It really is all about me.

I proposed something fun for this blog yesterday. Pain as your constant companion just isn't fun. And talking about it isn't fun either. There is a point of release and then there is a point of dwelling. Those lines are really close together. So, I try to not talk about it at all to avoid the possibility of crossing into the area of dwelling. I think I have landed into the land of dwelling because SO MUCH is happening with SSD and MY PAIN is bad right now. Those two things put it all right there at the forefront. So, when that happens I have to consciously put something else on this blog so that it takes up some mental space. I need something positive to think about and make me happy. Then I need to make myself do the stuff that scares me a little (like see what is really up with my novel and get my domain site on a web hosting server). Yeah, I practice avoidance. I admit it. Eventually I will have to do something about these things; I just want to bring my stress levels back down to tolerable before I do. Otherwise, if it is hard going or bad news I will be on the ceiling, and that really isn't attractive.ever.

So, I started thinking about fictional characters I would like to be. Everyone knows that I would like to be Buffy The Vampire Slayer. This is not news. Of course, Buffy has not really had the easiest time of it. The more I think on that, the more I realize how hard it would actually be to be her. She took a lot of hard knocks and I don't mean just physical ones. Lots of heartbreak there. So, I am taking a pass on Buffy for right now. She is very badass and I love that about her, but I am going in a different direction.

For years (and I mean years), my mom did everything but beat me over the head with Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. She loved those books and I had it in my head that they were murder mysteries. I read enough murder mysteries in my time at St. Martin's Press to pretty well cure me. I like character driven books. I love suspense books. Matter of fact, when I was thinking out this blog I remembered that I read the Kinsey Millhone series right up until I found J.D. Robb's series and then I was done with Kinsey Millhone. I didn't piece that together until today. Why was that? Kinsey pretty well worked alone. J.D. Robb writes futuristic murder mysteries featuring an interesting cast of characters. The first novel introduced them all. The delicious Rourke. Irish. Gorgeous. And numero uno suspect turned out to be not guilty of murder, but our detective, Eve Dallas, married him. He is also a gadzillionaire, which is very sexy. There is the very sensible Peabody and her kooky, nerdy, and brilliant computer genius boyfriend... you see where I am going? Detective Dallas has her own Scooby Gang. There is an entire cast of characters that I care about here and they are in every novel. They are all quirky and you can't help but love them. Some more than others. That Rourke. I really love him. However, my point is that I care about all of them. If you are going to write a series, develop interesting characters.

That brings me back around to Janet Evanovich. I knew it was a series. My mother cornered me on vacation several years ago. We were gone a week. I read a book a day. The first was the worst. We are going to talk Plum for a while. This isn't going to be a book review because it isn't about any one book. This will be a character study. I like all of the characters. Janet Evanovich is brilliant with characters. Anyone aspiring to write great characters should read the Plum series. And they are funny. Seriously funny. Of course, our main gal is Stephanie Plum. She is the person I would want to be most of the time. Okay, pretty much all of the time. I totally get her. She and I are a lot alike. She pretty much backdoors her way into all of the good stuff in her life, too. The only thing she has going for her is persistence. That is it. An unwillingness to give up.

All of the books are written in the voice of Stephanie Plum. Book one starts like this: "There are some men who enter a woman's life and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me - not forever, but periodically." Now, who can stop reading with an opener like that? Not me. I was hooked.

So, who is this Stephanie Plum? She grew up in Trenton, NJ. She was a lingerie buyer who is out of a job. She is so desperate for work that she goes to her cousin Vinnie, who I will tell you more about later, but he is vermin, to get a job as a file clerk. Vinnie is a bail bondsman. The clerk job is gone, however they need someone to catch their FTAs. That would be their Failure To Appears. Bail jumpers. I think you can see where this is going. There is no one in the world who is worse at this job than Stephanie Plum. (Well, I would probably be equally bad.) Her first skip, if she can catch him is... wait for it... Joe Morelli. The boy who stole her virginity and wrote about it on the bathroom wall. He is now a vice cop in a case that went very wrong and he skipped his arraignment. Stephanie will get $10,000 if she can find him.

This is the last time she saw him:
"The next time I saw him, I was three years older. I was on my way to the mall, driving my father's Buick when I spotted Morelli standing in front of Giovichinni's Meat Market. I gunned the V-8 engine, jumped the curb, and clipped Morelli from behind, bouncing him off the right front fender. I stopped the car and got out to assess the damage. "Anything broken?"

He was sprawled on the pavement, looking up my skirt. "My leg."

"Good," I said. Then I turned on my heel, got into the Buick and drove to the mall.

I attribute the incident to temporary insanity, and in my own defense, I'd like to say I haven't run over anyone since."

Yeah, she took the case. The fact that she has NO experience in catching FTAs didn't make a difference. The fact that Morelli had been a vice cop for years didn't factor in. The fact that most bounty hunters carry guns and know how to shoot them should have crossed her mind. It did. Very fast. And then it was gone. She did get a stun gun. Although, I think it has been used on her more times than she has actually stunned anyone else. Just sayin'. Did she get her man? This isn't a book review or a tell-all. We are delving into the person that is Stephanie Plum and what turns out to be HER Scooby Gang. This is just the teaser taste.

But, to answer your question... Stephanie ALWAYS gets her man. It's HOW it happens that makes the ride so hilarious. When your FTA handcuffs you naked to your own shower stall, you know that you just made a big bad mistake. When another really hot bounty hunter has to come to your apartment with cuff keys so that you aren't attached to your shower for the rest of your life... you have to ask yourself, is this a good or bad thing? Or maybe the question is... I really should work out more if I am going to spend so much time naked in these kinds of compromising positions. Or maybe I should work out more if I am going to be chasing the bad guys. I don't know. Too many questions for my overworked brain.

Now, I just wish I was Janet Evanovich. She has so many excellent characters in her Plum Scooby Gang. Tomorrow you will find out some more about Morelli the Vice cop (and virginity stealer) and Ranger (the hottie with cuff keys in the shower). He is a bounty hunter if the fee is high enough, was Special Forces, runs Rangeman. And he might be Batman. He has skills. Tomorrow's blog isn't for the weak of heart. Of course, it is still really about Stephanie and how she relates to these people. And since I am Stephanie; it's all about me.

YOU WOULDN'T FIX YOUR CAR WITH PAPER CLIPS AND DUCT TAPE

This whole worse than usual migraine thing is seriously getting to me. For those of you in the know about migraines, stress is the biggest trigger for a migraine sufferer. For me, I have been stuck in this loop de loop with the SAME migraine since 2003. Long story for tonight. I have written about it before. Long story short is that living in a chronically stressful situation for years made it impossible to break. When I got out of the situation, I didn't have the insurance. Basically, it was just a big ole mess. So, now it is all about trying to control the stress, regulating my hormones, trying to build up my adrenal gland (which produces the stress hormone), and that is just to deal with the migraine issues. The doctors are at a loss on the fibro stuff since the medication they were using to combat that caused my hair to start falling out. I think we will start a new plan soon, but an entire "family" of drugs is off the table because it contains the same stuff as the problem drug that I am titrating off of right now. There are no guarantees the new drug will work and my CRAP insurance has capped me out on any insurance on Rx for the rest of the year, so that means if it isn't a generic drug, we are looking at a really expensive medication. Yeah, I am thrilled with the options. This is pretty much why I don't talk about my medical stuff most of the time. I know I say that, but I have been talking about it a lot lately. That is because it is taking over my life right now. So...

It occurred to me while I was watching a romantic comedy this evening that maybe I should take this blog someplace more fun. Some place stress-free and fun. And that got me to thinking. I did the 30 Day Letter Challenge. That was not stress free and fun. That was cathartic and therapeutic and emotionally very healing. I cried through the letter challenge. However, it wasn't fun.

Some of you were around for the Plastic Joy Award. Purple Cow hated the Plastic Joy Award. I am not going to do that again. She might make a voo doo doll and start sticking me with needles. However, it did get me to thinking about fictional lives that I would like jump into and out of for fun. One could perceive that as a challenge, I suppose. Or not. However, I think the key here is fun. I have read some really wonderful novels that have made me cry and were written so well, but I would NOT want to be those people. Those characters hurt my heart. We are talking literal crying through most of the book, or at least half of it. It was pain. Heartbreak. Suffering. I have plenty of that right here. I am thinking more along the lines of characters that I would like TO BE. For various reasons. So, I am thinking that maybe even Purple Cow can get on board with this one, because it isn't so much about HOT MEN (which are never a bad thing, btw), but more about what qualities jazz me up in a fictional female character.

The forums for this are endless. Movies. Books. TV. You know I will have to include youtube footage for my movie and TV characters. My fictional characters from novels will be in the written word. I suppose I will rely on the author and my interpretation of why I like what the author is doing. I probably won't do this all of the time. Because every now and then I get a wild hair going about something and feel the need to blog about it. I used to do that more regularly. Of course, my thinking was less corrupted then. By that, I mean my head wasn't freaking killing me all of the time.

Before I let this post go, I want to link to a post by Martha. She is a relatively new blogger that I have been following. She is a chronic pain sufferer. She is in the process of the 30 Day Letter Writing Challenge. If you aren't in the loop yet about my Big Idea, I really don't have the wherewith all to explain it right now, but long story short. I think that the insurance companies are dictating the quality of care that we are receiving. Because of that, doctors are overbooking their schedules to make up for the fact that they cannot make enough money to meet their bills due to the fact that insurance companies decide what is "usual and customary" and they have to "eat" the rest. So, they book 3-4 patients in a 15 minute time slot. Nurses evaluate your symptoms, doctors read your chart, and 95% of the time they have diagnosed you before they walk into the room. They have to do this in order to see all of the patients scheduled for that day. You actually only have about 4 minutes allotted to you. If your "condition" is a sinus infection, strep, or something like that, this really isn't a problem. If your condition is actually the first symptom of a bigger problem and your doctor treats the symptom and not the root, this is disastrous. Why? Because YOU MAY NEVER KNOW WHAT THE ROOT OF YOUR PROBLEM IS BECAUSE IT IS SO FAR BACK IN YOUR CHART THAT YOUR DOCTOR NEVER CONNECTS THAT FIRST INNOCUOUS PROBLEM TO THE ULTIMATE THING THAT "BREAKS" YOU.

Your body is a lot like a vehicle. One thing goes wrong. If you don't "fix" it, it will cause another part to fail. If you don't fix that, it will cause more failure until you have a HUGE PROBLEM. Doctors are too busy to treat the root. They only have time to treat the symptoms. We would never accept that treatment from our mechanic if we took our car in for repair. If our mechanic told us that he was fixing our vehicle with paperclips and duct tape, we would demand that our vehicle be taken down from his lift, returned immediately, and we would never go back. Our doctors are treating us with paperclips and duct tape and we don't know it. The insurance companies are forcing this down their (and our) throats. If you have a small problem that becomes a bigger problem and your doctor continues to treat your symptoms, you MUST change doctors. There is a ROOT problem. And that is why my website is so important. No one should live in chronic pain. No one. However, until that problem is solved, the people who are living in chronic pain shouldn't be made to suffer because of the people who abuse pain medication. This whole situation makes me so angry that I really don't know who I want to slap more. Insurance companies are first. Doctors who enable abusers are second. Abusers are third. Doctors who don't stand up are fourth. Yeah, that is a lot of smacking.

You see, I am a chronic pain sufferer. Sometimes I don't take my pain medication just because I know it is doing damage to my internal organs. Yeah, I voluntarily take the hit if I think I can stand it. I take the pain medication when I just can't take it anymore. Here's the deal with chronic pain: it wears on you. Just imagine someone beating on you all day, every day, with a hammer. Sometimes hard. Sometimes soft. But all the time. For seven years. That's my story. Seven years of being hit in the head with hammer. I don't want your pity. I just want the hammer to stop hitting me in the head. I want to finally get SSD so I get insurance so I can get the medication (as in an IV), probably repeated IVs to make it stop. Then the migraine meds might work. Then I want to go through the bloodwork to find out what all of my other funky symptoms are and start treating those. I want to be able to take migraine meds when I feel one coming on and actually have it work. After that, when I have all of my issues straightened away and my website up and running, I want to help other people stop accepting paper clips and duct tape. I want to build houses. I know that there is a better way and I am going to help people get there. We are going to turn this boat around.


image found at www.weheartit.com

LIVE CRAZY BERET

I am still doing rounds with the migraines and they are definitively winning. I still haven't gotten my site onto a host server, and I have yet to upload Microsoft Office to tell if any of the mumbo jumbo on my computer might be my book. I have also not checked my saved files on the flash drive or CD to see if The End was saved to know whether I should worry about this novel. In other words, I have been "doing something close to nothing." That translates to lying in bed and moaning about my migraine. To all of you who were worried about the axe: you can stop worrying about that. Even in my woebegone state of serious agony, I ruled out the axe. I could see no good way to get any kind of grip on the handle (it is too long), and be able to effectively use it to cut off my head. Logistically, it just wasn't possible. It took me about four hours to work that one out. I really tried to mentally work with the axe using every strategy my mind could conjure, and I got zip. So, the axe was rendered as useless as a device to separate my head from the rest of me. Unless someone else wanted to help me with the task. I took a poll of my family members, and all of them objected vehemently to using the axe to chop off my head. So... it has been set aside as an unworkable plan. In lieu of that, I lie in bed and... well, that is it. There is no end to that sentence. I watch the clock turn until I can take my next round of pain medication. I haven't even read your blogs. Sorry.

My parents are preparing to leave for a few days. Then they will be back for a few days. Then they will be gone for something like ten days. This is not a great time for them to be leaving. I am less than thrilled with this plan. If there were ever a time that I felt less than capable of cooking anything for myself, it would be now. I am trying hard not to dwell on the negatives of this at the moment. They leave tomorrow.

Turns out that Social Security must be seriously considering my disability case. I knew that it was in the final stages because I was informed by allsup (they are handling my claim). They called and said it was under doctor review, which is evidently one of the the last stages before a decision is rendered. I got something in the mail yesterday indicating that they wanted me to see a doctor. This doctor would file a report. This was about my mental fitness. I got another piece of mail today about another appointment with a different doctor for a physical. Apparently, they want two reports from independent sources gauging my overall mental and physical health. Well, I look and feel like crap, so I feel good about these appointments.... I guess.

Mom just came home from church. The ladies of the church had a dinner for the veterans (I think). The explanation from my stepdad was somewhat confusing and I didn't want to sound stupid by asking the same question over and over. But I think that was what was going down. Anyway, she called me into the kitchen to show me the take-out boxes she brought home. Apparently she was worried about my eating over the next few days, too, so I now have enough food to last me until they get home again. My mom is so awesome. And she knows me pretty well. I would probably eat pretzels for the next three days if not for her industriousness. Yeah, that is how I get when I have bad migraines. I would probably mix it up with granola bars. And a turkey sandwich for lunch. I know I am missing some food groups there, but I can eat just about all of those things in bed. This is just one of the reasons I am sleeping alone... Yeah, I do find crumbs from the granola bars. I once found a nut stuck in my hair. Migraines are not only painful, but they are nasty. I intend to share that with the doctors. Particularly the mental one. I think they should know just how low I have sunk. Hmmmm.

Well, this is is still magical song Saturday. It almost slipped to Sunday. But, I actually thought of an inspirational song to share today and there you go. My mom is going to be going to one of the local nursing homes to play the piano and sing songs with the residents every Tuesday afternoon. She was told that they will love it. Apparently singing is the last thing to go in elderly people, even those with dementia. They can lose the ability to talk, but they can still sing. I remember that when we visited my grandma. Her communication had deteriorated badly. Mom had brought lots of sheet music and the three of us were around the piano. Before each song, my mom would ask grandma if she remembered the song, and every time my grandma would say, "No." However, as soon as my mom started playing it and singing, my grandma joined right in. So, I know that what that person told my mom is true. Whatever part of the brain stores your musical memory is different than the part that communicates via talking. The last thing to go will be your ability to sing. However, beyond that, the last thing you will enjoy will be music. So, here for your musical enjoyment...




I love that video. I suppose it speaks to me double right now because it is hitting me right where I am living. I first heard it when my migraines were demolishing my life. In other words, back in 2005/2006 was when I first heard it. Migraines had taken control of my life and this song spoke to me. Well, for those of you have been reading this for a while know that I got dropkicked right back to that place and, and then some. I didn't think it was possible to be worse off than I was before, and I was WRONG. So, this song really speaks to me now. I hope that one day it will speak to a lot of people.

I feel like I spun the wheel for the 80s pick this week. Seriously. I really didn't even try. It was like pulling someone out of the hat. Maybe that is what I love so much about the 80s. There are so many people in the hat. It doesn't feel at all like work. The only hard part is finding good video. Youtube sometimes makes finding the video tough. That is infuriating. Prince's PURPLE RAIN record was a lot like Michael Jackson's THRILLER record, in the sense that there was so much incredible music in one place. It was the same concept that INXS used for KICK. Instead of putting only a couple of good songs on the record and then using filler, they went for it with every song. The idea was to make the entire record so good that people wanted to listen to the whole thing. You would think that this would be common sense. Actually, not so much. I remember having actual records and picking up the needle to skip over songs. You know, the bad ones. More and more artists were going for it with the entire record. PURPLE RAIN was another example of that.

Let me be really clear about something here. Prince is not Michael Jackson. Prince never tried to be Michael Jackson. Prince had his own style. Prince was always a little naughtier than Michael Jackson. I remember my first day of college very clearly. There was a frat house next to my dorm. The guys had a homemade sign posted in their front yard that said, "We're the guys your mom warned you about." I eyed the sign lasciviously and couldn't wait until my mom left. I spent a lot of time thinking about ways to get into that house to see if that was indeed true. It was. They were very bad boys. I loved it there. Shhhhh. That is a secret. Actually, there were naughtier frat boys at my college. I knew this because I went in search of them. Cuter and naughtier. So, that sign really didn't live up to it's rep. I know which house it SHOULD have been posted in front of, but I'll never tell.

Now where was I? Oh, yeah. Prince. I remember spending some time pondering the lyrics of LITTLE RED CORVETTE, and decided that was a very naughty song. I was in junior high at the time, so it took me some time to piece that one together. We didn't have lyrics.com, so I had to play it over and over. I also had no expertise in this area, so when I say a LONG time I am being totally serious. I finally wrote it all down and took it to my next door neighbor. It came down to, "Does this mean what I think it means?" She just gave me "the look." Oh yeah, that was a very naughty song. Prince was NOT Michael Jackson. And LITTLE RED CORVETTE always did funny things to my heart when it came on. I don't know what it is about naughty boys. I don't want to keep one, but they are thrilling to be around. Like I might learn something by observation or maybe the magic will just leap off of them and onto me. Of course, I would be much more covert with my naughtiness. As it is, I don't have any handle on the naughty at all. Someone once told me I had that hot schoolteacher look. Woo hoo. Thanks alot. I am not a teacher. But, I will take the "hot" reference. Now beat it. Ooops. Involuntary Michael Jackson reference.

This clip is mixing up live footage along with clips from his movie, PURPLE RAIN. Yes, there was a movie starring Prince and he also made the soundtrack. Do you see how this is working now? This is another case of what made what more money? MTV playing the video? Did that make the song more popular? Did that make the movie sell better? Did the movie success cause the soundtrack to sell better causing it to get more play on MTV? What came first? The chicken or the egg? This is another case of all of these riding the other to outstanding financial success. I WANT MY MTV.




I would say that the second pick is harder, except that it is tough to find original Prince video on Youtube. LITTLE RED CORVETTE is boring (except for the lyrics). The video itself is nothing special. I am partial to I WOULD DIE 4 YOU. Sadly, I can't find the original video for it. However, I also really like RASPBERRY BERET, and I was able to find it. So, that solved that. Like I said, Prince is just on this side of naughty. Makes me wonder what that symbol stood for that he changed his name to when he did that back in the day. Or maybe it still is that symbol. Whatever. I bet it's something just this side of naughty;-)