I think I finally figured out this fake insomnia thing!

That's right, I'm typing this blog at approximately 4 AM on a Sunday morning because when I went to bed last night, I didn't go to sleep. Instead, I just existed in that bed, feeling the pain throb in the bottom of my foot in the area where I had two separate shots to take the pain away. I also felt my muscles vibrating with pain. And I had two pretty good days in a row (up till 1 AM, when I decided I had enough of just staring at the ceiling, the wall, the other wall, the ceiling again...). I was trying not to get too hopeful till there were some REAL results with this new medicine (the generic Cymbalta), so I wasn't going to say anything... but no... on Friday evening, I said out loud to the Disabled Guy: "You know, I felt pretty good today. And walking in the grocery store wasn't terrible."

Stupid, I know. I should have kept my flappin' face shut till I had some decent results to present.

Oh, by the way, we're on day 10 with no sunlight. Nothing but clouds. I know this because I took a photo of the sunshine and posted it on Facebook because a friend mentioned the "day-moon is on fire" in his status. I'm sure all clouds and no sunlight is probably making Pahz something-something.

Anyway, back to the title!

I think I might have this figured out! Okay, so you know how when you go to shut down your computer, but it doesn't shut down? Instead, that one screen comes up and says: "Do not unplug your computer" because its loading updates? THAT is what I'm obviously doing! Because I'll be wide awake, completely unable to "shut down" and absolutely useless to anything else. In this mode, I can't drive anywhere, I can't focus to read a book, and I can barely watch TV. And then, without warning- BAM! I'm so tired I can barely make it to my room to fall face-down on the bed. JUST LIKE A COMPUTER!

I knew that becoming a cyborg would be weird, but I didn't realize I'd have to do all these updates during my shut-down period. No wonder I keep rebooting in the middle of the day.

Oh, Hey there, Middle of the Night, I haven't seen you for a couple weeks...

I don't even know, man... failed pain meds? Too much caffeine? Buyer's remorse? Scurvy?

I have no idea what's going on, let's just call it "Fucking Fibro Failures" because who doesn't love alliteration and swearing?

So, I'm up in the middle of the night again. I've been on the new fibro drug for six days. So far, I've experienced one of the mild and non-threatening side effects. I have random bouts of mild dizziness, but not like "OH THE ROOM IS SPINNING!" dizzy. More like: "whoa... my brain is floating in fluid and when I turned my head too quickly, it took a moment for my brain to join us over here..." So, not debilitating, just annoying.

No change in the pain.

No change in the sleep-falling-into-and-staying-occupied-with thing.

No change in the goddamn itching skin. I'm just about ready to claw my way out of this skin because fuck that noise.

And speaking of noise- fuck all the noise. When I wear my hearing aid (I don't wear it around the house, but I do when I go out), I get sensory overload at places like the grocery store. I want to shove everyone around and tell them to "Shut the fuck up, asshole!" but I don't because I'm an adult now and apparently adults are supposed to have some kind of self-control when it comes to societal situations. And shouting "SHUT THE FUCK UP, ASSHOLE" isn't very "mature".

Every pair of shoes I have hurts me. And I love my shoes because all of my shoes are Dr Martens boots. What's not to love? And the worst part is I can't go shoeless, or, you know, as the normals call it: "barefoot". Going shoe-free causes a slew of pain issues that is very easily fixed by not being shoe-free, so I wear the shoes every day... even if I'm just staying home. Which is most of the time, except during faires.

Speaking of faires, I have a ren faire this weekend and I went from being "just a patron" to doing some photography stuffs for the Bristol cast that is in attendance. So I got that going for me this week. And next week, I have another faire with my sea captains and a slew of other Bristolites... Bristolians? They know who they are.

And speaking of photography, remember how I bitched about not being inclined to upload my photos to Flickr to share them? Well, I finally did... and because I was so goddamn lazy, I also added them to an album for ease of sharing. Just for you! I hope you appreciate it because making a new album took absolutely NO effort on my part.

And like any fibro blog without a point, I will finish with showing you some photos. All shot with my Nikon D5100 and 40mm Macro lens.

A new look... brought to us by fake insomnia

Tonight brought me a bout of Fake Insomnia. It started with the itching. You know the "thousands of hairy-legged spiders" itch thing... well, it was all over this time, not just my legs. It was annoying, at first. Then it intensified and the itching went from annoying to infuriating. I finally got out of bed.

I've been planning on re-doing my blog's look for a few weeks now, but I procrastinated myself out of it for all that time. And now here we are. I'm listening to a mix of house music (that I discovered because of DJ Phoole) and a Flo Rida CD. (fun fact, when I ordered that CD, I texted my youngest kid and said: "I just ordered a Flo Rida CD, is that weird?" She replied with: "A little..." and later told me that one of her friends thinks I'm cool because of this CD. Her mom would never listen to music like that! I'm the cool mom again! Yay, me!)... and yet, I almost procrastinated myself out of it again tonight. I hassled a young friend of mine over on Tumblr (something about cooties and how boys are gross), I stalked a few of my friends on Facebook, ate a granola bar... then I just had to get to it. This needed to be done and no amount of cootie-teasing and Facebook-stalking was going to change that...

When I started all my blogs- back in the day- I set a lot of it up so my mom could read them. She preferred a darker background and a slightly bright font. Well... I decided to clean up the overall look and make it brighter all around. Give it a bit of an update. Make it sleeker.

So, here it is- my new blog look. The same layout is still here, all the brackets/links/gadgets and such are just where they always were. The banner image is just something I threw together in Photoshop and it took about a dozen tries to get it centered the way I wanted it.

I hope you like it... I plan on doing the same to the Conversations with the Disabled Guy blog as well.