medicated

So much has happened lately...And honestly I've been very involved with a post that I'll publish eventually but it takes time to write and so I haven't written in a long time.

So this is very quick because I'm groggy from my new migraine medication.  Here goes:

• I started Topamax for migraine prevention.  If I can tolerate it (it has cognitive side effects) it may also be a weak mood stabilizer and can help with weight loss from psychotropic weight gain.  I'm increasing very, very slowly to decrease the risk of side effects.  This is day 2 and it just makes me tired so far.
• My house passed inspection and is awaiting appraisal.  It closes in less than 3 weeks.
• I made it 4 weeks without waiting to hurt myself and marked the occasion by realizing hours after I left Dr. Mind that he hadn't asked about it for the first time in many months.
• My new niece will be here in the next 3 weeks.  Any time now really.  She is breach so my sister probably has to have another c-section.
• My existing niece is showing signs of imitating some of the ways her mother treats me.  After I described this to Dr. Mind and he pointed out that she will treat me like her mother if I don't stop it with her mother I decided now isn't the time to take on my sister but I did make a point of letting my niece know that some of the things she said to me that day were not at all ok.  My sister pretty much let her think she can hit and bite me so those things are on my list too.  I may not be favorite Aunt Jen for a while but I am not going to be treated like that by a 3 year old.  And I love her too much for her to abuse me.
• I am not awake enough to say more.  Topamax is an excellent sleeping pill thus far.  I won't know if it prevents migraines for 2 months unless a lower than usual dose helps.  I think that's possible because I"m on neurontin which can also help migraines but I'm on a very low dose.  Maybe they'll work together.

More later

thought(s) of the day

I just signed the contract on my house.  I'm really happy with my realtor who is paying for a requested survey out of her profits because I took a bigger hit than hoped for in price.

Proceeding now to the men probably won't care/understand section:

It always seemed like menopause should be a gift.  Since I had the hysterectomy the side effects of that are a gift.  Menopause however is ANNOYING.  One too many hot flashes and migraines lately.  My hormones seem exceptionally out of whack this month, possibly from the extra Seroquel which screwed with my hormones when I started it and possibly just because it happens, but I am at this point not agreeing to continue.  (In general this isn't that bad, this last 10 days has just been trying and I just had one of the nasty sweaty hot flashes that seems to linger for way too long instead of the ones I handle more often and accept as a part of life for now.  Ugh).

They said about 5 years from my surgery because if that kicked menopause into a higher gear (it did) that would be because of loss of some of the ovarian blood supply and the ovaries don't last very long after that.  I'm almost to a year from surgery.

Try to relate these things

First, and biggest:  I SOLD M HOUSE!  For the record 2 weeks from listing to contract.  I will close on 8/19, which is also the week my new niece is scheduled to make an appearance.  I didn't get quite the money I wanted but it was so close that the fact that Wednesday I will make my LAST mortgage payment makes up for the difference since another higher offer would more than likely require me to make several more mortgage payments.  I have enough profit to make a substantial payment to my mom for the new home and still buy appliances and furniture (since downsizing means changes and hopefully I'll be getting a couch as well since mine is not in good shape and this is the time I'll have money to buy one.  Maybe).

Second, and also biggest, I have made it 3 weeks without dangerous thoughts.  Thank God the high dose Seroquel is helping.  However it's making me gain weight and that makes me mad.I will be better off when I am buying my own groceries; my mom keeps more junk in the house than I do and when it's here and I'm on this much Seroquel I eat it.

Third, I found a very good episode of Scrubs that explains a little bit about working in medicine with mental illness.  It's Season 3 and the episode is called The Catalyst.  Michael J Fox stars as a genius doctor with severe OCD.  He goes through the episode showing his genius skills and then at the end he is trapped washing his hands over and over for hours because the stress overwhelms him and makes his disorder worsen temporarily.  But in the next episode he is back and not only helps nearly everyone with something but he also conquered his greatest fear--which happens to be a toilet on the roof of the hospital.  It is so much like what it used to be like.  Good times when I knew what I would have been as a therapist without bipolar and bad times when it was bigger than I was.  When I left my first job a COTA who I had worked with since my first day and who I was very close to gave me a reference saying I was the best OTR he had ever worked with.  That kept me going for a lot of time when I wasn't the best OTR anyone had encountered.  Looking back now I see that sometimes I was very good.  And plenty of times I was affected by my disease and I wasn't good.  I had some good periods those first few years and I think I was in control most of that time.  When I was working in psych and then years later home health I was good at what I was doing.  I was a little more stable in those years.  Well, in home health I was.  I'm not sure about the stability with psych, that was just an environment where I thrived and an exceptional employer until it was bought out by a real estate developer who handled medicine like home sales.  That didn't work.  I moved from really good to really struggling because my assistant was fired and I was working WAY too many hours until she was replaced (which happened after I was on disability.)  That period of instability stretched for about 3-4 years where I was not good at my job.  It's hard to admit now that sometimes I just wasn't good but I did what I could and I cared.  Always. But it was a fight to do my job and sometimes I didn't remove it.

I need to get back to my sewing.  Anne's birthday is Saturday (3!  Can you believe that?  THREE!) and I am trying to finish a dress for her by Wednesday.

 

In which I am NOT fishing for compliments nor bragging, despite what it sounds like

Today my mother came to my session with Dr. Mind.  It went ok.  She wasn't negative or argumentative and her only response was that maybe I should be seeing a psychologist.  (I call Dr. Mind one but he is really a licensed clinical counselor with a PhD in counseling).  Somehow I don't think there is anyone more qualified to treat me right now but it was I guess something to think about from her perspective when he explained he can't directly admit me to a hospital.  Overall it went well.

The hardest part I think was that he once again talked about my courage.  It's hard enough for me to agree to that, but sometime in the last year or so he told me that he had been thinking and realized that I'm one of the most courageous people he's known.  I deeply appreciate this.  I know it is why he has gone above and beyond to make me have the best life I could have.  I objectively know that some of what I've done has taken courage.  I easily could have run away from OT when I realized that it was not the easiest career choice for me, which was less than a year into the 10 years I did it.  I fought my way into getting appropriate treatment and good doctors when that was not at all easy at some point.  I've fought my way through nearly 70 med cocktails (I think that's right; I think it is 68 but could be off) and survived some pretty tough reactions.  I gave up working when it was clear I was done even though I nearly killed myself to avoid that decision. I battled with the Mirena and what it did to my mood and cognition for nearly a year and then decided to remove it when I knew that this meant I was probably going to return to painful and gory periods.  I went into the hysterectomy knowing that I had experienced an unexplained anesthesia reaction the year before and that all that could be done was to pray that the anesthesia with MAOI anesthesiologist had better luck.  I gave up my home.  I went through intensive PTSD therapy for a lot more sessions than it usually takes because I struggled so much.

 I have had courage.  What I don't think it that this is more courage than most people in my situation would be forced to have.  I don't feel that this is a choice, I think it is a simple choice:  do it or kill myself.  And while admittedly that has been a frequent option the last 2 years it is also true that I ave never quite reached a point where I felt that I would not feel guilty for doing it and I think that guilt means I still feel there is something to live for.  Everything I did has been because there are those 2 options for nearly anything.  I might have considered not doing OT but I needed the income to pay for my student loans and I wasn't qualified to do anything else.  I did nearly leave it in the first year to do wheelchair evaluations permanently but the job fell through.  Most of what I describe though was doing what I had to.  All the med cocktails were because the previous ones didn't work and I was hoping for something that would.  And I had that for a while.  The surgical procedures were necessary for quality of life.  Facing the things that no longer were right after the first surgery wasn't a choice but I was much more concerned with losing my job than I was with facing that things were changed for good.

I just am uncomfortable with with the "one of the most courageous people I've known" because I don't think courage and doing what is necessary to go on are the same.  I also have been so weak in the last 2 years.  I haven't been courageous enough to do this gracefully.  I can't help thinking that he could come up with many, many people much more courageous then me.  Yet I know Dr. Mind isn't big on hyperbole.  So I find this all confusing.

Yet hearing this made me tear up today.  I haven't heard much that I was doing right in a long time.  That's because it has been a long time since I was in a good, safe place and we're celebrating 2 weeks of doing ok.

In unrelated news my house went on the market last Monday, was shown on Wednesday and Friday I got an offer.  The offer was low and I have come down $5000 and the last offer was less than I will take and my realtor was told that the person wasn't likely to go higher.  So we'll now see if he takes my bottom line offer ($2000 more than he wants to pay; he really wants a bargain on this house and the $5000 lower price truly is a really, really good price for him so maybe he'll take it but I have a feeling that this is over.  It was pretty clear initially that he didn't want to pay what was worth; the first offer was $9000 below asking.  It is hard to describe the difference between houses selling for that and my house but it's huge.  We'll see tomorrow.  I want the sale to go through because he has a loan and is ready to go with a closing date in place.  That would be fabulous.  But I also don't want it to go through if I could get closer to the anticipated sale value.  So I'm ambivilant.  I am permanently attached to my phone, constantly checking for emails these days.

And with that I think it is bedtime.

the song apparently written for me

I posted a few days ago about david m bailey, a Christian musician who graduated from the same college as I did and who became a professional musician after a diagnosis of a very aggressive brain cancer. Listening to his music has made me realize I need more of it, but it also has made me realize that he wrote a song that he could have titled "What Just Me Jen needs to hear". t's a Everything he sings in that song are things I need reassurance are ok. There was a time back when I started seeing Dr. Mind that we worked very hard for me to be able to cry. Now I cry with him often, alone occasionally, and with Dr. Brain rarely. Now that my high dose Seroquel has caused some numbing it's a lot harder to cry. But for the most part I struggle with feeling so many things because determining appropriate emotions in the middle of a whirlwind of bipolarness. It's also hard to remember that just because I'm grieving doesn't mean that I am not allowed to laugh with little Anne (who turns 3 in 3 weeks so not so little) says something funny or that just because I've been laughing somewhat hysterically because of mania doesn't mean that I am blocking the door to my sadness. It's too much when people tell me that eventually I'll get back to living more. that's overwhelming and makes me feel pressured to be better than I am. I know perhaps I'll work somehow again and I do believe that this sadness and hatred of life will end. Right now I need to just have space to be where i am and not think ahead or behind. But I am happy when this little reminder pops up on my ipod, especially since if i don't feel like listening i just press a button. Someday Ill be ready to move forward but right now my moving forward is limited to waiting for someone to want to see my house and praying it sells this month. Looking beyond that is impossible and that's fair between what I've been going through and will continue to go through combined with the numbness from my medication. That probably will go away eventually but honestly it may mean a new increase if it does because numbness is helpful right now. Anyway, time to try to sleep with the air conditioner unit making noise. Somewhere I have ear plugs but I don't know where and the noise is more than I like. We'll see. Copyright 2006 www.masterofirony.blogspot.com

Unreal

Today was my last day working at the house.  Tomorrow the realtor will take pictures, post her sign and send the listing out over the realty networks.  This was supposed to happen last Thursday but we had extremely heavy rain (and the biggest hail I've ever seen) and my basement was wet for the 2nd time ever.  That was a fun incident; I had all this extra time planned to be ready for her and instead I had to run out and buy rags and a shop vac and then frantically suck up the puddle.  So we delayed a little so I could finish up.  Today I did things like mop the basement floor, mow, vacuum one last time (for now), and clean kitchen surfaces solely to make them shine.  (Scrubbing Bubbles Kitchen cleaning foam is AWESOME).  So it's as ready as it will be.

I intended to take a few minutes to sit in my old bedroom and be sad.  Then I didn't really feel that because I am avoiding feelings and my high dose Seroquel makes me feel pretty flat, a side effect I forgot.  But mostly what I felt today was that the whole thing wasn't real.  Empty it just doesn't look like the place I lived for so much of my life.  It feels like somewhere I've been asked to clean, not like my home.  I don't really feel like I have one of those right now, just a place to stay which I'm grateful for but which is not ideal.

Then I realized so much of my life doesn't feel real.  The years since my bipolar began affecting my ability to function and moved on to the now simply do not seem like they really were part of my life.  I can't believe now that I once knew and did what I did as a therapist.  My camp counselor years feel like a story I once read.  Grad school feels like a dream.  Even most of college has a hazy quality.

I know that this partly because of my depression and the grieving process.  I know a lot of it is my med change.  Compared to December I am on a lot more medication between adding Neurontin and drastically increasing Seroquel.  But some of it because in the last 20 years almost everything I thought I knew and understood about my life has been turned inside out.  If you'd told me 15 years ago that I would have had to stop working after a rough career, that I'd own a house and sell it to live with my mother, that I would spend months not wanting to live, that the dreams I had about having my own family would never come true, that even my so-called best friend wouldn't be in my life anymore, I would have laughed.  But all that and more is true.

So much has happened in so little time.  I think I needed to understand this to start this grieving they keep saying I must face.  I hope.  Right now honestly the part I'm saddest about is that I miss my own things.  I miss my mattress like I can't explain.  I miss the stupidest things like sitting on my couch to watch DVDs instead of this not-so-comfortable bed.  I miss closing my bedroom door (not that I ever did at home but here I want to so I miss it because I can't do it and still let my cats get their food and litter). 

And my mom says I may be here until November.  That's bad in that I don't have clothes for that weather and getting to them in the storage unit would be incredibly hard.  It's also bad because it is so long.  So very, very long.

Anyway, I'm going to try to watch a DVD and knit for a while.  I miss knitting too; it's not the same here because I don't have space for it.

Yet it took less than a month to make everything seem like it never happened.

the dangers of being in the early 20s

Tonight a headline somewhere about James Holmes, the man who carried out the deadly shooting in Aurora Colorado about a year ago made me read more about him.  Nobody seems to know much but it seems pretty clear he was having psychiatric issues before planning and carrying out the murders/attempted murders.  He had apparently sought psychiatric help with 3 professionals prior to the shootings and  just looking at him in pictures you can see something is not right.  Behaviorally he went from being an outstanding student in a difficult field to failing.  Sometime prior to the shooting he texted a friend"Have you ever heard of dysphoric mania?  Stay away from me".

The biggest warning sign is that he is in the age group when the more severe cases of bipolar and of schizophrenia tend to appear.  I was 26 when diagnosed although my onset date is considered 14.  At the time I was diagnosed the dr. was  very  surprised that I didn't have a diagnosis some time before,  but my bipolar is atypical  enough that it wasn't easy to be sure.I too have dysphoric mania (I am  grouchy  and agitated instead of the better known overly happy,energetic,grandiose mania that more people have) and that looks like depression sometimes, especially when  there is rapid cycling so there is true depression as well.  I think the psychiatrist I had in grad school saw everything as depression with some variation in symptoms.

For  me,and for many people, as the early 20s pass, these illnesses become more overpowering.  A comparison of me at 20 and me at 25 or 26 is almost a different person and my memories of grad school are of a decline that I was aware of but didn't understand and which I couldn't articulate.  I remember clearly the spring of 2000.  I was taking a class that met on 2 weekends and completing my thesis proof-reading.   I  was babysitting a  few times per week and doing play therapy weekly with a child I had assessed in a prior class. I remember telling someone that something felt strange, that I felt different than usual and I didn't know why except that I wasn't sleeping well.  I remember the  agitation that I did not understand as well as the sense that something was slipping away.  Three months later I started my clinicals (6 months of full-time work in 2 settings) and while I did very well on my first one I could feel myself losing something during that time.  Just before those clinicals we went to the beach as a family and I saw in sharper contrast how off my mood is.  I have a picture of myself on that trip, taken without my knowledge, and the sadness shows clearly.  My 2nd clinical I didn't do as well in, although partly that was ambiguous expectations and little supervision, but it was also my ability to function changing.  I graduated in December 2000.  There is no way I could have done another year, probably not another semester, as a student. 

As I began working things declined rapidly.  I was 25.  I had the advantage of not having obvious symptoms for a while because nobody at my new job knew me and a lot of things could be forgiven as "stressed new grad in supervisory role".  However I knew that something was very wrong and I was terrified of it.

I was somehow able to hold it together for almost 2 years of working.  It was barely possible at times and I was terrified all the time of what was wrong since it seemed obvious that the belief that I just needed an antidepressant  for a while was wrong.  It wasn't me that held things together though.  I was on the verge of losing it more times than I can count and my memories aren't very clear of that time.

When I read about a situation like this my heart breaks.  What he did was terrible and if he is not severely mentally ill I hope he spends his life in jail.  But if he were not well medicated for some mental illness that he had just come to recognize then I pray that not only does he get the help he needs but that this tragedy helps others know that this diseases often appear in the early 20s and that bizarre behaviors or great changes in personality are warning signs that help may be needed and the person may not be able to seek it.  In may case I would seek it but I wasn't good at judging when it was not helpful until it was too late to easily extricate myself and then find the energy to move on.

It could have been me.  Not likely since i'm terrified of guns, but I could have done something bad before diagnosis.  It's a horrible illness.

Uplifting

I went to a very conservative, strict Christian college called Grove City College.  The college experience there differs from what most people envision when they think college.  Among many differences (lots of rules including very limited times that males can be in female dorms or vice versa and when there is "intervisitation" the rule is "feet on the floor, shoe in the door".  I once got in trouble for sitting on a bed beside the person I was dating with my legs pulled up and crossed under me).  We also had to attend chapel 16 times each semester.  Back then every semester we were given 16 cards printed on oaktag that we ripped off and turned in whenever we attended.  There were 2 mornings with 20 or 30 minute services and Sunday night services.  I worked in the cafeteria and generally worked one of the 2 week mornings so I went to the Sunday night services more often.  However I still had to attend some morning services and my senior year I went to one that was a musical performance by a duo called "Not by Chance".  (There is a slight chance I saw them perform on campus, not in chapel but I don't remember).

Not by Chance was a band with strong ties to Grove City.  One of the singers, david m bailey, (lowercase his) was an alumni about 10 years ahead of me.  I can't remember if the other singer was a GCC grad as well although I think not.  david had graduated from GCC and moved on to corporate work.  In 1996 he was diagnosed with a cancer that strikes fear into the hearts of anyone who is familiar with it:  glioblastoma multiforme stage IV.  If you remember ER this was what Anthony Edwards' character died from.  It is an extremely aggressive tumor and diagnosis usually is about 6 months before death.  In all the years I worked in healthcare I had precisely 1 patient who did not die shortly after diagnosis (and I only remember a few with it) and the last year of her life (3 years after diagnosis) was pretty awful.  In fact that patient sticks with me because I cried after my last assessment of her because she was frantic that I fix her suddenly non-functional arm and all I could say was that she needed to see the neurologist first.  She knew and I knew that I was saying that it was tumor progression and it was.  I had plenty of experience with tough news by then by this was heart-breaking; she wanted to live so badly.

Ok,so back on track...alumni, nasty cancer.  Incredible music.  I had a tape of his music but haven't had a place to play a tape for many years.  In my last months of college and in grad school I listened to this tape hundreds of times.  His music was/is striking because of the simplicity of his message of hope and his desire to uplift the spirits of any listener. 

I had many years when music was too much to handle.  Last year when I finally discovered that music in certain genres is manageable I remembered that beloved tape.  I had some trouble because Not by Chance dissolved around the time I saw them and david went on performing on his own.  Recently I took the time to remember the name and find him.  I knew that he had died; I remembered this from an alumni magazine.

It turns out that he lived 14 years from diagnosis and released 23 CDs. He toured  until just a few months before his death and lived 2 years after a recurrence that eventually took his life.  He truly had a miracle and was able to see his children grow to young adulthood among many other things.

Usually if I write about music I suggest a song.  In this case I'm going to suggest going to his webpage at

http://blog.davidmbailey.com/?section=calendar-past and listening to the songs at the top of the page and also checking out his music and lyrics section.  He simply has too many songs for me to sort through and choose anything in particular.  I am anxious to buy some more of his music eventually.

I find such strength in what he says and in his wonderful voice and acoustic guitar.  I also LOVE knowing that he started an underground newspaper at GCC;  that would not be condoned.  When I was there a group of us had a support group of sexual abuse survivors and that wound up causing major trouble so you can imagine what something actually against the rules would do.  

Words hurt

Under pressure from Dr. Mind over the weekend I admitted to suicidal feelings strong enough to make me unsafe with sharp items to my mother.  I was prepared for nearly any response but the one I got.  Her first response was that she'd have to get another box cutter to replace the one I threw out (aka threw into a sewar water cover).  Then she said, in slightly different words, that she didn't believe me.  I told her that Dr. Mind and i wanted her to come with me to see him to explain this.  She ignored that although later on, after she'd talked to someone (I'm assuming), she ungraciously agreed to go.

Not being believed made me feel like the kid who had to have 2 knee surgeries because nobody believed anything and so she never complained when she fractured her ankle with enough force to pull tendons loose and instead kept running 5 plus miles daily beginning 2 days after the fracture.  It also made me feel worthless, something not needed right now.

I'm learning that it is also making me doubt everything.  It feels like everything I do is wrong and that whatever happens is my own fault.  After all, I'm "making up" a very serious symptom of my bipolar, if you believe my mother.  They tell me it's grieving and that grief has turned frightening because of my illness.  Dr. Mind pointed out that every cycle of bipolar tends to make the disease worse and that is why medications and counseling and compliance are so important.  He also pointed out that the atypical nature of my illness means that we can't  even begin to guess how many cycles my brain has endured and that this may be why so much has gotten worse in the last few years.  This makes a great deal of sense and makes me feel less responsible for what my brain does. I generally can maintain a separation between what my brain does and what I'm managing to control which has helped me stay safe:  I know that I don't want to listen to my brain if I just  take a minute to think and so far that has kept me safe although borderline at times.

She's coming with me in 2 weeks.  I dread it.  I think Dr. Mind will take the lead with talking but that could  mean no more than making me say things.  I know he said that he will make sure she listens and that he doesn't care if she  likes him or not. I'll be glad to talk to him so I know more specifically what is happening.

I hope Dr. Brain's wish/belief that this will clear up when I am in my new place is right.  This has been so long and hard and knowing there isn't another med that is likely to change anything is hard.  Even my very high dose of Seroquel is only doing a little. I also hope the new place happens sooner rather than later.  I want privacy and quiet.  I want my own bathroom without a litter pan in it.  My cats need more space to be happy and to move around more to stay healthy weights.    I want to make my own decisions.

Straight from Michael Jackson trial

I never really thought I'd blog about Michael Jackson. I was about 10 when he was at the height of popularity and i didn't really like his music. I wasn't allowed a lot of musical variety and filtered through my experience he was just loud and showy. Even now I prefer soft music, lots of acoustics (another post coming soon in fact), and the like. But CNN had an article today that I found fascinating. It was based on the testimony of a sleep expert who said that with 60 days of "sleep" induced by propofol Michael had gone longer than any known person without REM sleep and he would probably have died from that within days. REM sleep isn't an option and anesthesia doesn't create it. Which is probably good. I'm pretty sure I had propofol during my hysterectomy and when they woke me in the OR and gave the first dose of morphine my body decided that the morphine was anesthesia. I was awake enough to know something was wrong and not awake enough to know that the surgery was done. Everything seemed to be the same as when I remembered and I didn't know time had passed. The surgeon was beside me holding my hand and I was looking to the right at first. Then there was all this bustling and I was repositioned, an oxygen mask was placed on my face and they used the ambu-bag to get oxygen in and then i think reversed the morphine and restarted at a lower dose. I knew only that there was bustle about breathing and thought it was part of going under until my mom told me what the surgeon explained to her. After that I just resented the oxygen I was on for 2 days. But my point is that it wasn't sleep. When I sleep there is a clear difference between sleep and awake. With propofol there was just aware and thinking or nothingness. So I know that he didn't get real sleep. What fascinated me though was the the descritpion of not getting REM sleep:

Depriving someone of REM sleep for a long period of time makes them paranoid, anxiety-filled, depressed, unable to learn, distracted and sloppy, Czeisler testified. They lose their balance and appetite while their physical reflexes get 10 times slower and their emotional responses 10 times stronger, he said.

describes me so well. Which is interesting because I only get 10-20% (I forget the exact number) of the REM sleep I should. Antipsychotics do this and are partly to blame but the dr. said after my sleep study that it is brain chemistry even without the antipyschotics. I was most interested in the reflexes as mine test slow. I kept telling the ER doctors that when I had the lithium toxicity and that makes your reflexes more active which was an early clue that something was off that it took 3 doctors doing it for me to realize the truth. I wasn't very observant that day; I kept doing neuro tests that I had done with patients many times and not realizing I was failing. When I figured it out I knew I was very toxic but by that point I also knew that I was about to be hooked up to a lot of fluids which was a give-away. Anyway, I learned something from Michael Jackson's death. Since I've toppled over at least 5 times in the last week it's good to know there's a reason. Today I painted my basement. I only did 50% of it because the rest is in good shape. It took 2 gallons of Kilz and I am still covered in paint that I couldn't wash off. Tomorrow we paint the porch floor and then painting is done. Praise God. I like to paint but we have done entirely too much of it lately. Next is just cleaning tomorrow and Sunday, Monday I will empty the fridge and freezer and take out the enormouse amount of trash generated each week, Tuesday the carpets are cleaned and hopefully I'll be able to mow and Wednesday I hope to have off unless I have to mow. Thursday I sign off and list the house. And that's enough for now. Copyright 2006 www.masterofirony.blogspot.com