zeptember

March 29, 2007

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Category: Depression, Hormone therapy. Posted by zept at 6:14 pm.

nervous breakdown monday
recovery still on the brink tuesday
don’t fuck with me wednesday
the last customer HAD to piss me off thursday

what will friday hold?

I almost made it through another week. Go me!

Today my friend sherpa brought me a present to work. She rode her bicycle all the way from her workplace, went to the store, found a gluten-free pie, bicycled to my workplace, and delivered it!
WHAT A WOMAN!

I am loved.

Yesterday afternoon, after work, I went in search of new combat boots. The closest army surplus store was 10 miles from my work so I trucked down there in rush hour traffic, only to find that they didn’t have any jump boots in my preferred style.
Bust.

I realised then that I was close enough to my favourite sushi joint. I decided lately that if I’m going to be miserable on ovarian supression medication, then I’m going to goddamn very well have my favourite food and drink EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK if I can help it.
Why? Because food and drink make me happy.
So I went and ordered a massive amount of sushi and took it home to my man, and we feasted like kings. :D

My search continues for new combat boots - I will have to trek back to San Francisco Real Soon, Now.

And as of today, I’m on the hunt for roller skates again. So before I join my mates at Pissup Nite™, I’ll head over to the sporting store and see if I can find anything suitable.
I dunno, it’s been like three years now, I’ve been on a kick about wanting to roller skate. Ever since our failed attempt at roller blading (my boyfriend felt like his ankles were breaking, and I got shin splints), I’ve decided to just go back to my childhood and get new rollerskates.

Don’t let my fun fool you. I was suicidal again today when as my last call of the day, I got some cuntslit who yelled and put me down and verbally abused the shit out of me for no good reason. I hung up on her and threw my phones and left the building. I didn’t finish my emails today. I just left.
I didn’t let customers bother me like this before getting on the hormones. Now I get The Rage on a daily basis. It’s really … REALLY… out of my control and depressing and puts me in that pit where I don’t like to be.
Oh and morale at work is through the foundation. One guy quit on Friday without having another job lined up - he told me and a couple others that he was so miserable there that being jobless is much more appealing. The same day, a newly hired temp was fired for demanding to be hired. Then, on Tuesday, a permanent employee was fired “for performance reasons”. Then today, another cow-orker starts ranting to me again about how much worse the place is sucking, now, and how she’d convinced they’ll fire her before she can go on maternity leave cuz they don’t want to pay for it and they did that to a girl in the sales department…. and then she tells me she’ll bomb the building but give me advanced notice so I can get out. This is the same girl who now, for the last two days, has people logging into her computer (popping her screen) to see what she’s doing. Usually one gets their screen popped if one is taking over 2 minutes to write up a phonecall. But people are staying logged into her machine for hours at a time for the last two days. She says, “they’re going to fire me next”.

Oh, and because we’re down a few people, and several others called in “sick” today (did I mention morale is low?), we were all forced to give up half of our lunch hour and keep taking calls, which, for the past two days, keep hovering around 13 in queue all damned day.

It’s THAT bad, there.

I highly recommend at this point that you sit down and watch the movie Office Space.

I popped TWO lorazepam on the way out of work and listened to angry music on my iPod all the way home.

Then I got inside, my cats crawled all over me and purred, I had some gluten-free cherry pie with a wee glass of port, and now I feel muuuuucccch better.
I survived. I made it. I came home and didn’t sob. I didn’t break down. I didn’t make out a new Shitlist.

Time to see if I can get me some roller skates and then head over to Pissup Nite™.

March 27, 2007

better today

Category: Depression, Employment, Car Accident Related, Hormone therapy. Posted by zept at 9:29 pm.

Today was bad and good.

I woke up feeling like shit. My eyes were puffed and stinging from all the crying the night before. My shoulders and neck were stiff and sore, despite having taken a muscle relaxer the night before.
I didn’t have an appetite so I grazed on stuff here and there instead of making a meal.

I went outside to my car and it was a lot colder than the previous day or evening had been, due to the storm that had rolled through. So I bundled up with my scarf, put on my gloves, and took off, heading towards the gas station.

I drove right past the police station, and a motorcycle cop shot out and followed me. He pulled me over. I had no idea why until I came to a stop, rolled down my window, and went to unbuckle my seatbelt.

That’s when I realised I’d not put my seatbelt on.

I always put my seatbelt on, ever since my car accident in 1994.

The cop was apologetic. He ran my license - clean. He came back and apologised - said it’s “click it or ticket” month and he HAD to give me a ticket. I took the fucking ticket and had no way to explain myself. “But I just forgot this once” doesn’t cut it when they’re on official quota for a specific violation. The ticket will cost me betwen $78 and $89.

I nearly cried right there after the cop left. I nearly turned my car around to go back home and sob again. But for some reason, I put on my seatbelt and continued on my way.

“I have no choice” rang in my head again.

I got to work and began my day. I felt like I could have a nervous breakdown at any moment. My shoulders continued to tighten.

Just before lunchtime, a disgruntled cow-orker of mine informed me that one of our cow-orkers had been fired.

Well, last Friday, another cow-orker was fired (I later found out she was threatening management to hire her full time so they told her to feck off), and another cow-orker quit without another job lined up because this company is that stressful to people.

Later on, I was told that the cow-orker who was fired today was told it was for poor performance. I was told she’d had more than one warning. But the thing is, how is it poor performance when she was taking between 33 and 48 calls per day? That’s about what I take.
Well, another cow-orker told me that good performers take up to SIXTY calls per day.

So now I wonder if I’m next to be fired.

“There must be better ways than this, I ask you” - 1000 Homo DJs

I worked through lunch and left early to go to another MRI appointment. This is the one that was denied, then accepted by the insurance company. It’s for my neck/shoulder pain and is related to the car accident. Sounds sick to say but I was happy that my shoulder felt like it was about to go out, and I was in pain laying there for 20 minutes in the MRI tube. Because that means something was going on and something will show up on film for the doctor to look at.

When I got out of the MRI office, I had to take an anti-anxiety pill. I HATE the noise from those things. This time, the attendant was nice enough to tell me how many minutes each iteration would last. So I counted the seconds and tried not to let the loud noise of the MRI machine take over the counting. .. if that makes sense. The noise made different pitches of sounds. And as I count, I tend to get OCD with counting sometimes. But on top of the OCD, I tend to let sound get in the way of counting. So instead of a steady “one one thousand, two one thousand”, my brain lets the sound dictate how the seconds will be counted, and they’ll draw out longer or be shorter. I amused myself by fighting against that, and freaked out less by the sounds this time.

But as I said, I still needed an anti-anxiety pill when I got out of there. I had remembered to grab the camera this morning, and so I drove straight to the estuary after my appointment, and snapped pictures of ducks, geese, sandpipers, seagulls, foliage, the shoreline, and ground squirrels.

Special note to Mel: I didn’t feed the ducks but I did enjoy watching them. They make me think of my sister, who loves ducks. :)

I’d post the pix but I STILL don’t have photoshop on the new machine. I keep bugging my boyfriend for a crack of it.

I got home and the depression set in again. I wonder if it’s the friggin house, or just the fact that I’ve come home and that’s the end of my day and I’m on the countdown before bed again. I’m so stressed out by time regulation it isn’t funny.
So I started drinking.

I only had two drinks. It was enough to get me nice and fuzzy. I chatted online with friends for a bit, then took a shower.

Now it’s time for bed.

March 26, 2007

breaking

Category: Depression, Hormone therapy. Posted by zept at 6:37 pm.

Still having breakthrough bleeding.

Enjoyed the sights on the way home because of the storm clouds.

Got home and sobbed for half an hour straight while pacing the house and clutching my head.

I hate the synthetic hormones.

I hate my job.

I’m waiting for the on-call nurse to call me back. She’ll probably tell me to get off the Yasmin. But then I bleed and get horrible cramps.

Either way, I might have to miss more work. I can either miss due to being mental sobbing basket case or I can miss due to dying menstrual pain.

And we just got lectured on Saturday on our mandatory overtime day at work that we can only take 3 days off total per month from now on.
And I’ve already taken 3 this month as of tomorrow when I have to leave early to get another MRI (car accident related - to get my neck looked at this time).

As of this Friday I will have worked 100 hours since March 16th.

Crying resumes.

Crying stopped by 8pm when I took a shower.

The on-call nurse never called back.

I considered at one point during my pacing and sobbing that I should just take myself to the Emergency Room and commit myself.

But fear took hold.

I have to be at work - I’m afraid to miss any more days.

I’m afraid to be locked up for longer than I need.

I’m afraid of how much it will cost to be locked up.

I didn’t try calling the on-call nurse or the manager because I was afraid they’d tell me to stop taking the Yasmin, and if I stop taking it, I will bleed and have pain again.

Oh and don’t say ‘how do you know?’
I’m tired of having to prove myself to people. I’m so goddamned tired of being the one who knows myself best, yet having to prove to the medical establishment and anyone else who talks to me that YES, I DO know myself well enough to make a statement about what MY BODY will or will not DO.

I TOLD everyone I get psycho and fucked up on synthetic hormones. I was asked to prove myself with “oh they’ve changed the dosage in the past seventeen years, just try it out” and “oh but you never tried THIS one before, just try it” and “you’ll never know unless you JUST TRY IT”. I’ve proved myself.

Now the only quandry is do I continue to prove myself or have I proven myself enough? When is it enough for me and the world? Am I now on a mission to prove to MYSELF - that is to say, have I lost the ability to TRUST myself over this??? Is that why I go on?
So the quandry is do I stay mental and miss more work or do I go off the Yasmin and get bleedy painful doom again and miss more work?

I make my case again for disability insurance. Only, I’m never sick enough for the federal government (social security disability insurance - SSDI). They say my disability means I can’t work AT ALL for a year or more. THEN they’ll give me money. And it will never be enough to live on.

I make my case therefore for reset button.

March 25, 2007

the brain won’t stop

Category: Depression, Hormone therapy, Alcoholism. Posted by zept at 12:10 pm.

I never did get to finish my last post. I had to finish getting ready for work and then left for work. Suffice it to say that the depression passed, and I felt better on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Today is the usual anxiety day - I have to get housecleaning and laundry done before returning to work again tomorrow. I only had one day off work this week because we were forced to work on Saturday to test the new CRM.

I’ve been on manic mode since Friday. I’ve got too much energy, I’m having weird dreams, my legs keep twitching and bouncing, my neck and shoulders are sore, I ramble on and on not just here, but in talking with people face to face, rapidly changing subject like someone with Attention Deficit Disorder.

Next depression? Dunno when. It’s a roller coaster when one is on synthetic hormones. It wasn’t this much of a roller coaster just having hormonal imbalance. Adding synthetic hormones to the mix just makes it a whole new level of fucked up.

There’s other stuff, too. There’s TMI stuff. Stop reading now if you don’t want to hear about TMI grossness.

….

A lovely side effect of taking Yasmin is yeast infection. I got something to take care of it, but then I started bleeding. It is light but has lasted for several days already. I’ve been wearing pads again. Perhaps it’s breakthrough bleeding because george caught on that he was supposed to show up last weekend but was suppressed? I dunno.

I’m about to change schedule of when I take my pill again, too, because I keep forgetting to take it at night before bed. I’m constantly between 1 and 3 hours late. That could also be why I’m getting breakthrough bleeding. So now I’ll try taking the pill with my lunch. I can’t take it with dinner cuz I rarely eat dinner. I get home from work and graze on popcorn or I drink booze. I need to take the pill with food or I get nauseous.

Another thing I’m going to alter again is my sugar intake. I remember sugar playing a significant role in my depressions before, and I’ve been craving sugar like nobody’s business since being on the pill. So it has to go. I know this means I’ll have another emotional meltdown due to withdrawls, but I have to do this for long term sanity. Here’s hoping that this helps me out.

Regarding the drinking….well… yeah. I need to stop that again too. Let’s just take it one thing at a time, shall we?

March 22, 2007

Category: Depression. Posted by zept at 5:33 am.

It’s not getting any better. Came home last night, did dishes, expressed my desire for a devastating earthquake to swallow me and everyone alive, and cried when my man was out of earshot.

This morning I found a list of shrinks in town covered by my man’s insurance (I’m still listed as domestic partner on his health insurance). I get 20 visits at $25 each. That’s about what, 4 months? Short term mental health care.

What I really want is for the government to give me my goddamned Social Security money. Every year they send me a statement of how much money I’ll be getting when I reach retirement age. But I know that there won’t be any money left in the Social Security fund when I’m of retirement age. Hell, according to the Fiscal Year 2008 Annual Performance Plan from the Social Security Administration, there won’t even be enough money left in the fund for people of retirement age in my mom and dad’s generation (Baby Boomers - many of whom already ARE of retirement age):

The large baby-boom generation (persons born between 1946 and 1964) is nearing retirement and most will have retired by 2030. Without changes to the program, there will not be enough workers to generate sufficient taxable income to support the Social Security benefits needed for the baby-boom generation. -Social Security Administration

March 21, 2007

Depression

Category: Depression, Employment, Hormone therapy. Posted by zept at 5:46 am.

I’ve been depressed since March 14th. I took most of the day off work on the 15th, and the entire day off on the 16th. The anxiety that resulted from being off work intensified my depression, because I was afraid I’d be fired when I returned on Monday.

On top of that, I spent the weekend from Friday through Sunday with anxiety panic moments over the thought of returning to work on Monday - not because I thought I’d be fired, but because I just didn’t want to go back.

I returned back to work on Monday to no firing - no reprimands - no nothing. However, my depression worsened:
Now that I’m full time, I’m expected to participate in the weekly company meetings, which fall on Mondays. This means that once a week, I have to give up my lunch hour - it’s mandatory. Oh sure, they pay me for it, but I’m lucky if I have ten minutes to scarf my lunch down (half the time it takes that long just to assemble and reheat my specially prepared gluten-free lunch). On the Mondays when I have to work through lunch on the phones so other groups can attend the meeting, I only have time for two very hasty bites between phone calls, resulting in a cold lunch and foul mental state.

Then there’s the mandatory charity outings that the company invokes upon its employees. This month’s endeavour entails spending a day out in the sunshine pulling weeds and other laborious work for a nature preserve. Paid, of course.
The Yasmin pill makes me very sensitive to sunlight. My eyes hurt and I can burn easily. The company simply says, “wear sunblock”.
I’m not the only one grumbling about this. It was brought up in the company meeting that people across teams and departments are grumbling loudly against participating in charity stuff as part of the job description. Despite it being part of the job description, we must sign a waiver that should we become injured on such an outing, our company is NOT to blame.
I’m not scheduled to go for another couple of weeks, but I’m trying to find a way out.

Back to my depression - Monday night I came straight home from work and drank myself drunk. I woke up Tuesday morning with a slight hangover. Tuesday I took a total of 3 Lorazepam for anxiety - two at work and one on the way home.
I got home from work Tuesday evening and did some dishes and went to bed before 9pm. I was awakened at 1am by my boyfriend, who was just crawling into bed, wanting to know if I’d set my alarm.

This set off another panic attack, only this time, I didn’t have any medication. I wasn’t supposed to have gone to bed so early - I was supposed to pick up my prescription. And I’d also forgotten to take my Yasmin pill. I whined near tears at my boyfriend for allowing me to have slept. It’s not his fault but I was panicked.
I did my breathing exercises and soon fell back to sleep.

Woke up this morning with a left shoulder so sore, it feels like it’s about to go out again.

…and now it’s time to go to work.

March 18, 2007

St. Patrick’s Day - revelations on why I have such an attitude about it

Category: Rant, Family. Posted by zept at 12:53 pm.

I cannot believe that in all the years I’ve been journaling online, I’ve never once gave a St. Patrick’s Day rant. I went back and looked - even through my old online journal.
I’m sure I’ve wanted to rant, but didn’t know where to start.

What set me off this year was hearing a movie review on National Public Radio (NPR) for The Wind That Shakes The Barley. I became instantly obsessed with this movie and found the trailer for it.

For eighteen years, I’ve been reading off and on about the plight of Ireland and its fight for independence. Eighteen years is not a long time to be knowledgeable about this, but remember:

  1. I’m an American, and Americans don’t even know their own history
  2. I was raised in a Christian Fundamentalist Bubble so this counts double against the first point
  3. Most Americans don’t seem to get formal education about the world outside of their own town til they go to college - IF they go to college (and it’s there that I learned about Ireland’s fight for independence, among other things)

Now, I was raised to be very proud of my Irish heritage (This heritage is a fallacy, as I’ll discuss later). It started with my ma’s side of the family. They are named McBee. All our lives, my ma and I were told that her ma’s gramma was Scottish, and her grampa was Irish. And we were told that on her dad’s side, they’re Irish.

This proud family heritage led the family to be over the top for St. Patrick’s Day every year, to show off our pride.

There’s only one problem with that picture (the second fallacy in my family pride): My ma’s family is staunchly Baptist - an offshoot of Protestantism.

St. Patrick was Catholic.

American Baptists/Protestants hate Catholics, often citing that the Pope is Satan.

But I had no idea of this when I was a kid. All I knew was we wore green on St. Patrick’s Day and I showed off my pretty Irish red hair.

All this pride and continuous oral family history from a young age led me to be very interested in genealogy. I began asking my dad about his side of the family, and learned that his family is a mix of Scottish, German and Finnish. And I get my red hair from my dad (so here’s a third family history fallacy - my Irish red hair is likely more Scottish if dad, who is Scottish, has red hair, right?)

Based on all this nationality talk, I was raised from childhood to recite my nationalities as “Irish, Scottish, German, Finnish¹ and American Indian”.

…Wait.

American Indian???

Oh yeah. Forgot to tell you about that. My ma’s side of the family absolutely insists that we’re also of Cherokee Indian descent. They often pin grampa’s mother as half Cherokee. I was taught to say I was a sixteenth Cherokee, and that my high cheekbones were obvious evidence that I’m Indian.
There’s only one problem with that. It’s never been proven that great-gramma was Native American, and the family REFUSES to talk about it, because, and I quote my grampa, “Indians are heathens. They don’t believe in God.” Grampa was very prejudiced. He hated anyone who wasn’t white and God fearin’.
His kids would lament for years that because of their dad’s prejudice, they were denied full scholarship to college. I was told that if one can prove Native American ancestry down to an eighth percent, one can go to college for free.

But again, it’s never been proven that there’s any Native American blood in our family.

But that never stopped my mom from sitting me for portraits with my hair in braids while she fawned over how Indian I looked (despite the fact I’m pale white with red hair…it’s the cheekbones, you see…)

By now you see a great many fallacies come forth. I didn’t really start to put all this together until college, and once I did, I became enraged at how ignorant my family is. My family is the very stereotype of Southern ignorance.

Speaking of Southern ignorance - here is where I break the cycle:

I had moved to California in 1997 and was working for a company processing ambulance reports. One day, an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT - ambulance person) came in to make small-talk with us as we processed the reports. She had beautiful red hair, skin paler than mine, and was right off the boat from Ireland. I swooned over her accent, and at one point remarked that I am also of Irish descent.

She scoffed at me, and declared that Americans have NO claim to Irish ancestry whatsoever. Further, she ranted on about how St. Patrick’s Day is not celebrated in Ireland, and that it’s considered laughable to the true Irish.

This left me at first embarrassed, and then with perspective.

I went home and began researching my family genealogy again with verve. Several months earlier, after talking to my mom about the family history, she’d suggested I speak to her cousin, who had been researching our family history for over 20 years at that point. I got in touch with him and he sent me printouts of lists of names. This was in April, two months before my hasty move to California with my boyfriend, who’d been hired over the phone for a dotcom job (ahh, the boom days of the dotcom industry…)
The information was quite overwhelming - the printout is six pages long, name after name, in something like eight-point font. Then the move happened. I didn’t examine the genealogical data closely until well after the move, when I’d had the run-in with the angry Irish chick just off the boat, who declared I was not Irish at all.

I checked my genealogy so that I could prove myself right in her eyes. This however was the needed wakeup call that I got - that perspective I was telling you about; when I went back through the family data, I discovered that my ma’s side of the family have been in the United States since before 1730.

Wow. That’s over two and a half centuries (And as my boyfriend points out, that’s before the United States was born).

I pondered this.

Two and a half centuries.

The woman at work was right. I’m not Irish. This was just the first fallacy in a series that I unwittingly revealed.

“Well”, I wondered, “if I’m not Irish, what the hell am I, then?”

Thanks to that woman, I called into question all that I’d been taught as a child regarding my nationalities and heritage.

Remember what I said earlier about Americans not knowing their own history?

Shouldn’t it have been obvious, given what region my family is from in the U.S., that I’m not only American, but Appalachian?

It wasn’t obvious, though. Social conditioning based upon ignorance made me really truly believe I was “Irish, Scottish, German, Finnish and American Indian”.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how Americans operate to this day - they can’t see what’s right in front of their faces because they’re brought up with romantic lies and deceit about everything from their own historical and genealogical background to religion to politics to what the rest of the world looks like and how it operates.

How they got that way is another rant for another time, and I don’t know if I’ll ever crack that mystery.

When I had my conscious realisation that I’m not Irish, but in fact just plain ‘ol American - and Appalachian at that - I told my ma and her family. They didn’t want to hear no such thing, however. It didn’t matter that their roots had been in this country for over two centuries. They declared with pride that we’re still Irish and Scottish, but for some reason, mostly Irish, because of the surname McBee (the first fallacy, to be revealed).

It was sometime between 1997 and 1998 that I started studying the meaning of the colors of the flag of the Republic of Ireland, and found out that Green is for Catholics (hence St. Patrick’s Day in the U.S. being all about the colour green), Orange is for Protestants, and White is for the hope of peace between the two religions/cultures.

So. Green is for Catholics. My family is Protestant in origin. They celebrate St. Patrick’s Day - a Catholic Saint’s day. They do this because they are ignorant to historical fact. They are led on by social misnomer, and they refuse to change their long-standing customs when fact is presented.

I spent years trying to figure out the origins of this McBee family, and never got out of Appalachia. In fact, I found names dating even farther back than the 1730’s. I found names dating back to about 1675 - still inside a land before it was claimed as the United States. That puts my supposedly Irish family at over three centuries old in the U.S. - living in the Appalachian mountain region.

We are NOT Irish-descended. We are Appalachian-descended. There IS no motherland or fatherland at this point. Three hundred years removes one’s right to historical nationality or land claim in Ireland in my book.

And then, in July 2004, I found something VERY interesting, relating to the first fallacy of my family (saying that we’re Irish).

“The McBee Family came from Scotland, many by way of Ireland. They are part of the Clan McBean which is a sept (or division) of the McBain Clan. It is probable that the name originated from the personal appearance of the members of the group, as Ban or Bain means “fair”. This name is found in several areas of Scotland and Ireland, but originally the MacBeans are said to have come from Lochabar as part of the entourage of the heiress of the Clan Chattena of Northern Europe. They settled in Eastern Invernessshire in Scotland.

The principal family of the time was the McBeans family of Kinchyle. For photos of the area go to Kinchyle of the Dores on the internet at http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/celynog/scotland/kinchyle_of_dores.htm . Journalist Bob McBee stated that it is possible that the whole of the clan immigrated to Northern Ireland and then to North America. The belief is that while crossing the Atlantic the MacBeans changed their name to MacBee later dropping the “a” and placing the “c” hence the name McBee.” - McBee Family - Scots Irish Sept of the McBain Clan.

The website goes on further to say “The following is a tradition that has been passed down through the families. William McBee left Maryland and settled in Halifax County, Virginia. His wife’s name was Susannah Vadry. They had four sons and three daughters; Samuel, Vardry, James, Mathias, Elizabeth, Joannah, and Mary. At the time the McBees were Quakers, but they renounced the faith at the beginning of the Revolutionary War.”²

Quakers are basically Protestants/Fundamentalists.

I wrote to my mom, who did further research on the Internet, and found the following:

“The surname [McBee] first appears in Scottish records in 1547, when James McBay gave his bond to John Campbell of Glenurguhay (The Black Book of Caymouth). Callome McBee and Donald McBee in Brockland were fined in 1613 for “reset of outlawed Macgregors” (that is, concealing them), and Archibald Reoche McBee of Corsarie, Mull, was put to the horn in 1629 (in other words, he was denounced as a rebel).” - electricscotland.com.

So… waaaaay back, we’re Scottish McBees. Not Irish.

I just went back through an article written in September, 1989 by Sassy Magazine (my favourite magazine back then), titled “Blood + Poetry”, detailing the sad, war-torn lives of some Catholic and Protestant kids in Northern Ireland at that time. One thing struck me about the article, relating back to the flag colours. The author writes,

“We ramble west to a lake where Brian used to play as a kid. We’re with his same-age mate Clint English, whose face is so deeply chiseled it almost hurts. He’s a Mod, which means he wears polka dots a lot and listens to the Style Council. He says everyone instantly knows he’s Protestant because his last name is English (any name starting with a Mc or an O is surely Catholic). It reminds me: A girl yesterday told me another way everybody can tell. “Red hair is obviously Catholic. So are freckles. No question,” she said, then looked down at her long red hair and shrugged.”

So if any name starting with a Mc in Ireland is surely Catholic, why are my family Protestants?

Because they’re not Irish. They’re Scottish. But that’s waaaaaay back on my ma’s paternal side of the family (McBee) that we’re Scottish. That’s centuries back. So we’re not even Scottish. We’re Appalachian.

My ma’s maternal side of the family is named Hughes, and it’s said that they’re Irish. Well, I’ve not even really begun to research that, yet. But I suspect that the Hughes family in Appalachia is as old as the McBee family. I.e., I’m still not Irish.

I’m Appalachian.

So there’s no need to go longing for Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day - on many levels as described above. There’s no need to get retarded and wear green and get drunk in Americanised versions of “Irish pubs”.

I remain however deeply sympathetic to Ireland’s fight for independence. I don’t know why. But I do know I will go see The Wind That Shakes The Barley, and I know I’ll cry my eyes out.

Show me a movie about Jews and Poles fighting for life against the Nazis and I’ll cry my eyes out, too. And I’m hugely sympathetic towards the Jews and Poles.

Show me a movie about Israel vs. Palestine and I’ll cry my eyes out, too, and be sympathetic towards the Palestinians since 1947.

Then there’s Tutsi vs. Hutu in Rwanda, and Haiti vs. Spain and France and the U.S… and Serbia vs. Yugoslavia and China vs. Tibet and N. Korea vs. S. Korea, and Darfur vs. the rest of Sudan, and Mogadishu vs. Somalia and Ethiopia, Sunnis vs. Baathists in Iraq… and on and on.

It’s the human injustice that does me in. It’s the lack of comprehension as to why people would spend centuries or millennia killing each other over religion or culture - or both.
They cite their reasons but it still makes no sense. Why does it have to resort to violence? Why?

And people wonder why I’m so pessimistic as to human existance. I’m doing my part to have the human race die out by not breeding to continue the sick attrocities of humanity. At least I can say I’ve done my part to end human existence when I die and take all my unfertilised eggs with me.

And that’s why I don’t like St. Patrick’s Day. :p



¹ I found out in 2004 that I’m not German or Finnish, either. My dad’s paternal grandmother wasn’t Finnish - she was Polish. And she married a Polish man. And during the time they were growing up in Poland, it was under German annex. So they spoke both German and Polish. They emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1800’s.
That makes my grandpa 100% Polish, and my dad 50% Polish, and me 25% Polish. My dad’s maternal grandparents were 100% Scottish. They emigrated to Canada in the late 1800’s and had my grandma there. Then they emigrated to the U.S.. Even though they had emigrated to Canada and their daughter had Canadian birth right, she was still 100% Scottish.
This makes my dad 50% Polish and 50% Scottish. I’m 25% of each on that side of the family.

² I have not been able to tie in these McBees to my own. The story goes that there were two lines of McBees settling in Appalachia around the same time, so this may not be my line, or it may be another distant branch. But what if both lines McBees were Scottish Quakers? It makes much more sense to me, historically speaking, that the McBees are Protestant Quakers rather than Irish Catholics, given my own family history.

March 16, 2007

Time off work

Category: Employment, Car Accident Related, Hormone therapy. Posted by zept at 2:44 pm.

I get anxiety at work. I stay home from work. That causes anxiety cuz I fear I’ll be fired for taking time off.

I can’t win.

I had my mental breakdown on Wednesday. I went in to work on Thursday. I lasted til my first break at 10am and asked to go home. I was told I could go after I finished the email support.

Well. There were 19 emails assigned to me. Plus several escalation cases I had to get back to people on. So even though I was relieved of phone duty, I still had to do email support, and this took another hour and a half.

I got home and took a nap. That alone seemed to help, and the swelling in my eyes lessened considerably. I then called my neurologist and asked again for the referrals to the MRI and EEG tests. I’d requested to see the neurologist a few months ago to finally address the non-english speech outbursts I’ve had (think of it like Tourette’s) ever since the car accident in 1994 when my head bowed out the windshield.
I think the only one who’s ever heard my outbursts is my man. It’s very embarrassing even when it leaks out in front of him. I’m pretty good at controlling it but I’m tired of having to constantly monitor myself consciously like that. It drains me to be on continuous self filter mode.

I got the phone numbers and to my fortune, was able to score both appointments for TODAY. That seems like that never happens - I jumped at the luck and called my boss back to let her know I’d be off work Friday, too.
I never got ahold of her directly, thus adding to my anxiety. “What if she didn’t get the message? What if the other managers weren’t informed that I’m not coming in today either? What if I get pegged as a no-show?” etc.
And yet, I felt so much better to be taking care of an outstanding issue.

I had to be up at my usual time (5:30am) today to get to the MRI appointment at 7am in Berkeley. I got there really early. I never know what traffic will be like, going in that direction.
During the MRI, I didn’t get claustrophobic like many people have described, but what I wasn’t expecting was the noise. UGH.
Even though I had earplugs, the noise really rattled my nerves. My mind flashed back to Drew Barrymore’s character (Charlie) during the MRI scene in the old movie Firestarter, heh. I finally understood why she was so upset!
At least, I *think* I remember that being the movie and the character…hmm, maybe I should buy it.

The good news is that they gave me the films to take to my neurologist. The bad news is that I can’t get a followup appointment with the neurologist until MAY.

I came home, worked on some genealogy stuff, and then a few hours later had to go back to Berkeley for the EEG. They put nasty gritty gel in various places on my head, and put the tight-fitting hat with electrodes on me. I had a ‘belt’ across my chest to monitor my breathing. I had to lay down during the test and close my eyes and just relax. Then after a time, it was announced that there would be a strobing light, which would increase in frequency to over 20 strobes per second. I tried to ponder that and prepare for it, mentally.
I normally don’t like strobing lights - I began to get irritated with them in the clubs back around five years or so ago. But the strobing light during the EEG traumatised me. I had tears welling up in my eyes not just from the flashes, but because I was ready to have a panic attack. I had to keep telling myself the same thing I did during the MRI, “just be calm, just be calm, just be calm…”

The good news on the EEG is that I can call my doctor to get the results in a few days.

Yasmin update: I haven’t had an appetite for any food, despite a starving, rumbling stomach. I get hungry, look at a world of food options, and don’t want any of it. I’ve been getting the point of wanting to throw up before I force food into my gullet.
Also, george is due tomorrow, and I’ve been feeling some tiny pelvic pains, like george is buried deep down, going ‘WTF?’ in a straitjacket.

HAH. GOOD.

March 14, 2007

The bad ain’t over, yet

Category: Hormone therapy. Posted by zept at 9:33 pm.

Ragey again this week. Started taking Lorazepam before bed. Waking up with Lorazepam hangover. Falling asleep behind the wheel both to AND from work. Stopped at a light today on the way home and fell asleep - car honked at me to wake me up.

Severe indigestion Monday and Tuesday - could be dietary failure point or could be hormones. But I’ve not had indigestion since last year when I took gluten out of my diet.

My eyes are messed up - this is a possible side effect from the Yasmin - “Change in corneal curvature (steepening)”. I have NO idea what that means. All I know is, as of the end of last week, my eyes are VERY sensitive to light and to the computer monitor. AND my eyes are now unable to focus when I wear my glasses - like suddenly the prism in my glasses is CAUSING my eyes to cross, rather than correct my lazy eye. I have gone back to wearing my old glasses - we’ll see how that goes, tomorrow.

I have minor yeast infection. Another side effect of the Yasmin.

And today I had a severe mental breakdown when I got home from work. My eyes are swollen from all the crying. I thought this part was over after last week. *sigh*

I may take tomorrow off work to figure my shit out.

March 12, 2007

I pedaled!

Category: Fun. Posted by zept at 6:53 pm.

Yesterday the weather was so warm! My man and I went for a bicycle ride. We rode approximately 13 miles, from our home to the shoreline, across the San Leandro channel bridge onto Bay Farm “island”, and followed the bike path around the perimiter of Bay Farm, ending back up at the bridge and back onto the island of Alameda. Thirteen miles! My first ride since surgery!

Alameda and Bay Farm Island

(follow the green line around, basically)

From there, we rode to the bicycle shop and I rested while my man shopped for a new seat. Then we headed back towards home, stopping off at Julie’s Tea Garden for some lavendar lemonade and a lemon scone. Mmmmmm….

We got home, showered, rested, and headed back out to hang with some friends. It was an active, exhausting, wonderful weekend. :)

In the medical news for me, last night I picked up my second month’s worth of Yasmin, courtesy my surgeon, and a small bottle of Lorazepam (anti-anxiety to help with the spaztasticness side effect of the Yasmin) from my primary care doctor. Judging by how little they gave me, I assume I have to make an appointment to be seen.
I needed the Lorazepam, too, cuz I woke up with anxiety at 3:30am. Without the Lorazepam, I’d not be able to get those last two hours of sleep, becuase I’d be trying to breathe and trying not to have an all out panic attack.

I’ll call the primary doctor tomorrow at work for an appointment, cuz I forgot to do that today.

I was very tired at work today, and my butt is SO sore from bicycling. I didn’t panic once. Go fatigue and Lorazepam! :p

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