Unsolicited Advice

Still sick. Still losing my ability to cope more and more with each goddamn tissue I throw in the general direction of the wastebasket. Still have to get up and do things anyhow. I have got to the point of overload where people being nice is now confusing me. The ballroom dance instructor, of all people, has suddenly started talking to me. I had no idea he was aware of my existence beyond the fact that I show up to work and don't burn the building down, but I snarked at him on the phone one day about running around herding cats in a tux, and apparently that got his attention. I had no idea what the fuck, then I thought I did, now I think I don't and I should really just stop thinking about it. I have just enough objectivity left to understand that people who do not like you do not stand around having conversations with you in an empty lobby when they could just as easily have cruised on by with their eyes glued to their phone and done something productive with their time inst...

One of the nicer perks of managing house for events at the dance studio is that, when the stars align just right, I actually get to see some of the show. A lot of them are repertory shows for the various schools that teach in the area, but others are professional deals, and some are Serious Art. I don't always know what it's going to be until I turn up; the permanent staff are responsible for booking things, and all I get is the ad copy, and some sheets of paperwork when I get there. Whilst channeling the usual amount of chaos a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the staffer whose project it was had wandered off at some point and changed his clothes. It's not strange to have that one roaming the building. Staffers don't have to babysit their shows in person, although he usually does. It's just a little out of the ordinary for any of them to be doing the babysitting in a tuxedo. I was just like, kessé?  I know not wherefore the monkey suit, but now I have got to...

One of the little boogers (Plugh, for the record) has developed a head tilt. There are a few different things this could be, but the only fixable one is 'clogged ear', so I ordered some amoxicillin on the theory it was infected. (The differential is stuff like stroke, tumor, or torticollis. The official treatment for those is 'Tylenol for discomfort, and love your slightly-tilted rat until he expires.') The MSPCA clinic has a compounding pharmacy, in case your cat needs to violently refuse liver-flavored meds instead of generic pills, but it turns out that mail-order AmoxiDrops are the exact same sugary pink bubble gum-flavored goo  I got when I had ear infections as a kid. Well, I do keep telling people the rats are basically tiny furry toddlers. I feel like a terrible monster holding an animal down and jamming a syringe in his mouth, so I've developed a much more roundabout method for medicating small spoiled critters: Remove rat from cage. Stuff rat into ...

I keep going through cycles where I try to convince myself that there's nothing wrong with me, I'm just a lazy sod, and I'm whining over nothing. Symptoms are subjective. Nobody likes getting up early in the morning, they do it anyway. Nobody likes hot muggy weather, but they don't let themselves melt into a useless puddle on the bed all afternoon. Then shit happens, and I am reminded that not only are all the things I think are wrong with me actually wrong with me, I am usually introduced to a brand-new symptom that I didn't even fucking know was a thing. The tech who did my hip imaging mentioned in passing that low body temperature was a known feature of EDS. Judging from the comments I got when the nurse couldn't get an IV into me last week, and the fact that she tried to fix that by heaping me with heated blankets, I don't just think  my hands and feet are always cold, or  feel chilled when I'm short on sleep, I actually am having temperature regulat...

An incomplete list of things I would like to wrench out of my head before I die: The YA superhero book I started for NaNo and had to put down because the 2016 election had me in a state of mortal terror; A "non-fiction" retrospective that purports to shed light on an unsolved murder, as written by a historian in the unspecified, but moderately distant, future; Another "non-fiction" work about a series of artists, whom the author (who may or may not be insane) claims has made a deal with the devil, the terms of which are that they will gain incredible fame and fortune, at the price of their single greatest masterpiece remaining forever unfinished; A mystery involving a Holmesian detective who, unbeknownst to himself, is not just brilliant at deduction but also psychometric. He is forced to deal with the implications when he encounters a crime to which he "knows" the solution, but cannot reconcile this with the fact that he was personally in a differe...

Is it bad when filing your taxes gives you an existential crisis? I had to monkey with my insurance paperwork when I went into the urgent care a while ago. The lady with the Official Computer Forms asked me what I did for a living, which is apparently a required question despite the fact that state insurance in MA is entirely based on income, not field of employment. I had no answer. Fiscal 2016 is the first year I've ever had to file as completely self-employed, as 0% of my paying work was as a serf beneath giant capitalist overlords. The insurance lady pulled out her phone, opened some kind of TurboTax app, and casually informed me that I was an "Artist".  I might have argued with her, but I was busy trying to pinpoint what exact part of my body was hurting so I could ask them to amputate. I probably just made some kind of non-specific noise of agreement. This feeling that you have to wear your "job" as your identity has always eluded me. Identity b...

I learn new things every time I volunteer for a research study. Today, I learned that neuroimaging researchers have no idea how the fMRI works. Oh, they're aware that there's a very large magnet in it, and that the people who paid for the very large magnet said NO METAL IN THE MRI ROOM in equally large block capitals. Beyond that they don't really have any idea. They know they're measuring brain activity, and I think  some of them know what marker they're using (blood flow), but they don't appear to know by what arcane sorcery big magnet + blood = animated GIF of the brain. [Hemoglobin is magnetically susceptible. Only very, very faintly, hence the mad scientist-grade 4T magnet in the MRI scanner. Hemoglobin that's carrying oxygen has a slightly different response than hemoglobin that's already dropped it off, and brain regions that are active get an influx of the oxygenated stuff. Awesomely powerful, but also awesomely picky, and if you don't do...