Talking with the Kids and Amazon Prime Shows

 I just ran into one of my milk crate full of records with my pinkie toe.  OUCH.  It recovered just fine but that initial ouch isn't fun.

I called N1 and N3 tonight.  (I think it's a little late to call N2.)  N3 was telling me about how he does calculus online.  Apparently, you type a series of characters to make a math symbol.  And the computer corrects your problems after you submit each one.  If you're taking a quiz you can change it X number of times but if its an exam, you can only change it twice and then it locks you out.  He was also telling me about his biology class.  Lots to memorize he says.  N1 told me about computer games that use artificial intelligence.  I was telling her about the shows I've been watching.  One is called "Upload" about uploading people's beings into an electronic avatar and people are assigned to watched them from earth via computers.   The two main characters fall in love- one human and one avatar.  I finished watched all of season 1 and there is probably going to be a season 2 but not until 2021.  Also, N1 and I discussed going to the doctor because I have my annual appointment on Monday.  We were talking about getting vaccines.  She relayed a story about when she was young and we were at the doctor for her annual appointment and she decided to be stoic and get the shot and after that I said that we could go out to eat as a treat because of how well she did and that she could pick the place.  I love that the kids relay their memories with me. Did not talk with N2 because by the time I was off the phone with the other two, it was nearly 10 and I think that's too late to call someone, unless they're in an earlier time zone.

I did laundry today.  There are three washers and three dryers downstairs on the lowest level.  I put my laundry in the washer and set an alarm for when it should be done.  (The machine has a count down.)  When I came back, all three dryers were in use.  They have timers, too, so I set my alarm for 20 minutes because one of them had 15 minutes left on it.  When I went down again, there were a few people in there just about to leave, so I got to use a dryer.  It takes 30 minutes for the washers and 60 minutes for the dryers.  I set an alarm on my phone so I get down there again relatively close to when the machines are done.  It costs $1.75 per wash/dry.  So that's $3.50  per load.  I do take my laundry to my mom's sometimes, but that's a long time to be over there.

I am enjoying my new apartment.  Its been a couple weeks since I've swept, mopped and vacuumed the floors.  I will do that tomorrow.  I've been here 5 weeks as of today.  I should also go to the grocery store to get a few items.  I try to use the twenty-items-max check outs because there isn't usually a line on the left side.  The right side always has a line and all the regular lanes have a long line down an aisle that is perpendicular to the line of checkout lanes.  The left side, however, doesn't usually have a line and if they do, it goes quickly and is shorter than the right side.  I brought my chairs and table in from the balcony because they were fixing them all week.  Today was the last day they were going to be here.  I'd put the furniture back out there, but I'm waiting for my colorful lights to show up and I want room to stand while putting the strand around the railing.  I should clear off the dining room table.  Its covered in notes and bills.  Luckily, only one hasn't been paid.  It's going to go through automatically later in the month, but I could call and pay it early if I wanted to.  I took out the trash today, too.  

I've been eating a lot lately.  Not huge amounts, but frequently.  I get hungry about every 2 to 3 hours.  And Whole Foods has stopped carrying my dried seaweed that I like.  I should start keeping track of what I'm eating, again.  I have gained maybe 4 pounds since I moved here.  That's a lot of excess calories!  The weather was nice today.  I should've gone for a walk.  Maybe if it's warm again tomorrow I will walk.  But, I'm still at about a 40 pound loss.  I hope my doctor notices on Monday.  I think I need to lose another 40.

I changed my "theme"/background.  It's very pink! Let me know if you like it.

Third Day In New Apartment

 Today is my third day here at the new apartment!  It is also my middle child's (daughter) 21st birthday!  She went out to a restaurant/bar last night so that at midnight she could drink.  She said they messed up her plan- everyone was saying it was her birthday, so when the bartender got to her, she didn't even card her!  She is disappointed that she didn't get asked for her ID.  I don't get carded anymore and that's on the rare time that I drink anyway.  

I'm in the living room listening to Pergolesi's Stabat Mater sung by Rene Jacobs and Sebastian Hennig.  Famous recording.  I've had it for maybe 25 years, but this is a new copy because the old one skipped. I'm listening through my tv because it has much better sound than my regular CD player.  I've been putting away DVDs and CDs and VHS tapes today.  Unboxing and putting them on the shelves.  I'm going to have to store some in the boxes because I don't have enough room on the shelves.  Then again, there is the table that the TV is on which has lots of drawers...  These are the last few boxes I have to empty.

Mentally, I'm doing well.  Just a little anxious about setting up the portal to pay rent.  But I don't HAVE to do that for several weeks when the rent is due, but I probably should anyway.  I found a TV channel that plays old shows like Gimme and Break, Maude, Webster, Facts of Life, Three's Company, Bewitched, and I Dream of Jeanie, to name a few.  I'm enjoying it.  And this is through the TV antenna so it's free!  The reception is good, too.  I checked my mail and there was just stuff for the old people here and not anything important, it looked like, so I left it down in the shelf thingie under the mailboxes.  

My mom and Kevin came over to bring me two chairs and a table for my balcony.  Now I can sit out there and have my coffee.  If it ever gets warm again, that is.  It IS October!  There are what they call "Indian Summer" days that could happen, though!  I bought some chocolate chip oatmeal cookie mix yesterday.  I'm looking forward to baking and eating those.  I think I'll wait until N3 comes over so he can enjoy them, too.  Maybe even N1 and her girlfriend.  They need to see my new place.  They live in the same apartment complex, so they basically know what my apartment looks like, but not what it looks like with my stuff in it!  

I have to pay this month's rent and next month's rent together.  They just took the security deposit.  I will have to sign up for the portal before I can do that, though.  As it stands now, I don't even know how much my rent will be!  (That information hasn't come in the mail yet.)  I hope it will be as much as or less than what it was at the old place.  

I went grocery shopping yesterday.  Got a medium amount of food, plus laundry soap and Febreze.  So now I have food to eat.  I got blueberry bagels, cheese and crackers, frozen microwave meals, cream cheese, cookie mix, butter and eggs... Just stuff!  I want to make those cookies with N3 but it occurred to me that I don't have a cooling rack for the cookies.  I don't know where it went because I used to.  Maybe N2 has it?

Listening to Chime Again Beautiful Bells, on a CD all of old recordings of counter tenors, only these men sing in the soprano range (not castrati!).  The original scratch is on the recordings.  I'm not sure when these were recorded- 1920's and '30's I would guess.  This is a copy of the original album so I have no idea of the names of the singers or names of the songs.  

I'm kind of bored.  I know I have a few things to do still- I think I'll move some of the records over beside one of the shelving units instead of have them under the dresser that the TV is sitting on.  And I need to put away the VHS tapes.  I don't have many, but I do have some.  Especially important is N3's ultrasounds.  I haven't seen those in YEARS.  I thought I had one of N1, but I don't have it anymore if I did.  I also have a movie on VHS called "Almost Angels".  It's a fictional story about the Vienna Boys Choir.  

  

File: 5/02/2016 Paranoid, delusions, aliens, anxiety, balcony

[PDOC] 05/02/2016

F31.2: Bipolar disorder, current episode manic severe with psychotic features (Active as of 10/16/2015)

F29: Unspecified psychosis not due to a substance or known physiological conditioner (Active as of 11/21/2013)

F31.9: Bipolar disorder, unspecified (Active as of 10/29/2014)

F39: Unspecified mood [affective] disorder (Rule Out as of 11/21/2013)

4/20/15: Clt's current symptoms and presentation and symptoms are congruent with previous diagnosis.

11/21/13: Client reports paranoid thinking with delusions. (Thinking people are aliens and endorsing a hx [history] of beliefs that she can fly and that she will not die for long if she kills herself.) Client reports a hx of auditory and visual hallucinations, but none at the moment. Client reports anxiety related to personal relationships. Clients reports that she tried to overdose to kill herself last night with plans to do so again.

10/08/13:. Pt presents as preoccupied, possibly responding to internal stimuli, hears voices telling her to stab herself, reports some improvement in psychotic symptoms.

10/1/13: Client presents "ramped up" with thoughts of jumping into traffic or "Flying off her balcony" w/o specific intent of suicide. She is calm in presentation but she reports that she has felt increasingly "ramped up" over the last 2 weeks. She spoke with her psychiatrist this morning and she recommended she resent to PES. [Psych. Emergency Services]

Early Psychosis (Pre-Diagnosis)

They say you don't get diagnosed with bipolar for at least ten years after symptoms first show up. In my case, it was more like fifteen.

When I was a teenager, I'd hear voices call for me, while I lay in my bed in the middle of the night. I thought it was my sister whose room was right next door, so I'd get up to go see what she wanted. She was asleep. If I woke her up, she'd be confused and wonder what I was up to.

At about twenty, I had my wisdom teeth removed. I stayed at my mom and dad's place with my dad as my mom was out of town on business. After the surgery, I was home on Vicodin, or something similar; I always thought what I'm about to describe was to do with that, but now I'm convinced its not. In fact, I asked my friend who is a behavioral pharmacologist if pain meds can cause this sort of thing (hallucinations) and he said "Not a normal dose in someone without bp*." The condo my parents lived in was built into a hill so that the back of the living room was higher from the ground than the front and front door. The balcony with sliding glass doors was at the back on the second level. One day, I saw aliens standing at the doors, knocking for me to let them in. I did not. They were short and pleading. They didn't say anything, and in fact, were completely quiet except for their sotto voce knocking. Later that same week, I was in the basement. There were no curtains, so that the black of the nighttime filled the windows and the sliding-glass door. I knew that the black was coming to get me. The oneness of it consumed it. Somehow, my mom called (pre cell phones) and I told her of my fear about the black. She said, "The black can't come get you," "I know!" I agreed, "but its coming anyway." She suggested that I maybe had had too much of my pain medication. It sounded plausible at the time.

Around the time when my daughter was born in 1999, I was in the bathroom looking out the window into the back yard. I saw many very large orange rectangles in the sky. I checked if they were really there by looking back in the bathroom and out again. Yup: Every time I looked outside they were there, but inside they were not. I called my husband to come look. He did and said there were no rectangles in the sky. I don't remember how long they took to not be there anymore, but my doctor was not called. I recall taking Zoloft around this time, so I must've had a psychiatrist. Again, I didn't relay my experiences.

In early 2001 when my youngest son was born, I had some vivid visions. When I was giving my daughter- then 2- a shower, my hands would crush her head- blood, broken bones, warped skull! It was as if it had really happened. I'd gasp! I went on with the shower, but it kept happening over and over. I did call my psychiatrist about it at the time, but she still said I had post-partum depression and kept me on my anti-depressant. I am thinking this was post-partum psychosis, not depression, but my doctor did not agree. Around that same time, I also had visions of driving my car into the opposite lane of traffic with the kids in the car. I got picked up and stayed at my sister's apartment for a while. I did call my psychiatrist that time and she said to stay put and not go anywhere. Aside from this last bit, I still don't think my case was managed very well at the time, especially since my psychiatrist was big into post-partum depression: she had many patients with it and had written books about it; therefore, in my case, I think that's all she could see. My OB/GYN, on the other hand, warned me and my sister about psychosis after birth, telling us to tell her if we got any symptoms that were even sort of like psychosis. This was when I woman named Andrea Yeats had drowned her five children during the post-partum period.

About four years later, I was taking my youngest to preschool and was walking the halls when I saw vivid spines being ripped out of the children at the school- body parts flying against the walls and blood splattered over the floors. I managed to call my psychiatrist, who said, "Don't drive!" and prescribed me Celexa. This was when I was in my early 30's. So close to being diagnosed (about age 33) but yet so far. The Celexa didn't do much to calm the psychosis and in fact, I went driving to Wendy's that day and was very confused about where I was and what I was doing. No anti-psychotics were added. In their minds, I still must've had post-partum depression? How could that be when my youngest was four? In all those years, what were they thinking? How could they STILL not diagnose me as bipolar? My parents didn't see it. But today, its so plain to see.

*bipolar