I regularly seem to have a problem keeping up with blogs and this one has been no exception. It’s not that I don’t want to. In fact, I find myself often wanting to but unable to due to a lack of time or resources when the desire to write occurs.
Recently I’ve been having vivid dreams which place in me a desire to record them. Or to go as far as to write a small novel! A novella perhaps?
Let me take a step back, though… that’s a bit much to jump into right away.
Wedding Planning: Update!
There’s not overly much to say. The photographer and DJ are paid in full. I am still in need of finances though but I feel Nick and I will make it. We had a wedding pow-wow a few weeks ago and it was very productive however events immediately following the little luncheon date turned everything around and I simply haven’t had time to go over the material we gathered.
But I will very soon – perhaps as soon as tomorrow – and provide the synopsis here. Once that is done, my very next goal is to prepare for the engagement photo shoot *GLEE* that will occur when we visit home at New Year’s and to buy the darling moroccan lanterns and have them shipped home for Nick, mom and I to oogle together.
Then it will be on to invitations and favors! Oh and those girls need to get on their dresses, too… but that’s next year and I’ve got several weeks to go before that.
School is going well; I am adoring my classes thoroughly. My sweet little math class is full of brain-bereft students however and I feel that my creativity is… well, wasted. Even the professor is a bit of a dunce when it comes to complex paragraphs and my elongated (but hopefully eloquent!) writing style.
My CPR prof, Mr. R. Reynolds is the exact opposite! He engages me in a way that I haven’t yet experienced in any class before. I cannot BELIEVE he is simply a physical education instructor. He’s finishing up a doctorate though and wants to open his own academy with a contemporary method of teaching. He feels the current standard of lecturing is out-dated and does not encourage personal growth but instead dampens it and the souls of the students themselves. And I thoroughly agree! If he succeeds in his dreams, I will surely wish to send my children to his school when the time comes.
We discuss so many things it’s hard to summarize them here and I feel I should devote an entire post to the musings we present to one another. From the human soul to theoretical physics, he is an amazingly intelligent man with a bright and creative mind and I am grateful to have met him.
Also notable is my biology professor, Mrs. D. LaCole! Her lessons have been fun and informative. Her love of the subject shines through in her enthusiasm to share it with her students. I have thanked her profusely for her method of teaching because it goes above and beyond what most other teachers have done for me (with the exceptions being Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Nomura.)
She admits that sometimes it is disheartening to look out across her classroom and see vacant faces or downward-turned heads, fingers hurriedly texting under cover of the desktop. My bright eyes and eager mind give her hope that something is making it through to someone. I always provide feedback to her which is possible due to her forum-style classroom. She provides ample lecture material and allows us to openly comment on it, our own life experiences and knowledge supporting the lessons.
Wow, this has been a rather lucid post!
Now on to personal goodies.
Work was… well, it was stressful. Stress on the was, if you would. Why? Well, because. Because I guess I work too hard and I am too vested in my job. I’m unsure why this is a bad thing and I am unsure why I have been punished for it but there it is, plain as day.
While under such constant stress, I broke. A simple question turned into a flogging session where my work ethic was challenged. The irony is that in the very same breath that the degradation occurred, the speaker also pronounced that I was hands-down the hardest worker in my group. I say group because, as school has taught me, there is a difference between “group” and “team.”
There is no team at work.
God I hope Laharl doesn’t barf on my jacket. :X
The shattering of my normally-stable-but-then-fragile psyche sent me into a downward spiral of seizures and panic attacks, complete with that feeling of being trapped, the darkening of the skies, an immense pressure upon my chest and shoulders limiting my breathing ability, and a headache that was near to splitting my skull (and damn well would have if I didn’t cry to relieve some of the pressure.)
But I’m a rather sane and stubborn individual and I said hey, adrenal gland. Will you lay off a friggin’ minute so I can get a grip on reality? And of course it did, because I am God Emporer of Birdyrrakis.
And then I went to my doctor.
Well, physician’s assistant to be precise, but I trust her immensely as I would any assistant of Dr. Kim. He has the highest standards in his staff.
She squeezed me in, the doll, and saw me for longer than she should have. I kept myself under control even though a few tears wanted to sneak themselves out. In the end, she provided to me a happy little peachy-pink pill. Her assessment to me seemed to be accurate: I was having panic attacks under immense stress that were causing silent seizures to occur. It is likely that I have had them for quite some time and through sheer stubbornness, I have plowed my way through them. The brutish way in which I have dealt with these troubles was not the best method and could have led to a compounding of issues with the breakdown being the end result. Frightening was her prediction that the episodes could get worse with time given lack of treatment and management.
And so my world was given Lamictal (lamotrigine, but I much prefer the American trade name; I put happy emphasis on the vowels that makes it slide of my tongue like a slippery and wiggly slug.)
The experience has been interesting! I was told that some patients report the drug as life-changing and I can see why. It has taken me to a completely different level of calm that I don’t think I have achieved since I was a small child, walking lazily through the grass of my yard to my tire swing with nothing to bother me and only the sun, the bees and the clover flowers as my companions.
When at work, I exude a distinctive “do not care” attitude. That isn’t to say that I don’t work as hard as before. Though I felt at first that I was noticeably slower than before medication, my coworkers have emphatically affirmed that I am functioning at the same speed and accuracy as usual – though I do have a severe case of dropsy.
It’s just… things don’t strike me as hard before. A customer complaint would have left me in tears, my self-image quivering in fear of being destroyed by the weapons of self-doubt and failure. A feeling of desertion caused by my coworker’s lack of effort would have left me bereft, trapped in isolation as they happily float about while I keep the strings of reality barely tacked down. Impending doom would come to me in the form of exams and tests. Though I had studied profusely and knew the material thoroughly; though I adored my professors and their classes and the subject matter, I knew in my heart of hearts that I would fail.
At the end of each scenario, my worries would be for naught. My persona would be strong and stable, as it always has been. Reality would not unravel into nothingness. My grades would emerge like pristine A-shaped butterflies, warming their wings in the sunlight of my success.
Holy shit, that was poetic. Apparently, drugs make me quite the verbose artiste.
Derp.
Mr. Lamictal curbs those awful feelings of panic and their companion seizures and lets me float happily along like everyone else in the world seems to. La-dee-da.
My mother amusingly quotes to me Huey Lewis and the News. “I want a new drug…” My mind feels more like it’s on the 59th Street Bridge. Hello, lamppost…
This lazy, hazy calmness does not come without a price. I find my waking hours quite pleasant, as mentioned above. Populated with peace and a steady ability to conquer all things with time. Or to simply leave them on the side of my life’s road to be picked at by the scavengers of existence.
But the nights… oh they have been something else altogether.
Perhaps it is an attempt to keep balance in check but my dreams have been nothing short of nightmares. When I do catch sleep, it is fleeting. I wake constantly, tossing and turning in that state of uncomfort right before a leg cramp kicks in. But there is never a leg cramp and the sensation is echoing throughout my entire body. My joints feel the need to pop but no matter how I twist and turn them, the relief never comes. And I suckle upon my tongue, leaving my mouth parched and enhancing the formation of canker sores. I drink mouthfuls of water when I wake each time, trying to stave off the progression and intensity of the apthous ulcers but to no avail.
Yet I wake rested and alert; my mind seemingly functioning at its usual acute and astuteness. I must have gotten nearly six and a half hours last night, interspersed with a plethora of tossings and turnings and blanketed under a horrible nightmare about a fight with my mother. I should not be so alert and energetic… yet I am!
I’m not quite sure how I feel about this but I will report it to my doctor or his assistant for sure.
A bit of elaboration on the dreams since it fascinates me to dissect them.
My dreams have been a source of great pleasure for me since my childhood. Nightmares had plagued my young brain to a point where I was terrified of the dark and sleeping. I still am quite scared of the dark but can find it tolerable now if Nick or one or more of my cats are near.
I conquered the beast of nightmares by learning the technique of lucid dreaming. To be honest, I doubt I truly learned it – I was too young to be taught something like that. I truly believe I developed it as an offensive way to deal with bad dreams.
These nightmares I have been having as of late are truly and intensely susceptible to lucidity. Though drug-induced they are within the realm of my mind and I have complete control of their courses. They may start out terrifying or more often than not purely FRUSTRATING, but I can control them. Rewind them. Manipulate them. Convert them to my desires.
Frustrating dreams are more upsetting than me to true horrific nightmares. Even so, they are within my control.
I’ve had four dreams on four consecutive nights.
The first was a familiar theme to me: aliens attacking my home. Oh, aliens. How I adore killing you. Your bulbous heads and glossy, unblinking eyes provide luxurious targets for my projectile or blunt-force weapons. This unconscious formation took a unique twist however.
It seems that Nick and I had procured a fabulous home at a truly insane price. Insane as it was extremely low. Along with this gorgeous fully-furnished home, we also were allowed to adopt two little daughters. Their parents had been the previous owners of the home and we were presented them as our wards.
To make a long and dilute story short, the aliens were seeking a weapon of great power hidden in the house. They had no desire to kill us and destroy us; they only wanted to take the weapon where it could be safe. However, lucidity allowed Nick and I to transform into the perfect guardians and so the aliens relented and allowed us to live in peace as long as we fought with such voracity any enemy that would seek our dangerous possession.
Second on the second night was a dream to which I will devote a much larger post. I will list here simply points for ease of documentation.
Furry bulletin board (don’t ask me why)
Round-style story telling
Large storm in small town
Destroys homes
MY TURN!
Storm was extension of curse brought over from Europe
Curse was druidic in nature; perhaps pagan witchery?
300 year anniversary of town being settled approaching
Quota limit approaching for curse to collect souls also approaching
Curse became active by manifesting as storm
TRUE curse was a deep well, filled with mud from the “old country” whose walls were built with stones of similar ancestry
Those who fell in well sunk slowly over seven days…
If within the seven days, someone took their place, the original victim could escape but the savior would die instead
Thus the curse claimed lives over the years… but it had a quota to fill
X amount of souls eaten in X amount of years
With the anniversary approaching, it was hungry to fill its demented means
Storm broke down walls of great door-less, window-less windmill that protected well
Haughty, rude, and vain girl fell in
Girl was one of three daughters – the middle one – of a clergy man in the village
First daughter was athletic and generous
Third daughter was bookish and quite but sweet
Their mother had died some years before, leaving them to be raised by their father
Middle daughter despised her small town and was cruel to all, even those she called “friends”
Upon falling in, no one would take her place
Her father was restrained by the townsfolk; they knew he would give himself for his child but they valued his life so much they could not lose him
They disvalued her so much, they were just going to let her die
It’s not that they didn’t try however
As the sun set on the last day, an idea was formed…
Break down the well instead of trying to get the girl out.
At last moment, victory!
Last scene however shows a dark figure from earlier in the tale carrying hefted upon his shoulder one of those dark and cruel stones from the well’s wall and in the other hand, a pale of bubbling amorphous muck taken from the selfsame pit
He whistles happily a tune that will be familiar to most as his path takes him away from the village to plague another locale…
The next two dreams involved intense quarrels with Susan and my mother. They were stupid but so heated that I left both homes forever. I awoke boggled. Why would we ever fight over such stupid subjects? Why would I ever LEAVE after such stupid fights? It would never happen but Lamictal wants to make sure I curb my temper so as to prevent such events from occurring.
So that has been my last month or so in an extremely large and luxurious nutshell. Tonight is a happy little yearly ritual at the Kosenka-Evans house: the NBC party. Due to a lack of time Nick and I regrettably cannot be John Crichton and Aeryn Sun. I just simply could not finish our black vinyl pants. But mark my words, we will be them! It is all well and good; I have no funds to get us pulse pistols. What is Crichton without his Winona?
Instead of the astronaut gone astray and the Peace Keeper gone rogue, Nick will be Nick and I will be a sex kitten in a dress from high school. How exactly does a sex kitten style her hair, I wonder? Google will help with this, I’m sure!
