dreaming in technicolor

Don't get too excited, I'm not really coming back to livejournal. I have so many other things I try to keep up with, and one more is just added stress.

But I do want to let people know where they can find me, if they want to. Which is mostly Facebook and Twitter.


As for the things I posted when last I was around... well, life got better.  And sometimes worse, and then better again.  It's life, that's what it does.  And that's okay.  And that's what I like about Facebook and Twitter... when those things happen, they rarely warrant more attention than a few lines.  And if it's epic enough to need more than that, there's always my blog.

So hopefully I'll see a few of you around my other haunts.  If not, well... it's been fun and I'll miss you, and I hope your lives are going great.

Thanks all for the words of encouragement.

I had to call off sick again today; I didn't think my voice could get worse, but I went from odd squeaking noises to no noise at all. I've moved on to the "fuck it, whatever happens happens and there's nothing I can do about it" phase. They'll fire me or they won't. I did my best, there's nothing more I can do, and I can't just keep stressing myself out over it. I do know that as soon as I'm feeling better, I'll start looking for a different job just to be prepared.

Still a little bummed that any of it's happening at all. No, no one ever said life was fair, but no one warned me it'd be utterly ridiculous, either.

Right. So I break my leg. Two weeks later, the car breaks down (causing me to miss a week of work). Get the car back after a week, and I start having problems with coughing and hoarseness. Go to the doc to get it taken care of right away, because if I miss work again, I'm suspended (and probably off overnights)...a week later, the meds haven't worked, and I'm actually WORSE now, to the point that I have NO voice. I work at a friggin' answering service. NO voice = unable to perform the sole function of the job. Which means that if it's not back by tonight, I miss work and get suspended. AND! Just because this isn't quite enough... I can't really walk properly yet, not nearly enough to go to the store and pick up the new prescription that the doctor faxed in for me, so that's one more day that the healing will be delayed.

WHY?

WHY can I not just have a normal life? Why do I have to have constant miserable luck? WTF did I ever do to deserve to have fate shit on me repeatedly like this? Every single last bit of this has been completely and totally beyond any of my control. In NO way do I bear the blame in ANY of what's happened the last six weeks. I can handle it when stupid shit happens and I'm at least partly responsible, because at least then I can make changes to fix it. But this? This is such a pile of bullshit. This isn't even a matter of choice. It's not as if I can just "suck it up" and go in to work... I CAN'T TALK. All the "sucking it up" in the world isn't going to change that.

And people wonder why I'm an atheist? Aside from logical arguments... why would I even WANT to believe in a sentient being that would do this to me? And not just this time around, but over and over and over again. It's far preferable to believe that it's really just random bad luck than to believe in a god that hates me this much.

No wonder I suffer from depression and anxiety. Maybe I'll cling to the hope that somewhere there's a version of me that has nothing but wonderful things happening all the time.

For now, though, I think I'll just go cry myself to sleep.

Well then. As years go, this one wasn't half-bad.

Wasn't great, but certainly wasn't as bad as some previous years. I'd rate it about a 6 on a scale of 1-10. Might have made a 7 if I hadn't broken my leg toward the end of it.

I was still unemployed for a few months, but not nearly as much as the year prior. I ended up in a job I don't hate (which I'll now have to hope I can cling to). Still married, so that's good. Still happy about it, so that's especially good. Elected a new president, always a plus.

Downsides: Dave's grandmother's diagnosis, my broken leg, the time I've missed from work, the financial issues (as always).

Overall, though, the good outweighed the bad, and that's the first time in a long while I've been able to make that claim.

So, seeya 2008. Thanks for not sucking too much! And perhaps we'll continue the improvement with 2009.

( Whiny stuff. )

Merry holidays, folks, whichever ones you celebrate. And from me personally, happy blinky lights day.

So...

Nothing serious, just some internal bruising on the back of my leg from hitting it on the car door, which I'd completely forgotten about because my leg's so swollen, I barely noticed it at the time. He said the pain should ease off after a few days, which it has been doing, so this is good.

He also assured me that there's very, very little chance of me doing further damage to it short of the same sorts of trauma that broke it in the first place. No walking on it for four more weeks, since that'll slow the healing. But if I accidentally put weight on it, it's not going to cause any problems, it'll just hurt a lot. I can turn it, twist it, bend it as much as I "feel comfortable with", which is to say, I can shave my legs (yay!) and I can sleep on my left side if I want (super-yay!), but it's gonna hurt when I do.

Not happy about four more weeks of crutches, but a bit better knowing that I can put weight on it if I need to (should make stairs a little easier), and stop babying it like I have been.

Supposed to be an ice storm tonight, but if it ends up missing us, we're totally going out to Denny's or IHOP tonight.

So two weeks have gone by. Most of it relatively pain-free (well, a dull, aching pain, but nothing that wasn't easily managed with tylenol). Then I wake up Saturday night for work feeling like I'm absolutely gonna die. I give it awhile, pop some pills, the pain dies off a bit and I head for work. By the time I got home, I was barely able to stay upright. Slept off and on, woke up Sunday night in pain so severe that it actually made me sick to my stomach. Again with the food, pills... nothing. It still hurt. We're talking day-after-the-injury level pain here. So I try to get some more sleep, keep it elevated, all that, but it wakes me up around 6am. Sit around a couple of hours, 8am on the dot, I call the doctor's office, leave a message for the nurse. Couple of hours later, she calls back, tells me that she wants me to come in and have it x-rayed again because it shouldn't suddenly hurt this bad without something having happened to it. Says check with the insurance company that's paying the bill to get approval, and call back to try to get an appointment for today, tomorrow at the latest.

That was around 10am. I called back at 10:15, left a message for the person who handles the appointments. Four hours later, still hadn't heard anything, so I called back. She was at lunch and wouldn't be back for an hour. At this point, I know there's no way I'm getting an appointment today, and I still hurt like a bitch, and since it hurts even worse when I wake up, I go ahead and call off work, explain the situation. She places me on hold, comes back, says the manager wants to talk to me and will call me later today. I'm going to guess this isn't good. And if I lose my job just because some company couldn't bother with putting down salt because it was a weekend, I will be severely pissed, and will probably skip right past dealing with their insurance company and hire a personal injury attorney instead.

So now I'm stressed as fuck, in a whole world of pain, and can't even go sleep because I'm waiting now for two phone calls.

This is not shaping up to be a good holiday season.

[Update: Called yet again, talked to someone else, finally got an appointment for 2pm tomorrow. Still waiting for the boss's call.]

Posting entirely too much lately, partly because there's not much else to do to fill the time between drug-induced naps, and partly because this is likely one of the most interesting things that's happened to me. Which is sort of sad.

First, the leg update:
It's gotten worse, but I suppose that might be normal. Really, the only thing that's "worse" is the swelling and the pain. The swelling can probably be attributed to the fact that I haven't been wearing my brace as much as I should during the day, yet still keeping the leg immobile. Dave-the-former-nurse says this is a bad thing, and that if I'm going to keep the brace off for mobility, then it needs to actually BE mobile. I think that's also where the pain's coming from. When the leg is braced, it's more uncomfortable, but hurts less. So I've hit a compromise that if it starts to swell/hurt too much, I lay down with it propped up for a few hours.

Weekend update:
Have our train tickets purchased and ready to go. A bit worried about trying to travel under the circumstances, but I only see my family once a year, so I don't really want to miss it. Still have to get stuff for the gift exchange, will hopefully have time to do that on the way to the train station tomorrow. Keeping my fingers crossed that the weather cooperates, since there's no way I'm going to try to maneuver on ice just yet.

Back to work on Monday. Looking forward to it in the "not being bored" sense, but not so much in the "going up and down the stairs and hobbling down hallways and not being able to carry anything" sense.

Changed my default pic to something more seasonal. Added countdown ticker to my "sticky" post. Woo, gonna have to slow down such massive productivity.

Now I'm off to find socks, 'cause my feet are friggin' cold.

Meh. It hurts.

Of course, everything hurts now. Crutches + no upper body strength = lots and lots of aching.

I also hate having an insanely smart cat. He knows he gets fed at 8am. He knows which leg is injured. He knows that walking up and down that leg is going to wake me up. He knows I can't sit up quick enough to grab him and toss him off the bed. Though, I don't think he counted on being startled by the scream of pain.

Have managed to figure out how to get up a set of stairs. Have not managed to figure out how to get down them. At the moment it involves throwing the crutches to the bottom of the steps, sitting down, and sliding down each step, one at a time.

Twenty days to go.

Here. Have a picture of my bones .

( Note, not for the squeamish. )