Viscous Lidocaine

while it isn't cancer...

it appears a hysterectomy is in my  near future, according to people who know more about this than i do. 

welcome to the new year.   sadaam is dead, which is too bad because rotting in a cell would've been a more inhumane treatment of him.  and because i'm altogether against death.

i will be switching my bank next week because mine just sucks.

i'm facing a huge surgery, so my mind will be occupied by things other than news, i'm predicting.  who knows, it could be a nice pre-occupation, that news thing.  i haven't watched/read anything in a coon's age, because i've been enjoying the house and cleaning it when not totally fucked up in agonize. 

thanks to the ChaosGod/dess and the Parrot Eater for their good thoughts. 

And of course to the Otherh for his endless support. 

more soon

day long

i spent most of yesterday in the hospital getting a morphine treatment and wondering wtf is wrong with me now. 
verdict: go see a specialist for that, but here's some stuff that might help with the pain.  Oh, and just so youknow, we don't think it's cancer.

what a relief.  really. 

important clues

plug the fucking slow cooker in, if you expect dinner to get made.

Better than A Kick in the Teeth: A Drop in the Bucket

A kick in the teeth kind of thing:

To be filed under duh:

[Christopher Lohse], a social work master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University, says he has proven what many progressives have probably suspected for years: a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush.

…Lohse's study, backed by SCSU Psychology professor Jaak Rakfeldt and statistician Misty Ginacola, found a correlation between the severity of a person's psychosis and their preferences for president: The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush.

The study began in part as an advocacy project "designed to register mentally ill voters and encourage them" to vote, while assessing "knowledge of current issues, government and politics." (emphasis mine.)

And while I took this very annoyingly personally, it does represent a story of data-mining with tiny study groups (in this case it was under 70 people studied.)   Reasoning better supplied by Sly Civilian:

Let’s just get this clear. This “study” is meaningless. 69 is not a sample size. “Severity” is a word that has one meaning in institutional mental health settings: “non-compliance.” And what political preferences these people had do not actually predict the mental health of people who happen to share those political preferences. That’s called a logical fallacy. So running an after-study data-mine correlation between what patients are judged by others to be most “severely” affected by psychosis and a joke of a straw poll, and then laughing at the “political” implications of the above…
It’s despicable.
It’s politically meaningless, scientifically dishonest, encourages the trivialization of voting rights for disability communities, and above all, uses mental illness as a freaking bat in an eternal game of whack-a-fundie.
Goddammit, have we collectively learned nothing?

So today (early) the inbox brought this.

A Drop in the Bucket:

This year, National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression$19 million to fund research on the causes, treatment, and prevention of severe mental illnesses.
The grants were awarded to 273 scientists to broaden and deepen the investigation of brain and behavior disorders and bring new insight to such illnesses as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety, autism, eating disorders, and other adult and childhood disorders. The funds support research at universities and institutions in the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain, Colombia, Costa Rica, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Switzerland, ranging from the genetics of schizophrenia to new treatments for depression.

With such a wide range of issues to address, and so many different ways this money is doled out, I wonder: what will be done for advocacy and stigma-busting?  Who else is reading this press release?  And, very cynically, how could anyone possibly turn this into comedy?

Bubble

When it rains in Austin, it's never raining here.

Rain sprouts cars that weren't there before.

I passed a street (unpaved, really) called Old Hog Snout.

wtf.

making friends and influenza people

it's almost our big night, solstice, and i am sicker than i have been in ages.  it's a mild 70 degrees (f) out, but apparently cedar pollen is through the roof.  which may explain why i can't see straight.

the Otherh and i have made a distinct effort to meet new people, which is working out quite nicely.  all i'm doing now is waiting for the news fatigue to fade before I go back to commentary. 

i'm working on a few book reviews, as it were, which will probably be forthcoming in the next weeks. 

that's the news.

a present from the gov't

my medicare card arrived in the mail.  a new one. 

they gave me part B, which means i have doctors' appointments covered now.   this is huge news. 

dates and psychiatry post

i have a new psychiatrist (pdoc).  He's a Fucking Moron.
Bipolar Depression responds to anti depressant therapy, but this guy, and his MD from what appears to be a matchbook, thinks i'll go apeshit insane if i take an ad. 
I do very well on a.d.s  in fact, cymbalta has likely saved my life. 
but nooooooooooooo  he wants me to take lamictal
lamictal which increased my sensitivity to metal, so i can't wear my wedding rings.  lamictal, the answer to everything, except hypomania, if you read up on the lit.

hopefully the combo of lith and lamictal with abilify and neurontin will work out nicely.    i also hope medicare will continue to cover it indefinitely,  but who gives a shit right now.

The Otherh is on a date tonight, he's been dating a lot out lately.  I love it, he's so happy to connect with men again.  I can't seem to snag a date that I want to revisit, especially since I really would like to date a woman right now, and the scene here isn't too swell.  Our sex life goes through the roof when we're seeing other people, for whatever reason (or none, that's fine with me.)  the only deterrent is that the moth is still staying with us.

Otherh has a new gig, he's working for the state in a capacity not unlike one he took in Ontario.  it seems to be a good thing.  but it's only been a week.   

and of course there's the dogs. 
dogs are my whole life, aside from the aforementioned.  it's kind of great.

I've been learning how to bake.  it's a great big challenge.  At 230 this morning I made my first pound cake. 
Word: don't ice it while it's hot.  And cool before eating.

doggy bloggy

here we have the little dog eating the bigger dog (for now) and two pics of the dogs in motion because they Never Stop Moving. 

determined

to take dog pictures today, because so many people read this blog and are desperate to see what they look like.

to write some bylaws for my new corp

to make chili

to run an errand or 8

to deal with the fact the Otherh is back at work and we're not together all the time

to read four chapters about the plague

to learn about Navies, even if just a little bit.

to contact that grad school that loves me.

is that enough?