headaches and movies

the end

2007-02-13T14:45:00.000-08:00

i thought i'd come back and write an ending to my blog for two reasons. one, i just felt a little weird leaving it open ended, i guess i wanted to close out this part of my life. two, i feel like i have the rare migraine success story, and i didn't want to deprive the odd migraine sufferer stumbling across this the hope my story affords.

so. to sum up. i was stuck at home, having to avoid light, noise, and smells, watching movies all day long. i went to the mayo clinic and was hospitalized at jefferson for over a week all without results. but i found my miracle drug. and when drugs work, it truly seems like a miracle. seroquel has given me my life back. i did have a little episode of being bad again and being stuck in my room for a week, but it was only because i accidentally was taking too little medication.

i moved out in january into an awesome apartment with an awesome roommate. we go out to the theater, have dinner parties, and i'm sure will go to many museums. i am interning at my two top choice internships in the world, and they are great, exciting, and career advancing. while my boyfriend is still an hour away (if we were in the same city my life would truly be perfect), he stuck with me through all this and even more crappy things in my life that never made it in here, and is really the perfect boyfriend. basically i couldn't imagine my life being better right now. there's nothing overwhelmingly fantastic happening, things are good. and life being good is a damned nice change. i still have a headache every minute of every day, but seroquel has made it obsolete. aside from small things like not drinking coffee, it's not really a factor in my life anymore.

fellow migraine sufferers: i know the world is full of people whose migraines seem to be destined to ruin their entire lives. i can't express how blessed i feel to have escaped that, and i know i am the exception. but, i exist. i hope the fact that i got through this can help you, even if it just lets you just get through today. if your doctor's bad, find another one. find one who will be aggressive until and past she sees results. i hope medicine advances enough so that this can happen to everyone with migraines.

really better!

2006-12-08T17:48:00.000-08:00

i'm sorry i forgot to post. i am declaring myself officially better. life is good, i've been visiting lots of friends, planning on visiting lots more. things are looking good about finding an apartment and a paying internship in january. i'm really excited about my life right now.

good thing i didn't declare myself better

2006-11-15T15:39:00.000-08:00

a few days ago it started hurting my head to read. i'm still able to galavant around, but not being able to read sucks. my sister contends that it's because i'm depressed, not getting any exercise, and sleeping too much (about 15 hours a day including naps). i'm hoping that's true, but all these things have been true of me for a while (well, i'm sleeping more, but it's up from like 12 hours). siiiiiigh.

it's been a while

2006-11-10T19:51:00.000-08:00

i knew i hadn't posted in a while, but i didn't realize it'd been since the 20th. wow. so. i got better. like better better. like i've read a ton of books better (reading is always the hardest thing for me to do with my headache). i'm loathe to declare myself officially in the clear "better" because you know how much i've been up and down, but i think this is the real thing. a few days after my last post i felt better, went to vancouver because my dad works there part of the time, to baltimore to see my boyfriend, and to new haven to vote and see friends. you'd think i'd be ecstatic, and it's really great to be out of the house and seeing people, but i'm pretty overwhelmed by being better. it's like i grew up from 5 to 22 in a day.

on a sadder note

2006-10-20T20:47:00.000-07:00

as soon as i got home (actually, on the airplane back) the side effects to the seroquel started. now i've gone down on it but i'm still really out of it. my head seems a lot worse. i'm on a slightly lower dose and i'm still hopeful about this drug, it's just really hard to be back in the house watching tv all day. arg.

florida!

2006-10-12T15:20:00.000-07:00

in florida here, being ecstatic. it was pretty incredible going to the airport where previously i'd needed a wheelchair, sunglasses and earplugs, and needing NONE of that. i needed all that (minus the wheelchair) on the flight previously, but not this time. this time i took the noise of the plane plus x-men 3.

i think it's finally sinking in that my head is better, and WOW! joy joy joy joy joy! i woke up this morning and for a few seconds wondered if my headache was gone. PLUS i'm in florida. it's like my dad's conference purposely happened in time for me to celebrate getting better. i read on the beach (!!) today for 40 minutes, no problem, i could have done a fair amount more but it started raining. so i went to the spa :) life is too good.

we have SO much to catch up on

2006-10-10T20:08:00.000-07:00

wow, i'm not sure i'm awake enough to do this post justice. but i'll try. on friday i went down to see the boyfriend. we went out to dinner on saturday night (it was REALLY good) and when we first got there, we were scoping out the noise level for me, and we explained this to the person who came to seat us, and he was like oh, let me turn down the music. and he turned it off. he's my favorite waiter ever. so anyway, it was quiet and dark at first, but then they turned the music back on, and more people came in, and it got pretty loud. and my head was still fine. and i was like, hmmm...

so the next day, which was very bright, kevin and i went outside. and i was fine without my sunglasses. and then there was a big baltimore parade for columbus day, and MARCHING BANDS went past me and i was FINE!!!

THANK YOU SEROQUEL!!!!

it seems that i'm functional in every way but reading, which has done me in from the start of my headache four years ago. i can read for 50 minutes but it makes my head hurt for the rest of the day, and i can read for 35 minutes no problem. i'm hoping going up on the seroquel will both make my headache go away and let me read. in opposite order than that, because i've had my headache for four years, i'm used to it, i'm even fine with it as long as it doesn't inhibit me.

sooooooOOOOooo my dad the day before asked me if i wanted to go on a business trip with him to florida tomorrow, and i wasn't sure for a while cos i was like, i might be really bored, and he was like, you can be bored here or you can be bored there. and i was like, good point. so now i'm in the middle of packing :) i can't understand what my life is right now. i can't understand being better and i can't understand going to florida.... wow.

hopefully i'll post in florida...!

busy day (for me)

2006-10-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

i had a busy day for a me-day. i woke up at 9, decided i was still tired, and went back to bed. who can tell at this point whether it's the abilify or seroquel that's making me tired and out of it (although i'm SO much more alert). both probably. i had a feldenkrais appointment, where she worked on my poor muscles that had suffered under the twitching from abilify. i had physical therapy, which was the usual, although i did seem to suffer a little less under the florescent lights than usual (i wear sunglasses). just when things might have been winding down, i went out to dinner with my dad.

it feels good to have actually done some stuff today. i'm going to increase the seroquel again tonight. still hoping to be cured...

doctor day

2006-10-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

i saw my doctor today (yay!). i really like him. he's starting me on seroquel (the one that's like abilify) and i'm going up way fast in the dosing. hopefully i'll get better soon! cos i can't take this shit anymore!

we stopped off at the jefferson integrated medicine center or whatever they call it. it's "alternative" therapies overseen by doctors. i thought it sounded pretty legit cos it was at a reputable medical center, but i dunno, they seem a little... let's just say their form you have to fill out asks you what you think your purpose in life is.

no movies again today. how do i possibly fill up my days? i'm not sure. it involves long naps though.

spot the fake jew

2006-10-02T19:17:00.000-07:00

so whoops, the day of fasting (which still no one in my house did) was today. and we had the traditional breakfast-dinner afterall. i suck.

i watched freaks and geeks (2000) today, or rather the first disk of season one. it wasn't nearly as good as i remembered. but maybe watching a show about nerds in high school while i was a nerd in high school was more rewarding.

my doctor's appointment is tomorrow morning, so i'm gonna sign off and go to bed. wish me luck!

yom kippuralicious

2006-10-01T19:47:00.000-07:00

my grandmother came for yom kippur today. we had duck, which is pretty funny, considering you're supposed to fast and then eat breakfast like food for dinner. but none of us fasted, so...duck. i used to fast, but it makes my head hurt, so...

anyway, when my grandmother was here for rosh hashannah, i was all drugged, and she totally hounded me about 'oh laura, you don't laugh the way you used to' and it sucked. this time i was all alert so she was incredibly happy. she took me to our local starbucks, where we sat outside. it was lovely, and we sat there for over an hour, sometimes talking, sometimes just being together. in the end, my grandmother really is wonderful.

no movies again today.

i've "decided" that my next treatment is going to cure me. i both have reason to have hope in my next medication, and it's just fucking time. i can't stand the boredom anymore. wish me luck tomorrow in getting an appointment ASAP with my doctor so i can get to getting cured.

optimism crash

2006-09-30T19:05:00.000-07:00

i realized a couple hours ago that the reason i was believing so firmly that i'll be cured within a couple weeks is that i'm going absolutely insane and need to be cured NOW. sucks.

i managed to actually stay awake and find stuff to do since 5:30 this morning. i only stayed awake because i was really jittery and couldn't fall asleep. thank god, i'm really tired now.

i didn't watch any movies today, just a chunk of the project runway marathon. damn those people are talented.

all i have to say is, thank god for phones.

movie post

2006-09-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

ok, here's what i haven't been blogging about:

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, 1984
Murderball, 2005
Network, 1976
The N Word, 2004
Manhattan, 1979
Funny Face, 1957
Queer as Folk: Season 1: Disc 4, 2001
Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, 2004
Victor / Victoria, 1982
The Station Agent, 2003
The Music Man, 1962
Bambi: Platinum Edition, 1942

and more recently:

kinsey (the pbs documentary) 2004
riding in cars with boys 2001

i promise to answer any and all questions about any of the above movies but i'm not going to talk much about them here. let me just say in defense of watching bambi that my mom wouldn't let me watch it when i was little. and then i got too old to watch it... anyway, wow, i'm so glad i didn't watch it when i was little, i had to apologize to her for teasing her for all these years about it. there's a lot of violence and scariness. and i'm a total sap, but i got upset when his mom died. wow, i can't believe the one i talked about was bambi.

i watched the documentary about kinsey after having watched the recent movie, and the movie got surprisingly few things wrong. kinsey was such an incredible man, he was using phrases like sexual freedom in the THIRTIES. visionary! i'm going to read about him when i can. also i'll catch up on all that really important feminist theory that's a gaping whole in my education. oh, i do miss reading...

now some about the headache. see how i switched up the order? these innovations are how i keep you coming back. so i'm finally stopping to feel the effects of
abilify, which is excellent. i'm eating more, and i'm clearheaded for what feels like the first time in forever. and i'm feeling probably way too optimistic about my chances of doing well on another drug. but it's keeping me happy, so why not. just sort of anxiously happy. look for another post tonight (probably).

side effects continue

2006-09-28T19:25:00.000-07:00

i really love my new doctor, but his office is friggin annoying. you can only communicate with people through the nurses' voice mail, and sometimes they don't return calls. ugh.

anyway i talked to my doctor tonight because he happened to be on call (my family convinced me into being really worried about some twitching like stuff), and he mentioned going back to the hospital. this makes no sense to me, why not try something else in the same class as the medication that worked? now i'm in a bit of a panic. i'll get an appointment soon and we'll discuss me NOT going back to the hospital.

i'm sorry movies people, i'm just not up to reviewing. hopefully in a few days the medication will have worn off and i'll tell you all about movies.

bye bye abilify

2006-09-27T18:16:00.000-07:00

even though abilify (my new drug) definitely works for me, i'm quitting it tonight (under proper medical supervision) because of way too many, and increasing, side effects. one of the main side effects has been being really out of it, part of the reason i haven't been posting. hopefully when i feel like myself again you'll get me back. there are other drugs in the same class, so i HOPE that another one works for me. otherwise i'll be pretty damned depressed.

2006-09-24T15:03:00.000-07:00

part of the reason i haven't been posting is because i got a string of migraines, and then i've been feeling really out of it and feeling like i need to sleep all the time. whether this latter bit is because of meds or sickness or a combo, i dunno. but it's sure frustrating.

but also frustrating is the knowledge that i'm a fair amount better but i still have no where to go, nothing to do. i talked to my boyfriend today and he asked if me being depressed (that's what we'd been talking about) was why i hadn't been posting on my blog. it's cute how much he likes my blog even though he knows every tiny detail of my life anyway.

so yeah, i've been pretty depressed. watching movies has gotten SO old. i drove to the drugstore today, that was exciting. what's there to do when a girl's moderately better from her incapacitating migraine? really. suggestions?

i'll talk about movies some other time...

hey look, a real post (and i'm feeling better)

2006-09-16T17:33:00.000-07:00

my beloved fans and followers,

oh wow, too much has happened to come close to recounting everything fully. so, i did that whole hospital thing. hospitals are pretty awful. you just lie around on your bed, and in my case your head hurts too much to even watch a movie, so you're REALLY bored. and i had some fun side effects to medication, like not being able to sit up. i was there for 12 days (including the first one) and somewhere towards the end they finally found something that worked at all, droperidol. it brought my baseline waaaay down, but triggers still were, well, triggers. they wanted to keep me for 6 more days, hooked up not only to the iv but to a heart monitor (heart monitor cos of the new med) to see if this other thing would work, but i was like fuck it, i'm out of here. i'm tired of you people measuring everything about me including how much i pee. it was more like a big breakdown, where my dad convinced me not to flee that night.

i came home. i've watched way more movies than i care to review, because we had no internet. god i've been so bored. i watched:

Lenny Bruce Without Tears, 1972
My Neighbor Totoro, 1988
Gandhi, 1982
Rize, 2005
The Birds, 1963
The Twilight Zone: Vol. 2, 1963, which has my favorite twilight zone episode ever, "time enough at last" on it
Singin' in the Rain, 1952
The Gold Rush, 1925
Me and You and Everyone We Know, 2005
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, 1995

if you want to know what i thought of any of them, ask. but under general comments: i still heart charlie chaplin, and i still don't get hitchcock, although i have to say that i'm a little scared of birds now. i think i may re-watch the birds sometime and try to give it a second chance.

i hope you're still reading cos here comes the most important part. last monday i doubled the dose of one of my new drugs, abilify, and on tuesday i woke up feeling better! not Better better, but better. i've started wearing my sunglasses a lot less when i go out of my house, i turn on lights sometimes, AND i took the train to my boyfriend's today. i am in fact sitting at his computer. AND i walked back from the train station, which is like 20 minutes, no sunglasses, along a pretty busy city street. and was fine. and today's a bad day. woow. i'm SO getting better.

don't worry, i'm alive!

2006-09-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

so i got released from the hospital on the 1st (a ago week yesterday), but then i felt too out of it to post for a few days and then my computer crashed. i'm posting this at the public library but they have florescent lights, so i really can't stay (especially since i've already been doing important things like checking my email and updating my netflix queue). i'll try to come back on monday and do a slightly longer post.

here i go!

2006-08-21T20:24:00.000-07:00

tomorrow's jefferson. i had to deal with a lot of phone calls and being on hold and stress because i wasn't in the system for checking in tomorrow until 7:30 tonight. ARG! it's exhausting taking care of myself.

today was some tv, some packing. i really have no idea why i was so stressed about packing to go to michigan. i guess it's also easier this time cos i'm really not going that far. my friend matt from school and his girlfriend maura came to visit, which was tre exciting. i was in hysterics laughing most of the time they were here. we just sat around and were very hilarious. and they took me out for ice cream. it was basically fantastic.

ok, well hopefully i'll be able to post from within the hospital, but probably not. so maybe the next time i post i'll be totally cured! doubtful. wish me luck!

the countdown begins

2006-08-20T22:13:00.000-07:00

i contemplated packing today. but i figured that my lists that i'd saved from when i packed for michigan were so complete that i should just wait till tomorrow.

so i didn't do much. i talked to a few people on the phone. one of my friends (you know who you are) seriously called me because i hadn't been posting enough and wanted to know how i was doing. wow. I'M SORRY, i'll be more regular. although i don't think i'll have internet in the hospital, so there may be a gaping whole in your lives starting tuesday.

i watched dave chappelle's block party (2005) over lunch. it was a fun concert movie, with a bit of dave chappelle thrown in. in the interviews with the performers and people attending, it seemed to me that there was an underlying current of anger, or at least tension about being black in america. the performers are people who have made a career of being the voice of black america and they'd come to perform in a poor neighborhood in brooklyn. i dunno, it just seemed like there was something profound there to me. but i'm tired.

i watched you me and everyone we know (2005) over dinner. it was weird, very indie-ish. it's one of those movies with like 10 plot lines that it tries to impress you with the cleverness of how they can all overlap, and thus makes it impossible to summarize. i don't think i ended up liking it, but it has some truly great moments, my favorite of which is towards the beginning and involves a goldfish.

ok, i gotta go, it's late, and i have to wake up really early tomorrow to double check that i'm actually being admitted to the hospital on tuesday (why i have to do this is not an interesting story).

being home

2006-08-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

i didn't post last night because i watched state and main(2000) and then watched the entire commentary track (william h. macy is really funny) and that kept me up super past my bedtime. it's one of those rare movies that has an incredible cast and is also really, really good. and it's written by david mamet. it's about a corrupt hollywood film crew that moves into a small town to shoot their film, and the innocent screenwriter's (philip seymour hoffman) dealings with them and the people of the town. it's hilarious, it's witty, it's a little surreal, it's pretty amazing. watch it.

i spent most of yesterday trying to save all the important files off of my dying laptop (i writethis on the house desktop), which took some cleverness since my computer's cd drive now refuses to acknowledge blank cds, and my computer won't recognize the internet. let's just say there were floppy disks involved, for starters...

today i guess the lack of of a project and i'm not sure what, perhaps the uncertainty of what will happen at jefferson combined to make me feel pretty depressed. i took a long nap (not supposed to do that with the sleep schedule) and watched a lot of tv. and watched secretary (2002), which i don't really know what to say about. it was really, really weird. and dark. dark and weird. it was well acted, but i don't think i can recommend it. i finally finished the frisco kid(1979) tonight with my mom. gene wilder as a polish rabbi, harrison ford as a bank robber, and the wild west. it drags in so so many places, but it's really cute, and really hysterically funny in some places.

off to bed...

and she sheepishly returns to the blogosphere (and home)

2006-08-17T16:55:00.000-07:00

being with my boyfriend kinda sorta distracted me from my blogging duties. but he's so damned cute and fun and cuddly and....ok, i'll stop myself. but you probably wouldn't have wanted me to blog while i was there anyway, it would have just been days of posts filled with gushing about him. we just lounged and enjoyed each other, and his parents' tivo and their food. he read me half of about a boy which is a pretty decent movie but is a much, much better book. nick hornby is pretty great. he also wrote high fidelity which is also a great book, but possibly a better movie. it is, in any case, my favorite movie of all time. anyway. the end of the visit was less great because i didn't want to return home to the suburbs and therefore feeling more like an invalid (anyone else noticed that invalid is spelled in-valid?) than in the city, where you can just walk a couple of blocks and be somewhere. also home is the land of parental tension. so i got all overwhelmed, didn't know how to bring myself down, and then got all migraine-y and sick. which is what happens when i don't know how to deal with bad overwhelming emotions. migraine and/or illness. but, as tired as i am of being the sick one in the relationship, my boyfriend is so great and understanding, and totally took care of me, and read me more about a boy. we were going to watch victor/victoria but i got the wrong version, so we watched no movies. but lots of star trek and daily show and colbert report.

random vent time: i'm really REALLY tired of hearing/reading that i need to learn how to live so that my pain isn't dictating my life. i'm getting a little better, so i'm starting to be able to do fun things, like visit my boyfriend, but this concept gets me SO PISSED OFF. ok, i'm sure there are plenty of people who benefit from this advice, but i'm sure there are tons of people like me, who are just rearing to not let their pain rule their lives, but unfortunately the pain is too bad but to do anything but bow down to its dictated rules. i'm SORRY that i have to avoid physical exertion, sound, light, and smells, and this by default forces me into my home most of the time, but that's the way it is. humph.

returning home has been ok. miss boyfriend cuddles. i had a feldenkrais appointment, cleaned up my room, worked on my medical binder. oh, i'm putting together a binder of all my medical records. it's rapidly getting heavy.

aaaand i watched:

jesus is magic (2005) with sarah silverman. it's a bizarre adaptation of this comedian's one woman show. it's mostly her doing her stand-up act, with music videos (starring her) intercut. i'd seen a little bit of her comedy before (she's in the aristocrats as the one who says her family was the aristocrats) and she's really, really weird, and fairly disturbing. she's very deadpan, and isn't afraid (as a white woman) of tackling race in a racist sounding way, or making rape jokes. in other words, she at least takes it to the edge, if not past, a lot of the time. but she's definitely talented and i'd watch her again.

sky high (2005) is a disney movie about a kid of america's two most famous super heroes, attending a school of super heroes. i got this because my friend chi recommended it, and even though our taste rarely overlaps, it definitely did here. this movie was one of those perfect combinations between being totally formulaic, being aware of its formulas and twisting them as needed, and having really, really good jokes for the grown ups watching. yes, it's a rip off of like 50 movies, but it's a really, really good rip off. and the jokes are so funny.

ok kiddos, that's it for me for now. i'm home till next tuesday (then i check into jefferson), so i should be posting regularly until then. and hopefully after then too. i'm going to call tomorrow and check they have internet there.

sorry again!

2006-08-11T07:35:00.000-07:00

blogosphere, you really shouldn't keep taking me back, i treat you so bad. i just disappear for days at a time, then come back with lipstick stains of another woman.... ok, maybe just the disappearing part.

so today's friday? how much my life has changed. oh, for those of you who read my blog for the movie bits (andy), i haven't watched any movies in the last couple days. whaaa? you say. none? how could this be? how could this be when ordinarily you have nothing to do. WELL.

wednesday i called jefferson. i have had a long and arduous path of trying to get an appointment there to then try to get into their in patient program there. here's a little what my conversation with them was like. them: "well, let's see, we have an appointment on october 25, one on october 10th.....oh, and there's one tomorrow" me: "umm....yeah, i'll take the one tomorrow." and then the rest of the day i spent scrambling to get ready, calling various doctors and getting various records sent and filling out their 20 page form and...i don't know, it's really all a blur. which was really pretty great, cos i can't even remember the last time i looked at a clock and instead of being like "oh god, it's still only (insert too early time here)," i was like "holy shit, it's already (insert much later time than i thought it was here)." my dad picked me up, brought me to his apartment, where he obsessed over how incredibly minimalist he could be about his upcoming decor, and we went to bed. i barely slept, but that was ok, because i had an appointment at jefferson AND i was going to see my boyfriend, of the being in europe for the last month and a half, after jefferson. i'm not sure i should admit this in so public a forum, but i actually, very quietly, sang "i'm walking on sunshine", or at least the couple lines i could remember, in the shower on thursday morning.

and when i say morning i mean MORNING, i woke up at 5, tried to get back to sleep, finally got up, and we left at 7. as it was said in apollo 13, AM, very very AM. we got there, and yay being back in the land of professional medical institutions. and sanity. as opposed to the place in michigan. they had the same basic intake procedures, talk to a nurse, a psychologist, and the doctor, and in between sit in the waiting room and fill out fifty MILLION pages of forms, but they were sane, and the people in michigan were not. when i like doctors i say that i imprint, as in goslings imprinting on their mothers (or humans, if that's the first they see), and i didn't imprint yet on the doctor i saw yet, but i liked him ok. he definitely said a lot of stuff that made sense. AND he said i could go on birth control, no problem. yay! he claims it won't make my headache get better but i think it will for two reasons: 1) i've had menstrual cramps every day for the last 6 months, something has been weird with my hormones the entire time my headache has been bad, 2) i'll be like half as stressed in general because i'll i won't have monthly pregnancy panic attacks (hey, i just don't like the 3% non-effectiveness that condoms leave). i'm supposed to be admitted as an in-patient on the 22nd, but there's a very slim chance that they'll call me and admit me this coming monday if someone cancels. yay!

then my dad drove me over to ze boyfriend's, and joy, joyous joy. oh how i have missed my boyfriend. and now i get to stay here (here being at his parent's house) for a while. mmm, goodness. yesterday was basically just lounging around, enjoying being a couple that was in the same country again, but in the large amount i'd gotten better since he'd been gone i suggested we try to find somewhere quiet and dark to go out to dinner. it'd been almost exactly half a year since we'd been on a date. and we really like dates. so we walked somewhere close, they had a few tables outside, and had a grand old time. he also accompanied me on my nightly walk, and since his parents moved to philly after he went to college he barely knows philly, or his neighborhood, at all. we found bbq and a delicious looking used bookstore.

today i went to see the non-acupuncturist, and i think she actually helped! previously i've been able to walk, as you know, a lot, in the suburbs, but i've barely been able to walk in cities and real towns. but today i walked for half an hour back from my appointment through the busy busy loud traffic. and listening to my ipod. awesome! the bf and i are about to go on a picnic. life is so good.

not much new

2006-08-07T22:16:00.000-07:00

no movies today, sorry. i watched some more of the frisco kid, and luckily for it, it showed some promise (wilder to fish he's trying to kill and eat: "i don't want to hurt you, i just want to make you kosher!"), so i think i might finish it afterall.

i had physical therapy first thing. she worked me HARD today. had me do more reps than i normally do of everything, and i had to do this thing with lifting up my head which was very hard, because a human head weighs roughly 8 pounds (so i've been told), and that's HEAVY for your neck to lift.

i said bye bye to my sister (sadness, it was really good to see her). i had my feldenkrais appointment, which was good, and we worked more on doing this one thing which i think helps me a lot and i can also do on my own (most of the time it's me focusing hard on relaxing while she movies my limbs around).

i played MORE badmitton with my mom today. i'm really sore! i've gotten so much better since we started yesterday. it's so nice to feel mildly coordinated. then i had dinner with my dad, which was nice. he didn't talk much cos he was tired, but ah well.

my friend kim and i started a tradition freshman year of college of talking every monday. our ability to stick to this has waxed and waned, but we've pretty much actually done it, but this summer it's been really hard for us to do. but today (monday) we talked! yay! she went to thailand and went to a traditional indian wedding. it was so awesome to hear about.

i get to see my boyfriend day after tomorrow! yay!!! i'm going to meet up with him at his parent's house. ok, i'm probably not going to make it to bed on time. whoops, bad me.

scary cat

2006-08-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

my sister and i went on a 45 minute walk, and totally got stalked by a cat. it was pretty scary. no, i'm serious. we'd cross the street, it would too. we'd speed up, it would too. and it followed us home, and curled up on our front step. it could have rabbies!

my sister's hooked on battlestar galactica. mwahaha.

i'm back!

2006-08-06T16:57:00.000-07:00

i hope no one was too worried. i got a migraine on thursday and then on friday and saturday i was mysteriously and incredibly sick sick sick. i basically slept for all of friday. so. i guess that leaves me a lot to catch up on, especially considering i didn't even post on wednesday night. i'll cover some of it.

going out to dinner with my dad on wednesday was nice, and he didn't, as promised, talk about any medical stuff. that's been a problem with us, because he knows more about medical things than me, i take his advice, but then he gets to be kind of controlling and then all we talk about is my headache... this happened when my headache started, we worked really hard to make it not the case, and then i noticed it happening again recently, confronted him about it, and he was really sweet and said he'd noticed it too. he's so much more highly evolved than he used to be. other good news is that the restaurant that we can normally count on being dark and quiet and odor-less for me was kind of crowded, and i definitely would have had to leave had we been there about a month ago. but i was able to stay! yay getting better!

then we went back to his apartment. it was really sparse, seeing as he had just moved in, but it was really sweet all the touches he had to try to ensure i felt at home, like getting a rubber ducky shower curtain, and getting me fifty kinds of blankets, and a toothbrush and toothpaste even though i of course brought my own. it was nice on the whole, and we had lunch the next day. it just sucked that i felt like default was being with my mom, and i inherently stirring things up by staying over with my dad. maybe things will be easier when default is having my own place and then i can split my time between them equally when i come to visit? hopefully?

thursday, friday and saturday all kind of blur together for me. i don't really remember what i did on thursday, except i got a migraine early evening, and most of what being sick consisted of was being really, really out of it. so here are some movies i watched, i seriously don't know when (the disclaimer of i really didn't know what i'm talking about because i was so out of it should go without saying).

one flew over the cuckoo's nest (1975). it dragged. it seemed to be saying there was no such thing as real mental health problems, just surroundings that make you screwed up, which pissed me off to no end. when it tried to be funny it wasn't really funny, when it was depressing it was really depressing, but when a movie depresses me i want to see the point. and i didn't. pass.

do the right thing (1989). a spike lee movie was on hbo one night about a month ago, and i was like, oh, spike lee, i've never seen a spike lee. so i netflixed that movie, and then if i did my research properly, do the right thing was one of, if not the, break out movie of spike lee's career. i think this was probably one of those movies that was really incredible at the moment, and then its incredible-ness got absorbed by our culture, as it resonated throughout culture, and got immitated and copied throughout art. i hope some of it was less powerful for me because race relations have advanced in the last 25 years. perhaps some of it was because i'm white. in the end though, i have to admit, i didn't feel like i "got it." in terms of creating a specific feel for an environment, the heat and the place and the time and the people and the tension, it's one of the most successful movies i've seen. normally movies that are so caught up in capture a feel of a moment in time forget that they have to create anything other than ambience, like, say, plot.

i watched part of the frisco kid (1979), where gene wilder as a polish rabbi travels across the west paired up with harrison ford. it sounds hilarious but it was boring as hell. i'm not even sure i'm gonna finish it.

kramer vs. kramer (1979) was awesome. all of the acting, dustin hoffman, meryl streep (of course streep is incredible), the little kid, all the supporting roles, was amazing. it's about a workaholic dad (hoffman) whose wife (streep) leaves him and her son to go "find herself," something she wasn't free to do in her life with hoffman. hoffman has to totally readjust his life to take care of their kid. as you can guess by the title, streep comes back and wants the kid, but hoffman's become very attached. normally i'm hypercritical of child actors cos they're normally so bad, but this one i forgot to be critical and there were so many roles with him and hoffman where i forgot they were acting. i was also ready to be politically critical of the movie, but it's basically like, look, women should be able to work if they want to and men should be able to be stay at home (or at least scaled back work) dads. and i was like, rock on. so once all of my guards were down, i settled in to watch the movie, which is really just beautiful. again, the acting, amazing. it's a small movie, with scenes of normally just two actors at a time, and it's a sweet movie without being like, LOOK AT ME, I'M A ROMANTIC COMEDY. it's small and sweet. and you should watch it. according to the special features, family court judges actually sometimes cite it when deciding in favor of the father. crazy.

ok, so those are the movies.

back to my life. my sister came to visit last night! yay! she can be very annoying, but we're also incredibly close, so yay! i drove us to starbucks, and i got her to open up (a little, she doesn't do that much) about her anxieties about going to med school, and it was generally nice. and i drove around, much further than i've been able to before. more signs of getting better...

AND my mom got out the old badmitton set (my family used to be addicted to it, we're weird), and the three of us started toss around the badmitton. but, laura, you say, you can't exert yourself in such a manner! that's what i thought. but i figured i'd try for a little bit. and then i started working up a bit of a sweat. and then i KEPT playing. and it felt good. i mean, we sucked, but it still felt good, to actually be moving, and not just to be walking. and we were all laughing at each other and how much we sucked and it was really fun and i kind of sort of played a sport! the net wasn't up, but there were racquets involved! i'm SO getting better. oh, i left when the shuttlecock got caught in the tree and i tried to knock it down, and it, of course, fell on my head. my sister used to say that i had a magnet in my head.

so...yeah, that's the story of where i've been.

middle of the day post

2006-08-02T15:43:00.000-07:00

i'm having to post only part way through the day, because my dad's taking me out to dinner, and then over to his new apartment where he's roughing it and doesn't have internet yet (my parents finally split up a few months ago. separated, no discussion of divorce as far as i know. if you want to know more you can ask me, but i find it doubtful i'll devote more blogspace to it). no internet! oh my!

not much to report on about today. i finally finished watching city lights (1931) by and with charlie chaplin. it was far from his greatest (i just can't decide whether his greatest is the great dictator or modern times, but you should watch them both), but it was still good. nearly a century later, chaplin's charisma grabs me. he's just... adorable. and i can't help but find that his every movement, from large to small, always lands somewhere on the scale of amusing to hilarious. his famous walk, with the cane and the kick back gets me every time. ok, i'll cut myself off.

i had a feldenkrais appointment which really seemed to get a lot of tension out of my neck and shoulders, which was highly needed. i mean, that's always highly needed, but it was extra highly needed.

umm, yeah, not much else. oh, i got to bed at 12:30 last night, the earliest i have so far, even on the nights that i was incredibly tired and made myself stay up (sometimes i just end up staying up really late, it's weird)! yay.

quiet day

2006-08-01T19:47:00.000-07:00

i'm really not quite sure how i managed to fill up a whole day today. but i did.

i watched psycho (1960) over lunch, which is actually kind of funny in retrospect, considering that they mentioned in the special features that hitchcock loved combining death and food, and love and food. i actually had rather low expectations after finding rear window mediocre and vertigo laughable. but i was pleasantly surprised with psycho. first of all, it actually managed to scare me and creep me out, even though i knew basically everything that was going to happen because, really, who doesn't. it's hard for older movies to be scary since us modern viewers are so jaded. secondly, the acting, especially by anthony perkins was exquisite, compensating for the dialogue that could still be, in pre-1965 fashion, cheesy. thirdly, some of the shots truly were amazing, and i finally felt like i had some sort of grasp of this whole "hitchcock is amazing" deal. although not entirely. want a real genius? see charlie chaplin. anyway.

the other main way of spending my day today was physical therapy. not much to report there, i learned a new stretch to add to my daily repertoire. oh, and i learned that one of the massage like things that she's been doing on my back is actually ultra-sound. it's weird, it just feels like she's doing really light massage. whatever, if it helps....

and my mom is SO addicted to battlestar galactica, we watched another episode tonight. this may become a nightly ritual. ok, i'm off to watch the daily show and colbert report, or as i like to call it, the fake news hour.

blog number 30!

2006-07-31T21:26:00.000-07:00

i picked a random number to celebrate the anniversary of my blogging. happy 30th blog entry, my blog.

so, when i blogged earlier and said i hadn't done anything, i lied to you, oh reader. i'm sorry. i didn't mean to. yesterday (leaving it to the last moment, savoring sweet democracy), i filled out my ballot, put form A into evelope B, which i signed, sealed, and put into envelope C. i slapped a stamp on envelope C, and then mailed it today. well, actually, my mom did while i was sleeping, but still, i voted today my compatriots. democracy smells sweet in the morning. i feel cheated of the "i voted today" sticker, but i'll live.

time for unrelated statements that don't bear discussion: i've had the songs from newsies stuck in my head all day today. i've decided i don't like the tens unit and i won't be using it anymore.

i watched a clockwork orange (1971) today. i liked it... i think. i think possibly the only way i was able to like it was that i paused it and went and did other things, and thus was able to ingest it in more palatable portions. cos that shit is distuuuurbing. like, whoa. i think possibly what creeps me out the most about it was how it managed to use the same music to make the disturbing parts less disturbing and the overall movie more disturbing. i dunno. this'll probably be a movie that has to settle in my brain for a few days before i figure out what i really think about it. can someone explain the meaning of the excessive phallic imagery in the first third to me?

ok, off to a healthy bedtime for me!

i left the house not to see a doctor

2006-07-31T11:15:00.000-07:00

i swear, at some point blogging, sleeping, and life will all work out. really. last night i had to keep myself up LATER than i wanted to just to stay on a regular sleep schedule. but let's start at the beginning.

dusty and i did indeed go on a picnic, and a marvelous picnic it was. when i woke up, i found my house empty, and a bit later dusty and my mom came back carrying a ton of food. by the time i was dressed my mom was already half way through packing the picnic for us. now, i may have gotten my judiasm from my dad (yeah, i know that technically doesn't make me jewish), my mom sure acts like a jewish mom when it comes to taking delight in stuffing me, my sister, and any other young people that pass within a few feet of her. it's really pretty cute.

dusty and i loaded up the car, with the three bags of food, one of them made out of real wicker (so cute!), and headed out to the river. it was lovely. we sat in the shade, and stuffed ourselves on scrumptious food, and only got through like half of it. and seriously, it's so rare that i get out of the house not to see some sort of medical professional, and much MUCH rarer that it's not with one of my parents. it was pretty great.

then dusty came back, we came back, and just so he could have more things to mock me with i played him the song "short people" by randy newman cos he'd never heard it. if you haven't you should listen to it, it's pretty great. then he left.

then i was sooo tired. and i was really bad and did absolutely none of the things that i'm supposed to do every day that i told you about last time, and just lay in front of the tv.

i watched the next disc i got of queer as folk. i'm totally addicted now. the next disc has been moved to the head of my queue on netflix, seeing as i HAVE to know what happens next.

i also watched newsies seeing as a bunch of friends in high school were obsessed with it. it's basically about newsboys at the turn of the century who decide to take on the man. it was cute, although i'm sure i would have enjoyed it more when i was younger, all the boys in their cute little newsie caps dancing around and christian bale being his cute little self (there's a scene in the beginning where he has his shirt off -- he's supposed to be a minor and have washboard abs? anyway...) it was a sweet disney musical, and i certainly appreciated that one of the main themes in it was that unionization is essential to protecting basic human rights (in foreshadowing, "oh that's my father, he broke his arm and so he was useless to the factory, and he didn't have a union to protect him so they fired him." that's not a direct quote, but it's pretty accurate), it was a little uncomfortable upon applying much thought that the union consisted of child laborers. i wonder why people tell me i think too much during movies...

ok, that was yesterday, i basically haven't done anything today. i'm, yet again, getting a little emotionally exhausted with having the burden of getting myself better. i guess that sounds kind of whiny and immature, but there's so much to do with barely, if any, reward, and i so desperately want to get better, want my life back. where's my magic pill, doc? sigh. ok, hopefully i'll blog again today about today and then regular blogging will resume.

sleep deprived day number 2

2006-07-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

ok, still trying to catch up/figure out how blogging's going to work with my new sleep schedule. and on top of it i'm sleep depriving myself to get myself to go to bed earlier, so my memories of what's happened recently aren't very clear.

but here goes me trying to recount yesterday. um. ok, well first of all i've made myelf a little list of the things i'm supposed to/want to do every day, and i think i did almost all of them yesterday. since i know you're dying to know exactly how i spend every minute of every day, here they are:

self massage (the non-acupuncturist told me to do this)
relaxation exercise
physical therapy exercises
go on a walk
put a heat pad on my neck
do breathing exercises about three times
use my tens unit

i'm still not sure how much i like the tens unit. it's supposed to be a pleasant feeling, i think, but my muscles are so tense and sore that i can't have it on for more than like 5 minutes before i'm like, oh, i'm painfully aware of my muscles existing. it's basically like sending little electric pulses into my muscles, and feels like a light buzzing. it's pretty ridiculous how every muscle in my body is insanely tense. like the muscles on my forearms are just one big knot. the non-acupuncturist claims this is all relating back to my migraine. it doesn't seem like that bizarre of a claim.

yesterday i went for another walk in the rain. this time it was actually full on raining when i left, but hey, i like summer rain. is that really so weird? apparently. i left my mom a note cos she was on the phone saying that i'd gone, and i had my cell phone so she could check that i hadn't drowned. she called me three minutes later, not having seen the note, saying "are you on a WALK?" clearly thinking i'm a little more than eccentric. then i walk like 3 houses down and this woman drives up next to me and offers me a ride. it takes me way too long to explain how close to home i am and i really just like walking in the rain. once i do she continues talking while rolling up her window. she gave me a look like i might pull a gun on her. oh, and i was wearing sunglasses during this thunderstorm, so that must have added to my insanity points. but geez, i've met other people who like getting caught in storms, and they didn't seem like they needed to be locked up to me... unfortunately i cut my walk shorter than my superhuman abilities of half an hour because the thunder was getting really loud and i thought it'd be a shame to get hit by lightening.

i tried to watch city lights, a charlie chaplin movie, but the fucking netflix dvd was messed up, AGAIN, so you'll temporarily be spared my fawning of charlie. who is, by the way, a total genius. and you know i'm not just saying that cos everyone else does, because i have a tendency to disagree with everyone else. pretty soon i'm gonna get gold rush, of boot eating fame. exciting.

i think that pretty much catches us up.

so today.... i got my absentee ballot from connecticut!!! oh joy of joys. there is little else that gives me more of a thrill than participating in elections. well, maybe when the person who i voted for wins. ok, there are plenty of other things that thrill me more. but it's still really exciting. and i get a chance to help oust lieberman! i went straight to the league of women voter's website to bone up on the issues. i also get to vote for my beloved previous mayor of new haven, destefano, for governor, although i'm not sure if he's polling so well. the only thing that makes me sad is that the only woman on the ballot is running for lieutenant governor, and apparently lieutenant governor is like vice president, they don't actually have their own platform, they just point to the person running for governor and say, yeah, what s/he said! and the woman running for lieutenant governor is a running mate (i'm not sure if that's what they call it) with dan malloy, the guy i'm not going to vote for, so i can't vote for her. boo, i want to vote for a woman! unfortunately i decided when i was like 10 or something that it wasn't ethical to vote for a woman just because she was a woman (yeah, i was pretty psyched about gaining the ability to vote, i thought about these issues a little bit in advance).

also today, my friend dusty from high school is coming over. for some reason a while back he decided he should take me on a picnic, and he's coming into the area for a wedding. we thought i was going to be in michigan, but i guess luckily that didn't work out... so he's gonna sleep over and take me on a picnic tomorrow. yay! joy abounds. ok, so i think i'm gonna go take my walk (during a sunny day?? it's unheard of, hopefully my sunglasses will protect me) before dusty gets here.

yesterday

2006-07-28T16:32:00.000-07:00

oh blogosphere, i hope you're holding up ok while i figure out a new blogging time. i know it must be hard on you, but i swear, it's not you, it's me.

since i know you can't stand missing out on a day of my scintillating life, we'll start with yesterday. which started way earlier than i wanted, at 10:30 am. that's like crazy early for me. translated to normal person time, that's about 5:30 am. just to give you an understanding of the horror. so i had a phone appointment with my neurologist at 10:30. i thought this was an appointment to set me up at the new in-patient place in philadelphia, but he thought i would have already made an appointment with the doctor he suggested before. hm. i talked to my dad and we agreed i should call my neurologist back and tell him to get him to pull his weight and get me to see the elusive head guy of this in-patient place. which it might have occurred to me to do before, but it was the equivilant of 5:30 in the morning for me. so i'm doing that on monday. also, exciting, new medication. so maxalt is a triptan, which is a class of drugs that they give to the normal migraine people when they get normal migraines. so when i get what i call a migraine, the episodes on top of my baseline headache, i take maxalt. in my normal life this has worked about half of the time. unfortunately i've tried basically all of the triptans, and they either didn't make me feel better or made me feel worse, so i stuck with maxalt. recently, however, it's been making me feel better most of the time i take it. i mentioned this, and my doctor prescribed me methergine, which is apparently a lot like a triptan, except for you can take it every day. so maybe it'll make me feel better! probably not though. don't get your hopes up and i won't either :)

whoa, we need a break from all that medical talk. how bout i tell you about trigun, the anime series i watched the first four episodes of yesterday. wait, i actually just watched the 4th yesterday, but anyway. so i didn't like it. i think it was good quality, but the three main characters are really, really annoying. the thing is, they're supposed to be. this is not actually a strange concept, i mean how annoying was urkel (very), yet how popular was family matters (very)? it's just a type of annoying that didn't jive with me. i this left me more open to feeling annoyed about the exaggerated facial expressions and actions and the general exaggeration of anime. i was talking to my friend matt about this (he's the one who gives me all my anime recommendations) and i was asking what the name for the genre of say, cowboy bebop where it's all serious and there are definitely no wildly exaggerated facial expressions is, vs trigun, so i could define what kind of anime i liked. and he was like, um, that whole exaggeration thing is pretty crucial to anime. i think he was trying to tell me i like weird anime. it's not entirely true, i like inuyasha, which is very light, does the whole exaggeration thing, basically has all of the stereotypes of anime. although i like it less now that i've watched the more serious anime. i dunno, i'm a mystery. can i recommend trigun? i guess, but be prepared to be annoyed.

so back to events of my day. i promptly went back to sleep after talking to my neurologist until it was time to go to my therapist. we spent most of the time talking about why i was being so stubborn about not getting on a regular sleep schedule even though i knew it would be good for me. i think there are many reasons, some of them "significant" and some of them not, but one of them is that sometimes the frustrations about my life right now that i don't feel during the day come out big time at night, and i end up staying up super late being upset. so i told her that i knew that if i were trying to keep a regular sleep schedule and then i got upset and stayed up really late, i'd be doubly upset cos i'd be beating up on myself for screwing up. and she was like, so you either do it perfectly or not at all? it's pretty disturbing when you realize that really stupid statements apply to you, and the more i think about it, yes, basically in everything in my life, perfect or no go. so, as you already know, i came around to trying to keep a regular sleeping schedule. so far it's been... interesting. last night i was almost excited to know i was setting my alarm, even though i hate alarms, but i guess it made me feel like i had something to get up for. once i got in bed another reason for not keeping a regular sleep schedule hit me, as i fought off the urge to get right back up. you know that feeling like you haven't yet been productive enough in your day, so you stay up later? i'm never productive enough, because there's nothing to do, so every night i stay up until i'm exhausted. uuugh. anyway, waking up to an alarm, with not enough sleep, sucked, but i think this is gonna be good. and i've been feeling pretty good all day.

i bet you think that was it for my appointments yesterday? nope. gwen the physical therapist was next. nothing much to report there, except for that i asked and found out that the exercises that i've been doing at home are to stretch out my muscles to help me to keep better posture. ok, sounds fine.

i also finished butch cassidy and the sundance kid (1969). i'm starting to feel like i have no taste or something... yet again, i don't get the deal. sure, the newman-redford rapport was great and funny, but the plot just dragged on. we followed them to bolivia? really? so apparently that's where the real life people went, but really? the movie had to go there? it was just disjointed, and while the scene with newman and katherine ross where they ride around on the bike and "raindrops keep falling on my head" (which was composed for the movie! who knew?) is playing is really pretty and cute, it's so out of place. i really shouldn't even get started on the unholy amounts of sexism i uncovered by watching the special features. well i mean there's plenty in the movie, but in the special features... i could fill an entire entry. i'll just say that in the commentary the director (and this was recorded, you know, like in modern times, not back in the day when sexism was in) said something about how he hired katherine ross because he thought she was sexy as hell and didn't care whether she was talented or not. and there was an incident where she, acting in perfect innocence, pissed the director off, he didn't tell her until afterwards, at which point he banned her from the set, except for when she had scenes. i had to pause the dvd and puzzle over whether my reaction was unwarranted, and then ask my mom when she came in. my mom normally calls me out when i'm going on feminist overboard. this director was a sexist asshole. anyway, that doesn't have much to do with the movie. which isn't great. the beginning's fun, but i should have turned it off after they got to bolivia.

so stuff has happened today too, but you may have noticed that this entry is loong, and my head is really starting to hurt despite my best efforts not to put any thought into it. maybe i'll post later tonight, maybe i'll post tomorrow morning.... we'll have to see. stick with me.

delays in the system

2006-07-27T22:25:00.000-07:00

it's conceivable one or two (i know there are at least two people who read this, i've talked to you) of you have noticed that i post this blog really late, because i'm up really late, because i have nothing in particular to get up for, except the occassional appointment, the occassion of which is becoming more and more often. anyway, my therapist convinced me today that i really should try giving regular sleep schedules a real go seeing as i do know very irregular ones (which i keep) make my head worse. so, sorry folks, no time to post about my day before bedtime. i may have to work out a new posting time, perhaps first thing in the morning. in any case, i'll have to tell you tomorrow all about my incredible adventures of today.

another shocking day

2006-07-26T22:07:00.000-07:00

it's hard to come up with names for my posts, and somehow recently i've been finding it hard to resist the allure of the pun. the pun being i saw the non-acupuncturist today and she shocked me. oy, soon i'm gonna start punning more than carrie in sex and the city. ::shudder:: and it got me thinking... (kidding)

it was pointed out to me by my friend that my analysis of apocalypse now was slightly less than in depth (oh my god, people read this?), and in my post i seemed to be saying that the movie was a realistic depiction of war. this was definitely not my point, as the plot line of apocalypse now is, as he said, is surreal if anything. my point was rather that war movies try to convey the feel of war, including apocalypse now. geez andy, i hope people aren't reading everything i write that closely. i have a headache you know, i just write what spills out of my brain. if i were to try to think much at all it'd make my head hurt. no, i'm serious.

i watched most of butch cassidy and the sundance kid and 3 of the 4 episodes i got of trigun, an anime series. as usual i'll hold off on reviewing until completion. sorry, but i wanted to be social with my mom after dinner so on went butch cassidy and then the daily show came on and so off went butch cassidy....

i saw both the non-acupuncturist, or the shock doctor, as my mom calls her, and my feldenkrais practioner today. and... i think i feel about the same. i think i'm gonna hold off on adding other treatments for the time being, it just feels like a lot. so that's five for you keeping track at home. and if i don't start to see results soon from the non-acupuncturist soon i might stop, cos she claims i should feel better right away, or at least the next day. tomorrow i have an appointment with my neurologist, and we'll talk about the other in-patient program. hopefully i can get that started soon.

anyway, i still haven't done my relaxation exercise today (i'm supposed to do them every day, and for some reason i always find myself up around 1:30 am wondering why i didn't manage to fit it in earlier), and i need to get up what's very early for me to talk to my neurologist, so i'm signing off.

in which laura gets hypnotized

2006-07-25T21:39:00.000-07:00

today was relatively average except for two main exceptions: i watched fargo and i went to see a hypnotherapist.

the hypnotherapist's office smelled musty, and even mildly strong smells of any kind make my head hurt worse, so i'm not even sure why i stuck around except for i'm too polite and i had an appointment. but i knew in about two seconds that i couldn't go back. i also just didn't like the woman, nothing in particular, but i didn't. ok, so she goes on about how hypnosis is so incredibly different from relaxation exercises. then she "hypnotizes" me. it felt a whole lot like a relaxation exercise to me, thank you very much. there was no swinging pocket watch, there was me with my eyes closed imagining things. anyone who's ever done a relaxation exercise knows this is what you do in relaxation exercises. but then something really sucky happened. i was supposed to be holding my hands like they were holding a warm mug, and she told me to imagine the pain in my head going into the warm mug. this was supposed to make the pain go away, into the mug. instead i started concentrating on the pain, you know, in order to get it out, but the more i thought about it the more i noticed how much my head hurt and basically my head just ended up hurting a ton. it was a lot like how everyone told me getting high would take away all the pain (this was how i was peer pressured into smoking pot for the first time, that, and i secretly wanted to), but when i'm stoned and it occurs to me to think about my headache i just fixate on it and it feels a lot worse.

i dunno if i'm gonna try hypnotherapy again. if i do, it'll certainly be with someone else. my mom and i wandered around afterwards trying to find somewhere to eat out, and while i can walk for a long time now in the quiet streets of my neighorhood at night, walking around town in the day with all the noise and smells etc was too much for me, and i got a migraine and had to go home.

fargo (1996), however, was quite good. i'm normally fairly averse to violence in movies, depending on how it's handled. the violence in fargo was just on the edge of too much for me, but they handled it well and it ended up sitting ok with me. well, not quite ok, but in the slightly off place that you should feel with the coen brothers. the cast was just phenomenal, and i feel like this is a movie that i'm going to want to watch again. i think one of my favorite parts was how much i cared about the subplots, even when i couldn't figure out how they related to the rest of the movie. the only part i didn't like was that ending monologue was a little cheesy, but it didn't do the movie in. i went to netflix to go fill in my gaps in the coen brothers movies, and did you know they did intolerable cruelty, that awful movie with clooney and zeta-jones? ew, have they sold out?

anyway blogosphere, i'm off to bed with my migraine. goodnight.

blues and the blues brothers

2006-07-24T23:34:00.000-07:00

it didn't occur to me until i was trying to come up with a clever title for this post that the blues brothers was an incredibly fitting movie to watch throughout my day, a comedy about the blues.

i had a really rough night last night, and i definitely had a not particularly keen on getting out of bed in the morning (or more accurately afternoon) moment. but my mood today was very strange. i was simultaneously much more on top of all kinds of shit in the kind of way i normally am in a good mood, (calling to set up appointments and i went on a half hour walk, yay!) and still feeling raw from last night. i guess sometimes a girl just needs a good breakdown. i think every so often i need to be reminded that i'm allowed to be upset about all this, and often the reminder comes in the form of getting very upset. so i was very up and down today, but mostly up, so the blues brothers was pretty appropriate.

i'm all appointment-ed up for this week, including with a hypno-therapist tomorrow. for those at home keeping score, that's six methods of trying to get me better, including meds. i wonder if she'll have homework for me too, cos as it is i'm keeping myself pretty busy. although in a way it's good, because one major aspect of my life that i'm missing is a feeling of productivity about something that matters, and i certainly feel that my headache going away matters, so when i do all the exercises and stuff to get better that definitely feels productive. i've decided that i think i'm going to try to actually write the letters that i get emails asking me to write all the time from the progressive listserves i've signed up for, because the activist part of me is screaming for something to do, and i think i could manage that, and while letters aren't much they're something.

so the blues brothers (1980). i mean, c'mon, i'm like the last person in the world to see this movie, right? it's pretty friggin' great. it's hilarious, it has great musical numbers, just the sight of john belushi dancing sent me into hysterics. the car chase scenes didn't grab me that much, but i'm really not a chase person. and there were moments that i was into them, so that's saying something. but the most horrible thing happened, which was the huge lead up of the entire movie, the big performance, was scratched on the dvd i got from netflix. i tried and tried but couldn't watch it. i'm going to get another one just to watch that scene.

only two weeks till my boyfriend comes home!

rough night

2006-07-23T23:39:00.000-07:00

so here's a new low for me... i was feeling so down today that i couldn't even get myself to watch a movie. that's just weird. like sitting there and watching movies is what you do when you're depressed, right?

i think the defeat of the michigan place not working out is finally hitting me, and it's not sitting well. i'm so incredibly frustrated about not being better i can't find the words. and to make matters worse i've gotten a little sick so my head's worse and i can't even walk, walking more being my major point of hope.

hopefully my life, and blogging, will get more on track soon.

all by myself (in a good way)

2006-07-22T20:15:00.000-07:00

sorry i broke my promise of returning to regular blogging yesterday. i'm sure my throngs of nonexistant readers were heartbroken.

so my mom had planned to visit the relatives in alabama while i was in michigan...except i was only there for a few days. she decided to go anyway, but everyone in my family is calling me like 10 times a day to make sure i'm still alive. i mean, i guess i would if i were them, considering i'm pretty well incapacitated, but it still seems pretty silly. and i'm actually having a great time, feeling mildly independant, feeling kind of like a real person. i've cooked two very simple dinners all by myself (well, my mom did some preparations for me)!

anyway my friend chi-chi from high school came to visit and stayed over last night. a few months ago we discovered a mutual obsession with the show one tree hill (you know, in a thinking it's hilarious in its badness kind of way), so she brought the first season, and we stayed up until i was practically falling asleep last night watching it (hence no blogging), and then watched much more today. ridiculous. and fantastic. oh, the drama. and the sex and drugs.

so that was basically my day yesterday and today.

oh, i finally finished watching apocalypse now. it's weird how much martin sheen looked like charlie sheen does now. but anyway. i don't really get the war movie genre. i suppose it's necessary, to remind us civilians of the horrors of war. but i don't really want a realistic depiction of war, soldiers spend their lives forever scarred by their experiences. also i accidentally got the version with 53 extra minutes (never do that). but as war movies go, although i don't see many, i have to say i think it was really good.

but i can't really say more than that cos my head really hurts. i wish irregular sleep schedules didn't make my head hurt. goodnight all.

michigan impossible

2006-07-20T21:51:00.000-07:00

i can't take credit for the clever name of my post, it's what my dad kept saying while we were in michigan.

so, i went to michigan. it didn't work out. i am now back home. i shall tell you the story. when last you and i last met, i was incredibly stressed out. i didn't post the night before i left because i was basically too stressed to move. except to pack and make lists of what i should pack. it was pretty ridiculous, and when i got a migraine on the car on the way to the airport, it was the third day in a row. luckily the flight was only about 2 hours. i have to say, i really wonder what disability people people came up with me as having in the airports. i get pushed around in a wheelchair, i wear sunglasses, a baseball hat, and these huge headphones that aren't attached to anything (they're noise cancelling). basically, i look really weird.

anyway, we get to ann arbour, i crash. we get up at 6:30 the next day for my 7:15 appointment. that's a good for a headache. we walk into the waiting room of the institute (by the way, it's called the Michigan Head-Pain and Neurological Institute), and the lights are all dim. amazing. i take off my sunglasses and baseball hat. there's even another area of the waiting room that's even darker. things are looking up. except i'm increeedibly tired and my head hurts a ton. so keep in mind for the events that unfold i was having trouble staying conscious. first i'm seen by a nurse who takes my history in an hour. in retrospect, while they were acting like it was this big deal that they gave us a whole hour to go over our histories, at the mayo clinic, the doctor (not a nurse) took my history, and took a few hours to do it, and there was no feeling of being rushed whatsoever, while at MHNI it was all, ok, we only have an hour, let's get this all in. i mean, not that everywhere can be the mayo clinic, but MHNI kept calling themselves a place of such excellence, so... anyway. here comes the good part.

so i was scheduled to see dr. saper, the head of MHNI. that's what they told me on the phone. when we got there, i was told i was seeing a different doctor, and that dr. saper never saw new patients. the doctor who i was now going to see was an osteopath. now, i was there with my dad, and my dad can at points be way too intrusive with my medical care. but he asked me if i wanted him to stir things up and get me an MD. i'd traveled all the way out to michigan. hell yeah i wanted an MD. he goes out, comes back a few seconds later, says things are taken care of. ok, then a few minutes later, the nurse, the head nurse, and the osteopath all come into the room and informed me and my father that i might not be a fit for the program. basically because we were too agressive and had asked for another doctor. had they heard of patients rights? the osteopath said that never in his 12 years at MHNI had he had his credentials questioned. really? dude, you didn't go to med school. he then looks through all my records, and finds that my dad had requested a change in doctor at the mayo clinic, asking for someone higher ranking. he gets pissed off and calls this a "pattern of behavior." my dad has many patterns of behavior, and plenty of them are bad, but seeking out the best medical care for me is not one of them. oy. ok, so then we are informed that the "team" including dr. saper will convene after i meet with the psychologist (seeing one is standard admittance procedure) to discuss whether or not i'll be allowed in. at this point it's all because i asked for an MD. we're already in the land of ridiculous.

so i meet with the psychologist. when asked if i've ever contemplated suicide, i say yes, because anyone who's had a migraine definitely has. when asked if i would ever carry through on suicidal thoughts i say no, when asked why i say i don't want to die, when asked why i say i like living. maybe it was just that i was so tired, but i found that interchange very amusing. so then i talk to the psychologist about what's up in terms of my dad and i being renegades (seriously, that's what we felt like), and i discover that my dad would positively not be allowed around during rounds. i very much wanted him there because i assumed i'd be all drugged up and not necessarily at my peak of being able to make decisions and ask questions, and it'd be good to have him there to do these things for me. but no, since i'm not a minor, a family member is not allowed. the psychologist is a much more reasonable man than the osteopath, but still, we get to an impass. oh, i've omitted that we'd been asking all day to meet with dr. saper, since everyone had been making clear that he was the one who was really in charge of everything. he was "unavailable."

after we left, i called my neurologist, who's all buddy buddy with dr. saper, and was like dude, help me out here, and he told me that dr saper had been planning on meeting with me the next day, which no one had bothered to tell us. we woke up really early the next day because we didn't know what time we'd be called in. then we get a call and learn that dr saper will make 15 minutes to speak with me, but only over the phone, not in person. now, i'm really good at making excuses for people, but i can't think of a good reason why he would do this, except he wanted to keep his distance. which isn't a good reason, so that leaves no good reasons. i tried to keep an open mind about what he'd be like, maybe he'd be fantastic. keep in mind that checking into MHNI had been my big hope about getting better for months, and i was willing to set aside some pretty big things in order to not give up on my dream of going. so i talk to dr. saper. i took some notes while we talked. here are some direct quotes from him. "i have to be in control" (that was repeated a few times, in different ways). this "has to be on our terms." "you have to let go." "you guys came in here like a hurricane." "you have to relinquish some control." ok, i've had doctors who clearly wanted me to give in to their power before, but for him to SAY it?? fucking scary as hell. he also told me that my dad was dictatorial (all we did was ask for an MD and for my dad to be present during rounds!) and agreed with the whole "pattern of behavior" thing. i thought i was going to have some agonizing to do no matter what after i talked to him, but it was crystal clear. get the hell out of there.

well, ann arbour was really nice at least. i'm going to try this in patient program at jefferson that apparently is really similar. the only thing that i still can't figure out after this whole experience is why MHNI has such a good national reputation, when they scared me to death before i even checked in. it was clear to me that as a patient they didn't want me to think or question anything. oh, i took a shower after i talked to dr. saper and my head hurt SO much less. that's the first time that i'd ever seen such a direct corrolation between stress and my headache.

regular daily blogging will resume tomorrow :)

stressssss

2006-07-14T21:01:00.000-07:00

day two of aurora being here, so again with the no movies. she left though :(

but i really started flipping out about leaving today. i guess my stress comes in three parts. here: getting all my medical forms, films and packing together. travel: travel is painful! it's loud, it's bright, it often involves smells, basically it's everything that's not good for me. there: they haven't told me much to give me any idea what this place is like. they mentioned a "seminar," yesterday, and i got off the phone and was kind of, oh? about what?

luckily i have a friend who goes to yale who also went to this place, and told me in incredible detail about the facilities and what to expect and placated my every fear. so that takes care of the third part of the stress, mostly. which should make me a third less stressed, but instead it just leaves me more time to stress about the other two. i have like 10 to do lists going. ok, 3, but still. even after doing a relaxation exercise, i stressed myself into a migraine tonight. and i still haven't stopped filling out forms (i'm almost done!), even though the migraine was my body clearly being like laura, STOP. i guess i just don't want to get another migraine tomorrow. that's pretty poor logic for not taking it easy tonight...

aurora's here!

2006-07-13T22:53:00.000-07:00

so today my feldenkrais practioner came back from her break. there's really no way to describe what feldenkrais is, especially without making it sound really stupid. i went to the national feldenkrais association website or whatever it's called and tried to find a concise description, and of course they didn't have one. i lie and my back and this woman moves me around in weird ways. basically, she's thinking about moving my bones, but all i know is it gets my muscles way more relaxed than any massage ever does. and then i had physical therapy. so for those of you keeping track, the things i'm doing to get better include the aforementioned two things, the non-acupuncture doctor, relaxation exercises given to me by my migraine specialized therapist, therapy (that's psychotherapy, to keep things straight), and of course, drugs. and i'm planning on starting hypnotherapy when i get back. i'm gonna beat this damned thing.

speaking of getting back, i'm getting really nervous about going to this hospital, but i don't have much to say about it, so...

anyway, one of my bestest friends, aurora, from yale is here, she'll be here for two nights, and thus i did not watch a single movie today. just spent a lot of time grinning and hugging her. i even drove her to get ice cream, five minutes from my house. look at me being mildly functional. joy abounds, but not much news.

simply satisfied

2006-07-12T21:38:00.000-07:00

i went to see my gynocologist today. unlike 99% of women, i almost enjoy gynocologist visits, just because mine is such an incredibly good doctor. normally i think of progress as a good thing (being a progressive and all), but the way doctors these days get in and out as fast as possible, unlike your old fashioned family doctor, it's a shame. she really takes her time with me. and it wasn't even what i was there for but i ended up having this long conversation with her about birth control. i can't go on hormonal birth control because no one knows if it'll make my head worse. ironically, it could make my head better, but they, and i, don't want to take that chance. i, however, being a reproductive rights person and having spent a lot of time with the statistics in my short life, would really really like to be on hormonal birth control. it stresses me out, and the stress, who knows, might make my headache worse. oh, the irony abounds.

i came home, did a relaxation exercise, and some yoga. took a shower. ok, so i accidentally got the version of apocalypse now with 53 extra minutes. they call that "redux." doesn't redux sound like it should be shorter? anyway, i could have just sent it back and ordered the normal version, but i thought, i always need more things to watch, might as well watch 53 more minutes of this. even as i thought this i had a sinking feeling. boy was i wrong. i think i'm about an hour and a half in (it's 3 hours and 22 minutes) and it's so friggin' intense. it's good though. i'll write more when i've actually watched it.

i ate dinner with my mom, and then i invited her to go on a walk with me. we decided last time that i was out-walking her and i didn't need her there anymore (when i was doing the incredibly short walks, i really needed to lean on her). when i got out the door, there was a lot of lightening, and some drizzle. i contemplated bringing an umbrella but then i realized: it's the summer, i can get caught in the storm. one of my very favorite activities is to walk/run/be in the warm rain. and i got to do it tonight. it was a good summer storm, really coming down hard for maybe 20 minutes. for a while i could barely see it was streaming down my face so fast, and i'm not sure the last time i'd been that happy. i jumped in some puddles.

I INTERUPT THIS BLOG TO BRING YOU WONDERFUL TIDINGS. i just left writing this to go watch my man, stephen colbert, on conan obrian. ok, so many wonderful things. first of all, i love conan, i love that he plays up his nerdom. secondly, i'd seen stephen colbert on a previous interview, he's plugging his new movie, strangers with candy, and he'd been kinda stiff. tonight he was fucking hilarious. and it kind of ended up being a competition to see who could be nerdlier. colbert made some d&d references, and spoke in elfin. the two of them discussed how it was miraculous that they had both found women who be with them and they had offspring. basically, it was hot. two funny, dorky men, being funny and dorky together, what more could i want? my boyfriend to be back in the states. sigh. moving on.

so back to the walk in the rain. basically it was amazing, i felt like i was doing something that i actually wanted to do for one of the first times since i've been home. i felt good, my head wasn't hurting that much. but i got a little overzealous, and wandered off into the patriotic neighborhood. see, i live in the royalty neighborhood, where the streets are named things like prince and queen and stuff like that. then there's the patriotic neighborhood with america dr and freedom ave and stuff like that. i called my mom at, i shit you not, the intersection of liberty and independence, because i knew i could wend my way home if i had all the energy of a healthy person, but i didn't. this abruptly ended my feelings of newfound independence. then, after mapquesting it, my mom, i again shit you not, instructed me to move on towards victory. literally, the street. the royalty names get annoying, but i'm really glad i don't live on victory or liberty. in the end, i walked for 45 minutes. conclusion? alternative therapies are working. and hopefully on the right meds i can really get my life back in shape.

note to self: stop watching the gilmore girls

2006-07-11T19:08:00.000-07:00

another early start today to get shocked by the non-acupuncturist. damn that hurts. i think it might have helped, i don't know. i'm throwing so much at myself right now, it's hard to tell what's going on. i just know i need to take it a little easier because my neck, shoulder and back muscles that are used to being left alone in their state of rock-hard are freaking out because i'm trying to chisel into them. soreness.

i watched 12 angry men (1957). i really liked it. but it's made in the fifties, you say. yeah, but a few things. the format of it, almost the entire movie (it's based off of a play, right?) taking place in one room, calmed down the overdone qualities of 50's movies. i don't know whether it was because of that or because it had exceptional people working on it, but it had some very subtle, beautiful moments, whether either with camera work or between two actors. finally, the cheesiness and grandiose nature that inevitably finds its way into movies of this period worked on me because i'm politics nerd. everyone tries to persuade me otherwise, but i really want to be called for jury duty. that's how i want to serve my country. and of course i would like to imagine it going something like what happens in the movie.

i hit up the tv after the movie, and watched the gilmore girls. i started watching it mostly because rory goes to yale, and in this episode it shows her being upset about dropping out of yale, and standing by as the freshmen come in (on a very realistic set, or possibly yale itself, they did some shooting during summers), and walk past her. man, i really didn't need to see that. i already feel like all my yale friends are passing me by on their way to jobs and med school (curiously, no one's going to grad school right away), and then seeing it manifested on screen....ugh.

anyway, i gotta go, the air conditioning's broken upstairs and i need to get back into the cool.

got to admit it's getting better

2006-07-10T22:06:00.000-07:00

i saw the new therapist again today. i mentioned this blog, and she asked if she could read it. i said i'd think about it. i think it'd be kind of weird for her to read about herself, among other things... anyway, it's pretty rocking to have a therapist who knows about migraines. it's like not having to explain this huge segment of my life, and she comes with years of experience and suggestions. she already gave me a relaxation cd. my favorite part was she gave me a sheet of reasons people give why they wouldn't do the relaxation cd. it was like looking in a mirror of myself from before i got worse and was unwilling to try to work to get better, i just wanted the meds to do it for me. so that's another silver lining of being so sick, becoming more open minded and flexible about trying new things. even if they're just relaxation exercises.

i then went to physical therapy (all kinds of therapy today). it was really great, and after all of that my head is feeling noticably better. which is excellent. but what was hysterical was margaret cho does this thing in i'm the one that i want where she's in the hospital (i forget why) and this woman comes in and says "i'm gwen i'm here to waaaash your vagina." you really have to see it to see why it's funny. but she says it seriously like 30 times. she just walks across the stage saying it over and over and over. and i'd just seen that on tv last night, and the physical therapist comes up to me and says, hi, i'm gwen. i nearly lost it. funny moment of the month.

then i came home and finished watching vertigo (1958). ok, so i know i'm going to film hell for saying this, but i think i just am never going to get hitchcock. i'll say that he makes some of my favorite pre-1965 movies, but that's really not saying much. cheesy! sexist! cheeeesy! people who have seen the movie... the dream sequence? am i really not supposed to crack up during that? after their week off, my dreamy boys stephen and jon were back in their fake hour of news on comedy central. i missed them. ok, seriously, hands up, who doesn't want a threesome with them?

ok, and i took a walk tonight, and, drum roll please... 25 minutes. wow. just. wow. i astound myself. pretty soon i'll be doing the new york marathon.

tomorrow i'm going to the non-acupuncturist to get myself shocked. saWEET.

friends and phone calls

2006-07-09T22:38:00.000-07:00

today was ok. not great, but not bad. i watched kiki's delivery service (1989), an anime film by the master animator/writer/director miyazaki. it's one of his early films, so while it's totally worth watching, and has much of his charm, it doesn't have the brilliance of his later films, probably my favorite of which is howl's moving castle, even though spirited away seems to be the consensus as to his best.

i did in fact make it down to my hammock in my back yard. it's really nice, and super great for staring at tree leaves. i talked to a couple of friends from high school, and just now i talked to my sister, and my friend from school who moved to cali and i keep playing phone tag. anyway, i've had a lot of good phone conversations. and i got to talk to my boyfriend for a long time, so that was really good :)

i started watching vertigo, i don't think i'll be that into it, but i'll see. my mom is totally addicted to battlestar galactica. and finally admits to it. it's a wonderful sight to behold.

sleepy saturday

2006-07-08T22:23:00.000-07:00

i was up till four last night (not that that's so late for me, but i haven't had enough sleep in days, and i've lost my ability to sleep in really late since being home) talking to my friend who's going through a rough time right now. a whole bunch of my friends are going through rough times. there's something in the air i guess.

in a weird turn of a events, my mom has started hanging out a little lately with the mother of my best friend from pre-k through about 6th grade, monica. apparently monica's home and looking for a job, and her boyfriend is also in europe. i've seen monica once since we went to college, and i'm really starved for socialization, but i honestly don't know if it's worth the agonizing five minutes of me explaining about my headache to yet another person, trying to figure out how much to include and exclude, and then her inevitable sincere expressions of extreme pity. it's weird, because i don't think of my headache as a personal thing at all, it never occurred to me to do so until some teachers at school asked my permission to tell other people about it, but i end up keeping it to myself as much as possible just so i don't have to go through all that. and i did that before, when i was functional, it feels... well i guess it does feel personal to have someone see me now. i feel i'm weak and exposed, because i'm just so sickly. i dunno, maybe i can meet up with her at starbucks (the one in my town has a nice little outdoor part, so it's quiet and in the shade), and then i can seem like a normal person. except for the part where my mom has to come pick me up because i can't drive.

i really didn't do much of anything today. making up for yesterday i guess. i did finally finish kill bill 2! i don't want to say much about it, i really don't think the two movies should be or are meant to be discussed much, because you're not supposed to think, you're just supposed to enjoy. it's visually pleasing, the references are cute (not that i got most of them), and it's funny in a really dry way. it's rife with problems, it can be critiqued based off of sexism, racism, etc, but i'm not going to bother, because again, you're not supposed to think. but you were supposed to think more in this one, there was less fighting, and because of this i will mention that the whole uma thurman's maternal instinct thing kinda pissed me off. she takes a pregnancy test and suddenly more important than her life is the very few celled organism in her uteris? i guess this is the way some womens' brains work, but i'm not sure if mine ever will. surely a woman in her line of work would take a second to consider an abortion. anyway.

i also watched good morning vietnam with robin williams today. it was kind of creepy, i'm pretty sure they could barely change the plot and could do a re-make taking place in iraq. except for it would have to have robin williams in it, so it'd be something like good morning vietman two, the US army's screwing up again only this time we're in iraq. i'm don't think it quite triumphed in the social commentary it was trying to pull off (they should just have just left making grave points about wars with humor to charlie chaplin, who did so brilliantly in the great dictator), but it was a good movie.

i ordered some more clothes online today, i made my mom sit by the computer with me, so it was almost like we were shopping together. one of the dresses at jcrew.com is $1000 and something! crazy! and nothing was below $100. anyway. on the few days i do get dressed in real, not lounge clothes, i spend a lot of time putting together my outfit and makeup and stuff, because it's fun and not something i get to do much. even though mostly just doctors get to see it :)

coming up tomorrow: trying out the hammock in my backyard, and possibly testing my limits to see if i can drive to starbucks (it's like 5 minutes away)

tree leaves

2006-07-07T22:36:00.000-07:00

i had a fantastic day today.

still haven't finished kill bill 2, and i didn't watch any other movies. here's why.

i saw the therapist who specialized in migraines. i'm not entirely sure i liked her, she didn't seem that warm, but i definitely like the concept of her. she really, really knows migraines, and is full of suggestions. she's going to do a relaxation exercise with me next time. if i were feeling better i wouldn't be open to suggestions like this, but right now i'm open to ANYTHING that will make me feel ANY better. i was worried that she'd be too migraine focused, but she said that that would really be up to me, and she could serve as a regular therapist as much as i wanted. that sounds pretty damned perfect to me. except i miss my real therapist. i really wish she didn't suck on the phone.

so then my mom and i had an hour and a half before my neck x-rays (non-acupuncturist acupuncturist's orders). so we went to the local strip mall (it's not what you think, it has a really beautifully manicured garden in the middle), got some delicious sandwiches (how i love my goat cheese), and ate outside. it was a stunningly beautiful day, and i haven't been outside much since it's been muggy. then we went to ten thousand villages and i bought earrings and a bracelet, and my mom bought a cd. i have soo much jewelery right now, but i figure there aren't many things that i get to take pleasure in right now, might as well shower myself with pretty things. THEN we went to the toy store and bought a remote control car for my 2 year old cousin zach. they make remote control cars for two year olds now. they're very appealing looking. i want one. zach is my one and only first cousin, and he doesn't quite count because he's my mom's half sister's kid, but i'm counting him because he's the only one i'll ever have. and i haven't met him yet, and i have to get better and go meet him before he's old enough to remember the first time he met me.

then i got my neck x-rayed. i looked at the x-rays and i think my neck looks fine, but i haven't been to med school. my mom wanted to go grocery shopping, and i couldn't go into the store cos that's way too much light and walking, and staying in the car would have been too hot, so she dropped me off in this little park. and it was delicious. i sat on the swings that were definitely too small for me for a really long time, listened to music, stared at the trees. i had a friend once from alaska and she said that us southerners (apparently in alaska everyone south of alaska is a southerner) don't appreciate leaves enough. so i've tried to really appreciate leaves since then. then i lay in the grass and listened to music and stared at the leaves. then i turned the music off and stared at the leaves. i haven't had nearly that much time alone not on the property of my house since my headache started, and it was wonderful.

magic wands

2006-07-06T22:05:00.000-07:00

so i saw a new therapist today. she'd sounded pretty flakey over the phone, but i figured i'd give her a try anyway. so i get there and the whole time i'm talking, giving my whole emotional life history, i'm staring at this like pretty princess type magic wand, which is pink and sparkly and has pink feathers coming off of it which is sitting on the table. and as we're wrapping up she produces ANOTHER (small, dark wood) magic wand, and talks about how she likes to keep magic wands around to remind her patients that she doesn't do magic, it takes work. riiight lady. my sister, my boyfriend, and my mother are all against me seeing her again. i'm willing to give her one more shot.

meanwhile i have another therapist appointment tomorrow with a woman much further away, but with someone who specializes in migraines. sounds good to me. she even used to be in a practice together with a neurologist who specialized in migraines, he did the medical side, she did the psychological side. tre cool. here's hoping she doesn't have wands.

i also was able to go on nearly a TWENTY minute walk today. holy shit! about a month ago i was barely able to walk for five minutes. i'm so definitely getting better. very exciting. i'm going to try other things too, like turning lights on. sometimes. maybe.

i watched part of kill bill 2, which i'll refrain on talking about until after i've finished it, and re-watched most of the battlestar galactica miniseries. if you like sci fi and aren't already hooked on this show, prepare to be even more of a nerd and stay in on fridays at 9? i think? when the season starts again in october. it has religious robots. it has romance and just plain sex. it has the balls the kill off main characters and skip ahead YEARS and basically change the premise of the show in the season finale. this is possibly the best show on tv right now. i mean, that's in production. cos it's not in season.

i need to get to bed cos that therapist appointment's early. for me time. and then i have an x-ray of my neck. i dunno, the non-accupuncturist ordered it. i don't really understand, i just do what the doctors tell me.

the dentist stole my day

2006-07-05T22:40:00.000-07:00

really i barely did anything today except for go to the dentist. really. i can say this though, i think i'm really coming out of the funk i've been in for the last while. yay! my room is full of disaster areas built up from the last 22 years, and especially the last 4 years of college just dumping things thinking that i don't really live here. so i cleaned up my room some more today, and also threw out tons of stuff in the bathroom. i threw out vaseline that i swear i've had my whole life. i didn't know vaseline could go bad. but it smelled bad. i chased my mom around the house with it. hehehe.

the dentist's technician had promised before hand that she could do it quietly as to not hurt my head, like just scraping, but i hadn't counted on the suction-y thing. that was a little too loud for me. and it HURT cos i hadn't been in two years. whoops. they were pretty mad at me. well, not mad, disappointed :) she said i had a lot of "plaque and debris." debris, like the stuff you find after a hurricane? i also have apparently been brushing my teeth totally wrong my whole life, like not just not long enough, which i knew, but at the wrong angle. i got a demonstration on an oversized set of teeth and oversized toothbrush. i was like really, this is a dentist office for grown ups, and i'm looking at an oversized toothbrush?

tomorrow i'm seeing a new therapist (i really should see one locally and not just talk to my one from school on the phone) but i don't have high hopes, she seems incredibly flakey. also i've become more and more convinced i should see someone who specializes in chronic pain, because that's really 95% of what goes on in my life right now. and she doesn't. anyway. i'm going to try someone who does in addition to this one and see who works out.

i break a rule

2006-07-04T22:46:00.000-07:00

so i've developed the rubric that i don't like movies pre-1965. before then everything was way too big and cheesy. overdone musical scores, overacting (god, the sobbing the women did), monologues full of grandiose ideas that don't belong in the character's mouths. cheeeeesy. around 1965 america grew some cynicism. phew. to be precise, the earliest movie (before today) that i really liked was the graduate, 1967. that doesn't even have a musical score, you don't see any sobbing women in that, and it's just simply darker. my other main problem with pre-1965 is that they didn't seem to understand how to keep the plot moving. i liked rear window (1954) ok, but even it had the lazy stroll pace of the 40's and 50's. i keep getting shot down for saying this, but then again no one has explained to me why i'm wrong: i simply don't get the deal with citizen kane at all. it has all of the problem's i've mentioned above, in spades.

anyway, i was apprehensive about watching casablanca (1942) today. i'd seen it when i was little, but the plot's a little hard to follow and i don't remember liking it that much. my dad said i'd like it, i hadn't gotten it when i was little cos it was love story and i'd like it now, but i was worried. 1942. that breaks the rule. and i'm running out of movies to agree with people that they are THE GREATEST MOVIES EVER MADE. ie have i mentioned i have no idea what makes citizen kane an even decent movie? please, explain it to me. i'm open to understanding. anyway, it did suffer from some cheesy orchestration and sobbing women, but it's simply masterful. i spent a lot of today trying to figure out what set it apart for me, and i think it's mostly the snappiness and tension of the multiple plots that pull us along. there's simply no urgency in citizen kane, and there's nothing but in casablanca.

casablanca was the only movie i had left, seeing as netflix doesn't deliver on national holidays. i basically am finished cleaning up the excessive messes of my room, i reduced the pile on my desk just to a small clutter. i did yoga AND walked to the end of my block AND around the corner and back. take that headache. but i'm not feeling better as promised by non-acupuncture acupuncture lady. maybe tomorrow... i really should call the headache clinic place i'm heading to and find out if they need their forms mailed in or just filled out before hand... tomorrow's main event is getting my teeth cleaned. they promised not to make much noise (so i'm assuming they'll be scraping like the old fashioned way) and to let me wear my sun glasses. there is a danger they will tell me i need to get my teeth drilled, since that's what they said last time. i'm not sure what i would do then, possibly have them sedate me, or just wait to get better and hope the cavities don't grow too big.

oh how i've missed you

2006-07-04T11:37:00.000-07:00

oh my god, for the very first time i missed a day of blogging. i'm sure the world nearly stopped turning. i guess i was kind of too exhausted after my day with the non-acupuncturist acupuncturist (hence forth dr chu).

she did all of these tests, most of which hurt. she pressed down on all of these places that are sore on me and asked me if it didn't hurt at all, slightly, moderate, or unbearable. is it just me or should there be one more in there before the last one? anyway, so that hurt. then she did an emg, which she said wouldn' t hurt, would just be electric pulses. now i've been around the medical profession way too long to buy the line "this won't hurt," yet for some reason i did. and then it did. then later she was talking about how the more tense the muscle is, the more an electric pulse will hurt. so you acknowledge the pain dr chu! why did you lie to me?!

THEN she stuck this needle in me. now she had told me there was going to be a needle and i didn't mind, i'm very used to needles by now. but daaamn. you know when they're trying to take you're blood and they don't hit the vein so they kind of jab around in there? it was like that, only worse cos it was deeper and in muscle. and then you know when you're getting a shot in you're muscle, like the flu shot, how you're supposed to relax your muscle so you don't get sore? she made me tense up my muscle. owww! and then she repeated this all over my arms and back.

then the treatment itself was more electric shocks. which hurt less than the emg, but still hurt some, and also made my muscles twitch, which just felt weird. my arm was flying all over the place.

but her reasoning behind why all this will make me feel better makes sense, so hopefully it'll help some.

i don't really have much to tell you about tv and movies from yesterday, i came back and napped and watched some stupid tv. i watched june's ironweed film (shelby knox was may), except i couldn't watch the feature film cos it was all in subtitles (too much reading). one of them was about this camp, seeds of peace, which i'd heard of before, which takes kids from either side of conflicts, palistinians, israelis, pakistanis, indians, and has them live together in maine and talk with each other. i'd heard of it before, and what i'd heard of it was that it was really sweet while they were there but when they got back they all reverted to suicide bombers and joining the army etc. but this movie showed not only the struggle they had during camp, but the bravery some of them exhibited afterwards in keeping the work they had done there alive. it made me more optimistic.

short day

2006-07-02T21:50:00.000-07:00

i slept till 3:30 today. that's really late, even for me. and i'm trying to get to bed early (on me time) because i'm seeing that non-acupuncturist acupuncturist tomorrow at noon. i filled out like ten pages worth of forms for her today, and basically the sum of the questions was, exactly how incapacitated are you? one of the questions asked how much i could read, and one of the answers was not at all. i guess if you check that you're having someone read the questions to you? that one mystified me a little. even after all this time of filling out fifty zillion forms for some reason i kind of like it. i don't really get it. i guess it's kind of nice to feel like i'm being productive and only have to write my name.

my only movie today was spaceballs. all i had from netflix was that and casablanca, and i was totally not in the casablanca mood. i've actually seen both of them before, but when i was much younger, and i thought it was important for me culturally to have myself up to speed on both. for different reasons on each, clearly. i don't think i really get mel brooks. i saddened a lot of people after watching blazing saddles for the first time recently and announcing i didn't like it. he's just so incredibly inconsistent. history of the world was pretty good, but again with the inconsistency. i think i liked spaceballs more this time around, but that's only because i've seen two of the three original star wars movies pretty recently (for cultural value).

since hbo had its summer line up on tonight, and i actually watched it all as it aired instead of on demand like usual, i'll discuss it. i like entourage. it's snappy, it's fun. the main character is hot. idea that it takes place in actual hollywood is cute. i really like that the cameos have nothing to do with the people they're supposed to be. like there is a character named "mandy moore" in the entourage universe who real mandy moore will play and the character may or may not have anything to do with her real personality. anyway. it's a total boys club, which is part of the charm and feel of the show, but sometimes the rampant sexism gets to me. skinny, barely clothed girls breeze in and out of each episode and shot. at least it doesn't try to dress up (excuse the pun) the fact that it's totally objectifying women.

lucky louie is a weird little sit com. it's about louie, shockingly, and his struggles through family life as a working class man. i still haven't figured out if i like it or not. i really liked the first episode, but i'm not sure if it's sustaining itself. check out the review in the nytimes, i pretty much totally agreed with everything they said.

tourgasm sucks. as my friend marissa said, how could a show about comedians be so boring? it's a reality show that follows a group of 4 (i think it's four, maybe it's three) guy comedians on their tour. the clips of them on stage are pretty good, i guess. i like other stand ups a lot better though. unfortunately it mostly shows them in their offstage antics, where they are not at all funny, but constantly trying to out-testosterone each other. the one guy who, ok, is a bit annoying, but shows the slightest signs of human feelings is mocked mercilessly. most of tonight's episode was taken up with wrestling each other to tear things off of each other to throw over the fence into niagara falls. and pulling equally mature pranks. i dunno, shouldn't they be sitting around telling jokes that us not employed in the joke industry couldn't ever come up with?

i don't think hbo's ever come up with anything brilliant. while i have watched sex and the city way to many times, i swear it's because it's on demand. it was cute, and fairly well written, but i don't agree with my fellow fans that it was brilliantly written. i mean really, how many puns is one viewer supposed to take per episode. maybe the sopranos was brilliant, i never got into it. my point is this. i think they're doing as well as they ever have, putting on fun, watchable shows, which is more than most of tv can say. however. has anyone else noticed the theme here? lucky louie is the only show where a woman gets more than a couple of lines per episode. and it's still definitely through his eyes. am i just supposed to watch the chick flicks on hbo signature (what kind of name is that, anyway?), or watch my reruns of sex and the city and shut up? i'm not sure what sex and the city did for feminism, but at least it had an all female leading cast, and it was through their, even if not necessarily feminist, point of view. c'mon hbo, let us back in.

into uncharted television territory

2006-07-01T22:24:00.000-07:00

it's been another day in a funk. my boyfriend is many too many time zones away. i miss friends and reading, thinking, doing things i actually care about. words cannot express how bored i am.

as i've told a lot of people lately though, in all of this crap i've become a firm believe in the every cloud has a silver lining deal. even if the cloud is really really big and the lining is really really skinny. so in my immense boredom, and disinterest in the movies i had today, i poked around outside of my normally tv channels, and discovered logo, a gay tv channel. oh, i heart gay culture. i watched gay (male) ruby teams, gay rodeo, gays on farms, gay couples getting married in massachusetts...beautiful, fun, funny.

i also watched inherit the wind (1960). i should say i was totally not in the mood for it, but i also had really been looking forward to watching it for a couple weeks before today, what with having learned about the scopes monkey trial in history class and thinking that actually was history. sigh. oh america, why must you de-evolve. anyway. i may just not be cut out for movies pre....oh, 1965, but i didn't like it that much. it was so over done, with the cheesy music, and the cheesy girlfriend who cries in like every scene, and the cheesy characters who stand for different concepts. i can say it was well acted though. i guess i just feel like you should do a story about an event only when you have to twist the facts a little to make it dramatic, not when you take the fact the the event happened as a starting point for writing a screenplay.

i'm off to bed. sweet dreams blogosphere.

baby steps

2006-06-30T22:19:00.000-07:00

most of the time i manage to maintain a pretty good mood. then every so often i remember what my life is really like, and this is annoying. it is annoying because it makes me just want to sleep and watch tv and movies, but unlike an ordinary person who's feeling down, i can't tell myself to get off my ass and go out and do something, because all i can do (basically) is sleep and watch movies. on very happy energetic days i tackle cleaning up my room, which has many reminants of middle school and the 90s such as some scrunchies i threw away the other day. not just any scrunchies, they had been my dress scrunchies. i can't believe there was ever such a concept. anyway.

even though i slept for a large amount of today i fit in three movies and some tv because i didn't feel like doing anything. well actually i had a huge triumph of walking all the way to the end of my street and back (that's about 4 blocks total). back in february i couldn't walk a block. baby steps. literally.

is this my headache and then movie reviews style too choppy? should i just get rid of one or the other? is anyone reading this other than rebecca?

so the movies. a thin blue line was first, which i watched during lunch. it's a documentary investigating whether the man who was convicted for killing this cop is actually guilty. it's chock full of reenactments, which normally are so cheesy, but i think they made them so over the top cheesy that it actually worked. it's a weird little movie, and i might even go as far as to say it was kind of funny. i liked it.

ladies in lavendar was my midday matinee. it's about two old sisters in england who rescue foreigner from the sea and become a little overly attached. this is not a good movie. its plot drags, it does weird things with slow motion and random still shots. but there are some actors who i would literally pay to watch read the phone book. maggie smith and judy dench are both in that category, so i didn't regret netflixing it. besides, the man they rescue was hot. oh, and a pet peeve of mine in movies is when someone is supposed to be playing an instrument but clearly is not. this guy wasn't bad at miming. if you kind of zoned out you could pretend he was actually playing violin.

and after dinner i watched the education of shelby knox with my mom. this is another documentary, about sex ed. now, you can't get this by renting it, you can only get it through ironweedfilms.com. hm, i should link them. you pay them a small fee every month, and they ship you a documentary made by a progressive film maker and a couple of other short films. my awesome boyfriend found them for me. anyway, shelby knox was pretty good, but it initially aired on pbs a year ago, and it wasn't as good as i'd been hoping for the past year. one of my favorite moments in the movie though is when she's struggling with her faith and she talks to her pastor and in explanation for why he looks at her weird sometimes he says something like "christianity is the least tolerant religion on earth. and sometimes you're really tolerant." are there really people who think that the concept of tolerence is a bad one?

i want to get better so badly. get me out of here...

in which i attempt to be an artist

2006-06-30T00:31:00.000-07:00

so a few lives ago (high school/freshman year of college) i was a bit of a photographer. i dabbled. it was never anything serious. it was an open relationship, it didn't get jealous of homework or drawing or anything. but i did like me some alone time with the noxious chemicals in the darkroom. i was strickly into black and white.

fastforward to now. the most creative thing i do is knit. i hate crafts. like i really hate them, but sometimes my head hurts too much to do anything else. so a couple times now i've whipped out my digital camera and delved into color photography.

i think i'm really rusty and i think i'm better at black and white, and i also think i'm restricted to photographing things in my house, because i'm fucking restricted to my house by my headache, but i think this photo turned out ok. the colors need photoshopping, but i don't know how to do that. i may or may not post more later. oh how i tease you, non-existant reader.

my boyfriend is alive!

2006-06-29T23:40:00.000-07:00

sorry the title of my post has nothing to do with headaches or movies, but it's the most exciting thing in my life right now. he called me from berlin. joy! now he just has to survive the ravenous soccer mobs...

today is a Very Good Day. let's start big scale. here's where you get to hear about me being a reproductive rights nerd. this is going to happen from time to time. so a bit ago the FDA ruled to allow the HPV (STD, leads to cervical cancer) vaccine to be on the market. but the little cancer preventing vaccine had an almost bigger hurdle: a recommendation from the CDC for routine vaccinations. this was needed to make it cheaper, covered by more insurance, and generally more accepted. and it got it today! huzzah! now kiddies will get vaccinated at 11 or 12, hopefully before they're having sex, and cervical cancer rates will drop drastically. if states follow the recommendation. other good thing in world news: the supreme court handed a big fat no down to bush. hehehe.

and in my life? well as we already covered, my boyfriend called me. twice. excellent. ok, here's something that proves that it was a Very Good Day. so i have this chronic migraine, right, never goes away. but on top of that i get episodic migraines, rather like your ordinary migraine sufferer. i don't get auras (that's seeing lights and stuff before the migraine) but i do get dizzy or feel sick or on occasion i have just had the general feeling that something's wrong. basically the rule is if it occurs to me i might be getting a migraine, i am. which after 3 and a half years is a rule i still try to deny when i'm getting a migraine, but that's the rule. which got broken tonight! my dad took me out to dinner, to the only place i can go out to dinner, it's really quiet and dark and has DElicious food. we were eating lobster (mm, yummy) and i blinked, and the room was spinning. i felt weird for a few more minutes, my head started hurting more, and then it started hurting less! amazing!

the final reason that it was a Very Good Day was that i saw a movie that i thought was really good, which doesn't happen that often, even though i only rarely intentionally watch fluff. oh hollywood, what's your deal? Ghost in a Shell (1995) is an anime movie. i'm very new to anime. i think possibly the only anime i'd seen before i started this movie spree was the power puff girls. is that even anime? ok, i'm exaggerating, i have an ex who was into anime, but still. i'm new at this. but i'm starting to gather that there's a genre of anime that's like: the future as totally screwed up urban wasteland...or is it? i think Ghost in a Shell was purposefully unclear about how optimistic it was. are humans combining with machines a good or bad thing? it was purposefully unclear about a lot of things, and the plot got incredibly confusing, which i always find annoying and want to be able to piece together every loose strand, but acknowledge that sometimes you just need to let go. this was a movie where if you let go, you're in for a good ride.

an awesome thing about having so much time to watch movies is that i watch any special feature on dvds that is at all interesting. on a special feature of another anime movie the director talked about how in japan there is so little space, and the japanese are very careful about how they use their space. similarly, anime uses the least possible movement, and every time something moves in a frame it has meaning. i really like that. it's like the animated version of poetry. i think this is an art-form i really want to get into.

i also watched margaret cho's revolution. i've become a huge margaret cho fan. first of all, i think stand up is underappreciated as an art, and i take my stand up very seriously. that was a weird sentence, wasn't it. secondly, margaret cho is an unabashed feminist, which is hot, and also she talks about sex in this really open and funny and chill way, and i think our society needs about fifty billion times more of that. katha pollitt once said that we need to talk about sex more so that we become less ashamed of it so that when people have sex they don't pretend they're not doing it and therefore don't use a condom. except for she said it a lot better. anyway, as awesome as margaret cho is, i think this is my least favorite of her movies. the other ones were just more hilarious. like i was laughing so hard i couldn't breathe for a while hilarious. i would have to see them all again in order to properly rate them (and again, and again...), but in order of best to worst (and worst is waaay better than most comics): notorious c.h.o., i'm the one that i want, assassin, revolution. i can't wait to get better and see her live.

here's to hoping tomorrow is even better.

scent of a woman

2006-06-28T17:20:00.000-07:00

i had a very light movie day, only one. this is the exception, i promise you.

the reason i only watched one movie is i actually had a very productive day, talked to some doctors. i'm going to this place in michigan in july that specializes in headaches. my neurologist seems fairly confident that they'll cure me. i think it'd be nice if they did, but i'm trying to stay realistic. i think it'll take more than a visit to a clinic to break through this killer thing.

so in that light i made an appointment to see a woman who i thought was an acupuncturist (which i've so tried to avoid but have tried twice, to no avail) but actually she apparently does some kind of electronic stimulation thing that's based off of acupuncture. i really hate deviating from western medicine, but after three and a half years of this headache, and four months of being stuck in my house, i'm pretty set to try anything.

on to movies. i should mention that i am no film buff, i am not a film major, i just happen to be watching a ton of movies. there's my little disclaimer. scent of a woman (1992) is cute. i didn't think i'd appreciate watching a movie for 2 hours and 45 minutes in order to find it cute, and maybe it's my immense boredom, but it didn't drag too badly, and in the end, essentially, it was just cute, and i liked it. it was on the whole predictable, and like most predictable movies, though it played around with some darkness, things are pretty much happy. pacino really stands out, and does the jack nicholson-like asshole-who-has-a-heart-underneath part extreme justice, so it's not shocking he won an oscar for it. on my nerdy tv obsessions side, i really enjoyed seeing both bradley whitford (josh on the west wing) and frances conroy (ruth on six feet under) have small roles. have people heard that sorkin has a new show coming up in the fall with bradley whitford in it?? anyway. i recommend scent of a woman if you have a lot of time and are feeling particularly cheesy, like you're snowed in or something. oh and it was a little sexist. but if i can get over it, you can too.

oh, i almost forgot. i added a link to scouts honor. apparently i'm not the only one to decide to blog about a particular phase in my life. my friend is blogging about being a councilor for the boy scouts. i hope she sneaks around and tells them it's ok to be gay.

on a final note, my boyfriend is lost in europe. anyone who finds him, please return him to me. thank you, and goodnight

hello blogosphere

2006-06-27T22:39:00.000-07:00

so let me just start out with the friendly hello that i don't like blogs. i don't really have anything against them. but i don't really get the appeal. in making them or in reading them. oh, i've experimented in blogging, c'mon, who hasn't, but it didn't deliver the highs promised.

so what are you doing here, the blog reader asks?

i'm excruciatingly bored. so, so, absurdly, insanely bored. i have this chronic migraine, it never goes away (yes, i have it right now), i've had it for three and half years, and on february 13th it got WAY worse. basically all i can do is sit at home at watch movies. i'm limited in even really basic things, like walking.

so, because of my absurd boredom, i'm going to write about my migraine, my life, and the movies i've watched in the day (which is most of what my life is). the movie reviews are my giving back part. all of my entries will be brief because writing this, yes, you guessed it, makes my head hurts.