I spent most of yesterday afternoon chasing around doctors and remedies to cure me of all my ailments and woes, and I feel better – not because the drugs have kicked in and I’m cured, but because I Took Steps towards fixing myself. Taking Steps is important; almost as important as the medication itself. It’s a heck of a lot better than wallowing, at any rate.

It was decided that I would gradually increase my daily dose of crazy pills until I got my happy back; 37.5mg at a time. If the first increase does nothing, we go up again. If I’m still staring blankly at walls, then we try something else – Prozac or Paxil, or other, newer drugs that all sound like boner pills. My boners are fine, thank you very much. Just fix my brain, and everything else will happen naturally.

I’m now taking 8 pills a day, which is depressing to me. To be fair, 5 of those are vitamins – at the advice of various people, I’m taking a metric assload of vitamin D along with vitamin B complex (a complicated version of regular old vitamin B). I’m also taking my omnipresent antihistamine, and then the two crazy pills – so it’s not all THAT bad; I just feel old because I really ought to be using one of those daily pill organizers to keep everything straight. I wonder if they make Hello Kitty ones? That’s a silly thought – of COURSE they make Hello Kitty ones; I just need to find them. To eBay!

I also addressed the ongoing issue of zombie face to the doctor. After peering at my face, he declared me to be gross but salvageable and wrote me a prescription for two +4 Dire Creams. Both ointments came with big instruction sheets and scary warnings saying “don’t use this cream” “if you have to use this cream, make sure your estate is in order” “for the love of god, wash your hands after using this cream” “better yet, burn your hands completely. cut them off and burn them, and don’t breathe the smoke.” “you are utterly screwed”. I figure I don’t really have much to lose – I’ve already got some wicked discolouration going on in my facial areas; what’s the worst that could happen? I’d get even whiter? I’m already the most non-Asian Asian I know. I am not concerned.

So, we’ll see. Maybe I’ll start feeling better in a week or so, and if I don’t, then I’ll take more meds until I do and/or go back for new drugs. This wasn’t exactly what I meant when I said I wanted some adventure, but if I get back to my normal self, everything is an adventure.

When I got to work this morning, the new programmer gave me some Diet Coke coz my birthday is on Saturday, and I found my goatse ring. It was under my desk, which is a truly stupid place for it to be. I’m glad I have it back – I missed it, and was sad that it was potentially lost forever.

i take a couple uppers i down a couple downers

goatse!

I’m working from home today, because I am too depressed for clothing. I’m too depressed for a lot of things right now, with the only exception being the 1000 yard stare – I am really good at staring blankly at things. I wasn’t able to get an appointment with the 75-second doctor today, but I have one tomorrow. I plan on bringing up two issues; the first obviously being that I am more or less dead on the inside and that sucks, and also please refer me to a dermatologist so I can get rid of this goddamn zombie face already.

Being depressed sucks ass for a thousand reasons, but here is a handy list of how this round of How Low Can You Go is affecting me right now:

• All I want to do is sleep
• I don’t feel anything: I am not sad or happy or excited or bored or content or outraged. I am not anything. I just .. am. I’m breathing and typing and I have to pee, but I don’t feel a single goddamn thing beyond that. It’s almost funny, because this whole “feeling like a zombie” thing is a common fear when starting an antidepressant regime – I know I was sure afraid of losing my out-of-control anger and deep unrelenting sadness, because I thought that’s all I was. Of course, the instant you start feeling better, you realize how much joy you’ve been missing out on and life starts being awesome again. And yet here I am, on all the meds ever (note: I am barely on any meds at all, which might be part of the problem), and I feel nothing. It’s actually worse this time, because I remember what feeling good feels like, and I really miss it.
• I keep losing important things, like my scooter cup holder and my goatse ring
• I don’t care about anything, which is likely tied into not feeling anything
• I have all the creativity of a turnip. Some people, while depressed, can be amazing – produce works of art and have effects and disorders named after them. Me, not so much – and that’s another symptom, because the thought of trying to produce my magnum opus while depressed is technically hilarious and my brain tells me that this is normally something I would be all over with great melodramatic flair, but I can’t be bothered. I never can’t be bothered to do something when the hilarity center of my brain is triggered, but here we are
• Want to know how bad this is? I’m so depressed that I can’t muster anything beyond mild, passing disgust for the people up in arms that liquor stores are closing at 4pm today for game 6 (something else I should be excited for but totally am not). Being full of righteous ire at drunken idiots is practically my raison d’etre, but right now it’s just making me tired
• Ed is away on a business trip until Wednesday, but I am missing my usual excitement at a whole bed to myself, unrestrained Hobble lovin’ and sausages for dinner
• thiiiiiiiis suuuuuuuuucks
• See? Sylvia Plath wrote The Bell Jar, Virginia Wolfe wrote A Room of One’s Own, and all I have is “thiiiiiiiis suuuuuuuuucks”. I am so annoyed at myself
• Hey, that’s something: annoyed! I feel annoyed! Sweet jebus, I’m cured!

I hope I’m back to my normal self by my birthday on Saturday – if not, I’m going to feel really pissed off nothing at all.

birds

Cave Johnson’s Lemon Rant from Portal 2 needed to be a ring tone.

So, now it is.

This version doesn’t have GlaDOS moaning in the background; if you want that you have to make it yourself.

We’re done here.

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