Mmm - Fratricide!!

Mother's Day afternoon drew out a long and lovely, pleasant afternoon into the first little dab of evening, and I was much later getting to revisions than I had thought I might be, but have been killing off one shoddy bastard-younger-brother subplot.  Woo!

So far, less of a cut than killing off the sister and her traitorous husband, but still the word count is on the way down, which is the right direction after all.

A good weekend this weekend - Friday was productive, yesterday I got the house clean, today was really nice with mom and stepfather, and he seemed well, which is good to see these days.  He also got in a NICE burn on mom as she and I got ready to run off on our own (as she was taking off her heels from lunch, I hopped in the back seat of their recently purchased vehicle and said "still smells like new car" - he looked at mom changing shoes and said, "That's not what I smelled!" - heh).  Silly, but it's nice when he's silly, and reassuring too.

Finishing off my weekend with a bit of *meh* earlier-seasons SG1 and the aforementioned revisions.  Not at all bad, and ready for a new week.

Unstifled

Today I had a conversation which damn near shattered me, precisely because it has meant so much to me recently that I did not have this coversation sooner.

I don't feel freed.  I don't feel empowered.  I have, it may be said, an almost physically painful shortness of breath, and the most intense headache I've had in some months.



But I do feel *hope* - that what I chose to do to myself ... simply won't be a choice for for anyone again.


***


While I chose to leave at a mildly scoffing dismissiveness from the manager I spoke with "informally" at the time this happened, I know frankly and simply what happened was sexual harassment.  For me, this does not translate into lawsuits or punitive action against my company - I stayed on the alert for any escalation, and when my extreme and instant brusque, cold, keep-it-professional attitude apparently headed off any further "hopes" this person had in my direction, I nursed a quiet grudge, contenting myself with feeling I didn't have to do anything.

It was probably within the last eight or ten months I witnessed a woman having to speak with the same man, who was clearly discomfited having to deal with him.  I knew her well enough to ask her if he had disturbed her, when we were alone, and she did not specify what he had done, but it was clear that she was profoundly creeped-out by him.

And so, I know:  it's not just me.


So.

When I was cc'd on a note from a higher-up responding positively to this person's interest in a permanent position with my employer:  I felt I had to say something.

This was a difficult decision to make, but not a lengthy one, and, rather dizzyingly, the opportunity to have the conversation came up extremely quickly.  From email to decision to dread to conversation:  something under two and a half hours.

Today was simply bloody difficult.  I had to have a conversation I stipulated at its outset I never wanted to have.  I had to present the situation, the context of why I was bringing it up, AND the context of why I had never brought this up before, professionally and coolly, honestly and somewhat dispassionately.

And I did.  And it is done.  I gave permission to the higher-up to use my name; and have already spoken with someone in HR, setting a time on Wednesday to have a conversation about this.

The worst of it is over - the event itself, long ago.  The conversation, today.  I am no longer stifled.

And I pray:  no other woman will have to make this choice.


***


And so for me, tonight ...  If not peace and power - then Big Bang Theory, set to "play all" (or perhaps a new purchase on Amazon, of a new season I can stream in my digital library) - and, if not the satisfaction of feeling whole ... then at least the contentment that I've done the right thing.

I am so blinking exhausted.

Lugging

Siddy is restive, because she did not get her nice long walk tonight.  Even last night's stroll was short; she tried to spin me like three or four times.  I can't go but so far after a good leash-yanking.

She's not being punished as a matter unto itself.  I just have too much crap to do around the house.

There was the hand-washing I needed to do before I even got around to dinner, and then there was the shade (its bracket fell down last night - when it did) I had to drill back into the sill.  Not my finest carpentry project, but the thing is up - and the shade is down.  And the skirt I hope to mend before the night's out.  Oh, and the laundry (one load down, and a bedspread now hanging to dry), which I am just to cussed to carry up and down stairs one sock at a time.  So I carry the damned basket.  And that doesn't feel great.

And here I sit, with the novel's handy little drive all plugged in the laptop ... not quite getting round to opening it.  And it's coming up on 9:00.  Which ... how in the devil???

Good lord, in an hour I'm going to be setting myself up for bedtime.

What an endless day.   *ZONK*

Clever Fluey Pun

It hit around 4:30 or 5:00, and I was surprised I couldn't ride it out, but the dizziness I sometimes just get with stress or a headache or carsickness seems to be up to somehting else.  I was selfish enough a jerk to drive home in this state (having nearly thrown up just leaving my building - and I would not have cared one bit if I had, except for the aftertaste), but did so because I am at heart an entitled, heedless, headstrong cow in need of better manners, and in no need of further delays between me and comfortable pants.

I was running 94.7 when I came home, which explained why I (a living space heater) was so COLD.  Here three hours later, I am suddenly growing really hot, and my feet are not freezing for the first time.  Fun.

X just asked me about it, and I said the cold was not a natural sensation, but something like the synthetic things drugs do to you - like the way a sleeping pill causes you not to be awake, but doesn't induce genuine slumber, or really give you rest properly speaking.  The leather couch felt like a painful assault to recline on.

And now the opposite faux-temperature is already overwhelming.

At least there is this.  I am having to correct 60% of the words I am typing here, as typos do keep synthetically asserting themselves.  But with my experience and endurance of headaches, THAT symptom is a piece of cake so far.

Chopped

A banana of the perfect ripeness, a wonderful, gritty pear, a Virginia peach, a fistful of black, tart grapes.  Dessert at my house was good tonight.

The problem with fruit salad, for me, is that in order to make it, you have to make quite a BIT of it - it's not really realistic to chop up one quarter of a fruit at a time and end up with one reasonable sized serving.  Oh, but la.

Sometimes, you just have to have fruit salad.  So dinner must be minimal.  And, oh - dessert was maximal.


It's at times like these - with so many such wonderful fruits in the house - I miss X the most.  Heh.

Hmm.

I'm not sure, given what I have had to say on the subject (to wit: no way/no how), whether this search string bringing someone here amuses, saddens, or embarrasses me.

Peter Steele groupie sex

I guess I can't say I'm embarrassed. After all, I did nothing to have earned it.

Even so. Gosh, people do get bored on Teh Intarwebs.

NO vocaine

Had a routine filling today, after cracking my very back molar ... and experienced a most un-routine aftermath. Holy smokes.

With the location of the damage, the novocaine shot was done at the back of my upper jaw. The back of my tongue went numb - but the rest did not - a terribly strange sensation alone. But the worst of it was that my soft palate was also numbed.

It felt like it collapsed, just falling onto the back of my tongue.

This caused a lot of trouble breathing. But I am well used to having a lot of trouble breathing; annoying, to be sure, but that wasn't what got my attention.

The problem lay in the fact that with my soft palate going saggy, my uvula went on HIGH gag alert ... and my gag reflex kept getting worse after the (relatively brief) procedure, as the drug seemed to strengthen slowly, or at least after I sat up and the effect became quite distinct. I had to hold back a retch just walking out of the building, and several times on the way home.

Yeesh.


Note to self: don't chip another back molar.

*Pleh*

I hate it when the only traffic here is 'bots. And nobody's commenting anymore - was it something I said (hah) or something I smelled like ... ?

In the This Never Happens Department ...

... I found a man attractive yesterday.

Scratch that, I found him very, *very* hot.

This would be a whole big twice in the past decade I have encountered someone I was attracted to.

I was Googling him in my mind. Seriously. Hot.



That was actually fun.

Bleah

Had a quite wonderful weekend, and yet here I still am at home. Sick as a dog. Queasy, dizzy, headachey - and I have lost eight pounds since I went to bed, where I stayed for twelve full hours. The laptop's probably not a good toy to be playing with, but a book is more than my eyes can handle, and picking out a DVD was more than my wee paltry brain was up to - never mind all the ambulation it would require.

I feel ROTTEN. And even the laptop, I find, is making me all cranky and bored. It's enough to make me want to just go back to feverish, shuddering sleep. *Bleah*

The Cocktail

My headaches haven't been as bad as they were in years past. The local honey, I do think, gets some credit for this ... but I realize, there is also a problem. A little over a year and a half ago, I hit the hospital thanks to one of my headaches. It was a reasearch trip - eliminate the worst, scan the headbone, scare the neighbors to death. Go home and sleep it off. The headache was, even for me, remarkable in its power, and that is clearly saying something; for those of you who've suffered this blog long, you know I'm able to manage levels of pain in my head most people would go mad enduring. For years, in fact, I didn't even bother with analgesics except very rarely. About seven years ago, though - the job was one of the worst of my life. This was the year I had a headache which continued, never stopping, but infinite in its variety - waking and sleeping - without relief for even a moment - for the course of over three months. Every day had its cresting bad hours, every night even unconscious, my brain was to one degree or other generating, and experiencing, its pain. The air in my building made me sick, and the nature of my position poisoned my head. I was, sincerely and literally, NEVER without pain during this period. And I think it was then I finally devised my cocktail. There were times I was desperate with the pain. I remember describing it to X - like millions of nanobots excavating my eyeballs from the inside, with millions of microscopic, cruel blades. I remember the night he and I went out with my mother, to move a refrigerator, when I had that level of a headache. I remember turning to my medicine cabinet. I would turn to my prescription. A very mild barbituate (I could take it in the daytime with no ill effects, fuzziness, nor fatigue): Phrenelin Forte. It was a very, very long time before I realized the reason I had sleep apnea so horribly, so terrifyingly, along with my headaches, was that this pill - the only thing that really worked for me - happened to come with the power to stop my breath. (Hey, and may I thank you *yet* again, Dr. W., you utter moron. Because it's not like my father DIED OF LUNG DISEASE - so it was a *great* idea you had, to give me a drug which "may cause severe breathing problems" ... Nice.) And so. Somehow, over the course of time, I began putting one aspirin, one acetaminaphen, and one ibuprofen together. After the headache a year and a half ago, when my mom, who'd been worrying and lecturing me about this "cocktail" for several years, importuned the ER doctor to tell me to stop using it - and he looked at me and said, "Does it work?" and then said, "Then take it," when I said yes ... "Or you can take four Advil at a time if that helps" - I won a vindication, and my cocktail became legitimate. And then it became two Ibu's and two Acet's, and maybe one aspirin for good measure. Then it became four Ibu's, and if that didn't work, within two hours I'd add two Acet's. And if that didn't help, at least one aspirin and one more Ibu before bedtime. Hey, I'm not drinking or something. I ... usually won't take four acetaminaphen, what with the stomach thing and all. It was ibuprofen the doc approved. So those have crept up in quantity. *** But my headaches ... are not as bad as they used to be. It doesn't hurt that my job is the best I have ever had, perhaps. It doesn't hurt that I'm comfortable in most ways. But it is unusual, for me to have a springtime without constant head pain, too. What *isn't* unusual, anymore, is for my go-everywhere bottle of meds - some of the ripoff-brand, caffeine-inclusive Faux-cedrin, some Ibu's, some Acet's, some aspirin ... and the last two or so, even, of the old Phrenelin Forte (because, yes, Virginia - there are headaches bad enough, you REALLY do not care if you wake up gasping for breath in the middle of the night) - to run out in weeks instead of months. It's never odd for me to find one of the types of pills in there has run out, and I have to take a fistful of the others instead. I remember my self of twenty years ago, who hardly bothered over headaches ... and I remember that year of the unremitting pain ... and I'm not an idiot. I wonder if it's not a disservice to my intestinal lining, to indulge quite as much acet as I do. I wonder if the pain would not be smarter, to just endure it. But the headaches are so much worse than they were twenty years ago. I think. I'd swear it, anyway, if someone judgy were asking me. And I haven't used the prescription in at least two years now, maybe three or even four. I know it's been a LONG time since that idiot quack doctor prescribed the things to me; by now the little lavendar capsules are more talisman than active ingredient anymore. I just know I get headaches, and I don't want to keep them. And you can't give them away. And really. It's not like I'm drinking or anything. And the ER doc said ...

Kicker

The follow up to the bad day at work (as distinct from the other bad days, and the bad nights, all this week) is this little tidbit: It turns out that that audio conference call? The one that connected those of us who'd been booted off the video conference - but didn't connect us back to it?

Did.

We were heard by everyone still connected on the video bridge line. We just couldn't hear them.



Good thing I stuck with that joke about not having anything to say without an HR issue ... rather than saying anything ..,

Shew.



This week just kept getting worse and worse, and didn't even improve once Friday night (should have) provided some relief,

Dammit

I think I may have made a HUGE mistake tonight. I bought my tickets for vacation. Under the influence of a headache.

Idiot.

I didn't find any nonstop flights ... and it seems to me there ARE nonstops - and for about the same price I spent on a bleeding connector (both ways) through EWR. Oh if only I had looked beyond Travelocity ...

Oh my aching HEAD am I going to be upset if I look tomorrow (it would probably make me a little sick to even try to look tonight) and see that I could have done this an easier way. Gaaahhhh.

At the end of the day, I don't so much mind the timing nor the inconvenience ... and at least it isn't a stopover in Chicago. But Newark doesn't buck Douglas Adams' "no language has ever come up with the phrase 'as pretty as an airport'" theory either.

No, for me, the inconvenience is secondary. It's this that really bothers me. Barfing in public is actually the least of the hateful experience of airsickness ...

Gah. Someday, I'll find a better way to travel.


And still not be able to afford it. *Bleah*

Aww.

Siddy really does like her Christmas present from her grandma.

Cure-ish-ative

Well now I *have* gotten some sleep. Sometimes, it's good to know my old ability to sleep whatever the circumstances remains intact. The headache has nothing to say about this rest, but it has been gotten, and the headache can't gainsay *that* at least. Now I'm bleary and slow, but that's not too bad. The afternoon is just giving way to dusk, and the dog is making sweet tired sounds at my feet. Light in the living room is softening; it is dim here now.

Not the worst day off.

Not the best headache.

I could cocoon on a day like this.

Oh, wait - I kind of did. Heh. If only X had been here to nestle into a day like this with me. That would have been perfect.