I have a terrible suspicion that my crazy pills are not working any more. I’d like to increase my dosage to see if that helps, or talk to a doctor about changing things up. Unfortunately, I have no doctor – I have a guy I go to whenever I need my prescription renewed, and I just used my allotted 75 seconds for this quarter.

I’ve been on Effexor for 7 years, and all the research I’ve done tells me that it’s not unusual to be loved by anyone for people to experience their medication sleeping on the job after being on it for years without issue. This frightens me, because I’ve had an excellent relationship with my crazy pills until now and I don’t want to experiment with a bunch of other drugs to see if something might work. I was really lucky when I went crazy; the first thing we tried worked on my brain like a charm and I’m afraid of the reported side effects of everything else.

I also want to tell my boss. I feel like I’m noticeably losing it at work and not performing with my usual amount of energy or productivity, and sooner or later someone’s going to notice that it took me 17 hours to write two paragraphs on Substance Abuse. I don’t know how to have that conversation, though – how do you tell your boss that you’re nuts and you know it’s negatively affecting your work? I am not good with awkward conversations. Someone do this for me, please.

I would love and think I need to take a few days off and arrange to visit my doctor by force to discuss my brain. Logically, I know I should do this. I’m struggling with it, though – I have deadlines to meet, company events to plan, and getting to my doctor is an enormous hassle. I don’t want anyone at work to find out that I’m not just quirky insane, but clinically as well. I don’t want to let my boss or my team down. Why bother getting a professional opinion that will likely not be to my satisfaction when I can just tinker with my dosage on my own? That would be so much easier than, you know, dealing with all this shit. I don’t NEED this right now. I am busy.

This is not the right way to think. I owe it to myself to do the right thing here, but I don’t WANNA.

I also don’t want to revert to the stage where bus wheels have an irresistible and dreadful fascination.

Internet, tell me what to do. At the very least, I can go the chicken shit route and just send this link to my boss. It’d be pathetic of me, but at least I could get the words out without having to verbalize anything.

Is it too late to exchange my brain for a new one? I think I still have the receipt around here somewhere.

I’m working on the part of our employee manual that covers sexual harassment. I am so very much the wrong person for this job – I can’t take anything seriously, much less a hilarious policy that I desperately want to make fun of. (disclaimer: I know sexual harassment is real and serious and a Big Deal, but I can still find the policies aimed at preventing it funny)

It’s all so serious and heavy handed – has anyone ever read something like this and said “oh, shit. good thing I saw the policy; I am definitely thinking twice about asking Mary in Accounting to go A2M tonight!”. It’s also strangely precise, but in a half-assed kind of way. If you’re going to list things people shouldn’t do, you should be really specific so they’re afraid to do anything at all:

Harassment is unwelcome sexual advances, sexually oriented conduct, comments, solicitations, gestures or actions that create a work environment that is offensive, hostile, threatening or demeaning.  Examples of sexual harassment includes any of the following unwelcome conduct:

• Oral sex in the kitchen
• Bending someone over a stack of routers and having your way with them
• Pinching bums to check for ripeness
• Inviting anyone, via Evite or otherwise, to a pants party
• Reverse cowgirl in the copy room
• Helicoptering anywhere at all
• Donkey punching
• The Reverse Wheel Barrow Insertion
• The Hanging Sandwich Mixer
• Splitting of the Bamboo
• The following exchange: Me: “I’ll just shove it in there.” Coworker: “That’s what she said.” Both of us: *dirty laugh.*
• Figging
• Pegging
• Figging while pegging
• Snowballing
• Happy Endings
• Daisy Chaining (routers or otherwise)
• Heptomacrophilia

This list is just a small portion of our Sexual Harassment Policy. For the complete list, please review pages 75 through 12395.

I’m having so much fun with this I haven’t even had time for Star Wars references!

At some point during the night, someone – possibly the devil himself – decided to drive a pitchfork into my neck. He was probably trying for my jugular, but I have ninja reflexes even while asleep and at the last minute I did some kind of fantastic maneuver and twisted out of the way at the last minute. Unfortunately, Ol’ Scratch was inadvertently prepared for this – knowing that I am a fatty fat fat, he brought a specially-made plus-sized pitchfork; one suitable for my gargantuan neck. Sleepy Ninja Me didn’t know this, so I didn’t twist out of the way quite far enough and I got forked. The thrust was off my vital parts by a mile, but so large was this fatty fork that it managed to stab me anyway – Beelzebub jammed his evil deep into my neck, catching me in the tender spot between my neck and shoulder. Luckily, I was able to keep my wits about me long enough to banish Lucifer from whence he came before I collapsed in a swearing heap of pain.

At least, this is what I assume happened based on the HORRIBLE RADIATING PAIN coming from that general area of my being. I can’t move my head at all without squeaking (my squeaks aren’t cute, they’re very menacing and ominous) in pain, and it sucks. I need muscle relaxants. Having my wits about me is highly overrated.

Needless to say, it didn’t help matters one bit when I was almost killed by a shiny white Mercedes this morning on my way to work. It was stuck behind a bus and decided to swerve out into me without warning. Time slowed down all Matrix-like as I saw my doom coming straight for me – I had no time to do anything, not even brake. There were large cars in the oncoming lane, so diverting myself was not an option – if I’m gonna be hit, I’d rather take out the asshole with the shiny car than go up against a giant pickup truck older than dirt that’ll be around long after our insect overlords have won the war.

The driver of the Mercedes eventually realized Lola and I were occupying the space he wanted to be in, and he slammed on the brakes just in time. I sailed on past with every muscle in my body frozen solid and tensed for the impact that didn’t come, including my fresh devil wound which is now even more sore than it was this morning.

I don’t know that I will ever give a thumbs up as sarcastically as I did today, at the next intersection after staring at the Mercedes in disgust. My one tiny thumb spoke whole volumes of scorn that no mere middle finger could ever convey, and hopefully did more damage than the right foot I wanted to drive into that expensive white surface ever could have. I was very proud of the restraint I showed. I deserve a cookie.

So, here’s the deal. Yesterday I posted a very ominous-sounding Facebook status update, hinting that I might be shutting down Delicious Juice Dot Com. I had several people ask me what was wrong, so I did some thinking and now I have an answer for you: I’m depressed.

June is my January, and I get really really depressed this time of the year. It’s been getting steadily worse for the last few years, and yesterday it was pretty bad to the point where I was about to throw in the delicious towel. I think it has to do with my birthday – I HATE getting older. It makes me very sad, and I spend most of my birthday month thinking about how I’m old and ugly and undesirable and no fun and .. well, old. There are other factors at work here, but I know myself well enough to know that a) I’m (more) depressed (than usual), b) my birthday is 98% of the reason, and c) I should be better after the 18th or so. There’s little I can do but suck it up and ride it out, because I’m not interested in upping my medication to deal with this annual onset of the crazies. I don’t like it, but .. y’know. Whaddya gonna do.

So, I’m not shutting down my blog. It wasn’t an idle threat based on the lack of comments, or a cry for attention, or because there are trolls afoot – it’s entirely because I’ve been screaming at the pancakes again. It’ll get better, though. It has to, or I’ll go hoarse.

goddamnit pancakes cut it out

It’s pretty well known that I’ve been a huge fan of Hipstamatic since the day it launched many moons ago. Because I’m so in love with them, I routinely keep up on what’s happening so I can take advantage of limited edition items, sales, pre-orders and more. I especially keep an eye out for new HipstaPak announcements; details on new film types, lenses and camera bodies to download and play with. Many of these are available for a limited time only, and I would be very sad if I didn’t get a chance to grab the item items to complete my collection (especially since they’re often free).

Hipstamatic just announced that for 62 hours only, they’ll be putting the super-duper limited edition HipstaPaks back online for people to buy. If you missed out on the Salvador Dali pak ($0.99), the Levi’s Holiday pak ($0.99) or the SWSX pax (free!), you can get them through your Hipstamatic app starting at 10am June 10th. They’ll only be up until midnight June 12th and then likely gone forever, so if you want some awesome new toys to jazz up your images you need to take advantage of this RetroWeekend. Mark it in your calendars!

There are also two limited-edition paks available right now: the free NSW Always On pak which has two films and a camera skin, and the Bondi pak with an awesome lens/film combo for $0.99. Get them before they disappear!

hipstamatic makes me happy in my pants

Hooray for brilliant iPhone apps!

Lola is apparently out of oil. Her red blinky light had been going off on the dash, so I hauled out the manual to see what’s up. It suggested – eventually; it’s a very convoluted manual – that I check the oil, so this morning before I left I did just that. According to the dip stick, I have no oil at all. This is not good. I need oil. Ed, help! Make oil go!

Discovering Lola was in no shape to ride was the least of my Monday morning mishaps – I left the house multiple times today, eventually escaping on the 4th try. I slept upside down last night, and I think it made my brains sort of squishy – I’ve done many things very, very wrong today, and there’s a whole lot more Monday to go.

My birthday is in 12 days. I suggest that someone get me this:

better get me three or four, just in case

I’ve been suffering from some pretty wicked insomnia lately (so sayeth the two hours of sleep I managed to get on Friday night), so being startled awake at 1:30 Sunday morning after I had FINALLY managed to drop off was really fucking annoying. I made the best of a bad situation, though, by live-tweeting the break up going on outside my window:

sara is kind of a bitch; i'm on Team Nick

A couple of charming individuals had a very loud, very public fight directly under my bedroom window very early this morning. I could have gotten up to take a look, or asked them to shove off, or shut my bedroom window – but instead I grabbed my cell phone and shared the lengthy exchange with Twitter. I’m no stranger to this – the technology is different, but the end result is the same. When I was living on Wark St. in Victoria a lifetime ago, a couple used to fight on their balcony every single weekend. I was a night owl, so I would inevitably be awake and on the STS – and I would share their angst with the world, line by line. I don’t remember their names, but it was all so familiar. Public break ups are embarrassing (for the couple) and hilarious (for me).

I was totally on Team Nick last night – I heard the fight from the very beginning, and Sara was just being a bitch. She was beaking at Nick for some minor infraction, and he just lost it – he called her out on how badly she treats him, sobbed a couple times, and decided he was done. She did a great deal of backpeddling at that moment, because I don’t think she had intended the fight to go that far – I know “Sara”, and they pick fights for the grovelling and apologies that come after they yell. They NEVER get called on their shit – but when they do, it’s shock and horror and HOW CAN YOU BE SO MEEEEEAN all over the place. Anyway, the subject soon turned to Sara’s drinking problem to which she screamed “I’m an alcoholic! I deal with it, why can’t you!” .. colour me skeptical, but I don’t think merely acknowledging that you have a problem can be considered “dealing with it”; you then need to try to get better. The conversation quickly turned nasty at that point, with Nick not happy about Sara’s constant drunken state to which she came back with “and your fault I drink!”. Uh oh. That was the beginning of the end of coherency; both parties descended into high-pitched wailing and shrieking at that point which thankfully faded away as they flounced off dramatically down the street. Nick wasn’t taking it too well, as he kicked or punched things many times while yelling “BIIIIIIIIIITCH” out loud to the universe, who had more important things to worry about.

I fell asleep at that point.

They did come back later, with a third party. It sounded as though most things had been smoothed over – oh, young love – as they weren’t yelling any more and therefore didn’t have enough volume to fully drag me from my slumber. I may never know the fate of Nick and Sara, but I certainly don’t envy them. Young love is a (loud) pain in the ass.

i love gnomes. i wish i had an army of them.

I wore knee high boots yesterday – these ones, in fact – so can someone please tell me how I managed to get 15 or so teeny tiny bug bites on my ankle and foot that are itch as hell? I do not recall opening myself up as a buffet. I got away from Cuba with exactly one insect bite, only to be attacked by mystery while trussed into a giant boot. Not cool, bugs. Leave my delicious juices alone.

I don’t feel well. If I were a betting man, I’d wager it’s 75% mental (insomnia, nightmares, anxiety) and 25% physical (headache). I need to shake this off quickly; at least for long enough to coherently deliver some training in the next 7 minutes – but I have a sinking feeling it’s going to take a little longer than that. I know myself well enough to know when I am Out of Sorts, and I am there. I loathe to up my meds – I feel like I’m already taking too much as it is, even though I’m on a minimal dose – but June does bad things to my headspace, and I don’t feel like whining about it (which is alarming in its own right; I whine about everything everywhere).

Maybe I just need a nap. I hope I just need a nap.

What’s up by you?

Store bought cards are great and all, but I like to make my own cards for Ed whenever a card-giving occasion comes around. I never really got enough of arts and crafts as a kid, and let’s be honest – no store in the world is going to carry a card dirty enough for me to give.

Here’s the card I made for Ed yesterday:

all the book titles are real except for one - guess!

He’s getting a Kindle for his birthday, which will be purchased when we visit America next weekend for pre-birthday (mine) Mexican food. I photoshop’d up an appropriately sized fake Kindle, printed it on cardstock, and gave it to him in a Kindle holder for effect. It turned out pretty convincing, actually:

tricksy!

I am frequently amused by my own antics.

You are my favourite!

ed is knee-deep in pussy, as usual