My world is wishing me asleep

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. Children get older, I'm getting older too.

Molly: No, it can't be. Can it be? Where have you been? Where have you been? Damn you! Where have you been?
Unicorn: I'm here now.
Molly: And where were you twenty years ago? Ten years ago? Where were you when I was new? When I was one of those innocent young maidens you always come to? How dare you! How dare you come to me now, when I am this!


Haha, seriously. Where was this game when I was 15?

I don't own a WII or any console newer than an N64. And I can't afford to buy one to play this game, but I'm not even sure that I want to. I feel like this is one of those "they're raping my childhood @#R$!Q*!" situations, mainly because it doesn't fall in line with any of the brilliant fanfiction that I wrote and read when I was 13. mwah!

Honestly, though, what bothers me the most is that the original characters are 17 years older now, and I'm 17 years older now, too, which means I'm about to turn 30. What a great metaphor for my own ensuing existential crisis: Within this game, it sounds like the torch has been passed on to new characters, and the original characters mostly play supporting roles. Do Cecil and Rosa do anything besides rule Baron? Yang's main concern is raising his daughter right? Is that what it means to grow up -- taking care of real-world concerns (apparently it is now Edward's job to maintain "the balance of the worldwide economy"), so that the younger generation can have adventures? What a shitty deal.

Nobody in the original FFIV even had parents, did they? Everyone's parents were either dead or otherwise indisposed... Rydia's mom got killed, Edge's parents became scary monsters, Palom and Porom just kind of existed, etc. I think Rosa had a mom, but she was basically a nobody (if I recall correctly, she was just a generic townsperson character sprite, right?). And Cecil's dad lived on the goddamn moon. They were all on their own, and there was no suggestion that it was the previous generation's job to make sure that everything went right for them.

Still, if this game had come out earlier (much much earlier, before I was old and resigned), I'm sure that I would have played it and enjoyed the hell out of it, even if Rydia and Edge don't fall madly in love and move to Eblan together or whatever. But now I feel like it's too late, for me. Get off my lawn, you damn kids.

So!

Like four or five years ago when I first started having all of these problems, I got a bunch of blood tests done, and they all came back normal. But xuande told me about his girlfriend (now wife, I believe!) and her thyroid problems, and that I might want to push for more tests. But I didn't, and then my health insurance ran out, and I started taking anti-anxiety meds and then anti-depressants too, blah blah blah, I got "better" or at least put enough of a band-aid on things to be able to somewhat function in society.

But for the past long time, maybe even for a couple of years, I've felt TIRED. Always tired. Like I could lay down and go to sleep right now, even though I got over 8 hours in last night. I have trouble concentrating on things, and my muscles are weak (yoga is supposed to be hard, but for me it's hell sometimes). I figured that it was just "stress".

What finally led me to have my thyroid tested again a week ago was actually the fertility awareness method... I've been taking my temperature every morning now for 5 months, and it's always seemed kind of low to me. Like an average of about 97.2. I figured, again, that this was just how I am, until I read in the FAM book that someone with an average basal body temp. of 97.5 or lower should get their thyroid tested.

So I did! And I have an under-functioning thyroid that is slightly enlarged! And now I also have a bottle of synthetic thyroid pills that I'm supposed to take for a month to see if I feel better. I took the first one today. This could potentially change everything.... goodbye klonopin and wellbutrin?

We listened to The Lonely Island CD all the way to Kalamazoo and back* and it still hasn't gotten old for me. There aren't many things that I can listen to for like a month and a half straight without getting tired of it quickly. Although I think that I listened to Tenacious D for months and months a few years ago as well, so maybe comedy CDs have special properties.

Anyway, the campus at WMU was great. All of the profs I met with were interesting (and interested in ME!), and I would get my own little office and a class to teach. And Kalamazoo actually doesn't seem like the boring hell-hole that everyone I talked to beforehand described it as. It seems nice and cozy, and for what we pay in rent here we could rent a fucking three-bedroom HOUSE there.

When I told the owner of the cafe that I work at that I am almost certainly going to go to WMU instead of U of M, she asked me if I thought that a degree from there would be "as marketable."

First of all, obviously, if I'm 30 years old and working in a cafe, I'm probably not THAT ambitious when it comes to amassing capital. If I made decisions based on what kind of money I could make in the future, I wouldn't be in the social sciences at all, nor would I have married some dude who didn't even own a car or a kitchen table.

It's all about creative freedom. I would have so much creative freedom at WMU! It's a small program with a lot of social support for its doctoral candidates. At U of M I feel like I'd just be shuffled through a program in order to get a brand name degree.

Now all I have to do is tell my dad that I won't be attending his alma mater.


*I think "to Kalamazoo and back" is an actual saying? Like "From here to Timbuktu?"

The Asante of Ghana use an Adinkra symbol to represent this same idea and one version of it is similar to the eastern symbol of a heart, and another version is that of a bird with its head turned backwards taking an egg off its back. It symbolizes one taking from the past what is good and bringing it into the present in order to make positive progress through the benevolent use of knowledge.

Okay, first of all, when you e-mail your tattoo artist about an appointment and he writes back that he'll "always make room for you!"... that must be a sign of some kind of PROBLEM.

But anyway, tonight I found out that I got into U of M's School of Social Work MSW program. This means... real health insurance (I can get my wisdom teeth pulled ten years too late, I can go back to U of M's anxiety clinic and maybe actually *fix* myself, I can reproduce without being a burden on the state! ...heh), the chance to study at a prestigious school that I've always lived in the shadow of, and... haha, I don't even know what else, exactly, I'm still pretty much in shock. Yeah, I thought I was going to write more here but I don't even know what to say!

And if I decide to apply to it later on (and assuming that I get accepted, of course...), they have a joint MSW-PhD program, where I could get my PhD in anthro as well. Holy shit.

ahhaha, lavender and chamomile tea isn't exactly the best stand-in for the anxiety meds that I forgot to bring with me today. It does remind me, though, that the Starbucks I went to in Mexico City put vanilla syrup in their "Calm" (chamomile and some kind of spearmint or something; I dunno, the same Tazo brand stuff they sell here) tea. It was actually pretty good.

I don't write anything here anymore. I still read other people's stuff, though, when I remember to.

I'm not adjusting very well to being back from Mexico this time. I'm addicted to fresh-baked bread covered in beans and cheese. We went to Dos Hermanos last night and spent $$$.

Here are my pictures from Mexico. We befriended a malnourished, one-eyed dog and fed her a bunch of leftovers in El Bellote.

I'm still waiting to hear back from the schools that I've applied to. I hate having everything so up in the air. We will both probably get into Western, but what if I get into U of M? Matt didn't apply there, but if I do get in and decide to go, he could teach at Eastern in the fall. But that would be a shame, because he's always wanted to go on for his PhD whereas I don't really care that much. So I guess the best thing to hope for is that we both get into Western? Or I could start at U of M and he could apply there for 2010. Christ, I don't know.

Really, it's the non-school things that I've been preoccupied with lately. We've been talking about having a baby! I didn't know that I had a biological clock, but now that I'm about to turn 30 this year... I seem to feel differently about reproduction than I used to.



heh, I had never paid any attention to Kings of Leon until I heard this song on the radio in Mexico. But now I'm realizing that it's basically Dancing in the Dark. CAN'T START A FIRE, CAN'T START A FIRE WITHOUT A SPARK!

So apparently this is how it works: I can complain about all of my husband's idiosyncrasies and weirdnesses and things that drive me nuts or make me feel sad or frustrated, but that's because my love for him is so deep that it is virtually bottomless. Someone else talks shit about him? It turns out that I go into mother protecting her cubs mode. Don't do it. Mine.

Anyway, I did a google image search for "lioness" and after a while this came up:



hahaha, what?!

There are a bunch of other ones, too, with women of different ethnicities posing with their race-appropriate power animals. I am so conflicted because they're tacky as hell but at the same time I think I love them.

I am trying to buy comfy t-shirts to wear to Mexico.

This model from the American Apparel website freaks me the fuck out, I'm not sure exactly why:



She's like the epitome of the brainy, awkward teenage girl of the 80s. Like her dad is a science fiction writer or something, and a lot of the time he's too wrapped up in his work to pay attention to her, but when he does, he always tells her something really profound about life and the universe. And then one day he disappears, and she has to travel far and away to find him with the aid of a magical unicorn or something. Haha, holy shit, I think she's Meg Murry!

I'm suffering from a brain cloud.

I need to organize the things that I need to get done in January, somehow.

• Revise and turn in my thesis proposal
  
• Find out about Mexico for spring break (ugh, this will require me to fill out a bunch of other paper work and drop a class after the semester has already started. I'd just give up on this if Matt didn't want to go, too, because it's a pain in the ass)
  
• Finish applications to UofM, Western, elsewhere, because an MSW seems like a good thing to get when you don't know what the hell else you want to do.
  
• Mail packages to people
  
• Make an appointment at Name Brand and stop into the Lucky Monkey, heeee!
  
• Import a desk from my mom's house into our living room so that I'm not always sitting on the floor.
  
• I'm sure that there's more, but, you know, brain cloud.
  

Also, there are things that I need to buy. I would like some houseplants. Some tea, some food, some winter boots. Some of this:


I can't wait until Monday when I'm not poor again!

hahaha, find a new dreampop and a better Ypsilanti.

I really like SF!

I hurt my foot, though, so I've spent most of our last full day here either limping around or laying in bed.


I've taken a bunch of pictures that I'll post when we get home... if we get home. We're supposed to leave tomorrow, but seems like a lot of the airports are all screwed up right now. =(

Facebook: (this isn't my Matt, it's Muzzy)

Matt
morning thunder!!!
10:46am

Lisa
That's a kind of tea!
10:46am

Matt
oh i know, it's brewing
10:46am

Lisa
With yerba mate?
10:46am

Matt
yup!
10:46am

Lisa
haha yerba mate makes me hungry!
10:47am

Matt
it might make me hungry i don't know, i smoke weed with it so i get hungry anyway
10:47am

Matt
pot of tea bowl of pot, im runnin late afk
work :(:(
10:47am

Lisa
Okay, haha
10:49am

Lisa
yerba mate doesn't make me weed hungry... it makes me viscerally hungry where I feel like I need to tear the limbs off of a cow or something. I don't drink it anymore!

It has come to my attention that I am very lonely.

I see Matt all of the time, of course, but other than that, the person who I probably spend the most time talking to on a daily basis lives 250 miles away. I'm not really friends with anyone in any of my classes. I work 20 hours a week in a building that used to be a high school but now is mostly empty. Out of the 20 hours a week that I work, I probably have contact with other people for about 2 hours.

I don't think that's very healthy. I'm not sure what to do about it, though. I feel like I ended up losing most of my friends around here after I got married. Matt takes up a lot of time. =P Plus, generally... I don't know. I had a lot of problems for a while and became pretty antisocial (in the colloquial sense, I mean). And now I'm lonely.

And once you're lonely, it's hard to break out of. I've made plans a few times to do things with people this semester that I've ended up breaking in order to stay home and do nothing instead. It's like I'm stuck in a solitude vortex.

Anyway, here's my Christmas song of the year. It's The Evangelicals: The Last Christmas on Earth. Maybe I'm jumping the gun here, because who knows what else will come out between now and the 25th, but I really like this song. It's all spacey.

I think last year's big Christmas Discovery was Christmas Eve by the Sugarcubes & The Jesus and Mary Chain. There's no way to top that, really.

I got my IUD removed this morning. I took some vicodin beforehand because I thought it would hurt (I couldn't remember whether it hurt a lot or not when I got the last one removed. bleh). Turns out it wasn't that bad at all, but I've felt groggy all day as a result of the pillzzz. yuck. I asked Matt how people who habitually abuse opiates ever get anything done, but he just laughed at me because getting shit done isn't exactly a priority for a lot of addicts, now is it?

But I need to do stuff! I need to start writing Personal Statements. Which is hard, because my greatest ambition is getting a cushy job at a community college where I can dress like Maya Angelou and enjoy a lot of free time. But since I'm not yet old enough or wise enough to be the person I want to be, I need to do some more school.

Okay, I think I'm on to something here!

Went to the Planned Parenthood today. Saw an extremely rude LPN who treated me like I was dumb (because I'm poor and at Planned Parenthood? Fuck you, lady.). Apparently my IUD is "fine" and the chronic pain is something that I'm just supposed to deal with, but I shouldn't even be taking Aleve or anything, I should just be taking even more calcium and magnesium (they are muscle relaxants, you say? well, I never!); I can get these magic "vitamins" (actually, they're minerals, lady) across the street at the WHOLE FOODS. Because, you know, I shouldn't buy vitamins from just any old drugstore -- unlike the vitamins at Whole Foods, the ones at Walgreens haven't been blessed with holy water.

Taking Aleve all of the time is bad for my liver, she told me rather didactically, like I'm taking it recreationally. Jesus Christ. I was there to ask about why I was in so much pain, not for a lecture on the importance of drinking more milk (I can't drink milk!). And yet, all of this knowledge was imparted to me as if I was some kind of incompetent fucking retard instead of a human being with a valid concern. The whole interaction had an air of "why are you wasting my time?" on her part. And on my part, too, after I realized that things were going nowhere and that I couldn't even voice my concerns without being patronized. By the end of it I was completely demoralized.

"So if I try taking calcium and it doesn't work and I'm still hurting all of the time, I can come back and just have the IUD removed?" I said this quite flatly.

"Yes, but hopefully you won't have to, because it's really wonderful!" She was cheerful.

Obviously I know that I can have it removed if I want to, but I was trying to get across my feeling of dissatisfaction with her "advice." It didn't work; this lady couldn't empathize, couldn't understand at all why I might be upset, even though I've been putting up with pain since July. Basically, in her eyes, the pain wasn't caused by the IUD itself, but rather by my plebeian ignorance.

haha, this has reminded me of everything that I love about medical anthropology. Maybe this is a sign that I should continue with school after all.

Anyway, I'm actually tired of suffering, so after today's bullshit appointment was over, I made another one to get the damn thing removed tomorrow. Which begs the question: What does the future hold for Matt's vas deferens? Mwahaha!

So I guess a lot of the pain that I've been having lately might be from another ovarian cyst? I already have an appointment at Planned Parenthood on Friday to make sure that my IUD is okay but I might just go to the emergency room tomorrow after work instead.

haha, I guess this article is about me: Why people overuse the emergency room: The real reasons why people go to the E.R. when they shouldn't. "patients may still rationally decide that the E.R. is more efficient than waiting for a doctor's appointment, waiting more for outpatient lab and radiology tests, and then waiting again for another appointment to review and discuss the results."

Because I know that I'm not having an "emergency", but it does hurt a lot and now that I have an inkling of what might be wrong with me, going to the ER is really the most expedient way of finding out for sure, especially with the holidays coming up soon. I can pay $50 and compress a couple weeks of waiting and worrying down to 8 hours or so.

Also, chances are that if I wait until my Friday PP appointment, I'll get there and have to spend an hour and a half to two hours in the waiting room, only to find out that they don't have an ultrasound technician available on Fridays (I'm pretty sure that one of the nurses told me a few months ago that they only had an ultrasound tech in on Thursdays, but does that even make sense?!) I guess I can call them tomorrow and find out for sure. But, if it turns out that they don't do ultrasounds on Fridays, I know a place that does them 24/7.

The real kicker is that, if I do have another cyst, there probably isn't even that much I can do about it, because they'll want to give me hormonal birth control that I can't take. But at least I'll know that it isn't my IUD that's hurting me.

I really want this sweatshirt:



I got paid today, too. But I have that appointment with Wendi on Saturday (yeah I decided not to back out after all) and after that I need to start saving money.

If we weren't going to San Francisco over Christmas break I'd totally get my piercings and buy the sweatshirt and probably some boots too blah blah blah.

Studying for the GRE just makes me want to eat. I'm not even taking it that seriously anymore, because I've pretty much decided that I'm going to take some time off of school after I graduate in the spring. But I want to eat cupcakes and chocolate cookies and grilled cheese sandwiches and ice cream and all kinds of other bullshit. I'm starting to feel like crap!

I bake cupcakes without the proper equipment.

I don't own a standard mixer, or even a hand mixer; I put all of the stuff into a glass bowl that is a bit too small and that I originally bought to use to mix henna for my hair. I have to add one egg at a time to keep things from overflowing while I gently sift dry and wet ingredients together with a spatula.

Then, half a cup at a time, I spoon the lumpy mess into the cup that came with my "Kiss Mixer", which I think is the same thing as those Magic Bullet things from the infomercials -- the ones that are supposed to be used for smoothies and Margaritas and pesto. I blend one batch of slimey goo that has the potential to become a delicious cake and then pour it into a holding tank/containment unit until I've repeated the process three more times.

I do own a proper cupcake baking pan, and some cupcake rolling papers -- "all natural ones", actually, that guilt you into buying them even though they cost more because the brand name on them is, literally, "If You Care." Yeah, fuck you unbleached organic cupcake cups. The only reason why I bought you is because I like the idea of decadence that comes in a plain, brown wrapper. If you know what I mean.

After the cupcakes bake and cool, I use the same spatula that I used for the preliminary mixing to apply the frosting. This used to result in horrible cupcake abortions, but I am getting better at it.

Outside of voting this morning at 7am (getting up at 5, after going to bed at 2), baking these cupcakes is just about the only productive thing I've done all day, save for signing up for my final classes next semester and e-mailing a couple of professors. I didn't want to go anywhere today, so I didn't. Hell, if things go wrong tonight, maybe I'll just become a full-time agoraphobic. But for now, champagne (thanks xuande!) and golden cupcakes with chocolate frosting in the comfort of my own living room sounds perfect.