Between the groups and friends and that one person who was reading year-old wired.com articles, my birth control has, to date, been viewed by 2,288 people, over a period of 3 years. (Ha. Period.)
2,288 people. 3 years.
The Internet is a vagina-centric time machine.
Update: I just realized that by blogging about it I’ve completed the Internet circle. Yay.
After work I got groceries. I had a few eggs left from the previous carton, so instead of taking the new eggs out and putting them in their little eggcup tray in the fridge, I sat the new carton on top of the tray. Of course the first time I opened the fridge door this evening, they flew out and landed top down on the stone kitchen floor.
Several survived. 3 of the casualties (thin shells, thick membranes) became an emergency omelette, with garlic and cheese and a salad and sourdough toast.
It occurred to me as I was cooking that my first reaction to the egg suicide was laughter, not crying or punishing myself in some illogical way for not being a good egg carton steward.
Part of it is just growing up. Obviously, there’s no actual reason to cry over a carton of broken eggs (unless you are starving and you can’t get more eggs). There never was. There never will be.
Part two is coping. Most people I’ve talked to my age, particularly those in high stress and/or professional positions, admit to having some kind of Impostor Syndrome. I think this generally gets compounded for people (like myself) who are anxious by nature. By accepting that I will probably always feel like I’m faking at least some part of my life, it’s okay to mess up. Somehow.
And the third part is finally not giving a shit.
I think I’m finally pulling myself up over the lip of the third part.
Sorry for the quiet lately. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since spring has truly arrived. Saw a friend off to France, finished up some work, caught up with some other friends I hadn’t seen in a while, attended a Grey Gardens-themed clothing swap, and modeled some hats.
At present I am recovering from some nasty withdrawal from Zoloft.
I was put on a very low dose for various reasons when I was 19, and I have been on it ever since (I’m now 27). Zoloft is one of those anti-depressants that supposedly doesn’t do anything unless you really need it, since it works with existing brain chemistry, specifically serotonin re-uptake. I have never been re-evaluated by a psychiatrist or psychologist for whether it’s necessary still, nor for general therapy purposes. I’ve basically stayed on it out of habit and the what-if factor.
So, since I have a been in a “good place” for a while now, I decided to go off it. I followed the recommended tapering-off procedure, which has you drop your dose by 25mg for a specific interval until you’re down to 0. Since I was only on 50mg (I’ve known people on four times that), this ended fairly quickly. I felt fine. This was expected, as Zoloft is supposed to have a 50% half life.
Then, about a week later, I got hit by a truly absurd array of withdrawal symptoms. Flu symptoms, dizziness, extreme nausea, fatigue, diarrhea, insanely vivid and realistic dreams. Of course, this was the same week that swine flu was all over the news. OH NOES TEH SWINE. Several days later I am much better, but I’m still in a fatigue/nausea/lack of appetite cycle that I can only seem to cut through with cold drinks, produce, and very very small amounts of peanut butter and other protein.
For an anti-depressant that is supposed to be on the less-mess-with-your-body end of the spectrum, and which is available extremely cheaply as a generic, and for which I was prescribed such a small dose, the after effects are pretty absurd. Part of me is very angry at my then-doctor, and the university psychologist, for putting me on this thing in the first place. Yes, there was a time and a place. I had a hard time adjusting to college, socially and emotionally, and it was probably good to be on some sort of stabilizer then. But, they both told me that I might have to be on it for the rest of my life, and I believed them because, well, they were doctors.
And no, I am not a medical professional. And yes, maybe I should have tapered even longer. But from what I’ve read online (and yes, I hate reading medical advice and symptoms online as much as anyone) people that have quit cold turkey and people who taper off the drug can have the exact same experiences, i.e., the symptoms I had and more (I’m glad I missed out on the “electric shocks” symptom. Jesus). And I don’t want to be one of those DON’T DO ANTI-DEPRESSANTS crusaders. I can only speak for myself. I honestly thought briefly about going back on (I have almost a month’s supply left, and another refill) to make the symptoms stop, but decided that wouldn’t do any better for me in the long run.
So, on a Sunday afternoon, after sleeping for about 12 hours, I am drinking iced coffee with soy milk and sipping a smoothie crammed full with antioxidants, trying to get my body as flushed out as possible. I am doing laundry, and some crocheting, and some work-related things, and I’m feeling pretty good. So there’s that.
Today I went to Morgan and York with a friend for coffee and cookies. They have Easter-themed items out now.
The odd placement of the icing prompted said friend to remark that the bunny looked like it was wearing a gimp mask. Things, as would be expected, went downhill from there.
Every good gimp mask needs a mouth-zipper.
It says a lot about how awesome the folks at M&Y are that at this point the gentleman making our coffees suggested that we should put the gimp bunny back in the display case. His sentiments were appreciated, but the gimp bunny was taken away and consumed.
It occurs to me that I haven’t blogged about What I Did A Couple Weeks Ago.
Many were overtly or vaguely aware of a brief and harrowing road trip I took with a friend to south central Pennsylvania at the end of February. I’ve explained its purpose on my return to several people, but I think it’s summed up best with the following description, culled from a retrospective IM conversation.
me: Well, a complex one. No? “I did a 22-hour round-trip roadtrip with my ex/best friend to pick up hundreds of dollars of military surplus storage and modular furniture from a tiny army surplus/Y2K-preparedness/gun-nut store in Bumfuck, PA, which I knew the location of because I grew up a different but similar Bumfuck, PA. And in return for signing up for another trip this summer, I got thiscase. Which has embroidery floss in it now.”
“During the trip we deconstructed a case of beer and stored it in one of the cases because the car was so full of army surplus furniture that there was only room for one case of beer.”
“The beer was acquired because it is not available in MI and has sentimental value. It was split in half to share with another friend who owns a $1 van which is regularly borrowed to move large quantities of free high quality furniture around, often in snowstorms.”
Pardon my relative quiet this month. It’s been a downward spiral of decadence, ink, firearms, and (most frightening of all) furniture ownership. And I’ve made more time to read, as you’ll have seen from the ever-changing “Reading” section in the sidebar.
I hadn’t checked my tumblr dashboard for a while, and when I did yesterday, I discovered that Filled with Chocolate Pudding!, one of my favorite tumblogs, had linked to Faces of Unsolved Mysteries. Traffic on Thursday went up 583.33% (to 35 people)! So I hastily updated, and will have to soon make a trip to the library for more delights to share. This is a public service to you.
I was largely well-behaved online during the presidential election. But I cannot ignore this. “This” being a video of Sarah Palin being interviewed for an Alaskan TV station after the annual gubernatorial turkey pardon. She talks for 3 minutes about total bullshit, wearing a Burberry scarf and drinking Starbucks, and then there is a dude in the background slaghtering a turkey. You cannot make this shit up.
I’m all for technology transfer. Often a discovery, technical, mechanical, or otherwise, especially when it is simple and elegant, can be used in many applications.
There is a sex/technology writer/educator/blogger/vlogger I like named Violet Blue (not always SFW). She has a regular column for the San Francisco Chronicle, and she’s recently published a round-up of the year’s strangest and most horrifying sex toys. I was looking over the article with a friend over beers and chips and we were intrigued by several that just seemed…ill-conceived. One of them is called…
If this thing came at you, vibrating (or oscillating, as the manufacturer insists), with it’s multiple, interchangeable alien heads and its weird 1980s She-Ra doll armor-colored plastic, would you
a) scream with (sexual) excitement
b) scream with terror
or
c) expect to get a nice tooth polish and gum massage
This item is endorsed by Dr. Ruth, who pronounces its name very elegantly. “ERRRRRROS-CILLATOR.”
I sent a link to the site to a male friend and he said that “it looks like a car part web site” and that one can “go to any Machinist site and you get diagramatic animated images like this.” He added, “I’m a professional man so you can quote me as an expert.”
There you have it. This…thing…was clearly invented by people with penises. Probably dentists. They already had the technology.
Maybe it’s awesome. Who knows. I’m not planning to shell out the $130 to find out.
PS: That thing with the black whiskers? It’s called the French Legionnaire’s Moustache®
Hi. This blog is by Devon Persing. She mostly writes about work (information science and publishing), food, and crafts. You can write to her, if you'd like. You can also follow her on twitter or check out things she saves on delicious.
