Tainting the experiment

I had a glass of wine last night. About four hours before bed, with dinner out. Since everybody is espousing the virtues of red wine, I stuck with that. Still feel pretty good this morning although I slept in. No mania yet. Dreary sky. Spelling still terrible.

How do you spell mania?

I wanted it and here it is. Getting lots of work done, kitchen in perfect order, a new pitcher of decaf iced green tea, dozens of new creative project ideas, clean, showered, clean clothes on, laundry put away, lawn watered, stinky sport shoes and sandals washed and listening to "You keep me Hanging On" by Vanilla Fudge.

Then there is the occasional wicked grin while jumping up and down with fists clenched and silently saying "GO, GO, GO".

Oh, and I am eating up all the old fruit around the house.

File under C for catharsis

Day three following night three of not drinking. Not that I don't miss it. It helps though to remember how foul it tasted when I missed my meds. It occurred to me that different meds clear the system at different rates, so the metallic taste I get when I miss taking the whole batch could be from one staying in my system longer, interacting with the alcohol/taste buds.

The catharsis was that on the first day without drinking the night before, I felt so much better. Now that I am on day three, I still feel better but now I want improvement on the day before. I want joy, giddiness, mania. I miss mania.

Something I should share with you, and also mention so I can better remember it: improvement takes practice. You (and I) have to practice staying "Up" because we are working to NOT be that depressed/manic person being treated.

Did that make sense? We are used to being the bipolar fuck-up, low self-esteem, self-hating, fast talking, volatile person who sought treatment in the first place.

Still is a bit vague. I am not used to feeling better so I have to stay focused on what it is like so I can repeat it more easily every day. Like playing scales on the piano.

That's the best I can do right now. This is a blog, not a treatise.

Going to put on socks and shoes, do a little work and walk the dogs.

I did exercise a LOT of patience and finally got through the phone calls necessary to get refunds for two pair of shoes purchased on line that I returned in June. Yay me. Way to go John. You are soooooo badass.

Hey, it is real money, off my credit card, don't have to pay, persistence paid off, got what I deserve, didn't settle for less, did not compromise.

That's practice, isn't it?

Hard to be funny when you're just hanging on

One excuse for the seriousness of my writing is that bipolar isn't really that funny. If I were manic right now, it might be and I might make remarks that would seem really inappropriate later. The Brit who gets the awards for her blog can make depression seem hilarious. I think I could get some giggles out of ironing shirts if I were in a better mood.

Ironing shirts is a manic pastime.

Wednesday morning

My morning consisted of sniveling and feeling sorry for myself. That is lifting a bit now and I feel more motivated. Got the sign project moving forward and came up with some real design. A little welded metal icon thing that roughly represents the profile of 172 N. Center Street welded to corrugated steel. I think the corrugated thing is so over, but everybody else thinks it is still cool and necessary even though it has nothing to do with the project. Then a brief venture into Ciudad Rodrigo, from a blog I happened onto.

Then back to the Ephron article. She makes me moan. She is so confident, has a Park Avenue apartment, rented her house upstate or somewhere to someone for $200,000. It takes me four years to make that much gross. I don't pay much in taxes and the rest goes to living expenses that can be written off.

I picked up stacks of paper around the room. A list of places to go and things to do in Chicago on the trip we didn't take. Too expensive right now. Need to trim down the credit card bills. Can't keep bailing us out with Finegan Thompson. Although I have a lot of work right now. I keep looking at this portrait of Son House on a CD cover. By the way, the CD was invented in 1979, the year FT was started.

This is becoming a disjointed rant. Must be going manic, or probably mixed state. What I wanted to say, after reading an article about Nora Ephron in New Yorker is that you think you are going to come out on the other side of bipolar and you're just not. It will go on forever. You might sit on the porch and watch the moon rise, but you'll never be secure in the knowledge that you are going to wake up in the same mood you took to bed.

All these pieces of paper, lists and phone numbers of people forgotten will live where they are for a while. Then they will become out-of-date and discarded along with the ideas they started with. Maybe I/we should take heart from the fact that these notes are about ideas that were stillborn. They weren't meant to be and didn't pan out. It's ok.

I have a lousy recording of La Boheme but it's ok. I can always Google reviews and find a better one and for about $17-28 have it to play. A play about a bunch of reprobates and a woman who gets sick and dies.

Now I am the reprobate, or so it seems. I sit around lamenting my misfortune when really, I lead an ideal life. I am "at work" all the time, thinking off and on about the projects I am working on. Then during work hours I commit them to paper, then to reality. I have the accumulated wisdom to think of all the obstacles and how to either overcome them or share them with the client to see how much they can participate, financially, in solving them.

When not at work, I get to hike in beautiful places with faithful, loyal companions who do not butt in to my dialog or talk over me. We're all so rude. Poor listeners.

I get a whiff of something that smells like loose change when you hold it up to your nose. Olfactory hallucination. I can't spell anymore.