though yesterday didn't half suck. i just love this song. they played it on Stargate Universe and i fell in love immediately. you can check it out on youtube.com, should you desire. a nice irish folk song.

i need to cut my nails, i can't type with these talons i've grown. what a pain in the ass.

i went out yesterday, i know, we all knew that wouldn't end well. i walked up to get cigarettes and cola. to my credit, i didn't start freaking out until i started on my way home. and all i remember of the walk back is looking at my feet and chanting, "i wanna be home now."

tomorrow i have a doctor's appointment. that will be a four hour trip, i have to get there an hour before the doctor even comes in because of the bus schedule. i hate these trips and after tomorrow, when doc is going with me, i will be expected to do this alone from now on. *fuckinglosingitatthethought*

then there's the huge shrink and therapy bills i just got because the billing was done wrong and i have to make a bunch of phone calls about it. and with the medication, we have rather comprehensive insurance, plus i have medicare and it makes me ineligible for most help programs. and when i said my one med, invega, will cost me $600, i failed to mention the nearly $1500 the plan covers. for three month's supply. and i'm not kidding, that is the actual amount, no exaggeration here. it's because the med is brand new, so the pharma company is trying to recoup the research money and there's no generic yet. there's still no generic for seroquel, which makes that one prohibitively expensive, too. i'm going to ask to try risperdal again. that's the one that makes me photophobic, and that should be cool because i live in the bloody desert.

but this too shall pass. i'll change meds. i'm prepared for the symptoms now and just the schizophrenia doesn't make me a danger to myself or others unless it's really bad. and we just won't let it get bad. or really bad. goddamn, someday i just want to be stable for 6 months. that's all i fucking ask.

and repeat several times

our insurance has changed with the year. my antipsychotic is now $600. now i have to switch back and not get fucked up because i can't go to the psych hospital any more, also thanks to the new coverage.

i'm just pissed.

president obama needs to remove the words "las vegas" from his lexicon. last year his comment cost us a lot of convention traffic. now he says it again. and sure he apologized, but damage done. and it is a big deal for us. we depend on the gaming, the tourists who must eat and find shelter. he's right, don't blow the kid's tuition in vegas, but that's not the whole message he's sending and i think it sucks.

i have a friend who's upset at another friend of mine for posting a private email by him, the first him, you following me? so there is a compunction to ask the one about the other and maybe make everyone feel better.

or, more likely, get dragged into someone else's drama or cause bad feelings for interjecting myself in someone else's personal life, when i'm not a part of that personal life. i'm just a long time friend. not an intimate one. so there is a compunction to leave it alone.

or, more likely, have it be a thing that festers in the friendship of the first mentioned friend and defects it forever, and i hate losing friends. that's why i don't want to get involved.

so could everyone who's posted a private email not do that so much anymore?

felix and i just finished some shrimp stuffed salmon. we both thought it was delicious. actually, he didn't get any stuffing, it had jalapenos in it. he did get to lick the plate. nope, i don't spoil him at all. truth is, he was the only one to be at all interested in what i was eating. he's always interested in what i'm eating. he doesn't like hummus, so i turn him away quite a bit. can't live without hummus.

my diet is very limited. cereal, carrot sticks and peanut butter, hummus and naan, yogurt, bananas . . . i think that's about it. with the rare salmon thrown in. oh yeah and pizza once a week plus leftovers.

"they" are saying no more rain for us for a while after this front leaves tonight. but it brings warmer temps, i'm all for that.

i think i'm going to call kam316 and have her make me laugh for a while.

a friend is going through a breakup.
i actually reconnected with an old friend on facebook.
i'm starting to see the draw of facebook.
another monday that doc made it to work instead of babysitting me.
i don't need taking care of.
well . . . okay maybe a little bit.
i still have to be reminded of some stuff.
i forget to take care of myself.
i forget to eat
i forget to bathe
i forget to wear my appliance in my mouth
these are all reasons doc is sick of me
but we won't dwell on that
the general trip down denial is good with me
and other people are in pain and i hate that.

felix was glued to me all morning, now he's sleeping on my bed
so cute. i take pictures and i'll post them all once i fix the computer

doc and i both got up around 8 and pissed around for a while. then we went back to bed, where he fell asleep and i got restless and got up. E! news is on and i couldn't tell you why.

i have a picture of someone else's cats as my desktop. oddly, they nearly look like leeloo and felix. i don't even know where i got the picture. it replaced the Thin White Duke mugshot i had up for about a month.

felix is circling me. he curled up with me this morning and proceeded to take a bath. after about a half an hour i couldn't take it anymore and got up. when i went back to be he curled up with me and since i've been up he's been hovering around me. last night i saw him walk out of the fireplace. he's cleaned since and gotten his paws back to white from grey.

sunday mornings are a flurry of boredom.

i was in the bath half asleep the other night and remembered going to the three stooges film festival at the Syria Mosque (a gorgeous old theater in pittsburgh that was unceremoniously torn down to make more parking) with Jeff a couple of years. that's how it happens, memory comes up randomly and i have to deal with it. now anger finally takes over denial. bargaining likely won't come, i've no one to bargain with, i'm not a curse-the-gods kind of person. that leaves us with depression, already creeping in, and finally acceptance. come on acceptance. let me be happy with the memories i have and know he's always in my heart.

it's been raining all morning and isn't letting up any time soon. gigglesnort. i am loving this: weather.

the cats are all passed out all over the place. i want to join them. there's at least two on my bed. it's just a sleepy day.

i've been taking left over haldol to help me sleep and it has made sleep dreamless. wonderful drug, i'll be bummed when i run out. i'm also taking seroquel to help me sleep, i'm down to one a night. i want to try the sleeper med alone, but when night comes around, i always opt to supplement it.

i can't believe the stupid tv i'm watching. at least it isn't some reality show. just a rerun of Becker. high entertainment.

jeff is haunting me. his memory, that is. i'm not talking about taking the ouija board and start asking questions kind of haunting. i can't stop thinking about him. i'm never good with death but this is ridiculous. i keep thinking of things to ask him, ways to get a hold of him and it's TOO LATE.

our friends are all feeling a bit of guilt for not dragging him out of the woodwork sometime in the past ten years, but it went by so fast and we all made our efforts.

i guess i'm still mainly in denial with a foot in anger. mainly angry at myself for the above reason. bargaining, depression and acceptance should be interesting.

it's like i want the universe to understand what he meant to me. but there's a lot of us that feel that way, we all have these magnificent set of memories uniquely ours that makes each of us valid sisters in grief. we all had these fabulous friendships with him. we are all missing him in our own ways that are just as intense for each of us.

i have a poem i wrote him some 20 years ago. i should find it, i can't even remember any of the words. the night i wrote it i wrote one of my favorite poems ever and the memory of it all is dominated by that. what a strange nonsequitor that became.

the rain has left off. the Big Dirt Hill is a dark brown from being soaked. we're supposed to get another storm tonight, it is in CA right now.i'm a weather junkie. it takes me out of the devastating goings on in haiti. there is not a thing that i can do, and i feel macabre watching the footage. so i'm getting into the local weather footage. for example, and this thrilled me, the city was covered in fog this morning. that's another never happen kind of thing. it was so beautiful with the stratosphere sticking up out of the fog and the dark outlines of the other hotels on the strip. gorgeous. epic.

it's currently raining here, hard. i am doing the happy rain dance, i'm scaring the cats.

i'm making a roast, not very involved work. i put it on a bed of thinly sliced onions. i decided against the bed of carrots, i'd rather eat those with peanut butter. see, doc bought me a roast for the holidays and i ignored it, he cooked it, he's been eating it. so he bought me another one to fix myself so i will eat it. so i'm fixing it.

the rain is causing chaos on the streets. it isn't even flooding. silly nevada desert dwellers.

the news and weather lady did not lie! i didn't believe her because we never get the rain they say we will. today is supposed to be the first of four days of rain that is meant to give us 1-3 inches of rain, half a year's worth.

it's all dark out and i can watch the lower clouds float by outside my balcony. i take such joy in rain.

i wrote a long rambling email to L about Jeff. i have so many memories flooding me but i can't seem to make coherent sentences about any of it.

i have nothing on my list today so i have to find myself something to keep me busy. right. i don't feel good, i think i have doc's cold coming on. i want to wrap myself in something warm and laze around. maybe i'll surprise doc and fix the desktop and get that out of the way. i've been talking about it and thinking about it for weeks now. kind of time to do something about it. make the thing useful again, and start backing it up.

i talked to doc's parents the other day and thanked them for the xmas basket of english breakfast goodies. that went well, i think. i've tried getting in touch with my own family. first for the holidays and then to let them know about Jeff, as he was like part of the family for many years. that has been in vain, they are never home or the number isn't working. it's nicer to talk to doc's parents any way.

i dreamt of Jeff last night. so many things. today i am sad.

i have plenty of things to keep me busy today. a big pile of ironing and some other stuff.

i think i'll listen to my xmas CD to cheer me up.

death is a sucky thing.

the memories are just flooding me.
the sunday afternoons we went for drives to smoke cigarettes.
the nights we rented horror movies.
hanging out at the theater where he sold tickets in a booth.
going dancing and drinking rolling rock.
M actually has some rolling rock so i had a bottle, best beer.
shopping
him rescuing me from yet another parental battle.
the untimely and painful death of his father.
so many memories, so much time spent together.
and then nothing for over ten years, the last time i saw him i was with douchebag and i wasn't the best person.
only kelli knows . . . only she, of all the people i knew who knew him, she knows.
we talked about it a lot, the not knowing after his site closed down and he fell off the radar,
the just assuming it had probably happened, but searching for him anyway
and she just read the obits by a slim happenstance today
if not for that we never would have known and maybe we would have been better off.

i don't have your email, so this is the message board:

I just found out that Jeff Rizzo has died. his obituary can be found here: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/postgazette/obituary.aspx?n=jeffrey-m-rizzo&pid=138320995. you can leave a message for the family, though i don't know if they are checking it or not. i left a rather incoherent one, don't know how to feel, didn't know what to say.

i'm still in shock. i haven't talked to him in over 10 years, but his friendship in high school meant more to me than i can ever put into words. i thought you'd want to know and be able to tell some of those that knew him.

it's been a long lazy morning that has led to a lazy afternoon. i'm spending the weekend with Dr. Who. i didn't see the final episodes of David Tennant all the way through or in order. plus nothing else is on.

i have a computer project to do and i keep putting it off. my back was my excuse, but since it's getting better, not so much anymore. it would be nice to have my desktop back. i might even start podcasting again. it's only been two years.

i love when the sun hides, though it holds in the smog, it also holds in the heat. i love it here, it's early january and i have the windows open. we've had this big assed high pressure system sitting over us that protects us from the northern storms and the wind is from the southwest so it's blowing in warm. precisely why i wanted to move here. my heart goes out to all who are colded in.

i wrote that yesterday . . .

today, not so cloudy, should be warmer they say.

am i really this obsessed with the weather or do i have nothing to say?

who can say . . .

this morning was gorgeous. doc and i sat together and laughed with each other. i know i'm desperately grasping at anything positive that i can, but it felt really good to hang out and laugh with him.

i took my nap late last night, around 9:30 and when doc came home, he turned the light out for me (i nap with the light on). my alarm went off shortly after that so i got up. greeted doc, took my meds and gathered up felix and went right back to bed. i'm still sleepy, though i slept for 13 hours.

it helps when i keep up on the housework and make his return home as painless as possible. make sure he can sit down and relax instead of cleaning up after what i haven't done. i've never been good at housework. i'm not the wifely type. that's something i am working on changing. it's all part of being more responsible and adult. great thing to learn at my age. better late than blah blah blah.

M and doc have talked me into believing that felix wants to be chased by tech. though tech tends to get rough in the corners at times and felix has little claw mark scabs on his nose. they also say the whole thing is felix's fault because he growls and hisses at tech and that sets tech off. okay, granted, but i still don't like it. i guess they have to work things out for themselves. the big plus is that tech used to bully leeloo for the same reason, she's old, she's a psycho bitch to begin with, and tech loved to egg her on. now he doesn't hassle her anymore.

that's my life, in the shell of a nut. my best friends are cats. i am a cat lady. at least i don't breed them or hoard and i clean up after them. but for all intents and purposes i am a cat lady. meow.

doc went over to a work colleague's place last night and thought he called me. i stayed up until he got home, then we both slept all day.

sorry i didn't update, i was so delirious when he got home and we started talking and then fell asleep.

thank you for your support, it was a hell of a way to start the year.

i think i resolve to meet a nice woman out there this year, i need to date.