Bi-Polarism and the unresolved symptoms

Hello Everyone,
I hope that y'all are doing well and you haven't had too much severe weather where you live. Save for a few fast moving storms the weather here has been pretty nice, but we haven't had the wind we look for this time of year. Ya see, when we aren't shooting up heroin or smoking crack (I'm Kidding Of Course!!!), we fly kites this time of year. This year has had the lowest average daily wind speeds, in our area, for more than twenty years. Which leads to some pretty miserable outings if you expect to fly that day. All things considered, it's probably just as well in some regards. For those of you that don't know, i have, for brevity's sake, Bi-Polar Disorder. Now, in as much as I'd love to say i have a garden variety case and it's well managed, i can't. In true Greyeyes Family style, i am so far out on that branch, treating me is an exercise in resolve, patience, and forgiveness for my doctors, close friends and family.
I have been battling, as of late, with the thought that we will never find a drug combination which will either arrest my BPD cycles or at least slow the rate of them down to a point where i will be able to return to some sense of the life i once lived. I'm reasonably sure someone reading this will tell me not to give up and advances in neuroscience happen everyday, but i have already been told twice that there are only a few meds left for me to try and i shouldn't give up hope, but i shouldn't be looking for that silver bullet either.
This subset of meds that i haven't given a try are the new anti-psychotics. I just love that term! Although, they don't call them that, they call them mood stabilizers today. Such a handy little euphemism isn't it?? Out go the anti-psychotics and enter the mood stabilizers. ACK!!! The problem with these pills, for me, are the side effects. I mean have you ever seen a commercial for a medicine and they list the side effects and while they are reading them off, do you hear yourself saying, "Geez! the side effects are worse than the disease." Well i know i have. In this, lies the problem. I need to supplement what i take now with a "mood stabilizer", but i want to avoid the major side effects and i just haven't found the right one yet.
This may seem a bit personal, but I'm pretty clear headed this morning and i thought i would put it down before i forgot what i was thinking.
You know there was a long time when i didn't put too much credence into BPD and the progression of symptoms during a lifetime. I remember a time when i went about a year without any extremes, neither up nor down. Sadly, that med combination only made it about three years before i, rather suddenly, nearly stopped responding entirely.
I have been actively treated for this for nearly fifteen years. Add to that a hit or miss, as symptoms arose dosing practice for another decade and it's little wonder why there are so few meds left to try. It's not all bad news though, as of today, i am nearly weight neutral. Trust me, that's a tremendous step. In the last fifteen years i have gained about a hundred pounds. It would make me ill if i thought about that part much. I have also managed to get my extreme depression under pretty good control. So what's left you say?? Only the anxiety, poor sleeping, and the ever present threat of losing control into a rage filled state. Okay, so i need a "mood stabilizer" that aids in control of anxiety, in sleeping, and arrests the bouts of rage with a minimum of weight gain and no link to type II Diabetes. I guess that's not hoping for too much.
I have a son going to a special high school next year and is in a program called Medical Academic, who's curriculum is specifically designed for kids who want to grow up to be doctors. Maybe one day he'll find my pill or your pill. At the very least, i would hope he never loses his kind demeanor the way so many of us have by the things that jade our lives.
I bid y'all a pleasant day filled with satisfaction and gratitude. Dave

Truculent @ 45

Today is my birthday and i'm forty-five years old. My sense of humor betrays me as the phrase, and that about sums me up, screams for me to splice it to the end of the first sentence. Truly, is that how i feel? Is that the value i place upon myself? Well, i just don't know. I'm beginning to believe "not knowing" is the stem from which i wilt.

I want to go fly fishing again.

A few notes on the Language

I must have been in my playpen, forty some-odd years ago, when the phrase "It's not what you said, it's the way you said it" was introduced to my lexicon. Perhaps, there are those of you that would prefer i use the term Broca's Area, but either way it's where we store our language. The interesting part of this is in the transport and delivery of language. Don't let me lose you, yet! This isn't going to be one of those dry academic things, more to the point it's going to be a quick examination of some language oddities that are on my mind. Oh Boy! I used the word quick didn't i?? Well, like the man said, "You get what you pay for." Back to, it's not what you said, it was the way you said it. Since the transport of our language is a living being, so must our language also be a living being. For instance the devolution of expletives for happiness or joy: sweet, dope, fly, awesome, cool, far out, peaches, berries, capital, and the like. Ah would a rose by any other name... Okay, so chalk that one up to generational catch phrases. How about the way technology has effected the language. if you misspell emulate (to mimic or attempt to pay homage to) you will end up with immolate (to destroy, usually by fire) another good one is rife (meaning a great amount of) and you get ripe (ready for harvest). These two can have overlapping contextual agreement. One could use either word to describe a quantity. Finally, we come to ascetic and aesthetic. The former is a person who trains in self denial and mortification and the latter is of beauty and what's pleasing to the eye. I'm not even sure i can find a parallel for those. Make no mistake, i'm not an English snob. If you look for grammatical problems in my writing, i promise you'll find them. I am the King of the Comma Splice.


All of this has been merely prologue to a few of my personal pet peeves. These are in no particular order and i hope you get some kind of giggle out of these. First off there is "alot". Alot is not a word. It is two and as two it doesn't mean many or several. However, many and several do substitute for alot just fine. Next, I want to remind y'all that y'all is spelled y'all. The argument has been made that y'all isn't a word either and the only reason it is in the dictionary is for common usage. WRONG! If you want to blame someone for y'all, then blame Queen Isabella of Spain. She needed to unite her country and commissioned a man named Nebrija to write the first Grammar. It is in this the Spanish form of the, plural and singular(in some cases) second person pronoun (you) (vosotros) was set down and hence, y'all is ours through assimilation.


Which leads me to my favorite email of the week. Yes! i'm telling secrets out of school.


I received the following:


Dude like my bff and me was hangin at the park just kickin and like her genes ript omg so funny cause her azz wuz hangin out and everything can you sew up her azz call me


In a word, WOW!!! I don't know if they need a geneticist or a seamster. So, i replied to my little friend with the following:


Dude, If she's over eighteen and has a good personality, bring her over and let me see if i can get her under the presser foot.


Remember, it's not what you say, but how you say it. I wonder if she'll want quilting stitches on her azz.......Y'all be great, D

Lactaid and the Humble Little Almond

There are few things in this world i cherish more, food wise that is, than ice cream. It's cold and creamy smooth with just the amount of sweetness you're looking for at any given time. Feel like something gooey, ice cream and caramel. Care for something just a little sweet, with very little fuss, vanilla with a bit of cinnamon on top. Oh, this could take days. Especially, if you've ever seen what they do with ice cream at places like Marble Slab. There's a problem with this picture for some of us; Lactose. For some of us that is the biggest four letter word in our diets, next to cholesterol, trans-fats, and eggplant.

I am lactose intollerant. As near as i can remember, i started having issues with milk and especially ice cream in the Army. I loved my Army doctor. He was a good old fashioned country boy and on the subject of milk, he was like that old joke: Hey doc, it hurts when i do this, and the Doctor says, then don't do that. So, for the most part, i gave up milk. I drank powdered milk for a while, it seemed to bother me less, and i even had goats milk. It just wasn't the same and neither made good ice cream. Now, i must confess, i wasn't ever a huge fan of milk like some people. I generally only had milk with cereal and in ice cream. I wasn't one of those drink from the carton kids.

Several years passed and i got to where i just didn't eat cereal and only ate ice cream sparingly. Some where in there i was introduced to lactaid by a friend. Ah, ice cream, my old friend. For a while it seemed to work fine, but then its efficacy seemed to wane a bit. I could have a glass of chocolate milk, but again, ice cream was my drug of choice you might say. I could eat ice cream with lactaid and it was tolerable, but i'd feel ugly the next day. Preferable to the pain, but not a good fix. Alas, am i doomed to a life without ice cream??

A few months ago, my son "bucket-face", yes i really call him that but it's not his Christian name, was put on a milk holiday to see if there was something in the milk making his acne worse. He's a carton tipper, jug junkie and all around milk monger!!! ACK!!! While he was on this holiday we got him soy milk. There are a few different brands of soy milk and they are all faily similar. He and his 14yr old taste buds told me it was as good as milk, maybe better. I smelled it and it had this machine smell to me. I couldn't drink it. I did try it and like i said we bought a few different brands, but they all had that smell to me and the after taste just grossed me out. I have a thing about smells. Smells can send me every where from lust to hiding under a bridge. So, i couldn't bring myself to eat a bowl of cereal with the soy milk. What this did do however, was make me want a bowl of cereal. I started remembering how i would drag my mondo box of Grape Nuts to the chow hall and suddenly i was struck with a full on craving. Ya see, my regular chow hall in the Army had both kinds of cereal, corn flakes and rice crispies. I liked Life and Grape Nuts. Solution?? Take your own to the chow hall.

Which sort of brings me to the crux of this whole thing. I want a bowl of cereal, but i don't want the after effects of eating it. Oh, what's a forty something foodie to do?? Enter, the Blue Diamond Almond Milk commercial. Now, i went to Germany and have indulged in some of the wondrous things they do with almonds and almond paste, so i naturally thought that either the Germans or George Washington Carver must have invented almond milk. I was wrong both times. Shhh, don't tell anyone. Almond milk enjoys a very long history stemming from the Middle East. This nugget made Donna smile as she is of Lebanese ancestry. Anyway, back to the Blue Diamond commercial. I jumped up and ran to the store to get me some of that stuff. I figured the worst case scenario being, Bucket-face could drink it. Oh, don't tell me you've never bought something, found out you didn't like it and then gave it to someone else. Kids are good for disposing of food that doesn't hit the spot and as far as that goes, Bucketface is the best.

The store didn't have any almond milk. It took a few days, but i found it. It's just under three bucks a half gallon here and here are the results according to my experience and taster. All they had was vanilla, no plain or chocolate. I opened it and smelled it. Weird thing, it smelled a bit like almonds. Go figger, right?? I'm not sure what i was expecting it to smell like, but it smells a bit of almonds. I poured a swallow or two into a glass. Taste, it tastes like a melted vanilla milk shake with a hint of almond. It's absolutely lovely. It's even great on cereal. I had the first bowl of Grape Nuts in nearly fifteen years. In the last couple weeks, i have had it on Cheerios (if you are a sugar hound, Don't Sugar cereal with Vanilla Almond Milk), Life Cereal and i even put it in a bowl with a fresh hot homemade brownie much like you might use ice cream. Excellent! Test number two, if you freeze it, does it separate when it freezes and thaws. Ultimately, i am going to make awesome ice cream with it. It is fairly stable from freezer to thaw and back. It will need some fat to make a good ice cream. Most of the recipes i have found use coconut milk, but i'm thinking avocado. Why not?? Alton Brown from the Food Network makes a cake subbing avocado for both the egg and oil, and it's pretty good. Don't go ew on me just yet, avocado has a very light flavor in comparison to coconut and might more readily lend itself to ice cream. I'll let you know. Till then, don't fear the lactose and don't endure the soy or rice, enjoy the almond. Afterall, would i lie to you??

Y'all take care of each other, D

Sort of an apology blog, an Ablogogy

I started off this year with a goal set to put up a blog once a week. To that end, i have failed miserably. At present i have five drafts in various states of completeness and can't find the words to finish any of them. I guess that's the way it goes at times, but it doesn't assuage my own disappointment. Ya see, this whole thing started with over ten inches of snow and ended up with Kolaches. So, i will try to sum up the whole break into one posting so i can delete all of those drafts. Who knows, i might even make myself giggle along the way.





Draft #1 It Snowed a Really Lot


It snowed. It snowed a really lot for here. It was beautiful.


Snow fall: Ten Hours, Picturesque Winterland: Seven Hours, Sunny and Warm Afternoon: TEXAS!!!!! Heck, that's really not all that cool. Once i saw a rainbow and a dustdevil while playing in the rain under a bright sunny sky. Now i'd like to see you top that one. It's funny though, some people wonder how some Texans pick up the habit of wearing a jacket with shorts. Really?? It seems normal enough to me, but then again i'm crazy so don't take my word for anything.


Draft #2 Finally an Artful Commercial

I loathe the way business panders to the consumer. I know this may not make any sense, but there has to be a way to convince people to buy your product without something like the Buger King. The Burger King is Kreepy or Kreepisimo or even the mostest Kreepiestest ad prop i've seen in my life. Every time i see "It" i want to pick up a ball bat, hunt it down, and kill "It" for the sake of the human genome. It would make me quite happy if i found out that "It" won a Darwin. But on to other things. The DQ chimp riding the dog herding chickens was cute and the Chick-Fil-A cows are pretty cool and the talking butter tub was alright, but you just don't see a lot of art in modern commercials. I believe it was Honda that had one a few years ago where a car put itself together from a stack of parts that was pretty nice, but i hate the ones with kids acting like parents or worse. Now, take the lowly Saltine Cracker. What the hell could you do to sell that?? Make a commercial with splashing soup in vibrant colors set to the tune "Rock You Like A Hurricane". It's beautiful. It is to me anyway. I looked for a youtube link, but maybe i'm the only one that thinks it's so great.

Draft #3 The Desert or The Lake

Typically we spend Spring Break at Canyon lake or in Alpine, that's the desert. Most often, the guys and I will go and spend the week doing knuckle-headed guy things and Donna will join us for the weekend at the end unless she arranges to get the Thursday or Friday off too. To begin with, this year was no different. Before making a decision on which route to take i knocked-up a friend to see if she was going to be in the desert that week. (Get your minds back where they belong, knocking up is a British expression for giving a ring, or a buzz, or a call, an email, some sort of making contact, and it is in this regard to which i speak) She said she would be there the latter half of the week. So, i made a plan to leave on Sunday for West, Texas, not to be confused with West Texas, to get some Kolaches and then on to the tail-race of Canyon Lake for some camping and fishing. Follow that with a days long drive to Alpine and a couple of nights there. Then we'd come home to be here in time to rest up and get ready for my Army Buddy to visit on Saturday. Well... Someone far more famouser than i once said, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans".
On Saturday, the night before we were to leave, my beloved Trooper you see pictured above developed an oil leak that prevented us from going anywhere until i could get my mechanic friend to look at it. Okay, Plan B: Make it up as you go along. Welcome to Spring Break '10


Draft #4 I Just Suck at Laundry???


Since i had nothing better to do over Spring Break, i did laundry. (insert giggle here) As though laundry only comes around at Spring Break or something. Though it did afford me the opportunity to address a growing concern i've had about my big kids socks. As you can clearly see from the picture on the left, there is a problem with his socks. I always ask if anyone needs anything from town and generally i am answered with "no". I guess it's a good thing he didn't need anything from town, you know, like a pair of shoes or something. The funny part of this is, i wondered just how old the nasty damn socks were and as it turns out, those are the ones he got for Christmas. Christmas!?! What?? Three months?? Ack!!! Suffice it to say, new shoes, new socks, timer reset for the next round which should be June?? Give me strength.


Draft #5 To West or Not To West...
Okay, since Spring Break was a bust, i had to try and capture some element of it just so i didn't feel so bummed out. Enter that quaint little Czech pastry, the Kolache.
Just south of here, about thirty miles north of Waco on IH35 is the town of West, Texas. It's one of those blink and you'll miss it kind of towns, but at the same time you drive through it the kids are saying why is Koh-Latch and Bakery on all the buildings. Kolaches are typically made with dried fruits or poppy seeds. Oh, the poppy seed ones are the best. So, in an attempt to capture something of the trip that never happened, i made Kolaches. Yes, those pictured are mine. No, you can't have any they are all gone. Like i tell my local friends, if you want some fresh bread, you have to get here before my older son (the one throwing Shot Put above) gets home. I don't call him Bucket-face for nothing. And before you ask, they were Poppy Seed, Apricot, and Prune. Hey! don't snub the prune. You might even say it's a true multi-tasker and quite tasty too.
I hope you got a giggle or two, until then, y'all take care of each other. D
P.S. Next time i'll tell you why i'll never miss milk again!!!!!!!

Hello all, how do you like the pic?? Donna has flipped her wig. hahaha, i thought it was cute. We were screwing around with the camera this last weekend and this is one of the snaps i took while reading the book. The focus isn't perfect and the depth of field is too deep, but like i said i'm still reading the book.

I have to admit i'm really looking forward to getting back out to the weeds and take some shots that I have taken before, but i like to revisit things from time to time. One of the shots i am dying to take is a reproduction of a post card my grandfather took of my grandmother and i along the river road. I guess i'll take it with just me cause i like the symbolism of it and then i'll take the same shot with Donna and the boys. Then of course, a whole lot closer to home, i'll have to go to LBJ Grasslands every chance i get and i'm going to the San Jacinto Monument this summer if i have to go by myself.

Ya know it has been six years since we went camping on the Guadalupe near Canyon Lake, so i think it's way past time we went back. We used to go there all the time, but our last trip was kind of a bummer and we stayed away for a while. I think we're ready to go back.

One last thing, I was watching TV today and a commercial came on where they are looking for subjects to test an investigational Bipolar medication. They are looking for people between 18 and 50 with depressive episodes that last for more than a month or those individuals that are hypomanic, something else, or have mixed episodes. Now i know that in these studies they set it up so that neither the patients nor the doctors know who is or is not taking the actual drug and who is taking the placebo. This brought a thought into my pointed little head. In order for a person to begin a new antidepressant medication they have to stop the old one. Okay, so that means that some of these people are going to purposefully go off of their meds and get sugar pills instead. I know clinical trials are important, but do you really want to take bipolar people off of their meds on purpose?? I know there isn't anyone i know that wants me to go off of mine, but it would make for an interesting doctors office. You guys be cool, D

P.S. I'm a huge Deadliest Catch fan and i feel like one of those little old ladies that gets misty when a soap opera character dies, but i sure am going to miss Captain Phil.

A Few thoughts on what i know.

My dear old friend Lavender Chick, should i say old??, posted a blog this week about the twenty five things she has learned in her years on this earth. I really enjoyed it. As a friend of mine would say, "It spoke to me". So i have decided to put down a few of the things i have found to be fundamental datums. So, Thanks for the inspiration Lavender Chick and just so's you know, i am using an empty Hummingbird Farms wonder lotion bottle as a dish soap dispenser. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Right??



These are in no particular order, i just put them down as they came to me.



1. Don't settle for something other than what you want. If you want Ro-Tel Tomatos, Del Monte Stewed Tomatos aren't going to cut it.



2. You can be as rich as you want to be in public, but you know how rich you are when you get home.



3. Girls lie, Girls make you feel bad, and Girls can do both at the same time. (If the sexist tone of this bothers you, change gender and see if it doesn't fit)



4. A glass of tea always tastes better when someone else makes it for you.



5. When a doctor gives you advice on the state of things, it is just that; Advice. What you do with it is your choice.



6. Nobody loves the way they look in pictures, just accept how you look.



7. If you like your car and it gets you where you need to go, it's good enough.



8. Nothing is too big when you do it for love.



9. When a child or a parent dies, they are never gone.



10. Rotisserie Chicken, Sun Chips, and Guacamole is the perfect meal.



11. Text messaging is for passing bits of information, Calling is for conversing.



12.Doing something unexpected for someone else makes you feel good.



13. Always have mashed potatos with english peas, the potatos will keep you from having to chase the peas all over your plate.



14. Some friends can be closer than family, they're not a replacement they're a blessing



15. Make time for the things you want to do, nobody else will.



16. Ultimatums rarely work out for those that make them.

17. People are who they are, either work within those parameters or don't, but change is not an option.

18. When dealing with life, the ability to compromise is important, but not as important as not compromising who you are.

19. Always leave room on your list to learn new things.

20.