So, after five years, I've decided to move on to another journal, disorderly_mind. I'll still maintain grave_medicine for a while, at least until I decide to make the move completely or that this one isn't working for me. I may do duplicate posts; I may post to one journal rather than the other. There are some things I'll transfer from the old journal to this new one, but I'm not particularly hung up on my previous posts. I mean, come on, I don't even have tag lines for them.

This would be a great time for anyone who wants to make the move with me to do so or to simply cut me from your f-list if you still have me there by force of habit. I know I have several people on mine that I've kept there for sentimental reasons, even though I know they're long gone and won't be coming back any time soon. I do hope most of you add this new journal to your f-list, though, or at least don't object to me adding you. I may not leave many comments or make my comment-worthy posts, but I still enjoy reading what you have to write.

Back to business as usual. I have a lot of work to do to make this journal presentable and I'm easily distracted by the mystery marathon on the Hallmark Channel. Plus I have three movies I have to watch and return to Netflix and I'm trying to clean up my office and figure out what to write for NaNoWriMo and ooo... Sparklies on sale at a www.etsy.com!

Endearingly,
E.R., pseud.

Ps: Maybe I should start signing all my posts, hm?

Q: How do the French eat frogs?
A: First they put one little leg over one ear, then they put the other little leg over the other ear.



Q: How does an octopus couple walk down the street?
A: Arm in arm, arm in arm, arm in arm, arm in arm...



Q: What happened to the lobster who was hit by a truck?
A: He was a mere shell of his former self.

I've been having chest pains for two days now, with my pulse jumping over 100, minor palpitations, etc., on top of recent instances of edema (swelling) in my feet and ankles. Doc did an EKG on me yesterday, the results of which were my usual Long QT Syndrome* and sinus tachycardia. Doc's still concerned about Wolf-Parkinson-White Syndrome** and now a Bundle Branch Block***. Essentially, one side of my heart occasionally twitches away without any rhythm or efficiency while the other side doesn't get the message. At all.

She's by no means diagnosing me with any of these things because she feels she's in over her head. I'm thirty-two, not fifty-two, and some of these things should have been caught much earlier on. I started having palpitations when I was seventeen and I've had periods of my blood pressure suddenly shooting up or dropping abnormally low for several years. When I passed out a few months ago, my blood pressure was barely 90/60 with a pulse of 56. Last Monday it was 137/89 with a pulse of 108. My normal blood pressure is 110/70 with a pulse of 70, so I can really feel these changes when they happen.

Anyway, Doc called a cardiologist we met back in February and discussed the problem with him. I've had four abnormal EKG's and an abnormal Holter monitor, but she's hesitant to diagnose me or prescribe any medication. She's not sure whether she's looking for a physical defect or a fault in my electrical system. This cardiologist can do another EKG, strap me into another Holter, or do an echo or stress test all in his office, without having to bounce me back and forth from facility to facility. My head's starting to hurt as much as my chest.

In perkier news, I found a rather large bundle of remnant faux leather fabric for $.63. Enough to make a pair of pillows for the couch, maybe, or to even re-reupholster my new chair. Imagine those clean French-inspired lines tempered with a lovely brown faux leather. Or a pair of hand sewn faux leather pillows adorning our new cushions. Hm, the choices are almost too difficult to make. I'll have to wait until I have some light to get a good look of the stuff in our living room.

* LQTS -- Basically, it's a slight delay in the heart recharging itself for the next beat. This causes a loss in rhythm the heart tries to compensate for by speeding up. By going too fast, the hearts loses the ability to effectively pump oxygen to the brain, causing loss of consciousness and death, primarily in young people with no previously known cardiac condition. A lot of those kids who have died on amusement park rides actually died of similar conditions.

** WPW -- Slightly more complicated, this is where a branch of the nerves that carry the electrical pulse through the heart loop back to the heart's battery pack. Occasionally a pulse catches this loop and causes the battery to fire again out of sequence, which results in the heart twitching rather than squeezing. If the misfire also catches the same loop, it'll simply cause the heart to keep twitching rather than beating, which leads to cardiac arrest.

*** BBB -- This is where a branch of the nerves that carry the electrical pulse through the heart simply don't respond. A tiny little section is harmless, though it should be monitored to make sure it doesn't spread. If it's a large enough branch, that means an entire section of the heart isn't getting an electrical charge, which means it doesn't beat with the rest of the heart. Up to half the heart can do all the work, which is horribly inefficient.

I mentioned before that my ultra-big project this year is going to be a tablecloth and runner for my mother. At least, I think I mentioned it. It's going to be a quilted black and white deal with a moderately thin pinstripe border and a thicker border of solid black heavy fabric to weigh it down. I'm a wee bit intimidated because I don't have a working sewing machine, nor would I know how to use one even if I did. I've always handstitched everything I've ever done. Still, machine stitching is so much faster and I could make sure my seams are perfectly straight. Decisions, decisions. Meanwhile, I'm going to go ahead and order the fabric.

Matt Damon as Captain James Tiberius Kirk?! Don't get me wrong, he plays Bourne magnificently and I loved him in The Brothers Grimm, but come on! Star Trek is sacred!

http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1566606/story.jhtml

I can celebrate one project being done, even if it's only a small one. I'll treat myself to some beer bread I made last night with Guiness. Yum. The chair was actually in the corner of a shot of the desk. I enlarged it so everyone can see just how grody it really was. So it went from this:




( To this! )

They remade Halloween?! Blasphemy!!!

My cousin's girlfriend asked me if I paint. I just smirked and said, "Walls." I love painting rooms. I also get bored with colours after a relatively short period of time. Now that my dad's feeling better, it's time for me to tackle projects again, and I don't just mean the salvaged goods I just got my hands on. By Thanksgiving I'd like to strip the popcorn off the living and dining room ceilings, paint both rooms a darker neutral colour with black and white accents, and continue the tile from the dining room into the living room to make them one unified space.

The biggest job, though, will be the dining room set. For some time we've wanted to do something with it. It's an antique teak set given to us by my aunt when she bought a brand new set for herself years and years ago. Last year I really rejuvenated it with some linseed oil and elbow grease. This year, though, I've decided to strip it down, do a little repair work, and make it something beautiful. My mom wanted to paint it black and i nearly had a stroke. You don't paint teak, you stain it. So we came to a compromise. I'm going to give it a gorgeous ebony stain, then rub it down with furniture wax to seal it.

Then, ontop of all that, I promised to paint my parents' bedroom and bathroom. I actually already have the bathroom paint and I'll do that this weekend. I'm still deciding between two colours for their bedroom that will really update it and make it more sophisticated. They have a set of three sketches and a painting I'm going to change by painting the frames black, scrubbing the inside of the glass, and replacing the matting with something fresh. And then after all that I have plans to paint my own bedroom and put up some curvaceous ceiling molding.

Ps: I also intend to rust the wrought iron banisters and give them a protective coating.

First, this is the painting Dr. Code did for my birthday. Isn't it gorgeous? It makes me happy because it reminds me that Jacksonville is just as pretty now as I remember it from my childhood.




( Now onto the treasure. )

I had a pretty nice dream about a certain someone. Too bad it was interrupted. Ha.

They're flipping a house down the street from us and simply tossing everything in it out onto the curb. Today I decided to pull off to the side on the way home and see what they've got in there. Lots of junk, of course, and lots of debris from inside and out, but they certainly had some treasures. For one I found a huge trunk, with only the leather handles and key missing, as well as an adorable chair I absolutely must paint and reupholster. I also found this gorgeous large glass candy dish with a sterling silver base that I've already cleaned and polished to a high shine. But the pièce de résistance? An intact 1953 Singer sewing desk complete with retro black machine, electric pedal, and three drawers stuffed with accessories and attachments. It even has the original manual. I'm going to strip that puppy down, replace the veneer, and give it a glamourous new life as an antique.

Edit: This is the Singer sewing machine I salvaged last night. I'm still trying to figure out the desk, since I haven't found anything like it online, but I promise I'll post pictures of it soon.

I had a nice day planned of housecleaning and yard work, but that all came to a screeching halt when my cousin called and asked if I wanted to go down with he and his girlfriend to see our grandmother. I'm not sure if they noticed, but I think we'll be lucky if my grandfather makes it to Christmas. He looks like he's going into organ failure and he has the distinctive grey pallour of death. I don't see any lengthy hospitalization of any kind; we'll either get a call from my grandmother saying he died in his sleep or he'll be rushed to the ER only to die a few days later.

While I was down there, my grandmother gave me a pair of postcards from around the early 1920's, from my great-great-grandmother to my great-grandmother. The cards themselves are beautiful and fairly well preserved. I put them in a pair of art deco with an acid-free paper backing to enhance how beautiful they are. Of all the things my grandmother has given me, I like these the most. They're genuine, dated antiques from my family when they'd just come to this country. To New Jersey of all places. Well, back then it was one of the places to be. Even presidents had summer houses there.

When I got back, my dad and I had a little chat about my mother. He quietly told me that he may be separating from her for a while after all this is over. My mother has been positively monstrous, but I had to point out to him that her behaviour may be caused by brain damage from the neurological disorder and/or the probes implanted in her brain, exposing it to constant electrical stimulation. Not that it makes her constant berating or harping any easier for him. In the end I told him I'm surprised he's lasted as long as he has and that I'm okay with them splitting up. I'm just too old to decide which parent I'm going to live with if they decide it's better if they divorce.

"I should have been born a boy!"
"Why, so you'd be taller?"
"Piss off."
"So you could pee standing up?"
"That would be a bonus."
"So you could have sex with other boys?"
"I won't answer that to spare you the trauma."
"...I really didn't need to know that"
"So as I was saying, I should have been born a boy!"
"...Alright, fine. Why?"
"My greatest joy right now is that my new laptop has a remote control!!!"

Oh, and it has an extra-wide screen perfect for watching movies. I'm in love.

There is a particular supervisor at work that's a total bitch. Even her own people can't stand her. She kept berating us because her log sheet wasn't completed, despite the fact that it's attached to a new system we've only been working with for two months, and that "nursing better get off their asses and fix this." Uh, we're not the ones who broke it! Monday she came for her daily tirade and commented on how another supervisor's log is always done, but not hers. Why couldn't we just merge the two of them together?

Just to pacify her, I tested the new form out for her and actually think it makes our job much, much easier. So my unit's going to put a positive spin on it and lead by example. Since we're trying to boost morale anyway by showing the employees how much we appreciate what they're doing, we pitched in to buy her a red velvet cake and I made her a thank you card. I miniaturized her form and put a gold star on it, then mounted it on a card and made it all fancy. Tomorrow we'll all sign it and take it to her office. Maybe we'll stun her into shutting the hell up for once.

Last night my basil tree's pot broke, forcing me to carry through my weekend plans of getting some new pots and upgrading all my babies so they can stretch their roots. So off to Home Depot I went, in search of decorative stuff that wouldn't cost an arm and a leg. I found one of those three-foot resin urns on the 50% clearance cart, complete with faux cracks and crumbling stone facade, but someone had peeled half the price sticker off. After waiting half an hour for the manager to arrive (mostly because he was hijacked by some cranky old Jamaican lady), he told me the original price had been $59.99 and asked if $12 seemed fair enough to me. Sold!

While he helped me load it into my cart he asked what I planned on doing. I told him my baby ficus, Rebecca, would go into the new urn while a new bella neanthe palm I brought home last week would go into the old on, which would then be placed on the tv stand. I needed a huge new pot for my olive tree to grow into, the bay tree would go into the olive tree's pot, and the pomegranate was supposed to go into the olive's pot, but it broke. Hence my purchasing a new Mexican clay pot. After looking at my cart for a moment, he told me to wait right there, then returned a short while later with an oversized tulip-shaped clay pot with handles. They'd just gotten the shipment in and hadn't even had a chance to put it into the computer system yet. How about $20? Sold!

All my reduced price purchases allowed me to get a small pallet of decorative stone tiles to mark the pet cemetery with, starting with Freaky Deke's grave. Maybe one day I'll figure out how to make memorial plaques out of them.

I woke up at six this morning to find Deke the Geek had died in his sleep. I knew it was going to happen. There wasn't anything I could pinpoint, but last night I just knew I'd wake up and he'd be gone. I sat there for a while and just petted him, telling him he was a good boy and mommy's little ugly man. I don't think he was in any pain -- he was all curled up in his bed as usual. I carried him outside and buried him in a new addition of the pet cemetary, right by the angel statue. I think I'm done adopting dogs for right now. Brandy needs to be an only child for a while. I'll wait until I make the move to Chicago to start looking for a new fur-baby.

I'm living in a house with two diabetics and a temporary cripple, and no one could make up their minds what to have for dinner. So I cleaned out the fridge and served grilled Polish sausages, parsley potatoes, green beans and garlic bread with Guiness cake for dessert. Soon I'm going to make myself a pot of tea for one, cut a slice of cake, and settle down to watch my Netflix movies so I can turn send them back in the morning.

I just want to thank everyone who's posted comments of sympathy and support over the last two weeks. I haven't been ignoring you, I just don't know what to say. "Thank you" and "It'll be okay" over and over again just seem horribly lame. Unfortunately, despite my ability to speak on the fly, sometimes my social distance makes it difficult for me to think of something to say at the appropriate moment. So, thanks everyone.

My dad loves to mow the grass. It's the one truly physical thing he's always been able to do, no matter how much pain he's in. Which means I've never learned how to use a lawn mower. I can use a hedge trimmer, weed wacker, chain saw, tiller, etc., but not a lawn mower. Even when I've lived elsewhere, by myself, I never had a lawn. I always had little teeny plots of land perfect for gardening. However, with the surgery and the (dog) collar he's wearing, he won't be able to do much of anything for the next three months. So thanks to our guest showing me how to prime the mower and start it up, I'm now taking a break after finishing off the back yard under my dad's supervision.