After raining all day. I like snow. Snow is good. 🙂

After being up a few hours today, and still in as much pain as I have been, barely able to walk, I suddenly got very tired and could not stay awake. Fell asleep on the couch and slept about four hours. When I woke up, pain much less. I can walk without even using the cane now. What changed? I have no idea. I’m happy to have less pain and be pretty mobile, but still it’s puzzling how this illness works.

Not a lot, but I can sign petitions and try to make my readers aware of the issues I think matter. Here is one:

Stand Up For Your Freedom

I hope you read, watch, sign, do what’s right.

I’ve long been anti-deregulation, blaming Reagan for a huge chunk of the problems we all face today. It was down to him that we have so many homeless people, people who should be in long-term care, or getting needed help from resources funded by our taxes. By ‘our’ I mean all of us, including that wealthy 1 percent who’ve had their taxes cut, and can afford expensive lawyers to find loopholes so they don’t have to pay taxes at all. Remember, they got rich on the backs of the rest of us. The people who do the actual work in this country. The other 99 percent. Please participate in democracy, people. It’s the opportunity thousands of men and women have died in war to give us. Use it.

Have I mentioned how much I love Amazon? I love Amazon a lot. A real lot.

The pain has been winning lately, and I upped my Zoloft by 25 mils two nights ago. Feeling better in general, less negative than I had been, but so far it hasn’t helped the pain at all. I can barely walk a lot of the time, even with the cane. And tonight, I almost fell down. Tripped on my own feet, fell against the desk and onto the desk chair. Lucky I was close to them. That hasn’t happened before, the falling. A bit upset about it, mainly because the people who keep tabs on me so I get to have a homemaker always ask me that. Have you fallen? No. Well, almost. God, I hate being sick.

Gertrude and I are just vegging on the couch. I made pizza for dinner and it’s almost time for bed if I expect to get up at a decent hour. Ha. Like that ever happens.

My friend Tess is back from vacation and came over today. We played Big Kahuna, that crazy word game that always leaves us laughing like idiots. We’re hoping I will be ambulatory on Thursday so we can go to lunch. We haven’t gone to lunch in a long time. Now that her husband is retired and home all day, we don’t do nearly as many things as we used to. Neither of us have been all that well, anyway. Oh, well.

It seems we are finally done with hot and sticky. Took long enough. It’s windows closed time, as it gets pretty chilly at night, and not that much warmer during the day in here. Guess that’s all.

Posted this before, but it’s worth a repeat, especially these days.  Lots of interesting vids in the sidebar, too.

Here Are Four Charts That Explain What The Protesters Are Angry About….

You could watch the vid and read the comments.  I did.

Lies-The Video

It got me thinking, and that can never be good.  I often wonder why the right-wing tea-partiers and their ilk cannot seem to get that allowing religion to dominate government is exactly what has resulted in the Taliban and the fanatics here and in the Middle East.  I just don’t understand.

The comments with the vid above got me wondering if I am the only one who sees a similarity in Germany blaming the Jews for all their problems and certain factions in my country blaming poor and disabled people for all of their problems, and their inability to see that the rich one-percent are behind the teaparty et al, and they are not doing it for our benefit.  I just don’t understand.

We used to be proud that we were not like ‘them’, now we seem to revel in the same ideas we once condemned.  I just don’t understand.

Can anyone enlighten me?

Signed petitions today.  Here is one issue.  I know.  When I use the ‘press this’ bookmarklet, it makes the whole post clickable, ot just the address of the page I am posting.  Annoying.  If anyone knows how the fix this, please let me know.  Thank you.

The Occupy Wall Street movement spreads – The Big Picture – Boston.com.

This made my day,.  If you know me in person, you’ll know why, 

No one makes cards for this. But they should. — TheBloggess.com.

Woke up freezing this morning.  Yes, I said morning.  Sleep is getting back to a more livable schedule, for however long it lasts.  Closed the windows and fired up the electric fireplace.  We’ve been having rain every day for several days now, but this is the first really cold night and day.

I am feeling relatively well, too.  Not so much pain, although brain fog has made itself known the past three days.  Okay so far today.  I think it’s allergies.  I hope.  I’ve been enjoying not being foggy since I started the new med last….wow, last October, I think  it was.  A whole year of no brain fog.  Yay, me.

I am planning to cook again.  Chili, this time.  Haven’t made chili in years.  I am using ground turkey, since I don’t eat beef.  Looking forward to it.  It’s good weather for hot and comforting food.  Brrrr.  Still freezing, even with the fireplace and a sweater.

Has anyone really noticed a difference in the normal weather?  Here in New England it felt for a bit like we’d moved down south with all the heat and humidity in September.  September is not for heat and humidity.  Then day after day of off and on rain.  Also not normal.  It will be interesting to see what the winter brings.

I’ve posted this picture before, but it sort of goes with the season, yes? It’s the John Greenleaf Whittier house in Amesbury, Massachusetts.

Well, after sleeping most of the day (hey, I must have been tired, right?) I am running the dishwasher, eating a rebaked potato, balancing my checkbook with pen and paper since my calculator can’t seem to agree on any numbers, listening to AWOL Nation, my new favorite group, and reading my Twitter feed. It’s all good. Seriously. Feeling good. The usual pain, but no misery. Nice weather, too. I don’t tweet much, usually just when I sign a petition from Move On or The Daily Kos, or some such. If you think this blog is boring, can you imagine what my tweets would be like? “On the couch. Still on the couch. More couching.” Naah. Think I’ll just leave that alone. LOL Although, I’m not actually on the couch right now. I’m at the desk. Multi-tasking. I am good at multi-tasking. So I believe. Others may dispute that claim.

Seriously. I made fish chowder. Only took me about five times as long as bi (before I got this crappy illness) but it was soooo worth it. I make the best fish chowder ever, and I didn’t even have the wine to add in. It started as my friend Beth’s corn chowder, but I thought it would be much better with fish instead of corn, and I was right. I haven’t made it in several years, and I forgot how good it is.

Had a fun day with my homemaker, and not too much pain, which surprised me after the stairs yesterday, But it’s coming along now. I’ve done just about all my before bed items, fed the cat, etc, because I was up and down making the chowder, and everytime, I got stiffer and painier. Going to watch some tv on Amazon now, and then I probably will barely be able to make it to bed. It’s all good. Riiiight. But I had a good day, so it was worth it.

We had a fire alarm. No idea what set it off, but of course we all have to evacuate. Gertrude runs and hides at any noise, not just a fire alarm, so the chances of me getting hold of her and carrying her downstairs are less than none. So I grab my cell phone and head on out.

My neighbor is out at the same time. We start down the stairs (I do NOT do stairs), and halfway down she remembers that the door at the bottom is blocked off for no apparent reason. So back up we go, down the hall, down the back stairs, which for an inexplicable reason have more stairs than the front. I am going down one slow step at a time, leaning on the cane, people passing by. One person asked if I needed help. That was nice. Made it out. Stood there, decided to walk around to the front door. No stairs to get to the elevator, which you can use AFTER the fire department clears it. Look at my cell phone thinking I will call Tess, notice that it seems to have morphed into my wireless mouse. Hmmm. They are both the same color.

I will not be able to walk tomorrow. The pain will be back, too. Oh, joy. At least there wasn’t an actual fire. Been a few years since we’ve had an alarm, and only once has it ever been an actual fire. Very small mostly smoke fire, at that. It of course was winter and freezing and pouring rain and we had to wait forever while they made sure there was no fire in the wall, and brought in huge fans to blow the smoke out. That was fun. I was holding Simon the entire time, and he was not loving me for it. So how exciting was that? Not very, I guess.

It’s vanished. I’ve had the a/c on since Saturday, after suffering through the stickies for several days. Last week I had the electric fireplace going for a bit. I love New England weather. This relates to illness in that it’s been hot and humid for several days and I have been in a lot, and for ‘a lot’ read ‘a LOT’ of pain until today. Is it humidity related? I haven’t really noticed a definite connection before, so it could be coincidental. How can you ever be sure of something like that? I suppose I could write down the weather and the pain levels every day, but I would get bored with that by day 2, or else I would just plain forget to do it. I’m very mercurial. *giggling*

I was getting pretty discouraged by yesterday. Every movement, however tiny, caused more pain, and I realized I had lost the ability to really focus on anything I was doing. Pain is very demanding. It wants all of your attention. So I was very happy when I got up at 3:30 pm, after being up all night and getting to sleep around daytime am, to not be in nearly as much pain. I could actually stand up without agony, and walk without needing the cane to hold me up. Usually the cane is just for balance. I tend to walk like I’m drunk without it. Bob and weave. Saw that in a really awful commercial on Hulu. Bob and weave.

So I’m up all night again, but actually got a couple of things done. Unload/reload dishwasher, baked something from a box, that sort of thing. Yay, me. So autumn can do a comeback any time, because if that’s really what made me feel better (the cool and dry-er ness from the a/c) I want more of it. Pain wears you down, mentally as well as physically, and when it is relentless for any length of time, it starts to sap your will to keep fighting. And the pain pills are not working as well as they had been. There’s always something, right?

On another subject, I’ve been having pc issues. So what else is new, Microsoft? I suddenly lost sound. Just gone. Messed around, looking for solutions, no luck. So I did the old shut down, unplug, plug in, restart, and there was the sound. But no internet connection. Just gone. Sound familiar? Control paneled everything I could find, googled, somehow got it back. Next time I turned the pc off and then restarted later, no internet connection again. Thought I’d try system restore. Didn’t work, got a blue screen of ‘oh shit, this thing is borked’. Almost called tech support, but decided to do some more diagnostics, disk check, etc. Everything fine. One more diagnostic. Something is unplugged. No it isn’t. Nothing plug, usb, cord of any kind had been touched. So I unplugged the cord from the modem and replugged it in a different port. Nothing. Plugged it back in to the first port, and voila! Internet connection. However, and there is always a however, isn’t there? However, I have not turned the pc off again since, so don’t know what will happen when I do and then restart. I can’t just leave it on forever, because some things demand a restart. I’ll let you know what happens.

So I googled for an image for ‘mercurial’ but all I got was shoes. Oh, well.

dont-ask-dont-tell-officially-ends

After Elton on DADT

Hooray! After doing exceptionally well for several days, including one ‘I could swear I’m a normal person here’ day where I got things done, lots of things, and I was happy, the pain started creeping back, until I spent the last three days barely able to hobble to the kitchen to take pills, and spent most of my time in bed or on the couch. Slightly better today, but still hurt. I liked the getting things done days better. Yes. Yes I did.

Tomorrow is 9/11. I have not plugged the tv in so have no clue what’s being aired about it, and I really don’t want to know. I remember the day, I don’t need follow-up reminders. It was horrible, what else do I need to know? I remember that it was an absolutely beautiful autumn day, and I can still see the images from the television coverage in my mind’s eye. I don’t want to relive it by watching whatever is being shown this weekend. I hope the survivors, those who were there, families of those who died, anyone who was personally affected, have managed to find some peace over these past ten years. I don’t think you ever ‘get over’ something like that. You can only hope something as horrific never happens again. Humanity needs to do better. Much better.

Amazing photography:

Cool bug:

Except for the fact that I am old and decrepit and absolutely terrified of this, oh, man would I love to do this:

And elsewhere. Finally, it is Autumn. In feeling, anyway. Actually, meteorological autumn starts September first, and the weather cooperated. It’s been gorgeous since the hurricane.

My really, really good spell ended with tiredness on Saturday, and pain came back on Sunday, but overall, I am still feeling better and getting things done. How great it is to be able to say ‘getting things done’. Went out with my friend Tess yesterday, and my friend Beth is coming for dinner tonight. We will order in or go out somewhere, cause cooking is NOT on my agenda.

I have some decluttering I want to get done today, more stuff for my homemaker Traci. She has two children and is always glad for any crafty things I can toss her way. She is very creative, too, has lots of small animals and makes housing for them out of all sorts of things. I’d like to get another pet, but not sure if Gertrude could handle it. I of course always want a dog, but I have to come to terms with my limitations on that front. It would be different if I had a yard, but living on the second floor in the middle of downtown means I could only let the dog out if I went out with him/her, and that is not always possible for me. Oh, well. My friend Tess has put A Yard on the list of things she is going to buy for me, but we haven’t got that far down yet. We have to get the buffalo first, although I have no idea why I ever said I wanted a buffalo. LOLOL Also, wouldn’t it be better to rearrange the list and get the yard before the buffalo? Not keeping it indoors, that’s for sure. This gives you some idea of why Tess and I spend a lot of time laughing hysterically.

Here’s a quote I like, from this place:

http://www.slate.com/id/2302344/

“Someday, they will stand together in history’s dock. Two groups of willful men who sold out their fellow citizens with their blind avarice and arrogant stupidity: the greedheads on Wall Street and the empty heads (and hearts) of the Tea Party know-nothings.”