Updates from everywhere

I've been sort of procrastinating on the updates here, so I decided to just post a big one with anything that comes to mind.

I shall start with....Bread machines! Yes, that's right everybody, bread machines. I got a wild hair up my ass about making bread a few months ago, but I don't have the coordination or the arm strength to be kneading bread a couple of days a week. But I was sick of reading labels on grocery store bread and seeing "high fructose corn syrup" in my freaking bread. I've recently learned that are a lot of various things you can put into bread. High fructose corn syrup IS NOT ONE OF THEM. Ew. So I started looking around for a bread machine. But as I'm being a tightwad these days, I didn't really want to spend a couple hundred dollars buying one just to find out if I would use it often enough to warrant the purchase.

Enter the State of Nevada. Basically, Nevada still sports thrift stores and yard sales where you can find all kinds of absolutely amazing stuff in remarkably good condition...for really, really cheap. Which is awesome. Unfortunately, I do not live in the State of Nevada. Fortunately, my parents *do* live in said state. So I called and begged them to keep an eye out for me for a breadmaker if they happened to see one, and let me know. And after that, I more or less completely forgot I'd even asked.

Fast forward to my birthday, when said parents arrived bearing gifts! Yay! Presents! They found a top of the line bread machine, with all its' parts and doodads, and a slicer and a cookbook and brought them for my birthday. I've been making a couple loaves a week since then. And interestingly, I haven't gained weight from the amount of bread I'm making. But it most decidedly is an improvement over random stuff in the grocery store bread that I can't pronounce. I makes some *good* sammiches these days.

In the spirit of my tightwadness lately (pause to smirk that "tightwad" is recognized by spellcheck, but "tightwadness" is flagged), I've also been cooking a fair amount. I haven't yet decided whether or not I'm enjoying it, but I have certainly been enjoying the taste-good aspect of the food. I'd gotten bored with fast food takeout. It is amazing how much money actually gets saved if you cook. Even if you buy expensive ingredients, you end up with about four times as much food quantity-wise for the same amount of money.

In other news, my long-dreaded and avoided neurology appointment was yesterday. I freaking hate those things. But some things I can't avoid forever, especially with a proclivity for brain cancer already looming over my head. So, it's the neurologist for me.

He seems fairly competent, which was nice. He was also friendly, which was also nice. And I learned a few things. And I feel like a complete ass for not having put two and two together before now. When I had my resection surgery, it took the incision on my scalp about a year to heal. Average for that type of scar is a couple of months, for the healing of the outer incision. But for me, that it took a year wasn't that unusual, and I didn't really think anything of it, unless it separated and was causing me to be annoyed. I'm so accustomed to scratches, scrapes, and bruises not healing in a timely fashion that I honestly no longer give it any consideration at all.

Which brings us to my being a moron. Ladies and gentlemen, if it takes an incision that should heal in two months a year to heal, how long does it take brain tissue incisions to heal? The answer? For the average person, it takes around a year for the tissue to heal and scar over. For me? It apparently took about 3 years for the tissue to scar over, and when it did, it promptly started seizures. Just like it was predicted it would. Only, a year came and went, and I went off the anti-seizure medications, and the doctor let me. Because a normal person if they aren't having seizures at that point means that the scar tissue won't be pushing on anything that would cause seizures, and there's no need to be on unnecessary medication. Except I'm me. And I take forever and a day to heal.

So nice Mr. Neurologist man looks at my MRI films, sees the scarring, says of course you'll be having seizures, theres scarring on your left temporal and parietal lobes, duh! Well, the scarring wasn't there a year ago, you douchebag doctor. The scarring that's now on the films is a new thing. Except because it's supposed to be there, expected to be there, nobody thought to mention it to me. And I'm stupid, and never thought about the mechanics of it myself.

So I go in and get another EEG, and it'll show some stuff (not sure what) to the happy neurologist man, and he put me on anti-seizure meds. So I'm going to sleep a lot...well, more than normal for me, which is saying something...for a while, and at the end of the while, I should be back to being able to drive myself around and lead what passes for a normal life for me.

Oh, complete subject switch.

Cheesecake pudding! Did you know they make cheesecake pudding?? I did not. Thus, when I came across this particular item, I had to buy it. Because, dude, *cheesecake*!!!

Musings

(playing in the background): Ice Cube - Today was a good day

I haven't quite figured out how to set it up to show what's playing on here, so I guess I'll just manually input it in the meantime.

Our TV *still* isn't fucking back yet. And I'm not altogether sure what's going to come of that. I hate not knowing what's going on for stuff like that.

Monkey turns 11 this week. I haven't decided if I really feel old, or if I should just be grateful that's she's healthy and happy and whatnot. She's growing up so fast, it's scary. Boy crazy and thinking she's all grown up, when I know very well that she's still a kid...not much I can do about it either way.

House is cleaned. The cat is laying around being lazy. I should post pictures of my cat. He's absolutely teh awesome. As usual, I'm about a year and a half behind the LOLcatz craze. *Now* I find LOLcatz funny. Oh well, nothing new about that.

I'm just kind of sitting here bumping my head in time to music, and thinking about tomorrow. I go in to see the neurologist tomorrow. My speech has been getting worse lately, enough worse that it's making me paranoid. I guess I probably ought to go and get new scans of my brain too, but we'll see what the new guy says. It's bound to be one of those really fun doctor visits where he asks myraid questions I can't answer, because my memory is swiss cheese, and where there's blood involved. Yay.

I haven't really updated this blog as regularly as I used to, which I should start doing again. Venting on here tends to keep me from boiling over inside.

The last week has been fairly odd for me in general. Danny finally concedes that we should get the hell out of this town. Looks like north is winning the war for the direction we'll go in. I got a message from an ex who is about to get married, and it was good to hear from him for me. It was nice to realize that not *everyone* I used to know or care about hates me. I hadn't realized that even mattered to me in any visible fashion, but I guess it does.

I can't always find the words to express what I'm thinking or feeling, and sometimes even when I *have* those words, I don't say them. At least, not out loud. Communication in the written form, I have that down pat. Audibly? Not so much. Maybe someday.

Hi to anybody who happens to still read my blogs. Nice to see ya dropped on by :)

Oh, and to Sam if she's reading here...you should come hang out sometime, you and Natan. If we ever get my stupid TV back you could come kick it here and play video game wars with us :)

Whee

So my plan here is to get copies of all my medical files. Which is more complicated than I realized it was going to be, when I actually tallied up all the places I need to contact to get said files. And then I found out that in the state of California, medical providers are only required to keep said medical records for three years. So I am not at all sure I'll be able to *get* the files I need.

Le Sigh.

We'll see, once I start sending in written requests for all the files. At least the local ones I can just drop in to and sign it right there.

How to lose friends and influence people

Wow, been a while since I posted anything. Guess I've been in a slump. I keep getting these random piles of things that I contemplate in the middle of the night, but never get up and write them down, and I seem to have lost them by morning. Ah, the laziness, it's killing me!

Anyhow.

In the last, oh, year or so? Yeah, that sounds about right. I've come back into contact with a handful of people that I knew either in junior high, or high school, or around then. We were friends then. Granted, I disappeared right after high school for a couple of years, and we all moved on in our different directions, as is pretty normal for the whole growing up process. Okay, sorry, running on tangents these days. Moving on. So I found these people, and sent messages to them. And they responded, and we chatted, and it was all nice and happy and sunshiny. And then they abruptly stopped communicating with me, for no apparent reason.

As I've put some serious thought into it, I really can't come up with any kind of valid reasons for why they'll no longer have anything to do with me. I'm not particularly pursuing the issues, mostly because I'm not sure I want friends who drop me for no reason whenever it suits them. But in all honesty, it bothers me.

I'm not sure what I did that's caused me to be disdained. And this isn't the first time it's happened. It's happened over and over throughout the years. And in every instance, contact was simply severed, with no explanation of any sort. As though I'm good enough to have as a friend as long as I'm useful to them, but as soon as someone better comes along, I'm ignored completely, if not seriously disparaged in general to others who we mutually knew.

And the biggest problem with all of this? It's that since I have no idea what it is that I'm doing wrong that's so offensive as to write me off entirely, I have absolutely no way to correct whatever it is.

I'm not the anti-christ. I'm not mean to people just for the sake of being a jackass. I'm generally nice to anyone who is nice to me. I'm not a stalker. I don't lie, I don't cheat, I don't steal.

I just don't get it. Ah, well.

Oh, and a shout-out to Borrego, thanks for the comment. It cheered me up to see that you'd been by the blogspot :)