God is good, but life kinda sucks :(

God is good. all the time. but i'm not ready to commit to "paper" what's going on right now. it's like writing it down will make it real. not that not writing it down makes it any less real, and i've got so much stuff to do to get ready. it always takes me a bit to process things so that i can function without my eyes leaking constantly. good thing i have to sing at a funeral today -- i'm supposed to be a little emotional :) what a time to go off my meds!

The Diary of Anne Frank

i'm an old soul, and i love masterpiece theatre, or masterpiece classics as it's called now. and i was really looking forward to the latest interpretation of The Diary of Anne Frank. of course, i read the book in school, and i've seen a couple of other made for tv versions, but this was by far the best. i actually sobbed at the end. it was amazing.

it came on on sunday evening, but i missed most of it becuz we got the kids to bed late. so i'm glad that pbs is available on demand. my husband and i watched it in utter silence this evening. and even though knew that i was going to cry at the end, i just couldn't turn it off. it was just so well done and so moving. bravo, pbs!

my favorite french :)

today is a really crappy, sucky day. the sky is grey, & that totally reflects my mood today. i've gotta go see my pcp about being off my meds & the surgeon about my throat-ectomy, so i'm not thinking it's gonna get much better. i'm trying to change things by wearing all black with cheerful jewelry :)

but here's my poem for today:

personne m'adore
tout de la monde me deteste
je croix que je veux manger les miner
les miner qui sont grande
les miner qui sont petitie
et les miner qui agiter dans ma bouche

i've been saying this for years, but i finally looked up the last 2 words i didn't know in french. i feel so much better now! :)

...the next step...

well, it's been 3 weeks since i went off my meds, and i'm not so sure it was such a good idea *smile*. bleh. so i called and made an appointment with a psychiatrist, cuz my therapeutic team and i agree that my mental health should be cared for by a mental health professional who is more capable of deciding which drugs, if any, will be the most beneficial for me. i'm kinda nervous about it, though, cuz going to a psychiatrist means that you're crazy, right? i mean, everybody's medicated and everybody's in therapy, but the only person i know who goes to a psychiatrist is my brother and the crazy people on tv. when i spoke to her this evening, she actually asked me if i was 1) in the witness protection program & 2) had ever been hospitalized for a mental illness. there have been times when both of those options have seemed like a good idea *smile*

prozac, for all it's suckiness, is awesome, cuz it doesn't drop you into the abyss immediately -- it kinda lowers you slowly into the abyss so that you don't realize where you are until all the light has been sucked out of the world and you are in utter darkness trying to feel your way to the surface. i definitely need to be medicated, cuz i'm starting to think like my brother *smile*. we'll figure it out.

i also have an appointment next week with the thyroid surgeon, cuz they ultimately didn't like the biopsy they did of my thyroid. but if you're gonna have cancer, thyroid's the one to get. it has a 100% cure rate, it doesn't spread anywhere and it won't kill you. of course, now that i've said all that, i'll be the first to die of thyroid cancer. it'll take over my body completely and i'll have to have a complete body-ectomy. *smile* i still think i'll end up with one of those throat things like the asian guy on south park *smile* but in the big scheme of things, as long as i have some anesthesia, i don't really care what they take out. nothing could be as bad as the biopsy! (famous last words...)

in search of sanity

after i had isabelle, i finally realized that i needed some help and found a fabulous therapist. and after working with her for a while, i finally admitted that i needed to be medicated. and it helped for a long time. it did what it was supposed to do and helped me through the darkness. of course, it also helped that isabelle stopped screaming all the time, alexander started going potty and both of them could walk and talk *smile*. but for a while, the meds were all that were keeping me out of jail. there were still days when i had to put myself into time-out *smile*

but i switched from zoloft to lexapro, and more recently from lexapro to prozac. they all made me twitchy, and the lexapro actually made me think i had some sort of neurological disorder, cuz my hand would twitch periodically like i had parkenson's or something. but the prozac just sucked. i had all of the side effects with none of the relief (see "prozac sucks my butt"). so i talked to my therapist and my pcp, and we decided that maybe it was time to take a break. i had to realize that the things in my life that annoy me and drive me crazy will be with me forever (or at least til they graduate from high school or college *smile*), so i really needed to figure out how to deal with it, since i can't medicate them *smile*. so i've been off my meds for a little over 2 weeks.

for the most part, i feel great. i've been doing a lot of breathing, but my children and husband are all still alive, and i'm not incarcerated or on a 72 hour hold somewhere *smile*. but then i have a day like today that makes me question both my fragile grasp on my sanity and my decision to go off my meds. today sucked. i think i cried for an hour. my kids were great, though. they kept coming into the kitchen to give me hugs, and allow me to hug their special toys, which was really great. but i had to call my union in NYC cuz i didn't pay my dues on time. and the guy was really MEAN!!! i mean, obnoxiously out of line and i really wanted to go through the phone and beat him to death. but unlike before i went on my meds and the girl at sally's caused me to throw a brush at her, i just called my mom who proceeded to talk me off the ledge. of course, when i told my husband about the incident later this afternoon, it made me cry again, but only briefly, so that was definite improvement.

i don't regret going off my meds. and i don't think that i'll never go back on them, perhaps, at some point if i need to. but i like being off them right now (with the exception of this morning *smile*). before i started therapy i was in a research study for post-partum depression, and one of the questions they would ask was if i felt that people were being overly mean or critical. they were looking to see if i was suffering from paranoia. but i don't think it's paranoia -- i think that when you're medicated you just don't care that ppl are mean! *smile* now that i'm off my meds i'm more aware of how mean and evil people can be *smile*

i've also come to realize that i'm a hoarder. i did talk to my therapist about it in my last session & her eyes got really big a couple of times *smile*. i prefer to think of it as selective collecting *smile*. but when i watch those hoarding shows, i totally understand the hoarder thought process, which is a little frightening *smile*. i'm much better now than i ever was when i was single, mainly becuz christopher limits the amount of space in which i can expand my collections. so i've become a somewhat organized hoarder. but we're thinking about moving, so i've gotta get it under control so that we can do something with it. i like to see all my stuff all the time, so putting it all in storage so we can show the house will be painful *smile*. and christopher already knows that he can't help me clean and/or organize. all he can do is fuss at me until i do it, albeit grudgingly *smile*. as long as it gets done, right? *smile*

rest in peace, miss bea :)

it's been a rough couple of weeks. a very good friend of our family passed away a week ago today. her funeral was yesterday, and of course, i sang. it's always so much harder when it's someone you knew, and knew well.

miss bea was one of my husband's ladies. he did some work for an older couple we used to ring bells with and they recommended him to her to do some odd jobs around the house. she was a widow with grown children, most of whom didn't live nearby, so she kinda became a surrogate grandmother. when chris was doing work for her, the kids and i would sometimes go with him, and then we'd take miss bea out to dinner with us. or we'd invite her over to our house for dinner once in a while. she invited us out to dinner to meet her family when they were in town. she was just a really nice lady that was really easy to talk to who really loved our kids.

so when she fell and broke her hip and was in the hospital, her daughter called us, cuz chris was more than just her handyman. and when she slipped into a coma after the surgery, we went to sit with her at her house while her children held the vigil waiting for the waiting to be over.

but it wasn't until the calling hours that i truly realized how much our friendship meant to her. chris and i walked in, and a complete strange came up to me, gushing, and said "you must be kym! the jewelry designer, right?" we had no idea that miss bea talked about us to any and everyone *smile*. but because of the close relationship we had with her, they had alexander and isabelle listed in the obituary as her "very special grandchildren" *smile*. i'm just glad that we were friends and able to share that special part of her life.

i was also very touched, when her daughter, katherine, gave us one of the quilts she'd made for her mother to remember her by. it was one that hung at the top of the stairs and was admired every time we came over.

we basically spent all day yesterday with the family, at the funeral and lunch after, and then at the house just talking. the house seems so empty without miss bea there. she will be missed.

OUCH!!! what pain!

so, today was a really great day, and a really crappy day. it was awesome, cuz i met up with my local street team, steel town etsy, and they are fantabulous! i'm so lucky to be affiliated with such talented crafters and such wonderful people. but after i got all hopped up on caffeine at starbucks, i had to go have my ultrasound guided fine needle biopsy of my thyroid nodule.

now, first off, "fine needle" is relative. i was imagining something akin to a acupuncture needle. boy was i wrong! it was a regular needle. not as big as something they'd use for an iv, but definitely not what i'd call "fine". but it wasn't the needle stick that sucked the most -- it was the fact that once it was in, they had to wiggle it around to collect cells to biopsy! OUCH!!! but i survived it, and the doctor took it to look at it and came back to inform me that they were fine, but he needed MORE CELLS TO SEND TO THE LAB TO BE PROPERLY LOOKED AT -- meaning they had to stab me in the throat again! &%*&$$&^#$@@!!! of course, i had my husband come with me to "hold my hand," not realizing that i'd literally need someone to hold my hand! he and the doctor both like to crack jokes to lighten the tension, but i challenge any of you to try to laugh with a needle in your throat! i could barely breathe or swallow, cuz i discovered early in the procedure that movement of the throat area causes the needle to shift more than necessary. did i mention, they don't use anesthesia for this procedure? :) apparently they used to, but they discovered that it hurt more when the drugs wore off than if they just stab you in the throat repeatedly without. i wish they'd given me the option to find that out on my own! :)

but granted, i'm grateful to know that the cells they found were fine and i don't have to have surgery or anything. they'll just keep an eye on them with a repeat ultrasound in 6 months and go from there. but it's been 9 hours, and my throat still hurts! i've gotta take some ibuprofen before i go to bed. i knew going in that there was a 95% chance that they were benign, so i wish i'd had the option to just leave them un-biopsied if i knew how painful it would be! at least they give you an epidural for childbirth! :)