a human party bus

Its always right.

I'm not eating or smoking or drinking really. So I'm buying things, mostly online and in bed.

I have been noticing seashells more often. I did a puddle this morning and my toes were wet all day. 

one of my recent Temu binges included a sticker that says everything is temporary.

I have been having weird disassociative feelings, dizziness, spacieness accompanied with swirling epiphanies that I can't even capture or articulate fully. They are half baked. Maybe its a brain tumor. Or a midlife crisis. Perhaps a spiritual awakening. New meds. Crippling anxiety.

I wish for many things. I wish for discipline. I wish my boyfriend would leave me. I wish a fairy would clean my house.  I wish I was a little bit taller. I wish for a hundred thousand dollars.

A mysterious and pungent odor

 So here's a funny thing, internet, if you are still listening.

I go and login for my 2023 post of the year and see my republished version of a rant about being overwhelmed from way back in oh 2008 I reckon, about 15 years ago.  I think I was trying to copy the post with comments to a word doc, archiving the old records and shit.

I feel exactly the same way today as I did that day.  What a fucking hoot.  Some things really never change.  I suppose the difference is that now that I am older and now that my ADHD is diagnosed I know that I easily get overwhelmed when I am overstimulated or say yes to too much  and am bogged down with obligations and while I want to freak out and yell at everybody to fucking leave me alone, I know that I really just need to step away and try to corral my ducks and draw some boundaries.

I came here to brain dump everything that is overwhelming me/pissing me off.

I've just now decided that I've also come here to brain storm solutions, in no particular order.

• This fucking kid riding her bike down the street in front of my house ringing her bell as she's trying to thirst trap the other toddler across the street.  My nice quiet street has become full of screaming children as all the old folks have slowly died/moved away.
• Keep telling myself they are renters, they are renters, they are renters and hope they move away sooner rather than later.
• Shut the windows.
• I could also yell at her like the mean old lady that I have become.
• My wegovy coach who sent me links to videos every week and nagged me to login to the portal every couple of days to set my SMART and reward has dumped me.  Because I ghosted her.  And now I feel bad because she doesn't like me.
• I hate SMART goals and this coaching program did not work for me.  I only signed up for it because I had hoped for a WW like forum with recipes and group interactions.  Mostly it is basic ass articles that anyone on a diet could have written.
• It's okay. I wanted a way out.  And now I have one less AI robot nagging me.
• I keep forgetting to take the Wegovy ... I'm already late this week.
• I just did it.  This needs to be the thing that I can do right now.  If I can't do everything they tell me to do, at least do the injection because it's the part that actually works.
•  My co-worker is on vacation this week and I have taken it upon myself to prove that I can do the work of two people without being a whiny bitch like she will be when I'm on vacation.
• It is easier to get work done when she is not there constantly trying to talk to me or interrupt me.
• My boss has noticed and commented on how hard I am working so point proved, no need to kill myself working 12 hours a day.
• I am fucking tired.
• Chill out tonight.  No working from home tonight, tomorrow I can kick ass.
• Had signed up for a new local poetry group/open mic tonight but just canceled.  Last time I went I gained some fans but I just don't have the wherewithal tonight.
• Hey how about I put the phone down instead of doomscrolling from 10pm til midnight and go the fuck to sleep?
• The biggest problem weighing on me at this exact moment is my broke-ness.  Ever since I bought my used car and let the payment creep up beyond what I had said I was comfortable with ($300 turned to $400 turned to $450 and ended up $457 a month) I have been robbing Peter to pay Paul (more like robbing myself to pay myself).  I have a disconnect notice from the electric company.  It won't be disconnected but come on man, I'm almost 44 years old and this is still happening?
• Canceled Amazon Prime, one of my favorite places to buy things on my phone while in bed.  Heck, I just uninstalled the app from my phone.  Double heck, I just went and removed all stored card numbers from my online wallet.  Take that, impulse spending.
• Canceled my YNAB (you need a budget) subscription which sounds counter intuitive but they had upped that shit to $100 a year and I wasn't really budgeting, just using it as an overpriced check register app.  Just switched to Quicken for $35.  
• Did not take money out of my 401k, but did request a loan.  I would like to get a bonafide consolidation loan but my credit score is atrocious at the moment. I will use the loan money to bring down balances and catch up on the dire needs and hope to see my score go up enough that I can get approved.
• Going to need to get an actual budget set but still working on importing all my accounts and sorting out the nuts and bolts.  Needs to happen soon because I have been procrastinating on this.  Head in the sand sort of shit.
• Also, I have not been just willy nilly blowing money on silly stuff (just nilly), the problem is also that I have no emergency savings so when I owed taxes to both the feds and state, I had a car repair that wasn't even fully repaired, and I had to call in an exterminator to rid my house of a yellow jacket infestation, that also meant turning more to the credit cards.
• I have been saying that I am going to have a rummage sale for three years now, maybe four, ever since I moved and I declared that it will be the Saturday of Labor Day weekend.  A friend is coming to help me work it but that now leaves me with 2 weekends to finish cleaning the garage, purging my house and getting ready to get set up and it is a time crunch.
• I asked my therapist if I could push it off but the week after would not work and even if it did I would end up spending my vacation prepping and who wants to do that?  And then it's fall and who has rummage sales in the fall? This one might even be too late in the season as it is.
• The problem is that everyone wants to hang out with me on the weekends.  Boyfriend, friends I haven't seen in ages. It's nice to catch up but also it's really the only time I have the bandwith to do these projects.  Boyfriend says he will help but I am all codependent and stuff still so I can tell he doesn't want to or he's in the way so I say I will work on it Sunday but I don't because by then I'm super worn out so I told him not to come over this weekend until Saturday evening.  I need time and space and everyone outta my way.
• The boyfriend situation argh.  I don't even have the bandwidth to go there and I also have guilt about procrastinating working on all of my codependent literature.  I said I was going to read Codependent No More and do all the writing prompts by the end of summer.
• I have failed at Self-Care Summer.  Or have I?
• Does self-care work like that?
• I went thirty days no contact with him which were nice and quiet and productive.  I took him back because he promised to quit drinking but it's slowly creeping back and boundaries and guilt and obligation and yes, do not have the bandwidth. 
• At heart, I am an introvert and I have not been filling my cup.  I need quiet time, sleep.  I have off next Monday to spend time with my mom and then the week of labor day.  

This is enough dumping.  I'm tired and hungry and my cat smells like a farm, or maybe this town does.  I am miles away from any farm fields though, so who knows where that shit smell is coming from.

Olivia, right now, annoyed that I said she smells like a barn.

keep this feeling in a plastic jar (original post 4/7/2008)

I spend all weekend calming myself down and telling myself its just a job and it doesn't matter and I shouldn't get so worked up over it blah blah blah but apparently I must for some reason care about my job because within twenty minutes of walking in the door the rage returns. And it is ruining my bloggy flow. Once in awhile I have a witty thought about something to blog about it and forget to write it down, but the majority of my time is spent in the midst of work rage or suppressing work rage. If by some chance I would happen to blog from work the post would look something like this:

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKING CUNTS LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK PIECE OF SHIT FUCKING LAZY ASSES STUPID FUCKING JOB FUCKING STAB BITCHES IN THE EYE FUCK FUCK MAKE YOUR OWN GODDAMN COFFEE FUCK FUCK FUCKING HANG MYSELF FROM THE RAFTERS ABOVE MY CUBICLE FUCK FUCK FUCK HELLO MAY I HELP YOU?

It applies to both jobs. And then I come home and have a glass of wine or beer and either sit on the couch and sigh or sit at the computer and sigh while clicking refresh a hundred times on my myspace homepage or facebook.

I won't really elaborate because nobody really wants to hear about people's jobs that they don't really know anything about, it's about accounting and gl accounts and boss's sisters and meh, suffice it to say the devil doesn't really wear prada but a lot of eddie bauer.

I am taking a four day weekend, friday through monday, hoping to regain a little bit of sanity and reel in my Tourette's (the self-editing mechanism that filters what I'm thinking before it comes out of my mouth seems to be on the fritz lately). I plan on drinking a lot of coffee (or mimosa's I haven't decided yet--maybe both), doing some serious spring cleaning, putting together a proper computer desk, and just.... not working. I need a break, even though I have been busting my ass for the last week to have things caught up enough that I am not too behind next Tuesday so maybe it negates itself.

The point here is that since I promised myself only quality posts, no blogging just for the sake of blogging, is that I hope to either clear my head enough this weekend, or at least drink my problems away enough in order to continue to bring you juicy updates about my own personal LOL Cats, my druggie neighbors and oh yeah, those silly arrogant people who have penises who like to refer to themselves as what, oh yeah, that's right, men. Boys, whatever, pffffffft.

The Goal for January is Survival

It is 5am on a Wednesday as I sit down to blog.  I've been up since probably 3:45, peeing, tossing, turning while trying to listen to the soothing meditations to get me back to sleep but I just laid there feeling like I was starving and sweating into my Cuddle Duds sheets despite it being -13 Fahrenheit just on the other side of the my window.

I'm not doing well, haven't been for weeks.  It seems like everyone is in the January doldrums so I smile meekly and try to downplay it as that but I think I may be having an anxiety episode for a few weeks now.  

Just after new years my boyfriend disappeared for a few days.  It feels like years ago, honestly, but at the time I was so mad at him for ghosting me, then relieved that I didn't have to break up with him, maybe he was just waiting until after the holidays, then depressed that I would be alone, then happy, then I worried he was dead and who was going to tell me if he died, so I was googling his obituary and then considering adding his mother on facebook when he finally sent me a cryptic text message with a photo from the emergency room.  No explanation of why he was there, and I assumed he had finally given himself alcohol poisoning (he kept throwing up on New Years eve and the next morning).  Not exactly -- he had given himself hypocalcemia, too much calcium in your blood which comes from either a tumor on some sort of lymph node or potentially from taking too many Tums and this kid eats Tums like they are candy because he always has heartburn, I suspect, from the drinking.  I thought maybe he would learn his lesson and he stayed home the next weekend to rest, but mostly he was grounded because when he was in the hospital his mom found his stash of empty vodka bottles in his bedroom.  He is back to drinking on the weekends and honestly I know I need to end it or at least try some ultimatum manipulation, but I can't go through a break up and be alone right now, especially since he is my only physical human contact.  I keep trying to downplay our relationship to casual so it doesn't matter as much.  It's his problem, and it's not like we're not getting married.  

I haven't been smoking, which is good, except that it also means I have not been taking breaks from work or going outside.  My lungs feel better but I also feel like I'm losing my mind.  If it wasn't so fucking cold,  I think I would let myself do it.  I had a couple of the boyfriend's smokes this weekend and ahhhhh.  

I had my adhd follow up and the psychiatrist who diagnosed me did not prescribe me any medication, she just reiterated what her notes said.  She kind of explained which tests I did "good" on and which ones I did bad on.  Apparently I have good verbal skills and comprehension, I'm just a slow processer, like my Dell computer here.  I called the local behavioral health branch however, and the adhd specialty therapists are not taking new clients, other therapists are booking new clients in July, and the earliest I could get in to see a nurse about meds is April 19th.  What if I was/am having an actual mental health crisis?  Do I need I have an actual mental break and end up in the ER?  I am afraid to bring up depression and anxiety because sometimes that is all they hear and they get hung up on treating that.  

So here's the thing.  I am on no meds right now, which was going fine until now.  I had backed off my prozac in anticipation of the diagnosis and wanting to start fresh.  I think I still have some and I think I might self medicate.  Like... now.  I cannot raw dog  these emotions through the rest of the winter.

Friday night I was in Target when I had what I usually would refer to as a low blood sugar episode -- I get woozy, sweaty, feel like I'm going to pass out, get a little panicy.  My instinct is usually "I need to eat" and I buy some little debbies and mow down on them in the parking lot.  It seems to happen a lot when I am in grocery stores.  So this happened, I did the routine and I have not been feeling right since it happened.  This is also why I stopped taking metformin - it was happening a lot - and even though they told me that metformin does not lower your blood sugar, I think taking diabetes medication when you're not diabetic must do something to lower your blood sugar.  It's an off-label use to treat PCOS but I'm not actually trying to get pregnant so I think it's silly to take it.  I gained weight when I was off, but also was working from home.  My new nurse/doctor tested my A1C and it was not even in the prediabetic range, but she wanted me to try going back on it at a lower dose.

Here's the thing, I don't really know if it's low blood sugar.  And being fat, I really need to come with evidence of what is happening, which  means documenting, which being adhd I am not good at, which is not an excuse because I have always been terrible at tracking things just now I know why.  

I could just be having panic attacks?

Because I still don't feel right.  I still feel woozy and starving all the time.  I just ate a double serving of oatmeal and am still hungry. 

I have to go out into the cold today so I am going to buy a glucose monitor and a pregnancy test because that has been running looping around the back of my brain too.  I had my period, but it was weird and early and light but long but I might be beginning the long march to menopause, who knows.  Let's just rule it out.

I am finally sleepy again.  It was probably the coffee.  Coffee can soothe the ADHD mind because our brains work the opposite.  That explains how I never had a problem drinking truck stop coffee late at night then going to bed.

My wake up alarm just went off.  I have an appointment this morning and need to drive to Milwaukee.  I just want to call in sick and go back to sleep for a few hours but adulthood is calling.

I might dump more anxiety later.  Mostly, I just feel like I am dying.  And when I don't feel like I am dying, I feel like I am trapped.  Sometimes it's both.  Now I feel queasy again.  Time to shower and dig out the Prozac!

2021 wasn't real

2021 in review: work from home, work from home, vaccine, a few awkward dates/sexual encounters.  But I have a new alcoholic boyfriend now. It's been 4 months and we haven't said "I love you" yet but I kinda think we are each using each other for companionship and sometimes sex. He's not over his divorce and I'm not over my bullshit so we'll see where it goes. Likely nowhere, until I become the first 42 year old to accidentally get knocked up.

We went back to the office part time in the summer. Also, my new job had summer hours which I did not like. I was just tired all the time. My coworker is very annoying in person. Only 2 years until she retires (fingers crossed). I had covid in early November, mostly just malaise and body aches. 

I also was officially unofficially diagnosed with inattentive adhd in December. Or maybe unofficially officially? I have not had the follow up to my diagnostic/testing yet but was able to read it in the psychiatrist's notes in which she says it.  I am supposed to find a therapist who specializes in adhd coaching. Also, a prescriber because drugs is the reason for this rabbit hole. I need to plant the magic beans and all my dreams will come true!

I think my resolutions for next year are the same as this year and every other year that I fail them. This week I'm not smoking so I am going easy on myself. Work is going back to 100% remote for January, probably to stave off the inevitable covid wave. I'll clean, I'll get the Christmas decorations taken down, I'll try to avoid leaving the house. I'll curl up with my electric blanket, because January is rough enough the way it is.

this is a bad idea. let's do it anyway.

Oh, hello August and your intense desire to make me question my existence. I get solemn and even my annoying coworker asks me what is wrong. I'm just trying to tune her out.

Hot Girl Summer had been going quite well. Has been. Is been. *(I am on my phone so the cadence and lengthiness will be different and typos will be rampant.)*

A month ago I sat around the fire with a couple of girlfriends and talked about everything under the sun while drinking everything under the sun while sitting under the moon. It might have been enough for July, to have that comraderie, community, confessional time. It made me look forward to when their husbands are dead and we can live together or side by side as golden girls.

I tried to capture the expansiveness of that soul filling night in a poem but it failed. I was even so present that I didn't know where my phone was and did not take a single photo. The whole fact and feeling of it lives solely in me. And hopefully my gal pals. 

A couple of weeks later I went to the small hippie wedding of a poetry friend where I didn't know any guests when I arrived but made mingling friends with two Pauls and a Jane. One Paul was very cute but very short and asked me to dance for a slow song and everyone was like aww thats so cool you guys danced. We also fast danced together, ate together, spotify dj'd together, chit chatted and and then he left me with just a hug in front of everyone. Was I supposed to chase him down and force my number on him?  Or was it just the two buck chuck fueling the wistful romantic clichés of a wedding? The bride and groom were together because she took the initiative to stalk him down after their initial meeting. 

I had Paul's last name (Jane was a good wing woman) so I stalked him on facebook to verify what I had heard. 33, a former touring punk band member, came home to start over as an IT student. Also apparently fairly Christian.  I probably used the lords name in vain as I am wont to do .

I held off on reaching out because that night ended with me phone chatting with my latest okcupid match Andrew for almost three hours and we had a date set for the next weekend and I wanted to avoid a love triangle. I also wanted to give a few days to see if Paul asked about *me.* 

Andrew is cute, days away from turning 37, also lives with his parents and tries to pull the "care taking" card even though they are always yelling at him in the background.  He's divorced but has a good job history and the only legal hiccups were around the divorce. He doesn't drink and drive so instead of him coming to my town for our date, I went to him.

This was a bad idea.

He really had no excuse for starting to drink Saturday afternoon. They hazily wound from his sister being in town, to us not having a firm enough plan, to being nervous about meeting me. While I was disappointed I didn't let him cancel and flipped it to me picking up what I thought was going to be a slightly buzzed man but turned out to be one HAMMERED motherfucker by the time I picked him up.

We attempted to go to Texas Roadhouse but they were out of rolls so I led him out of there before poor Joey could ever come back for our order. We went to the movies instead where I had to help him get his credit card in the slot and told him to "Stay" when I went to the bathroom. The teenagers working might have thought I was a good person for taking my handicapped brother out for the evening.

You'd think he would have been sober after a 2 hour movie and he was better but not 100%. He got a bit better after some George Webbs. 

He's incredulous that I'm still talking to him. I don't know, he's cute and humble, kinda funny. Says sorry all the time, so likely damaged.  I told him I'll give him another chance to show up here sober but if he's always sloppy,  I'll take the hint. 

And I added Paul on Facebook.  He messaged me "hey Cindy!" and I messaged back "hey Paul!" That was two days ago. Our connection might have just been under the influence of wine t. He's damaged in his own way: covid killed his dream and now he's living with his parents and starting over. 

IT'S LIKE I HAVE A TYPE. and my type is a version of myself. 

So all this and some other stuff is going on and its like all of a sudden I am thinking, *wait, have I been hot all along?* which is kind of fucking with me because I am also at my heaviest weight ever. I don't really think I'm hot but I'm starting to realize things such as I do not only exist through my perception.  

But on the flip side of things, I'm also feeling like shit. I have no lung capacity, I am out of shape and am embarrassingly out of breath when I walk up the stairs at work. I keep trying to convince myself to do the bare minimum. A walk around the block. Maybe even just to the corner and back. But its so hot. So humid. And I am one easily sweaty lady. I have been eating like a toddler. My desire to not do dishes has me hitting the drive thru or eating easy foods like grilled cheese and air fryer chicken nuggets on paper plates. Decent halfway healthy foods require planning and heat and dirtying all the dishes then leaving them sit until a work from home day. I am sick of summer hours. Spending three months going to work an hour early every day just so I can have off on Friday afternoons wherein I mostly nap out of exhaustion? Boo. 

A fall/winter boyfriend might do me some good. Get me out and moving around, a little sexercise, a reason to clean up, someone to cook for who might help me with dishes. Adderall might have the same effect if the end of October would ever frickin get here.

The gist is that I am uncomfortable but nothing new there.

Like the veggie burgers I left on the counter overnight, I wonder if this can truly go bad?

Now that the country is slowly returning to normal I am realizing what it is that I have been not missing.  I have not missed working in an office.  I have not missed all-day interruptions from and feeling uncomfortable in my own skin.  And whose idea was it to return to work in the summer, when I have to schlepp across the parking lot in 90 degree heat & humidity, to the back of the building, up the stairs, and to the back of the wing while wearing black dress pants and a polyester shirt so I am a nice sweaty ball of breathiness and fatness?  

Sometimes, if nobody is looking, I take the elevator.

We're not even there full time yet.  Two days a week.  One of those days my co-worker is also there next to me, narrating everything she does out loud so that I have to constantly pull my earbuds out and look at her to see if she's talking to me.  Sometimes she is.  Most of the time, she's not.  

I go in on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  She does Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  I was going to make Wednesdays my third day in July and she's going to make Thursdays hers, but that would mean working next to her three days in a row.

"I think I might make Fridays my third day," I told my boss.  I'm sure she knows but it's one of those things that I don't know if I'm allowed to voice.  My boss is five years from retirement, and the co-worker guesstimates she has about three years left.

By September we'll all be there five days a week, so I'm just delaying the inevitable.

Isolation was good for me.  It was a break from societal expectations, of feeling self-conscious.  Now I am feeling submerged right back into the diet & wellness culture with the co-worker saying things like, "do you know how many calories are in those pop-tarts?" and feeling like anything I eat has to be healthy because everyone else is watching.  Are they?  Maybe.  If they are judging, it really only has to do with their own internal food issues and body shame.

I have definitely noticed I am more likely to snack in the office than I am when I am working at home.  I will chalk that up to ADHD.  One of the elements is needing constant stimulation/dopamine hits hence the easily distracted behaviors.  When I am at home and I feel the need to change things up, I go out for a cigarette or vacuum or tidy up the kitchen.  Because I don't really have friends at my new job yet (if I did, I might also be prone to interrupting them with idle chit chat to cure my boredom), I go in my designated snack drawer for pop tarts or granola bars.  

I mean, it's a cheese company for crying out loud.  A lot of my insecurities are self-perceived, I'm sure.  Maybe the first time people see me they might think "woah" and then they just get used to you.  I'm doing the same thing.

Here's a confession:  This draft has been sitting here for ten days and I don't know how I feel about it anymore.  

My job is fine.  It's a beautiful building filled with art and cheese and wellness culture and relaxation rooms and yoga classes will come back and I'll just get used to walking up stairs again by the end of the summer, maybe I'll go walk the walking path outside through the Sunflower Berm, monarch garden and Italian orchard.  I average one gift every time I go to the office.  There's a fucking 2pm Gelato break in the courtyard.  It's actually quite wonderful.  I am slowly starting to act like a human again.  I just don't want to weird people out.

I've been listening to the Breath book and getting my usual excitement at the prospect of a new lifestyle spurred by a single self-help book.  You're supposed to breathe slower.  Or faster.  Depends on what you're trying to do.  But empty your diaphragm.  Don't mouth breathe.  I downloaded a sleep tracking app and paid $20 for the year and it records when you snore in the night but there seems to be a two minute limit and maybe a ten times limit, but just listening to the horrible horrible noises I am making in my sleep are enough to confirm that I should not spend the night in any lover's beds.  Make a hasty exit lest he discovers that I sound like an elephant with a bird stuck in its trunk.  My "occasional" cigarette smoking has been creeping up so I haven't smoked since Sunday (a secret Father's day gift for my pops), bought mouth tape and I have been practicing my slow and empty breaths.

Speaking of father's day, my dad had a heart catherization scheduled for yesterday which turned out all fine, his existing stent was replaced and no new ones, but he was a little anxious on Sunday and I was being an accidental dick and decided that it would be a good time to talk about family history and how everybody died.  He said his mom died because she was too fat and had diabetes.  That's not really a cause of death.  He wanted to say something about my weight, he tried, but I have yelled at him before so I could see him trying to restrain himself.  I almost wish he had so I could point out, "but you aren't as fat as I am, and you have heart and cholesterol issues so maybe it's more hereditary bucko?"  He didn't say it in person but later texted me that he was sorry, and I said I was sorry back.  

I started a dad rant blog post a few weeks ago but didn't post it because I'm glad my dad is alive even if he pisses me off sometimes.  I think I have just come to realize that my dad is just a guy who probably doesn't know everything, he just acts like he does.  I had a thought the other day of, "what if my dad is NOT THE ONLY GOOD MECHANIC that exists in the world?"  I have been under the assumption that they all will screw you over.  I don't know.  My dad provides free labor and parts at cost and he asks what I'm going to do when he dies and I just shrug and say I guess I'll have to get a brand new car with a service package.

Maybe I'll just get a bike.  If I don't have to leave town to visit my friends or family I have no need for a car.  Everything is here.  Even delivery.  

I think I'm ready to switch into the next intuitive eating phase where I don't try to lose weight but I magically do because my brain is fixed and I eat like a bird.  

Well this was enough of a warm up.  I was gifted a mock-moleskine hardcover notebook from work that I have decided is going to be a book for making lists so I need to go start some lists and I bought a women's ADHD workbook because waiting until 2022 to get started seems foolish.  

It's like I have some hopefulness!

You Can Have This While My Lasagna Bakes

I am so proud of myself for making lasagna and attempting to make gelato on the very last day before my ricotta cheese expires.  Now to drink the other half gallon of whole milk before it expires on Wednesday.

I went to the doctor/nurse inside our work clinic to ask for a referral to get ADHD tested.  I needed to get set up with a new GP anyway, so I had my annual molestation a bit earlier than expected.  She sent a referral down to Madison and then proceeded to ohhhh... not blatantly fat shame me but she is probably a third of my weight and I was very not comfortable in the paper gown that did not cover my back and the fact that the other nurse who came in while she was digging around doing the pap smear HELD MY THIGHS BACK WITH HER HANDS.  Bitch, I can spread my legs if you need me to.  It's one of my special skills.  You don't have to treat me like a pig you are inseminating on the farm.  

I don't know about this whole on-site work clinic thing.  I felt dangerously close to flashing my vagina to any one of the co-workers I don't know yet who could possibly be walking by or at the very least out in the parking lot.  That and they couldn't get my blood so I had to go to the local hospital the next day for the blood draw.

Everything is normal blood wise.  A round of antibiotics to clear up some discharge and now my vulva is like vodka -- odorless and tasteless.  (Here I just thought it smelled like vagina before.)

So I got the referral and called Madison, got transferred back and forth a few times between nueropsychopathy and behavioral psychology and got an 11am zoom appointment at the end of October.  This didn't seem right since Char told me that it was one day thing.  So I sent a follow up email on my chart to question it and got a reply that the 11am appointment was for an initial screening, they would give me some questionnaires for my significant others and then decide if I should be tested.  Um, then why the fuck did I have to get a referral?  

Oh god, and I've heard about the questionnaires... can the cats take it?  "She forgets to feed us unless we remind her!"  If it's for my parents, I don't know how that's going to go.  Hopefully their narcissism comes across?  I'm sure they've dealt with that before, parents who don't believe in psychology who think you just need to try harder or they are in denial about their own symptoms?  (Oh my dad totally has it, 300%.)  James used to say I had ADD, but I'm pretty sure he has me blocked across all platforms and/or has changed his number.

And so I wait 5 months to be screened.  I cried out of frustration.  Wait, I procrastinated and finally accomplished this and now you are going to make me wait EVEN LONGER?  Then probably another five months after that to be tested.  IT NEEDS TO BE NOW.  If I can muster up the focus maybe I can see if I can find something outside of insurance and pay cash?  Depending on the cost?  

It's summer, it will go fast.  And even though today is the unofficial first day of summer, it also has a foreboding last day of summer break feeling because tomorrow is going to be my first full day working in the office and I am freaked the fuck out.  We are on summer hours, so starting early in order to have Friday afternoons off, so I have to have my ass in my chair by 7am tomorrow morning.  Can you feel the face that I am making as I type that?  They haven't rolled back the mask policy yet (waiting for guidance from OSHA).  Thankfully nobody is really enthusiastic about going back, so we are easing into it part-time.  Two days a week in June, three days a week in July and four days a week in August -- mostly so we don't have to bother with Fridays.  

My summer project -- which I typically start and never finish -- is to explore my new city and finally check out all the shops, parks, festivals, restaurants, museums, et cetera.  Being fully vaccinated, I have spent the last couple of weekends gallivanting around maskless and I think I caught a cold.  I forgot about colds.  I haven't had one since last year.  So there's that.

Let's see... the weather has been quite bipolar.  Today is a perfect low humidity 73 but the last few weeks it's either been 90 or 45.  I think next weekend is going to be 90 and I will regret not mowing my lawn this weekend but ..... I didn't feel like it and it's not bad but by Wednesday it will be bad.  

Speaking of bipolar, I haven't seen but have still been texting with both fellers. I keep hearing about this "Hot Girl Summer" thing, is that the same as One Horny Summer?  But I feel like I just got my vagina fixed and now I don't want to mess it up.  It's like when you finally vacuum your car.  As soon as the first french fry falls down the crevice between the seat and the console, it's only a matter of days until the whole thing is a mess again.

I was walking into a gas station yesterday and a girl said to me, "wow, you have really pretty eyes."  I had just woken up from a nap and my eye makeup was smeared and my hair was disheveled but it felt cute so maybe it was.  Is it time to switch teams?  

Took a lot of naps this weekend.  Hoping my sleep schedule is finally readjusted.

The lasagna alarm is sounding.

Well I was out of foil so the top layer of cheese burnt but que sera. Crunchy cheese is good too.

#lasagnathirtysomewhere

American Mental Health Care at it's Finest

Because ADHD, a few weeks ago I finally made a phone call to see about getting scheduled for an ADHD evaluation.  We have a medical employee assistance hotline and I figured they would be the best place to start.  I have been procrastinating on making that call mostly out of nerves and getting distracted by work and texting boys and scrolling facebook for an hour every time I pick up my phone to make a call.

Lady at Employee Assistance Hotline:  "We don't do that, we do short term counseling, but I can transfer you to a psychiatrist's office."

Psychiatrist Office:  "Is this for you or a child?  We only do people under 21 but I can transfer you to Char who can schedule appointments for adults."

Char:  "Hi this is my voicemail at 4pm on a Friday, leave me a voicemail."

Char calls back on a Tuesday or Wednesday.  "Well I can schedule you here in town but I'm just going to let you know that we are booking into January of 2022 and it will be three appointments.  Or I can transfer you to Madison.  They are booked about eight weeks out."

Madison:  "We need a referral from a physician or therapist before we can even start to schedule you."

Me, two weeks later, calling the last shrink I saw and discussed ADHD with, who told me that meditation is better than medication but I can't create routines because ADHD, who never answers her phone, so I leave her a voicemail:  "Hi this is Cindy, I was wondering if you would possibly be willing to write me a referral for ADHD testing?  If this is something you are willing to do, please call me back."

No call back.

Me, two more weeks later, calling Gigi, my former therapist from before I moved.  "Oh hi Cindy, it's so good to hear from you and hear you're doing well.  What do you need?  I can't write you a referral, I don't even have an open file on you.  Karen should be able to do that.  Why do you need a referral?  Can't you self-refer?  That's kind of outdated."

I already broke up with Karen, my prior primary care nurse practitioner from my old town because I live and work here now and it's just not practical.  The place I'm trying to get referred to is in a different network and after I read her notes I feel like she is fatphobic and dismissive so I really don't want to get roped back in with her.

So I finally made an appointment at my new job's clinic for a Well Woman Exam so I can meet the nurse on-site, discuss these things, establish a repour with her and see if she'll refer me.  Don't know how I feel about being naked while my co-workers are potentially in the next room, but this is how we save copay money.

This is a lot of steps for an ADHD person to follow through on.  It's almost as if getting to the diagnostic stage proves you don't have it?  My impatience and wanting it to be done *now* is another symptom.  Even once scheduled I think I have to go on some evidence gathering missions to bring proof.  I did not find my high school report cards, I have a transcript somewhere but I need the ones with the comments that say "late assignments" & "has potential".  

I love the dismissive nature of friends and family.  The other day my dad was over and asking for a tape measure.  I have at least three but couldn't find any of them because they weren't where they were supposed to be.  "You probably got that from me," he said and I quipped, "yes, thank you for the ADD" and he was like "the what??" but I dropped it which was easy because he was too busy being impatient.

But Cindy... everybody has trouble concentrating.  Everybody is in debt, everybody is incapable of developing routines, everybody is messy and everybody loses things and leaves their car windows open with the keys in the ignition for 48 hours.  Everybody has a running dialogue in their brain that is constantly reminding them that they did their entire life wrong and that it's too late and has to listen to podcasts just to drown it out because listening to music is just a fucking time machine and/or they will just end up giving their neighbors a two hour long karaoke concert of Sarah McLachlan's Possession on repeat.  Everybody is like that, don't beat yourself up. And stop telling everybody about it, you are making us look bad.

One Horny Summer

 I had another first date last night with a fella I met while spite-swiping after the last first date.  Professor has been spending plenty of time on the app (thank you stalkery green dot for showing when someone is online) and being kind of withdrawn in answering my texts.  Instead of ruminating on it, I just said "next please" and ended up meeting a guy who is a couple years younger than me and much more type as in he is full of red flags and we spent two weeks oversharing through text messages.  Let's think of a psuedonyn for him hmmmmmmmmmmmm... Flag.  

Now because he managed to find me on facebook before I even told him my last name, and because of some very loose connections that may make it possible for my name to trace back to this blog, there is a slight possibility that Flag could read this.  I'm not about to eviscerate him in anyway but this is perhaps a more honest "review" than the one I have given him.  He asked for initial evaluations and I said that I had fun and would like to hang out again.  All true.  The problem?  The problem is that he has a grown out beard and hair (Pandemic) and while they are a nice beard and hair, my brain keeps screaming "oh my god, he looks just like my dad's friend Bowser" which played in my head on a loop.

I am not anti-beard but... I don't like those big long ones.  I also don't want to be that kind of woman who dictates what her man needs to look like.  I am the kind of woman who drops hints on what she would like her man to do with his appearance and hopes he is able to pick up on context clues and obliges.

So what are the red flags?  He is separated from his wife but they still live together and have not filed for divorce yet because insurance and pandemic.  He says they have been basically over for three years but just a few months ago he was posting lovey pictures of the two of them.  Apparently she's gone poly and has a new boyfriend and is encouraging him to date.  Also, his posts are a lot about being depressed and it came out one night that he is bipolar but not on meds, just weed, but was out of weed.  He has a job but has been on disability after dislocating his knee so he has nothing to do but check in with me all day.  He seems maybe prone to be a bit moody.  I mean, I can be too, but it also means that I would be codependent in trying to cheer him up and manage his mood and that isn't good for me.

White flags:  we have had long unfiltered conversations about everything from raping to being raped to traumatic childhoods to death of friends.  *slow realization* Oh shit, we were trauma bonding.  But he's funny and makes me laugh and I think I make him laugh.  He's quite tall and banged his head on my very short bathroom doorway.  Are these pluses?  Similar upbringing, similar senses of humor, taste in music and tv shows.  I think he'd be cool with poop talk.  Professor, probably not so much.

We messed around but didn't do it all the way.  There may have been a moment or two of just the tip and he may be beating himself up over that.  Had fitbit not told me that I was in my fertile window, it may have gone further but I'm guess I glad I didn't.  He tried to make me come, but that never happens a first time with someone.  It was fun nonetheless.

Professor did start texting me again, though not back to what it was.  He'd been preparing for a job interview, I guess I was a distraction.

I can't say for sure that either of these guys will be my next boyfriend.  The fact that everyone is lonely and horny post-pandemic might make for one horny summer that rivals that of 2017.  I wonder if my emotions are broken or  rusty but now I compare my experiences to James.  I wasn't 100% sure on our first date until we kissed.  But once we kissed, which was not until the very end,  I knew I loved him.  I also took a picture of him without him knowing.  That hasn't happened again yet.  I guess we'll see.  Should be an interesting summer.