pumpkin patch in the church yard

this afternoon, sandy and i stopped at a pumpkin patch on the way home from the dog park. it was set up in the front yard of an episcopal church and billed as a "pure pumpkin patch".

i figured that despite my less-than-christian aspirations, i do respect the community and support a church can provide - plus i needed a pumpkin for goddess' carving party.

there were a couple of families with small children wading through the pumpkins. one small boy toiled with a little red wagon. they all forgot about the pumpkins when they saw sandy trotting up. i told her to sit, and the children approached in two familial groups. the oldest girl (five or maybe six) asked if they could pet her, although the younger children were already reaching. sandy was relaxed and generally loves kids, so i said okay.

they covered her body in little hands, petting and stroking and some just touching. they asked me questions about her - her name, age, if she was a boy or a girl, what she was going to be for halloween.

then the oldest girl looked up at me. without a change of tone she asked, "why is your hair blue?" her mother blushed. i smiled.

"because it makes me happy."

"oh." she went back to loving sandy. we picked out a pumpkin and a small gourd and returned to the car.

because it makes me happy. darn tootin'

pictures are easier than words

blue hair has proved an effective anti-depressant. for which i am grateful.

but i still feel like an undead humpty dumpty (franken dumpty?). i'm slowly coming back to life. i left my apartment every day since a week ago last wednesday. i've been seeing people and doing things. but i've also been sleeping at least twelve to fifteen hours a day. and i haven't been to class.

azuzil asked about the waitressing. honestly, i will not be able to get a job until december. my stomach has been healing and i'm off antibiotics, but i'm taking acidopholus (sp) and imodium and prescription nausea meds. my bowels are pissy (har har). leaving the house for a grocery run or to meet a friend for lunch drains my energy for the rest of the day. today i did the dishes and vacuumed the bathroom (shaved sandy's tail a la degu due to a rash from old ant bites that kept scabbing) and had to nap before hitting the new dog park (on 610 and westpark, just south of 59, not as big as millie bush but forty minutes closer, awesome). physically i'm not up to much of anything much less a regular job.

mentally i'm still crazy. getting better but slowly. kicking the meds due to stomach revolution helped clear some residual funk. yesterday i began lamictal again. three weeks of building prior to full dosing. we'll see how the balancing acts. my trusty xanax is helpful but i've been having interesting side swings lately - not depression or anxiety or excited agitation but rather a fuzzy incomprehension. i was separated from my mother at linens and things and spent ten minutes staring at a spatula before sitting in a (massage, woo hoo) chair by the door as i could not begin to find her. i drove to campus to meet with a professor on monday and ended up at shepherd and west gray (in the opposite direction entirely, north west as opposed to south east). i have trouble completing thought processing and talking is ridiculously hard. keep in mind, this is without the meds.

one of the hardest parts of rebuilding is not the slowing down or allowing myself to heal: it's the lowering of expectations for tasks as i resume. i hope to return to epidemiology class this week (knock wood). pretty necessary as there is one lecture on tuesday and a review on thursday for the second exam the following tuesday. i have not been to class since the week prior to the first exam. i am going to have to work my ass off to pass the class. pass. meaning c or possibly low b. i have not received any score below an a since leaving nyu in 2002. even then, b's were rare. i do not know if i EVER earned a c in my life. and now i'm going to have to work harder and study harder than ever before just to make a c. in the only class i have this semester. rationally i understand that passing this class will be a huge triumph, but in my head it is hard to accept a c as a good thing.


my new therapist had a good point yesterday. i brought up the fact that it is almost time to send out holiday cards. last year i wasn't able to send them out until june (when i issued a mass multi-holiday/graduation announcement/birthday party invitation to seventy folks). so this year's cards would only cover june until december. and what have i done since june? moved, bought a dog, gone crazy, and failed school. rock!

she asked a good question (didn't have me imagine climbing a mountain or laying in a pool of water or anything, just asked the question): why do you need to write holiday letters? and the killer follow-up: what would happen if you didn't? it was the best thing she has said since i have started seeing her. i like writing letters because i feel that keeping in touch with those you love is important. plus, i like getting mail and receiving my own warm fuzzies (thank you, rkb, by the way). but why the december deadline. in dacia's words: it's not like i give a crap about the baby jesus. so i think a new tradition was started this year with june holiday cards. because if i have to send out holiday notes they may as well be for flag day (in honor of car dealerships, mattress sales, and my birthday).

so i have an extension on my next formal review of my progress as a human being/adult person. and that is the theme of my current life. relaxing standards, extending personal deadlines, and giving myself a break.

the advice of many in these tough times: just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. i'm working hard on taking it.

the blues

so tonight, i rented earth girls are easy, and settled myself in the bathroom with little baby elastics, non-zip baggies, a whole box of black dragon latex gloves (not just for sex and tattoos!), two bottles of special effects blue mayhem, one tub of manic panic amplified atomic turquoise, a comb, a big bottle of white vinegar, a shower cap, and (of course) my digital camera. here are the results:

the blues
Originally uploaded by the_educated_slut.

shower caps are sexy. i find it hard to look serious in self-portraits. one of my favorite annie sprinkle photos has her finger up her nose. i can relate.

the blues
Originally uploaded by the_educated_slut.

bluebird o’ happiness. notice my lovely shower-rack!

the blues
Originally uploaded by the_educated_slut.

that is blue, alright. you can see some of theturquoisee highlighting, as well as the general blue.

the blues
Originally uploaded by the_educated_slut.

grab some blue. embracing my blues and my boobs.

now i will re-start earth girls (no commentary but a special feature of valley cable!), cuddle up with sandy-pants, and stain my pillow.

cause i'm a blond B-L-O-N-D

the first bleach is complete. my hair now blends well with sandy's.

cause i'm a blond B-L-O-N-D
Originally uploaded by the_educated_slut.

cause i'm a blond B-L-O-N-D
Originally uploaded by the_educated_slut.

testing 1-2-3

testing 1-2-3
Originally uploaded by the_educated_slut.

this is the goal.

last thursday, we officially began the blue-hair metamorphosis by initiating the testing phase.

testing 1-2-3
Originally uploaded by the_educated_slut.

bleaching the test strips

testing 1-2-3
Originally uploaded by the_educated_slut.

the highlight shade

testing 1-2-3
Originally uploaded by the_educated_slut.

the blue base

lessons learned from test strips:

• leave bleach on longer & a double-bleaching will probably be necessary.
• the blue blends in with existing reddish-brown but should "pop" on it's own.
• turquoise on top of brassy yellow creates more of a teal green. bleaching will be important.

and so we are off.

for a public health student, my health sucks

my health continues to spiral out of control. I ended up coming down with what we thought was food poisoning. I got to go to the ER because I was shitting blood. As fun as projectile anal-phleboto-art can be, it was really quite scary. The ER gave me an iv bag of atibiotics and a great big IV pouch of fluids. The fam ended up leaving late for a friend's wedding. At least it gave me a more legitimate and less questionable excuse to stay home ("oh, she's just going crazy right now" didn't sit as well with me).

I had to find a new general doctor for a follow-up. Of course, I had one of the worst doctor's office visits of my life! The place is not in an office building but what looks like a converted convenience store wedged between a used-car lot and a raized building. There were only four parking spaces in front so I had to drive around pack and park in an empy lot and walk the trash-littered weed grown poor visibility alley to get in to the clinic. Great fun with a fever and dizzy-headed confusion already intact.

I had to wait almost an hour to be seen, athough i was ontime for my appointment. No magazines in the waiting room. Only a tv playing a tape of CNN Health in Spanish.

The nurse who took me back did not understand the medicines I was listing for her that I was currently taking, so I just handed her the bag of the three I was on from the ER and the four mind meds that I had been on prior to my bowels' exodus. I had to write down my medication allergies for her. SHE DID NOT KNOW ORTHOTRICYCLEN!!! The most prescribed birth control pill in the nation! So then I step on their oviously fourth-hand rusty scale that is not set to zero and find out that I have gained 30 pounds since late-June/early-July. That is more weight than a pregnant lady! And i haven't been stuffing my face. Dacia has decided i have demon babies in my womb.

So she takes me back to an exam room where she takes my blood pressure from BOTH arms. Then I am left alone for about 12 minutes. Door open. As the doctor approaches he asks the nurse, "Now, WHO is she?" He is informed that I am here for follow-up. "So, you're feeling better now, right?" He inquires as he walks through the door. Well, I have been asleep for the last five days. "But you haven't had any more vomitting or diarhea." um... I haven't had solid food since last Thursday (this was wednesday) so I haven't really had the chance. He looks in both ears and listens to my back. says, "but you're fine now. Okay, you can go. And you can stop taking the medications from the er." (this included a seven-day antibiotic! with four days left!!!).

Then, as he walks away, he opens my file to look at the copy of my insurance card which has a copy of my driver's license on the same page. He looks at the DL pic. He looks at me. He looks back at the DL. "Wow! You've gained a lot of weight!" Well, the picture is seven years old, but yeah... "We're going to do some blood work."

The "blood work area" is a cracked vinyl chair in the receptionist's booth. The nurse who draws my blood spends five minutes patting down both arms. She decides to go for the right arm because "I know there is a vein there. I can't see it. But it's there. It's just deep." So she inserts the needle cobra (you know, the buttterflied neck makes the snake's head hood and then the tube is the body... needle-cobra - it's my new technical term), after a few pull backs and plunge deepers with the head of the needle still subdermal, she removes on of her gloves to pat and push my skin around the needle, trying to smush the needle and a vein together. She sighs in exasperation and withdraws the needle entirely. The only bandaid she can find is on of those quarter-sized circles, but no vein was hit so there isn't really much blood. She grabs another needle and pierces my hand instead. This time it is productive. Unfortunately, the circle was the last bandaid in the office ("We're low on supplies right now") so she tapes a chunk of gauze on top. The doctor walks by - "Have you eaten today?" I haven't eaten in almost a week! "Do her lipids, too. You'll need to come back in a week."

So I'm supposed to GO BACK THERE?!?!?!

I skipped the follow-up today. I have one with a new provider tomorrow. The puking and the di continue, and i have started my period. Funny side note: when i woke up in a pool of blood, i thought i was hemoraging. Until i realized it was coming from my twat.

So, way too much information. But i need to purge. At least my body seems to think so.

the blue haired waitress is born

since moving back to texas to start grad school in august, i have suffered a little mental health breakdown.

all the plans i had busted my ass on over the past year seemed to fizzle in sync. my furniture arrived two weeks late, my grad school is overcrowded (twice the anticipated student body, plus displaced students from katrina), my promised advisor dumped me on his colleague who prefers not to waste his time on masters students, my parents moved to town, my mild bipolar issues roared to the forefront, and to top it all off, i'm bedridden from food poisoning.

but i have a plan.

i am dropping my course load to a single class in epidemiology (a surprising favorite). i am getting a part time job as a waitress. and i am dying my hair blue.