Is Life Too Short or Too Long?

Life is either too long or too short, depending on whether I'm suicidal or not.  Right now life's too short, a belief only confirmed by my latest trip to my GP.  I'd gone to see her about hip pain I've been having.  I suspected it's Old Arthur.

 Arthritis runs in my family.  My younger older brother (the middle child) turned 60 last Monday and has arthritis so bad that he's already had both hips replaced.  He's got it all through his spine, too.  My older older brother just called my Dad to ask if we have rheumatoid arthritis in our family.  No, we don't, Jack, you've simply got a bad case of osteo, just like Chris and me. I can feel it in my bones (groan - OK, baaaaad pun!).

I've had pretty painful osteoarthritis in my middle back for a few years already and now I've been told it's "moderate to severe" in my lumbar & sacral spine as well.  Plus I have it in both hips though it's worse on the right. I've got those little bone spurs that are so painful.  Yep, it's Old Arthur.

I've been on an anti-inflammatory for over a year now but the disease seems to be progressing swiftly nonetheless.  Thank God for Percoset.  (And what's weird about the Percoset is that I feel much more energetic after I've taken one...and a nice high to boot.  Go figure.)

What's so troubling about this latest diagnosis isn't the pain and stiffness, or even the possibility of joint replacement surgery down the road.  I fear the loss of a life's dream, of having to strike an entry from my Bucket List because it has become impossible.  It's a very small item in the grand scheme of things but it's the most important of them all:  own and ride a horse of my own again.

I practically grew up on the back of a horse (good old Rusty - God I miss him) but I haven't had one since I left home at 16.  Now I'm 47 - that's a long time to wait for a dream to come true.  I don't know what I'd do if that dream became an impossibility.  Sometimes that dream (and the freedom it represents, to just hop on and GO) is all that keeps me going. 

I can't have a horse yet.  We don't have enough flat acreage, nor do we have enough money for proper care.  Not to mention the money to buy what I want:  a Rocky Mountain horse.  And we don't have enough income to even be saving for a down payment on another place.  We just have to keep paying down our mortgage until we can sell the property and get enough cash from the sale to use as a down payment on another place.  That'll take years - years I'm not sure I have left (for my dream, not for my life). 

Yeah, right now life's too short.   

Just A'Swingin

I had a rotten weekend.  My worthless son and a friend of his were supposed to come help us put up Christmas lights.  Hubby and I neither one care much to get on the roof.  It's not the roof, per se, it's the effing ladder we don't like.  

Needless to say son/friend didn't show up.  They were supposed to come Saturday, then changed it to Sunday.  Sunday a.m. my son's friend was having "back problems" so they didn't come.  This is after my son helped his friend put up HIS family's lights.  Supposedly they will come next weekend but I'll believe it when I see it.

So, I'm expecting no Christmas lights this year.  Of course we've called a moratorium on Christmas this year due to financial concerns but still - the lights would've made it cheery around here, even without a Christmas tree and gifts.

Then my husband and I tried to have a romantic encounter but he, um, achieved Nirvana very quickly, and then lost interest.  Boy, was I pissed off.  I threw a tantrum and shoved everything off the couch onto the floor.  (The couch is NOT a table anyway, but usually I just pick the stuff up and put it away.)  It's still on the floor.  I'm not touching it.

So Sunday I spent the day escaping - I read a whole book yesterday.  I was SO depressed. And although we have more than two cords of wood sitting in a pile in our driveway, I refused to help hubby stack it in the shed.  I just couldn't find the energy, plus I was still pissed at him.

Then today, amazingly, I woke up in a cheerful mood and with lots of energy.  Where did that come from, I wonder?  It doesn't feel like mania, or even hypomania - it feels like normality.  I have actually done a lot today - dishes, laundry, and kept the woodstove going despite the fact that the wood we bought isn't seasoned (much to our dismay).  Green wood doesn't burn easily.  I've been cussing the guys we bought it from for several days now.

Bipolar is a wild ride.  From high to low to "normal" to low to "normal" to...well, you all know how it is.  I'm just hanging on for dear life and trying not to scream at the senselessness of it.  I have never dealt with frustration well, and it's horribly frustrating to have a good day, then a bad day.  I have too much to do!

Hugs to all, I'll write more tomorrow (unless I wake up depressed again)... 

  

Thank the Goddess for mania, and possibly for gabapentin.  My month-long job with the US Census ended October 28, but I then had to bust my ass making soaps and Christmas crafty things for three craft fairs in November.   If I hadn't been at least hypomanic, I wouldn't have made it through all that.

My Pdoc prescribed gabapentin in the middle of October, two weeks or so before the Census job ended.  It made me groggy in the a.m., but it eliminated my hand tremors - for about 3 days.  Then they came back.  Grrrrr.

I had two one-day fairs back to back, one Nov. 7 and one in a different location Nov. 8.  Setup and tear down were a bitch!  Then this last weekend I had my first big fair - a 3-day event.  I spent several days last week without sleep or food, trying to get together enough product for the big fair.


 Wanna hear something funny?  I made pickled eggs for the fair, which all my friends (and my husband) said was a waste of time.  Who would buy pickled eggs?  Yuck!  Well, the first thing that sold was a quart of eggs, and the only thing I sold out of was - you guessed it - pickled eggs!  Go figure. 


I needn't have put myself through the three days of torture ahead of time, though.  We were disappointed with what we made at the big fair although we did make enough to cover our booth fee and then some.  Next year might see a better turnout because HOPEFULLY the economy will have improved somewhat.

So yes, I'm still around, but have been so f-cking busy I haven't had time to even think about writing.  Now that the fairs are over for this year, though, I'll be writing a lot more.

Right now, though, I've got to go.  The house is a disaster, with craft supplies strewn everywhere and dirty soap molds scattered throughout the kitchen.  Not to mention the pot I made my Oktoberfest Beer Mustard in, which has burnt-on mustard on the bottom.  Unbelievable that the scorching didn't affect the flavor of the rest of it.

Catch u all sometime in the next couple of days.  I need to talk about the mania more.  And thanks to those of you who wrote with your concerns about where I have been.  You're a great bunch, y'know that?