October 2006 CIS

We are still Crazy in Shreveport.

Of course we couldn't let the month of Halloween pass without posting about zombies. Other subjects you'll find falling from your screen like a bunch of crunchy leaves: Pumpkin Spice coffee, Katee's 19th birthday, happiness, pancakes, tea, bottle trees, going days without running water in the house and boyfriend troubles.


About the photo: There was no under age drinking on our front porch on Halloween night. That's Katee and Meru sipping Lemon Ginger Beer while waiting for trick or treaters. We got plenty of them on D street in Highland.

Bleh

Bleh. Meaning fever and phlegm. And on the eve of my well deserved vacation. I'm loading up on vitamin C to see if I can shoo this stuff away.

Power outage today. Heard the transformer snap and everything go off.
Asked Charlie to call AEP SWEPCO.
"We have no phone."
"Use Katee's cell."
"Someone else will have done it."
"Please."
I just want to know that the power company knows. I don't want this to be the beginning of the zombie uprising.

Time passes.

I ask him (I'm eeking out orders from bed 'cause I'm sick) "Did you check to see if there were any whole chickens in the back freezer?"
"Not yet." He checks. "There are none."
Katee's bedroom door opens. "What's up with chickens?"
I answer while gulping down vitamin C and ibuprofen. "To distract the living dead. So we can make our get away."
She looks at me hard. Only like a teenager can do. "You better stop."

More time. Charlie and Katee drop off her prescriptions at Walgreens. The lights pop back on. Charlie bursts through the door with Pumpkin Spice coffee from Circle K (the white trash Starbuck's). He hands me a big cup. My hero!

And the phlegm is a little less green.


Zombie uprisings can start on beautiful days like the one pictured. Katee took it at this year's Revel while we were listening to Trout Fishing in America.

rain!

OMG it just randomly started pouring down rain. Loudly.

Mm today my shoulders hurt because Meru and I went to the T'ai Chi class and had lots of upper body workout fun. D: It was pretty amazing and smelled awesome inside. I dig aromatherapy.

Why is the rain so loud?

In other news, I want to go back in time, find whichever Babylonian decided it would be a good idea to invent algebra, and stab him in the neck a couple of times. *very unhappy face* I attempted to do nothing today, but it's impossible for me to sit completely still for long periods of time. I always have to be doing something with my hands.

This weekend should be pretty fun. Probably not so much tomorrow because I'm gonna be studying algebra and possibly taking a trip to the learning center at school if I don't start getting faster at this nonsense. On Saturday, however, Meru, her boyfriend Casey, and myself will be celebrating our birthdays. Casey's and my birthday was the 23rd, and Meru's is the 28th. Casey lives in south Louisiana, so he's coming up for a few days I suppose. I haven't seen him in a long while. The plan is to go to the fair, go to Macaroni Grill for dinner, and then go see Saw III. I may skip on the movie, though, because the Saw movies scares me and also because I might be too tired.

I thought Sara would be coming, but it appears that she is angry with me. This is probably because I gave her advice, so her thanks would be to shun me. Women piss me the fuck off. We are so stupid when it comes to men, and sometimes I wish they would all just fuck off and die. Or at least the ones my age because they're pretty damn useless.

Mm sorry, that just made me extremely mad. "Oh, thanks for helping me through a hard time, but now I'm going to not speak to you because you said something mean about my boyfriend!" Fuck your boyfriend. He's the one who got us into this mess in the first place. *flails angrily* DO NOT TALK TO ME IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO HEAR THE TRUTH. Jesus Christ, hasn't anyone learned that I am the last person to bullshit someone? You'd think since I'm the person who is always like, "Uh, look, you need to shut up and stop being such an ass," my friends would have learned that you come to me for honesty and not bullshit. That just needs to stop because I was under the impression we're all adults here. Also: I am a snarky bitch who is very, very bad at not being blunt when confronted with asshattery. Think of these things, people!

Okay. That's better. For those of you wondering, it's possible for me to be less frustrated when giving advice, but when a person is being stubborn about something dumb, it's more difficult for me to not reach out and smack him or her upside the head. Slightly off topic, I've noticed that when I get extremely pissed off my eyes go out of focus for a few seconds. It's very noticeable when I'm typing up a rant because the screen gets all blurry and weird. I mean, I always heard the expression, "So angry I can't see straight," but I never thought it was actually, you know, true. Apparently it is.

It's rather late. I should probably go to bed. ^_^

i got all kinds of crap.

So I turned 19 and all this stuff randomly happened.

Sara and I started hanging out again.

I got a bright pink Honda Civic which I named Tinkerbell.

Everyone in the world wants to hang out with me all of a sudden.

It's pretty cool, I guess. Today I went to see my psychiatrist who made lol like crazy when he started talking about how cool math is. What a nerd. I also mentioned that I have the attention span of. . .something without an attention span, so he was all "LET'S TRY SOME DRUGS" and I was like, "Okay." I'm supposed to try Adderall XR for a few days. I got a voucher thing for a free prescription that came in a "starter kit" box with all kinds of crap in it, including a CD-ROM. Yay. I also got refills on everything else.

The waiting room was, like, extra-annoying and loud today. Some woman came in and was talking about how she thinks kids should be raised and how the driving age is too young nowadays and blah blah whatever, lady, no one cares about your parenting philosophy. And the driving comment makes no sense whatsoever. They made it 17 instead of 16 like 3 years ago. I don't think idiots should drive, but they still do, obviously, since you made it to the doctor's office. D:

Aaaaanyways. See, attention span. Nonexistant! Oh well, maybe the new pill will help. Tomorrow Meru and I are going to check out a tai chi class. I told her we should take tai chi and kung fu and then, like, fight crime with the aid of Tinkerbell [my car]. We would be UNSTOPPABLE!

Mmk bedtime.

Katee in Paris

For her birthday we splurged and hopped a jet to Paris so Katee could enjoy the City of Lights on her special day.

I lie.

We could have done that if Allegiant Air offered $75 one ways to France like they do to Vegas and Orlando.

Instead Sunday night we drove to the Downtown-O-Lights to celebrate Diwali at the park next to the Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport.

You can read more about Diwali at Shreveport.blogspot.com.

YAY.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME.

I'M NINETEEN!

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Happiness

I've come realize people in my family of origin have to work hard to be happy. Katee thinks this is sad. Or maybe it's that we're cheerful but we don't recognize it.

So in an effort to help me remember I'm more than capable of reaching sunshiney states of mind on a daily basis here's a current (partial) list of what makes me happy.

1. Getting prescriptions for reasonable prices not budget busting ones.
2. My goofy dog Eko when he hears me say "wanna go for a walk?"
3. Dealing blackjack in the high limit area.
4. Dealing 3 Card Poker.
5. When there's shrimp and or chocolate cake in the company dining room.
6. Days off.
7. Thoughts of my upcoming vacation.
8. Pounding giant nails into wood.
9. Drinking water from blue bottles.
10. Crushing cans with my new can crusher.

random whining.

I'm so tired today.

It's hot outside. I cannot deal with hot weather this far into October.

My birthday is in 5 days.

I got my transfer application into LSUS yesterday.

My neck hurts really bad.

I don't know why I'm so moody lately. Possibly my period is about to show up.

Ugh.

Pancake State

Sunday night we were tucked in for the night. Settled down to watch Zach Braff and Natalie Portman in Garden State. It's a film about twentysomethings that are lost.

Rick called and after much fancy old school disc jockey talking convinced Katee and me to go for pancakes. We put the movie on pause. Left Charlie sleeping on the couch and went venturing out (poor Charlie, just when things get settled in his system along comes another med change that keeps him tied to his life-boat-couch).

We ended up at Bossier's IHOP for smokes and strawberry waffles. There is no smoking allowed in the Shreveport IHOP and Bossier's management informed us there would be no smoking there after January 1 because of state law.

Believe it or not they were out of strawberries. Rick had to make due with whipped cream. Katee and I settled (sulked?) for water. No, really we had eaten all day and were not hungry. So we filled our time by taking myspace pictures of ourselves. At which time Rick had to stare at the two of us and make the realization we both have beauty marks just above our lips on the left side of our faces.

I first met Rick when I started working in Shreveport radio. He was the evening guy on KROK and I was hired to do overnights. That was over twenty years ago. It's good to reconnect with someone who knew you back in the day. It's like that Sunscreen Song:"... because the older you get the more you need the people who knew you when you were young."

Or maybe it's what Sue Miller has her first-person narrator think about in the novel While I Was Gone: "But here's what I thought: that if I had a crush, it was on an earlier Eli, one who didn't exist anymore, and the real Eli was just a vehicle for it. Or, perhaps even more complicated, that the crush --- if you could call something so psychologically distorted by such a playful name -- was on myself. The middle-aged Eli contained for me, of course, his youthful self, yes. But he contained me also. The self that had known him then. Myself-when-young."

So we could have stayed home and watched the flick but instead we went out to make our own little moving picture. I wanna script a movie about fortysomethings that are lost. It's easy to be twenty and muddling about but there are oh so many challenges to being almost half a century and still stumbling around. Welcome to my life.

Why Crazy in Shreveport?

Why did we start this blog a couple of months ago? We wanted to document our lives as a family dealing with bipolar disorder. Because being bipolar is more than what medicines you take or who your doctor is. It's also about how you make a life for yourself. This is how one Southern family is living with manic depression. These are the every day adventures of a bipolar dad and daughter and the mom who lives with them.

But if your wanting more information about the bipolar disorder in our lives you need to see our fairly new blog kathrynandkateebipolarjournal.blogspot.com. That one really deals with bipolar issues. This one is more about daily life.

haunted house on crack pt 2.

They had that Sahara from The Ring STARING AT ME, and then directing us where to go (that was pretty wtf-worthy, actually, the "patients" telling us where to go). That thing never ended. It wasn't a huge structure, but they made it all twisty turny and stuff, so it went on way longer than it should have. They had Michael Myers running around, and also Freddy Krueger, and there was a lot of pitch-black fucking darkness and I DIDN'T KNOW WHERE TO GO and then there was a lot of flashing lights and people with epilepsy should never go there ever.

One of the first rooms we went into was weird. There were all kinds of squiggly red lights reflecting off of everything and I freaked because that fucking noise from The Grudge was ECHOING OFF THE WALLS because these people ARE EVIL and attempting to run through these things is not an option because THERE'S NO LIGHT. And then we went into a room that had one of those bridges that, like, rotate and makes everyone sick and the Burger King I had for dinner wasn't happy with me. A lot of people popped out of places and jumped down from ceilings and it was horrible GOD. One of the last rooms was the padded cell, which was exciting because I was like, "We're in a haunted crazy house, WHERE IS THE PADDED ROOM?"

Only the padded room was FUCKED UP. Jason Voorhees jumped out at us WITH A REAL MACHETE AND HELD IT TO MERU'S HEAD. And then he smacked it on the floor and it SPARKED and we got the hell out of there REAL FAST. I wish I would've brought my machete in because mine is like 18 inches long and would've made his its bitch. And then some girl with a baseball bat was like PICK A DOOR ON THE LEFT OR RIGHT and we all know I have to argue about shit, so I pointed out that there was a door in front of us and she got like all irritated and shit. It was great.

I DON'T LIKE PEOPLE TELLING ME WHAT TO DO. In one room some guy swinging on a bar on the ceiling jumped down and was all in my face, but he was kinda hot, too, so it was cool. We finally got the hell out and it was AWESOME. But by then it was almost ten and Meru had to work the next day and I was exhausted, so we just left before entering the Factory. The most lolz-worthy was the interpretive dance stuff they had going on. These kids were all lip syncing and dancing to My Chemical Romance and Panic! At the Disco and also, for whatever reason, Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas. Look, I don't know, the target audience was 15 year olds. The only decent one was when these people did Time Warp from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Then we left and drove back and yapped incessantly about everything ever (mostly about the WEIRD LITTLE CLOWN GUY) and I came home, posted the head-chopping off thing everywhere, and fell asleep. Thankfully I take Ambien to sleep which rids me of any unnecessary nightmares, so I was good in that department.


So that was awesome.

haunted house. ON CRACK.

Fucking wireless. Everything's moving very slowly and programs are taking forfuckinever to load. D:

So I guess I should elaborate on last night's entry. :P

I realized that it was Friday the 13th, in October no less, so it was imperative that Meru and I do something awesome, so we went to the Edge of Madness "Scream Park" in Calhoun. That's like out in the middle of nowhere. We brought my mom's machete and other pointy things for protection from potential zombie uprisings and nuclear-testing mutants wandering around (hey--it was Friday the 13th. These things happen). It took about an hour and a half to get there, and despite everyone in North Louisiana driving like bitches, we made it to Calhoun safely. We walked in and paid for all three attractions. Unfortunately, we only made it to one attraction, as the lines were insanely long and the haunted house thing was never ending.



I, of course, insisted that we go to "Insanitorium" aka the nuthouse. I tell you, if psych hospitals/units were really like that then my stays would be a hell of a lot more interesting. So we stood in line for about half an hour and it was kind of hard to tell who worked there and who didn't because a lot of the workers were dressed in all black and goth make up and shit, and some people were just, you know, dressed like that because that's what they were. While standing in line, the workers come up and fuck with you. Meru and I had encounters with a werewolf (I was tempted to ask for his number; he was totally hitting on me) and also a very small, very evil clown. Okay, look, everyone has issues with clowns. But this clown was, in fact, a little person. This dude apparently had problems with Meru because he kept freaking her the hell out. He'd come up and she'd be looking off into the distance and he would get all up in her face and she was all, "WHY DOESN'T HE LEAVE ME ALONE?"

Well, they were around the same height. THANK YOU I'LL BE HERE ALL WEEK. Anyway, I was more irritated with the reaching out and "accidentally" brushing against us because I don't think they can legally, like, grab you but if they accidentally touch you there's nothing that can be done. Well, little dude kept reaching toward our legs and I DON'T KNOW WHY and that freaked me out so I was all like, "HEY YOU NEED TO STOP" and he looked up and glared and I was all *glares*. And then he went away. It was still weird, though. We finally got in, and that fucking asylum had everything that scares the shit out of me.

Continued!

friday the 13th!!

MERU ALMOST GOT HER HEAD CHOPPED OFF WITH A MACHETE IN AN ASYLUM.

That is all.

Ode to On-Air

Bottle Tree

I want to make art.

I've been gathering the materials to make glass bottle trees. The cut boards from Lowe's have been riding around in my van for about three weeks. Their fresh pine scent is a good one. Overpowering in a way that those little green pine trees could never be. And so much better than the giant ashtray smell going on at my place of work at the riverboat casino.

If I get all the base problems worked out I just may have found the right medium to express myself. Especially since my "raw" materials are empty bottles and I have to drink all kinds of cool beverages to get them.

A Party for Your Head

We made to the Revel last night to see Trout Fishing in America.
They'll be there through the week.

Then Katee and I dashed though the grounds glancing at the art. I was thrilled by the photograpy of Charles Bush. His large shot of a family of Roseate Spoonbills was so vibrant in color I stared at it and wondered aloud if he had created the image on his computer. He confirmed that those funky pink birds really do live in Louisiana. His prints were available in a variety of sizes and prices.

Katee begged for coffee and then she decided she was too tired and wanted to come back later in the week. So we tramped down the row of artists on the north side of the train depot and were almost out of booths when I discovered fiber artist Vanessa Cunningham of New Orleans. Her hats are millinery explorations for your noggin. Ladies of all ages were giggling like little girls at a tea party while trying on hats. How exciting to have your art make people feel so good.

Stress Tea

When I was a little kid and would go out to eat with my grandmother I'd get all excited because I got to order a Sprite. Bubbles! We had Pepsi at our house but that was for mom.

I thought my grandmother was crazy because most of the time she would order water. So not cool or tasty. I'd look across the table at Howard Johnson's and think I'm never going to eat out and order just WATER. Many years later I now find myself ordering water most of the time.

There's new study from the University College London that suggests drinking regular black tea may speed up recovery from the daily stresses in life. That's good news. I've had so much green tea in the last couple of months that I'm burned out. I'm trying the regular tea. Drinking it without sweetner, sugar or milk. I'm suffering from pucker tongue. I hope I get used to it soon because right now I'm sipping and cringing.

We Have WATER...

... and a new dishwasher and a new faucet and a big mouthed daughter...

After going weeks (really days but it seemed more prolonged) while Charlie installed the dishwasher and put in a new faucet we finally have plenty of running H2O.

I only had to make half a trip to the laundromat to wash my white work shirts, although since they're polyester I could have beaten them clean in the yard with a rock. After spending $2.50 on the wash Charlie drove up to say the water was back on and why not dry my pretty things at home and save that ten dollar bill I was holding.

The WATER ON situation didn't last long. In the midst of our celebratory dance under the ta-tas of the naked mermaid mural in the kitchen, Katee mentioned how I hated the new faucet since it was so low milk jugs couldn't be properly rinsed and why wasn't there a sprayer? I could have throttled her.

The next day he came home with a new one. And the next day, my day off, he wanted to install it. Since I had been reading The Zombie Survival Guide I knew the bare minimum I needed to do was fill the bathtub so the toilet could be flushed. As I dropped the drain plug and opened the taps, with big, droopy eyes Charlie looked at me and said, "You have no faith in me."

I shouldn't have doubted him. Hours later we had another new faucet complete with sprayer and running water.

whaaaat.

Well, that's the end of that relationship.

Let me tell you about this situation. Last night, after not hearing from Mike for like, 5 days and not seeing him for about 2 weeks, I figured it was time to take matters into my own hands and A) see what the hell was up, or B) break it off. I so did not see this coming. So I walked the three or four blocks to his place, in the crazy humid ass weather, saw his car in his driveway, knocked on the door, walked in the house, went to his room, opened the door, and I pretty much almost died.

There was another girl sitting on his bed sitting right next to her, and they'd been "watching a movie," but don't give me that bullshit, I know what happens when someone "watches a movie" with the lights out and a door closed. So he reached up and hugged me like it was nothing, like this was a normal occurrence. Wait, seriously? It was like he thought that if he didn't freak out, I wouldn't freak out, which I didn't. And then I took a look at the girl (Amber, apparently), and realized she looked like a goddamned chipmunk. Actually, she looked like me, in chipmunk form. Let me tell you, it was like looking into a Twilight Zone mirror of fug or something.

Dark red hair up in a half bun (like I always wear my hair), green eyes (!!!), glasses (!!!!), and I would say she was around my height and weight, but her teeth were kind of fucked up. AND UGLY. I thank God that I am stable (and possibly that I was too shocked to do anything) because if this had happened six months ago, there would've some Jerry Springer shit going on. So the whole time this is happening, my brain is only dimly aware of what's going on. The whole thing is hazy because it was so surreal. I mean. . .who does that? So I called him a son-of-a-bitch and walked out and I was in my This Is Not Acceptable mode, where I get very calm and pissed at the same time. He comes out after me (quite obviously stoned), like nothing was going on. It was fantastic.

Best. Break-up. EVER.

He was spewing all kinds of bullshit, "IT'S NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE REALLY I'M SORRY I HAVEN'T CALLED I WILL CALL YOU I PROMISE YOU'RE OVER REACTING PLEASE I'M SORRY." Mmm, no. First of all, I'm pretty sure it really is what it looks like. Second, you can call, but I'm not picking up the phone. Third, I am most certainly not over reacting. If anything I'm under reacting. Over reacting would've included me stabbing someone in the fucking head, and possibly setting some things on fire. Over reacting does not include me being completely calm about things and walking away nicely. Last, don't you dare make anymore promises to me ever again. You also "promised" not to hurt me again, and not to be a complete ass.

Why I choose to date drug addicts, idiots, douche bags and/or sociopaths is completely beyond me. So, that's the end of that. Thank God I didn't sleep with him. I really don't fancy another pregnancy test. And wouldn't that be a bitch? Anyway, I called Meru after all of it happened who said she would come right over after work (which she did 'cause she's awesome) and I came home and wrote a Livejournal entry and then I got a bunch of comments and yeah I love my friends. I told Mike's brother Scott what happened and he's like the greatest little guy ever, so there was a lot of LOL's at the "chipmunk" comment. Scott rocks.

I think the most amusing thing about the whole situation was (besides the girl being ugly WTF) the fact that one of my first thoughts was, "Aww, man, now I'm gonna have to redo my Top 8 on MySpace. GOD THIS SUCKS."

Fin.