A Survey to Pass the Time

Eight lasts

1. last cigarette? Haven't had my FIRST... don't plan to.
2. last beverage? Just water. Bleh.
3. last phone call? My Neurologist. Because apparently NOTHING is normal anymore?
4. last text message? From Steph saying she got hired by Pepper Nix. :O)
5. last CD played? The Scarlet Pimpernel audio book
6. last BUBBLE bath? I'm allergic to most, so it's been awhile, like years
7. last time you cried? 3 minutes ago?
8. last meal? Some pasta salad *I* made and brought with me and a breakfast burrito my mom made me.

SEVEN have you's:
1. have you ever dated someone twice? If you mean like DATED-as-in-boyfriend broke up then dated again, then NO. If you mean, ummm, like been on 2 dates with the same guy, then Yes! twice! I am SUCH a player! hee hee hee!
2. ???
3. have you ever kissed someone & regretted it? kinda, a little, maybe?
4. have you ever fallen in love? I think I did.
5. have you ever lost someone? as in died? Yes, my cousin Brady. As in broken heart? Yes, Fresno. As in misplaced them in the grocery store, no, not yet. ;O)
6. have you ever slept until 2pm? Yes. More often than I would care to admit.
7. have you ever been drunk and thrown up? no, but the second half of that PLENTY of times.

SIX things you did in the past three days:
1. Sprained my ankle
2. Watched a lot of CSI, Law & Order and other killing shows
3. Went to my Psychologist
4. Cried
5. Cried some more
6. Took a lot of stupid medication

FIVE people you can tell pretty much anything to –
Mali, StephAnn, Gilch, Mom, Megan

list THREE favorite colors —
Purple, Red, Green

list FOUR things you want to do before you die -
1. Swim with Dolphins
2. Hold a baby Monkey
3. Get married in the Temple
4. Have Sex

This month have you…
Laughed until you cried? No. Just cried till I cried.
Went behind your parents back? In... a WAY.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT:
1. Your last kiss? Wasn't good enough... apparently...
2. Gay Marriage? I... waver. On principle, I am against it. However, there are people I LOVE who struggle with that temptation. So I really do know it isn't as easy as "principle."
3. Lowering the drinking age? I don't much CARE as I don't drink, though I DO think it is kind of off that you consider someone old enough to fight in a war or get married at 18 but not drink till 21.
4. Straight, Gay, or Bi? What do I think about... I... am? hee hee! I am straight. Yeah.
5. Who are the best huggers that you know? my cousins' little kids... Gabe and Caleb. THEY are the best!
6. Do you believe in love at first sight? No. I do believe in ATTRACTION at first sight. But real love takes work.
7. Is there something you want to tell someone? There are lots of things I want to tell lots of people.
8. What brand of shirt are you wearing? Interestingly enough, Eddie Bauer
9. Would you kiss anyone on your top friends? On my MySpace? Lemme look... NOPE.
10. What is your current annoyance? my health. Especially my stupid ankle and foot.
11. How many kids do you want to have? I don't know. Between 1 and 10?
12. Do you want to change your name? Sure! I often make up better ones.
13. Last time you saw your father? Half an hour ago... aka: TOO SOON.
14. What did you do for your last birthday? Is it horrible I have to CHECK? Oh yeah. Worked at the Farm, was all CRUSHY (bleh!) and got flowers from Fresno, and got Chinese food with the fam!
15. What time did you wake up today? 11 am
16. What were you doing at midnight last night? Watching some random murder-y show with my foot in an ice pack, finishing that last blog post, starting this one.
17. Name something you CANNOT wait to do? play with my gliders again! I MISS MY BABIES SOMETHING TERRIBLE!
18. What is your favorite thing in your room? My Rosie the Riveter poster, probably, or my stuffed dog, Max or one of the other things that has memories.
20. Where is your best friend right now? Ummmm.... Brigham City? Or Sandy? Or Orem?

"but I see things getting better! Why don't you?"

Well I heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do ya?
Well it goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Well Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
she tied you to her kitchen chair
And she broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Well baby I've been here before
I know this room and I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew ya
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Well there was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show that to me do you?
And remember when I moved in you?
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Well maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who'd out drew ya
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

I am pretty sure despite what the x-rays didn't show my ankle is not just sprained. Because if it was, I could put SOME weight on this left foot, and I wouldn't be sleeping at the Padre's house, and I wouldn't have screamed SHUT UP at my dad today and he and Mom would not have argued over what it means that I have Depression, AGAIN, and I wouldn't have bawled for half an hour in the bathroom, and I would be playing with my gliders before bed instead of missing them so bad I could scream.

I am not... coping so very well. Depression is hard. It's harder when you randomly find yourself unable to walk.

My mom told me she recently has felt things are going to get better. That she has "seen" me healthier, working, happy, and making new friends. I want to believe her. But *I* sure haven't "seen," "felt," etc. anything of the sort. But then, 1. I am not mentally well, and do NOT always see things as they are right now and 2. Moms. You know, they have that whole Mom-sense.

But still... yeah.

Oh, and p.s. my crutches just broke coming in the room

At the parents again.

No dripping ceilings this time.


moar funny pictures

I slipped on the ice going out to the car for some Carefresh for the gerbil and may have broken my foot but hopefully just sprained it. Waiting on the X-Ray, but I can put NO weight on it at ALL so I am in the Padre's basement hobbling on crutches and an office chair cum wheelchair.

As my Mom said, "[Kipluck], if you didn't have bad luck, you'd have no luck at all."

Dad and I are fighting already.

I am hurting like hell.

And I am watching a lot of Law and Order, trying not to cry all the time.


moar funny pictures

Go Ask Alice?

Oh you guys, could my life get any weirder?

I DON'T have the flu, I have drug interactions. And the culmination of it all? Tuesday night I had actual Alice-in-Wonderland-style Hallucinations and ended up in the emergency room, barely able to walk. SCARIEST. THING. EVER.

There was pink paint coming down from my ceiling. Things in my room were wiggling. There was a whirlpool in my wall. My soap dish was jumping. More paint dripping from the ceiling. Nightmare while awake, with all the lights ON. My muscles were rigid and I couldn't walk. I tried to close my eyes, but it didn't stop. I saw squirming colors. Like worms. It was almost worse. Bawling, I called my parents who took me to the ER. We came armed with every pill I had to let them see what might be interacting or if I had Serotonin Syndrome. I was there for awhile. They gave me a shot (in my butt) that counteracted the crazy pills, but for some reason made me hurt really bad at the same time, and VERY sleepy. They let me go home, under supervision. So I have been at the padres' till now. But I still am being VERY careful. It was SCAAAAAARY. And yucky. And I still feel like crap. But at least the paint is staying where it should.

“All writers should be put in a box and thrown in the sea.”

I had appointments today, but with this flu I canceled... just as well. All day it sounded like the wind would rip our house out of the ground. UGLY weather and probably not good to drive in while slightly under the influence. But I am really sick of being sick and I am hurting a lot right now.

Anyway, as I DID nothing today (literally. Like I slept. That's it.) I have nothing to write but wanted to share another article about President Hinckley. (he at least deserves more blog coverage than Heath Ledger, right?)

This is from the New York Times. I like it because, well, sometimes it's nice to see him acknowledged for all the good things he did from a NON-churchy source (plus reading "Mr. Hinckley" kinda makes me giggle) .

Also it has some funny quotes. I *heart* our Prophet. I will miss him so much.

---

January 28, 2008

Gordon B. Hinckley, Mormon Leader, Is Dead at 97

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Gordon B. Hinckley, the president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who led Mormonism through a period of global expansion, died Sunday at his home in Salt Lake City. He was 97.

The church, which announced his death on its Web site, said a successor to Mr. Hinckley was not expected to be chosen until after his funeral.

Mr. Hinckley spent 46 years in the church’s top leadership ranks, 12 of those as its 15th president. He was the oldest president in the church’s history.

In a faith that is relatively young, founded in 1830, Mr. Hinckley’s impact was formative. He traveled to 60 countries and dedicated 95 of the church’s 124 temples, some on sites that he himself had surveyed and selected. Wherever he went, he drew large crowds of church members waving white handkerchiefs, a sign of affection that began in Chile and spread.

With his buoyant personality and affinity for public relations, Mr. Hinckley made Mormonism more familiar to the public and more accepted in the Christian fold. He gave news conferences and was the first church president to sit for interviews on “60 Minutes” and “Larry King Live.” When the Winter Olympics went to Salt Lake City in 2002, the church’s home base, he guided the church outreach campaign.

To emphasize its commonality with other churches, he changed the church’s logo, making the words “Jesus Christ” in the church’s name much larger than “Latter-day Saints.” He arranged to make the church’s huge library of genealogical records publicly available on the Internet.

“He’s been the face of the church, not only for church members, but more than any other president, to the world at large,” said Richard Lyman Bushman, professor of history emeritus at Columbia University, a member and scholar of the church. “He exposed himself to all these interviews and seemed to enjoy it. That has won the admiration of church members. We have been a little bit isolated and clannish, and it’s wonderful to see our church presented to the world.”

During his tenure, Mr. Hinckley faced tough questions about whether the church had muzzled critical scholars and about the role of Mormons in the Mountain Meadows massacre in 1857, when a wagon train of emigrants crossing the Utah territory was attacked. Under Mr. Hinckley, a church magazine published an article about the event and a memorial was constructed at the massacre site.

He would often disarm interrogators with peppery humor, once welcoming a reporter for The New Yorker magazine to his office with the greeting, “All writers should be put in a box and thrown in the sea.”

In President Hinckley’s term, the church grew to count more than 12 million members worldwide — more than the largest Lutheran denomination. It is now believed to be the fourth-largest church in the United States. (But the Mormon church has acknowledged reports that a significant percentage of new converts, especially overseas, do not remain active members.)

Mormon presidents serve in office until their death, but Mr. Hinckley stood out for his enduring vigor. When his wife of 67 years, Marjorie Pay Hinckley, died in 2004, he told Larry King: “The best thing you can do is just keep busy, keep working hard, so you’re not dwelling on it all the time. Work is the best antidote for sorrow.”

President Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004.

Gordon B. Hinckley was born on June 23, 1910, in Salt Lake City, a descendant of a governor of the Plymouth Colony. His grandfather joined the Mormons as a teenager in Nauvoo, Ill., where they had taken refuge in 1839 after being run out of Missouri. But four years later in Nauvoo, anti-Mormon mobs killed the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, and chased his followers out of the state. Mr. Hinckley said his grandfather was among those who made the trek by covered wagon and handcart across the Great Plains to Utah.

Mr. Hinckley returned 158 years later to Nauvoo as the 14th successor to Joseph Smith to dedicate the rebuilt temple, which had long ago been destroyed by a fire and tornado. “This is the greatest season in the history of the church,” he said in a news conference, “and it will only get better.”

He grew up in Salt Lake City, where his father ran the LDS Business College and invested in real estate. His mother was a former English teacher who kept a large library at home. He graduated from the University of Utah with an interest in writing, intending to become a journalist. But at 23, he accepted the call from the church to become a missionary in England, where he preached from a portable stand in Hyde Park in London.

After two years, Mr. Hinckley returned to Salt Lake City and informed headquarters that missionaries needed better materials to explain the church’s teachings to prospective converts. He was soon assigned to direct the church’s publicity efforts, which he did for the next 20 years. For seven years after that, he managed the church’s missionary program.

As the church was growing overseas in the 1950s, Mr. Hinckley came up with the idea of producing a film to be shown in temples as a part of the instructions in the ritual. The film, which teaches about salvation and redemption, was easily translated into many languages and is still part of temple ritual.

In 1961, Mr. Hinckley was brought into the upper echelon of church leadership. For 20 years he served as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the church’s second-highest governing body. Then he ascended to the First Presidency, an office that consists of a church president and his two advisers. The presidents he served, Ezra Taft Benson and then Howard W. Hunter, were in failing health for much of the time. Mr. Hinckley had effectively been leading the church well before he was ordained as president on March 12, 1995.

To Latter-day Saints, the church president is not merely a temporal figure but also an inspired prophet who interprets church teachings for the present day. In his first year in office, Mr. Hinckley issued a proclamation on the family. Besides reaffirming Mormon belief that families live on together after death, it condemned domestic abuse. It also said that gender was a characteristic determined even before birth, and that procreation was reserved only for a man and a woman as husband and wife.

Under Mr. Hinckley, the church endorsed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman and financed political campaigns to support legislation that would bar same-sex marriage in California and Hawaii.

In his worldwide travels, Mr. Hinckley became attentive to the needs of church members in developing countries. He established a “Perpetual Education Fund” to pay for needy church members to attend college. And he designed a smaller version of a temple that could be built more quickly, for less money — giving many more church members access to the sacraments at the core of Mormon spirituality.

“That was hands-on, sitting at his desk drawing the floor plan,” said Boyd K. Packer, the acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve. “They are being built everywhere in the world.”

In Salt Lake City, he oversaw the renovation of the historic Mormon Tabernacle, where the famed choir sings, as well as the construction of a new 21,000-seat assembly hall four times the size of the tabernacle to seat the faithful who attend the church’s semiannual general conferences.

Mr. Hinckley is survived by his children, Kathleen Barnes Walker, Virginia Pearce, Jane Dudley, Richard Hinckley and Clark Hinckley; 25 grandchildren and 38 great-grandchildren.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

(Source here)

this is a sad day!

I have a fever today (and the only cure is MORE COWBELL!!!) which is PROBABLY, almost for SURE, because yesterday I came down with some flu thing and I have been sick all day. HOWEVER, because I almost JUST upped the dosage of Cymbalta and WAS on Celexa the same time, I am being watched for the very scary Serotonin Syndrome. Cymbalta made me sick at first anyway, but I got over it. I think it just is doing it again for going to the next dose. But it has been decided I will STOP, not taper off, the Celexa... just in case.

Anyway, right now I feel like crap.

Also, earlier tonight Steph called me and asked if I was watching TV (I wasn't. I was laying in bed, feeling like crap.) because they had just announced that President Gordon B. Hinckley, the prophet of our Church, had died. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I know this sounds weird, but he felt like a GRANDPA to me. Not just the leader of a church, but someone I truly loved. On the other hand I am so happy for him. He has got to be overjoyed to be back with his sweetheart Marjorie again.



Another sad thing I remember today is the Challenger. It meant a lot to me because at the time I was in kindergarten and obsessed with the idea of being an Astronaut. They let us watch the launch in class. And then all that happened. It also meant a lot in my family because my Uncle Bob worked on parts of that Shuttle and when it happened people in his neighborhood blamed him and some still do. They were horrible to his family. It was really sad.

Anyway, to a nerdy kid like me, this was a really really memorable day. I cried and cried. Our teacher cried, too. She had talked SO much about how one of the astronauts, Christa McAuliffe, was a teacher. Anyway, just a little bit of history for ya.



It is Sunday, and I intended to go to church, but to the Padres' ward, where I have decided to go awhile. But this cold/flu/black plague thing I have going stopped me from going to ANY ward today. Or, basically, any room besides my bedroom and bathroom. I spent most of today asleep though, drifting in and out. I have gone upstairs exactly once. The Roomie and her boyfriend are sorta spooning up there and 1. I don't want to interrupt and 2. I don't want to make anyone sick and 3. I haven't gotten DRESSED all day either.

Oh, the Legislator's Night Schmoozing went okay the other night. Not good, but fine. Most didn't even come over to us unless they had kids or grand kids who wanted to do it. And we decided on making cornstarch plastic instead of seed necklaces this year. Some were impressed. Others, not so much. As always, Dave is our hero and ran the show, schmoozed while secretly mocking and called us rockstars. We *heart* Dave! Anyway, glad that's over, even though we ate some of the mighty yummy finger foods once the majority of the big wigs went into the Dinosaur Movie. It was a long day for this medically-frustrated part-timer.

It is going to storm AGAIN. Even though this fever has my face on fire, I really am sick of feeling like I live in a freaking igloo. ENOUGH WITH THE SNOW! EXCEPT that I heard that the DROUGHT HAS OFFICIALLY ENDED! I kind of didn't know that would EVER happen in Utah. I mean, not REALLY end. So I better stop whining about the cold and snow. But still... BRRR!

Anyway, I am going to cross my fingers that the snugglers are done so I can grab some grub for the gliders and go to bed... even though that's where I have been all day. Good night.

p.s. The Roomie is very good and Moral and I am not saying HER Spooning will lead to ANYTHING.

"Do you want to color a Dinosaur, Senator?"

Today I had therapy with Dr. Apparently. WHY is it that the only people who seem to be able to help me with my medical issues don't have actual medical degrees?! I mean my physical therapist is the BEST (if only my insurance helped with him) and is REALLY who "diagnosed" that crazy headache thing awhile ago, that Dr.YeahBaby could fix... and Dr. Apparently is a Psychologist, but I think he understands more than ANY of my doctors and pretty much told me what to tell them to try for meds.

Yep.

Anyway, I really like Dr. Apparently. But I do NOT like therapy. I think it helps... or WILL help... but I think it hurts. It actually HURTS to talk about some stuff, you know?

But I go. I like, though, that he doesn't JUST talk "fluff." He KNOWS medical stuff, and he talks it. That's his specialty... coping with chronic pain and we talk about the science of it. Things like my low thyroid and Fibromyalgia. We'll see. I just want to feel GOOD for a change. Healthy... moderately happy. You know?

After my appointment I went to work, though. It was a Educator Night. BLEH. It was not very good. But it was better than I expect TOMORROW to be. LEGISLATOR NIGHT. I am NOT excited to teach a bunch of politicians how to make seed necklaces and stuff. In truth I am so nervous I am sick. But there are almost NONE of us available that night to do so, so there is no getting out of it. I don't know what I am going to do. I am so scared. I hate adults. Especially official ones.

Anyway, on the way home, Rinny called. Her battery died. So turned back and jumped her car. But DANG IT IS COLD OUT THERE!!! I mean, it was cold ANYWAY, but the wind starts whipping around out there at TGP and you just FREEZE. It was so cold while we tried to fix that car. When will it ever get warm?

For that matter, when will I feel happier?
Hurt less?

I know... give things time. New pills. Life changes. But... I have been ME a long time.