one I had replaced. I fell on it a week ago and it still hurts. Oh, and I've stood 2 people up today.

Okay, nobody has died, yet. My husband hasn't filed for divorce, yet. I'm not out on the street and starving. But right now life is sucking. Do you have any good news for me?

12:01 pm: Words Fail Me
You know back a bit when I called my doctors' office and they gave me to someone to talk to who didn't understand English very well? Yeah. Well, I saw my doctor yesterday, and I ought to have been told to come in then, because my flu had morphed into bronchitis and I really shouldn't have gone to Milwaukee. And now I'm still sick and I Have Stuff To Do. Dammit.

10:50 am: Reporting In
I'm back from a week at Bead & Button in Milwaukee. It was cold the whole week! Since it was, ya know, JUNE, I hadn't taken a sweater or long sleeves and I about froze. I don't remember it being that cold in Milwaukee in June! I understand I missed some lovely warm weather in Seattle too. Sigh, my timing has always sucked.

I took 3 classes. The big, one a 2 day looming class did not go at all well on the first day. The teacher was Japanese and had pretty good English but not really up to the strain of that sort of class. She was an awfully nice lady, but... I woke up early the 2nd day with a migraine so had to bag the 2nd day, but am told I didn't miss much. That was a lot of money for very little return. After I woke up again in the afternoon with the migraine under conrol, I went over to the Pfister Hotel for a massage in their spa. Man can I recommend that! It's a beautiful old hotel too. Spent Wednesday doing little errands and chatting a bit with Christi Friesen and her helper Laurie. Wednesday night was meet the teachers and I chatted with folks and bought a couple of kits and one really super lampwork bead with a dragon.

Thursday I had one final errand and then spent some quiet time in the sun with a book as it was warmer. Took a nice walk too. Thursday night is the opening of the sales floor to students before the general public gets in on Friday. It runs from 4-9pm and is really wonderful. The first thing I did was go straight for Sharon Peters table where we chatted a bit and I bought the most magnificent dragon I've seen in a while. (He looks not unlike this, but he's orange with cobalt blue trim.) It's so completely fantastic I'm going to string it very simply (though I did find some matching beads at another lampworkers table!). In fact, I put him on a cord and wore him for the rest of the night and everyone oohed and ahhhed over him. Those who've been around for a couple of years took one look and said, "Sharon Peters, right?" I got most of the other stuff on my list (Yes! I made a list!) as well as a few other things I just fell in love with or which were *such* good deals... Well, you know how that goes! After close I went out to dinner with Christi, Laurie and a bunch of the other polymer clayers. We went to a really nice restaurant and had lots of fun talking, flirting with our adorable waiter, Justin, and telling stories. We were also the last folks out of the restaurant. Hope the staff weren't too annoyed. (The group included Lynne Ann Schwarzenberg and her SO Tommy, Christi, Laurie, Janet from Twocan Clay, and Pam who I have no idea what her last name was - they were all so nice and funny too!) Out like a light after the long and and tiring shopping, but woke up at 4:30am and couldn't go back to sleep. Sigh.

Friday morning I finished my shopping and stopped by Christi's booth to get training to sit in for her on Sunday morning. I really didn't buy as much as I expected, mostly because I tried really hard to stay away from the 'dangerous' booths, except for Sharon. Eclectica had some really excellent deals on glass beads, some of them vintage, so I did buy a fair amount there, but Out on a Whim seemed to have a much smaller selection of Swarovski and vintage Swarovski than in past years so I didn't get that much there. I have a couple of seed bead projects I want to try so I may be ordering from them later. Friday night was the second loom class I signed up for. This one went MUCH better and the teacher was excellent, Sheilah Cleary FYI. I got the project about half finished and expect I will finish it off in a couple of hours this week. We've learned a new way of terminating all those warp threads so it doesn't take the enormous amounts of time it used to. I really enjoyed that class and it was very useful.

Saturday was mostly an all day class with Lisa Pavelka on making polymer clay millefiori canes. It was *so* much fun. Lisa's a great person and a good teacher (though she was trying to cram too much in!) and I both enjoyed it and learned a lot. Also brought home some canes to experiment with. I had tried to do some canes from a book a while back and it was a dismal failure. It amazes me how much easier it is to do those things after watching someone do it and then having them watch you. After class made a quick pass through the show floor, stopped by Christi's booth to reconfirm about the morning and headed back to my hotel. A Chicago friend (erikvolson) had driven up and we went out to dinner at Mo's Irish Pub a couple three blocks down the street. We had a great time catching up, having a good dinner, and just talking. After he headed home, I packed and cleaned up so I'd be ready to leave the next day. Just as I had finished and was settling down to look through the stack of papers I had accumulated, the phone rang. My friend beadslut was down in the bar with her friend and would I like to join them. Well, hell yes. More talking, drinking, catching up, and storytelling. I tried to get to bed a relatively sensible hour since I had to be up early and mostly succeeded. Unfortunately, I was so tired I forgot to take my pain meds before I went to sleep. And they wore off at 3:45 am, after which I couldn't go back to sleep even after the pill kicked in.

Checked out of the hotel and checked my luggage. Went over to the convention center where I helped Christi set up for her class and got the money bag from her. Went down to the show floor and set up her booth to be ready. While I waited for the show to open I chatted with the folks in the next booth (one from Port Townsend!) and the folks in Lisa Pavelka's booth. It was a very slow morning once we did open and eventually Tommy came to take over so I could leave for the airport. Our plane was late getting into Milwaukee, so we were late getting out, but I had plenty of time. I think, though, that I'm going to investigate ways of getting from O'Hare to Milwaukee that don't involve tiny feeder airlines and not use the Milwaukee airport again. It really underwhelms me. Got upgraded to first class for the flight from ORD to SEA. Finished my book, read a couple of magazines and had a very short nap. (I don't sleep well, or at all, on planes, even with only 3 1/2 hours of sleep the night before.) Got into Seattle on time but it took for-fricking-ever for the luggage to arrive and we went home. So good to see my husband and cats again and to sleep in my own bed. Which I did for 10 hours. I'm going to really take it easy today, before leaping into a whole pile of stuff tomorrow.

08:45 pm: Updatage
Well, the Acura now has 4 new tires. Shouldn't have any flats for a while now! That took a huge hunk out of yesterday and today I've been running around like a mad thing trying to get ready to leave. I'm heading out tomorrow for a week in Milwaukee for Bead & Button. Taking a loom class that lasts all day Monday and Tuesday, a Friday afternoon class, and an all day class on polymer clay canes on Saturday. The only thing I've got left from the last couple of weeks is bad sniffles. And I get tired easily. Sigh. If any of my readers will be at B&B or ortherwise in Milwaukee - I'm staying at the HIlton near the Conference Center.

06:43 pm: Two steps forward, one step back
I was well enough to go to a small cookout yesterday afternoon and then pick up Jordin at the airport. Of course, I also went to bed about an hour after we got home which was pretty darn early. It was so nice to have my husband back in my bed. I'm not sure why I find such immense comfort in a warm body next to me, but I've always hated sleeping alone. One of the downsides of feeling better is that I now have enough brainpower to remember my losses one year ago this past weekend. Had crying fit over Loki last night, and at today at lunch, ran across an unexpected reference to Bob and nearly lost it in public.

Stopped briefly by the grocery store and came out to a nearly flat tire. That's 3 flat tires in 2 weeks. WTF? Barely managed to get home before collapsing into a 2 hour nap, and that's without changing the tire. Which I couldn't do because the spare is on the car aleady... I don't really feel bad, but I keep trying to do things only to fall over unexpectedly. The late 50s are not a good time. But as I told my father when he moaned about turning 50, it's better than the alternative.

02:27 pm: Whiiiine!
You have been warned (see Subject). Read at your own risk.

So I felt amazingly better 24 hours after beginning the Tamiflu. And better still 24 hours after that. Since then it's been downhill. I now have horrible head congestion that I didn't have before. Throat is still a little sore, coughing greatly decreased but still present. No horrible muscle/body aches but sooooo tired. Alternately sniffly and bitchy. So I called the dr office this morning. They take my name and number and someone will call me back. Unfortunately, the person who called me back had no explanation for why the culture wasn't back or any idea when it would be. Also unfortunately, she did not speak or understand English at all well. The THIRD fucking time I told her that I hadn't *had* the head congestion when I'd been in on Tuesday so it couldn't be either better or worse, I lost it and hung up. I don't feel like my concerns got heard adequately and I got no advice I could count on or trust and I don't know what to do. She said not to worry, although I still had some symptoms and had developed new ones and was starting to feel bad again and give it a couple more days. Which would be Sunday of a long weekend. She also tried to explain to me that 98.9 was not running a fever. Completely ignoring the fact that I am *always* at normal or below it and virtually never have higher than 98.6. This has made me angry and tearful. And I'll probably do nothing but sit here feeling sorry for myself.

Additional reasons to feel sorry for myself: there are several really cool cons this weekend where many of my friends are and are twittering about how wonderful it all is. My husband is at one and hasn't even called me today to see how I am. Absolutely no one has called or emailed to see if I need anything or if they can do anything in spite of the fact that it's fairly widely known that I'm home with the flu while Jordin's out of town. Even the cats are ignoring me. Everyone is whining about how hot it is where they are. It is sunny in Seattle, but the last time I checked the temp was in the low 60s. Yes, Memorial Day weekend and we can even break 70F. I'm not really happy til it hits 75F. Whiiiiine. Whimper.

(Edited to fix wrong day in 1st para)

01:19 pm: Holy Cow!
This Tamiflu stuff is amazing. It's been @ 24 hrs since my first dose and I'm feeling amazingly better. I mean, I still have a runny nose and sore throat and occasional coughing fits, but I don't ache all over and feel like nothing but a pathetic heap of viral misery.

I even felt well enough to cook myself some lunch and to read my book with pleasure. If this keeps up I should be totally fine tomorrow or Friday. I think, though, that I'm still not going to Marcon. The doctor said I'd still be contagious even if I was feeling better and I didn't think to ask how long that would last. Maybe when they call to tell me whether I had swine flu or some other strain.

I mostly used my emergency meal supplies to fix lunch and it was yummy. I chopped some onion and started it sauteeing in EVOO while I rinsed and dried a can of chickpeas. Added them to the onions and EVOO. Opened a can of saffron cream sauce (a mild Indian sauce) and poured it in. When it was simmering nicely got out packet of already cooked, frozen organic brown rice. Microwaved that. Poured chickpeas with sauce over rice. Good, easy, flavorful, and nutritious. I ate most of it, and then had an (organic) ice cream sandwich for dessert.

Followed by more Tamiflu. Really, I can't believe how good this stuff is. Expensive though. We have pretty good health insurance, but our co-pay was $35. For 10 pills, and worth its weight in gold actually.

02:04 pm: Quick update
Saw doctor this morning. He's sure enough it's flu that I've got Tamiflu to help me recover and Jordin has it prophylactically. So I won't be going to Marcon or anywhere else this weekend. They took a swab to culture to see what sort of flu it is and will let me know when they have the results. Sigh.

05:56 pm: Well Fuck
So I'm not just tired. I hurt all over. I have a headache. My throat has been getting progressively more uncomfortable and feels kind of raw. I may be running a fever. The thermometer is 2 floors up and I'm not climbing that many stairs. And there's this pain all down my left diodes. So I wasn't just tired from the drive and visit. I'm sick dammit. So what are the symptoms of swine flu again?

11:02 am: Not Dead Yet
No, really. I just suck at this keeping in touch thing. I drove down to the Bay Area and back for a week and that just sucked up amazing amounts of energy. Which I don't seem to be generating very well. I don't know what my problem is, but I hope I get over it.

We're leaving for Marcon on Thursday and will be back Monday. I don't expect I'll be writing much then either. And after that life gets really crazy.

10:46 am: Go Maine!
Today the Maine leg passed a bill allowing same sex marriage and in less than an hour the governor had signed it. I feel we're getting close to a tipping point. Hope so anyhow.