I’ll just let you have a moment to visualise that…. ever so attractive image.  I see them as snails, like those giant African land snails…

EATING my brain.  Really. That’s what I’m imagining my depression and anxiety as.  It’s not good.

Nibble nibble nibble nibble sluuuuurp.

All the stuff I THOUGHT I understood (especially about ontological metaphors) just seems to be GONE.  It’s like there’s just a big gap where the brain bit that’s even meant to understand it lives, so even though I’ve spent days trying to go back over past notes and lectures and readings it’s JUST NOT GOING IN.

Rhetoric, rhetorical terms, media modes, sure, I can find you a laundry list of those.  Unfortunately I need more than that for the essay.

Speaking of which  – the essay overall SUX. I’ve forgotten how to write.  Nothing flows.  It’s as stilted as Baba Yaga’s hut.

(yes, I know Baba Yaga’s hut had chicken legs.  Work with me here.)

Oh dear.  Yes, I know, it’s the first essay for uni, after a break of 20+ years, and I should (whoops, there’s one of the trigger words the psychologists love to pounce on – “be kind to yourself, Caity,” they say!  “There are no shoulds!”  Yeah, well, I’m stressing out here because there ARE bloody SHOULDS and one of them is I SHOULD be able to do this damn thing!

(Mr Beloved went and got me one of the special p1lls.  Oh dear. All the Little Books Of Calm and Acceptance Commitment Therapy tricks in the world don’t work once I get to this point.)  I was supposed to see my lovely mental health nurse today but she had to cancel so I’m stuck here unloading on the blog and Mr Beloved.  Woooot.

Doesn’t help that I feel I have to live up to the ridiculous mark of the stupid library assignment, which was basically a paint by numbers quiz.  ARRRRGH!

You know what?  The whole thing is only meant to be FIFTEEN HUNDRED WORDS.  And I’m tearing my hair out!   It’s worth 40% of the semester’s mark. WHY am I going to uni again? Anyone? Anyone? (Bueller?)

I’ve made an appointment to see the tutor during office hours this week (Thursday), and I’m going to keep trying to work on the essay but – arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!  Feels like banging my head on a wall.  ( And I just know I’m going to embarrass myself by being all teary in the office, oh GREAT.)

WHY CAN’T I SEE THESE DAMN METAPHORS? I know they’re hiding there.  I think I’ve almost got one by the tail. Ontological metaphors are the ones where  our brains very sneakily decide to deal with something ABSTRACT as something PHYSICAL so we can understand them better.  Makes sense, right? EXCEPT It’s like trying to catch wet frogs.

I don’t think I’m going to sign myself in as a day patient at the ward tomorrow.  I probably should. But those sessions are so EXHAUSTING and I really need to work on this damn essay some more.

This morning’s lecture was interesting… I had been looking forward to it – This week’s module is all about Narrative! YAY!  Narrative!  I can do this!  Only THE THING that makes story WORK, right, only one of THE most important tools if you’ve been foolish enough to enrol in the Writing and Society major (Yep, it’s really Creative Writing, whatever you call it) and plan on getting on with it… instead I rolled out of bed late after not enough sleep (gee, could I have been fretting about The Essay?) and then sat in the lecture theatre feeling STUPID and dribbling my hot chocolate down my front.  The words just didn’t go IN.  We got half a lecture and a trailer from a film.  I am disappointed. I mean, of course I’ll still complete all the readings and go back over the websites in the powerpoint links once they’re on the uni site, but – meh.

Feel like I am falling ever more behinderer again.

Maybe I should eat some snail pellets on toast?

I will NOT be participating.

You might find this surprising, given that I live my life so openly on the web.  Anyone who reads my blog or is prepared to do even a minute or two of online searching (off you go, I’ll wait…) can find out any number of things about me.  I’m very open about my mental illness, my health issues, about the places I’ve lived.

I’ve had an online presence for a very long time.  And waaaaaay back at the very start of that, back when I had a livejournal account – gosh, way back before then, when I used to play on bulletin boards – alt.rec.whatevertheheckitwas, etc, multiple boards – I made the decision – a very consciously taken decision – to be ME online.  Not some hidden identity, not hiding behind aliases, but searchable me.

Does this mean I put my real life residential address in an easily findable format? Of course not.  Nor do I hand out my phone number.  I try to protect the people around me to a certain extent – Mr Beloved and my family are not so easily identified.

So why am I so annoyed about the arrival of these cards in the mail?  What could possibly be so upsetting about the WONDERFUL offer of “shop with us and we’ll reward you with these lovely, lovely things”?

Because you don’t get something for nothing, folks.  Every time you sign up for a store “loyalty” card, sure you might “get” some sort of discount.  The best ones might give you, say, 10% off the retail price on every purchase, and if you’re happy with that, great.  But what about the ones that make you wait until you have a certain number of their “points” until  you can claim a “reward”.  What’s happening there?

While you’re waiting for that great intangible, there’s a whole lot of data collection and processing going on.  Every time you buy something, there’s analysis about what else you bought at the same time.  How much you spent on a Tuesday.  Whether you bought more or less compared to last Tuesday.  Did you buy the product that was on the aisle end display, did you buy something that was advertised on the tv last night.   Did you pay cash, use your credit card,  ETFPOS, and did you take cash out with your purchase. It’s all there – whether the big store actually uses it or not is unknown.

The point is, they could.

If you let them.

*The panopticon was originally designed by Jeremy Bentham as a structure where inmates of an institution couldn’t tell if they were being observed or not. (Creepy, huh?)  You might think I’m paranoid.  I am at least aware of being (potentially) “observed” (by camera or by data) at all times,  given my local town’s “city safe” camera surveillance system, various store security cameras, and my willing participation in some store loyalty card programs.

Do you know who’s watching YOU?

Yup.

The problem being that this particular tooth is more (old, amalgam) filling than tooth and the small piece of tooth that is left had cracked, and was flexing and hurting.  A LOT.  Which was greatly contributing to my pain, misery, and general grumpiness.  And anxiety.  Because I have a well earned terror of dentists, reinforced by many traumatic experiences from Dubbo to  Wagga Wagga, from Canberra to Toowoomba.  (Hint: if EVER a dentist suggests you get your wisdom teeth taken out “in the chair”, unstrap yourself AND RUN.)

And tooth horror stores are everywhere – once you start, people just can’t WAIT to share them  – a long time ago I had 3 long, slow, painful root canals on a tooth on the other side of my mouth, then the tooth had to be pulled out anyway.   “Oh yeah, my husband paid $3000 for a crown, had to have 4 root canals to get it done, then it came off the next year and he had to pay another $500 to get it glued back on!”  “Yeah, No, my Aunty Rita, she had a crown put on and then got an abscess under it, they had to take it all off again,  and her whole jaw swelled right up and she had to have months of antibiotics and she could only eat soup ’til it healed!

(Oh, and if you have teeth issues, probably don’t read Daughter of Smoke and Bone, which is a really good fantasy read, set in Prague, and elsewhere, but with teeth as a powerful magical metaphor… you can watch the trailer for the book here on Amazon …)

SO: the interesting things: apart from the OUCH $400 for just over half an hour consult (not sure how much I get back from heath fund yet because the paperwork got messed up and I have to go back tomorrow to get it fixed) *headdesk* And my answering the question on the form “Any other medical issues?” with “Extremely anxious patient (I AM REALLY NOT KIDDING ABOUT THIS)”  and noting “There is not enough room to list all medicati0ns (Please see over for rest of medicat1ons) (And yes, I took an anx1olytic in the car on the way there so I wouldn’t freak out in the chair); it turns out that most of my teeth are CRACKED.  The endodontist asked “Have you ever been in a car crash?”  Ummmm… no… could it be from grinding my teeth?  No, apparently this sort of cracking is more from a forceful coming together of the teeth.  So possibly when I got hit in the jaw?  Maybe. (Domestic Violence, the gift that just keeps on giving, 20 + years later…) The endodontist showed me with a special light and mirror that every single one of my teeth has these vertical impact cracks. EVERY ONE.  So I’m likely to keeping having odd problems with my teeth as a result.

Next interesting thing – the endodontist was also surprised that I manage to grind my teeth while wearing a full face CPAP mask.   Says that’s quite a feat. Shouldn’t be able to do it.  Not sure it’s something the judges on Australia’s Got Talent would be all that thrilled to see, but there ya go.  My own special thing.  I’m such a snowflake.

And I have exceptionally good oral hygiene (preen, preen.)  Given that I have such a range of mouth drying med1cations, and the CPAP machine, and asthma meds on top of that, I really am very pleased to hear that.  Not a scrap of plaque or tartar anywhere.  Go me!  He has recommended that I use a special mouthwash three times a week to help with the dry mouth (I already use a toothpaste formulated for dry mouth, and my electric toothbrush has made a big difference, I think) and yep, I will give in and chew the dreaded chewing gum to help with saliva production.  I don’t like chewing gum, which is weird -my Dad is always chewing it to help his teeth (and he is a mad keen flosser, too)  but my Nana, his Mum, said something to me one day when I was staying with her about chewing gum being vulgar and it’s just stuck (ugh! sticky chewing gum!) in my head (UGH! CHEWING GUM IN HAIR!) ever since.  You know when you see a “celebrity” photo and they’ve got visible gum in their mouth?  VULGAR.  UGH UGH UGH!!!  That endless chomping like ruminants on their cud, round and around and side to side and it’s just…. UGH!!!!  But If I have to use chewing gum I will.  Just… discreetly.  For the sake of my saliva production.

And now to the tooth.  THE TOOTH.  THE DREADED TOOTH that the whole of the last few weeks have been about, that my psychiatrist was trying to find a way to get me special Medicare funding for if it turned out it needed a crown, the tooth I wept about in group therapy, the tooth that I had been worrying about because my own dentist had said that it might need all that work and I was panicking about how on earth I would afford root canals and crowns and what’s more, maintenance on a crown further down the track (short answer  – I wouldn’t have been able to, the only option would have been for the tooth to come out).

And guess what? After all that: the simplest solution for now (it’s not a long term fix) was to actually take away some more of the tooth so that I can’t actually grind the cusp and make it flex open and hurt.   After an x-ray (that’s about the 6th?  dental x-ray this year?  Oh, goody) and the endodontist looking at it with his magic high powered microscope, he could see the fracture but the tooth was alive with no infection and he reckons if we can just stop the flexing then it should stop hurting and settle down … so the short answer is: hope it settles.  Keep doing a good job with the dental hygiene.  Try not to grind my teeth (even though the endodontist very truthfully and realistically admitted that if you’re a tooth grinder, you just are,  and until you’re not as stressed, you won’t stop.)  And he won’t do any drastic interventions unless they’re needed – the less he can do the better, which would be FINE if it didn’t cost quite so much but is still a policy agree with in principle.

So now we wait…

Mark for the first assignment was finally released  -  on Thursday – I got  97.6%, which is a High Distinction.  When I got the marker’s sheet, I couldn’t actually find any MISTAKES, so I can only assume she didn’t want to award any 100s, which is annoying.

And it was a stupid assignment anyway, given only to prove that you could use the library system/journal databases/internet to look things up and then reference them properly.

See what I mean? Not even that mark can drag me out of this slump.  It’s all just GREY.

I’m seeing the mental health nurse twice a week and she keeps asking if it’s time to go to hospital, and I have explained that I have very complex sleep routines that involve two different sorts of ice-packs to help me sleep, plus a hot water bottle for my feet, and I’d rather stay at home with Mr Beloved and the dog and my own things, but I’m not sure how much longer I can avoid a hospital stay.

I’ve asked for an extension for the next essay (due May 8th) so we’ll see what the lecturer says about that.  I missed the lecture last week (but caught up via the audio and powerpoint provided for external students) and missed the tute (meh).

I’ll miss the lecture this week, too, because I’m going to the dentist instead.  Oh joy.  The biggest, oldest filling I have is giving me trouble and I am NOT looking forward to having that prodded and poked at.

That’s about all I can think of.  Other stuff has happened but everything is just too grey to process.

The problem with b1polar depress1on, as the HP acknowledged today, is that sometimes  a placebo can be just as effective as anything she can offer.  I have had periods of utterly horrible depress10n where one morning I have just woken up and things have suddenly been okay again.

I have also had periods of b1polar depress1on where nothing – NOTHING – has helped for a year or more.

And there’s no way of telling which one will be which.

Still no result for the first uni assignment, although the lecturer reckons they should be up this week… we’ve just finished two weeks break and the lecture tomorrow morning is on Rhetoric.  I have been enjoying this book:

A very readable book on rhetoric

and let’s hope tomorrow’s lecture is more useful than this:

although I have my doubts….

Last night Mr Beloved measured the noise from our back yard at 10:15 pm at 74.1dB – to give you an idea, lawnmowers are only allowed to be 75 dB.  Calling the “hotline” is pointless since it is – SURPRISE!  managed by the event.  As Mr Beloved has noted, it’s like calling the fox to report a disturbance in your henhouse.  Calling the council is just as useless: they measure the sounds levels AT THE PARK where the event is being held, not HERE where the noise is a problem!!!

Add to that the noise from Drunketta & Sullenteena’s stereo next door and I literally CANNOT HEAR MYSELF THINK. And Little Djuana Belting ‘s SCREAMING on top of that  – not that they can hear him over the stereo…

…I can’t do uni work, I can’t read, I can’t sleep (since our bedroom is less than 3 metres from Drunketta’s house.) There’s no point calling the police (since they take hours to come, there’s no guarantee the noise will still be happening when they do get here…) so I just have to suck it up.  And take my special p1lls that stop me from having a complete and utter meltdown EVEN THOUGH THAT’S WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I AM SO FUCKING OVER THIS NOISE.

And before you ask – no, we can’t go away for Easter -we have no money and we have animals to look after, And why should we be driven out of our home by the stupid Easterpesters?  ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH!  There’s more arguments to be made there but I just can’t do it right now – I am just DONE.

After wasting YET ANOTHER HOUR of tute time going over the assignment AGAIN!  *headdesk*

Fair dinkum, there had better be close to full damn marks for EVERYONE for this bloody thing.

Then – lessee.  Saturday I made a cake (Rose Levy Beranbaums’ fabulous Chocolate Domingo cake, with masses of chocolate ganache icing) to take to the girls I usually see during the week, but we had to hold our get together on a Sunday because everyone had other commitments and we had to celebrate Tammy’s birthday.  That was ok – fun with the cake and pressies.

Monday, Tammy and I went shopping – not something I normally do and it was EXHAUSTING!  Just trying on clothes at one shop. For three hours!  I bought a dress and a long sleeved top to wear under it, and a scarf.  Lay-by-ed another top (and it was on a better price than shown on the web!)  Just wanted a couple of pieces that weren’t so – daggy, you know?

Then uni on Tuesday – the lecture actually made sense this week, and it was such a relief to get back into the course CONTENT instead of the !@^(%# library assignment!  We have two weeks uni break now, so I’ll be using my couple of hours of uni work per day to try a get a little bit ahead and start writing the essay, which is worth 40% of the mark for the course.

Wednesday was group therapy, which is always very tiring.  Ugh. Especially so this week – stuff came up that I didn’t cope well with, and I got left til last, so I was wrung out when Mr Beloved came to collect me – Ia cup of tea and then had lie down, put my CPAP mask on and just sleep for three hours.

Thursday was Toowoomba Show Day, a public holiday, so no uni.  And I slept. A lot.

I was supposed to meet with the girls to celebrate my birthday (which isn’t until next week but one of them was going out of town) but I just COULDN’T.  I was done.  I just can’t do things that many days in a row. Just can’t.  Physically or mentally.

Which brings us to today.  I slept in again, then ran a few errands (post, library, supermarket for a couple of essentials) and now I’m worn out again.

Both of us are in the grips of allergy season – I don’t know what’s flowering but I wish it would stop already, it’s costing us a fortune in antihistamines!  And I’m back on the asthma preventative.  Blaah!

So that’s me – tired, grumpy, sniffly, menopausal, and several other of the dwarves Disney didn’t want to mention.

Next week: More trauma therapy.  Oh goody.

I’ve just had another wasted hour of lecture time, and I am cross. Grumpy. Annoyed.  I am struggling with the real work of the course – what I see as the real work, anyway – while time is being eaten up on the trivia of referencing and “can you do an advanced web search?” ARRRRGH!

One of my dear (online) friends has pointed out that the lecturer is dealing with children with unformed brains, and the only way to get these ideas into their heads is to pound it in over and over again.  Ah.  Right. Yes. I hadn’t considered that.  Interesting to note, however, that attendance at the lecture was about a third of the usual crowd.

And now it’s Wednesday, almost time to start making tea, and I’ve had a lousy day… Mr Beloved was crook the other day and I think I’ve managed to pick up whatever it was he had.  Let’s just note that moving too far away from the loo would not have been a good idea, and move on.

I didn’t go to group today.  I did manage to check over my assignment (and catch a couple of silly mistakes in referencing formatting that would have cost marks – using ‘and’ instead of the ampersand (‘&’) for example when multiple authors are involved.  Oh yes, these things matter.)

I have the red one!

In happier news I am now the proud possessor of  Moleskine LEGO journal! For which I have to thank one of my oldest friends (not in terms of age, but in terms of longevity of friendship – in fact, I think only the girl I went to kindergarten with can claim a longer span.) Thanks, RF, I am only waiting on my new pen with a bigger nib to arrive before I start using it: all my life I have used fine point pens but now my hands are so sore, I’m hoping a larger point will force my writing movements to un-cramp and maybe let me write more than a sentence at a time.

And now it’s tea time.

That many of you?  Huh.

I am jealous of my time.  I need a  lot of sleep.  I am finding it difficult to manage how much time the course requires.  So having to spend both the lecture AND the tute time last week in what I considered to be a complete waste of my time was really, REALLY annoying.

The lecture was spent going over the first assignment in laborious detail.  With the lecturer pointing out that we probably needed to PRINT OUT the guide to the assignment as well as the assignment, even if we were going to submit the assignment electronically.  ARRRRRRRRGH!   Then the tute went over the same thing. AGAIN.  Except this time in the library.  Which we can all access from HOME because that’s the way the university system is set up.  So that was a waste of time, really, too.

And guess what? This week the lecture is on… MORE stuff for the first assignment!  Which, I should point out is worth 15% of the the course, but is only a library exercise to prove you can look up stuff and reference it properly. Yes, essential for a uni student but honestly – not worth TWO WEEKS when we’re struggling with identifying ontological metaphors in the newspaper article on which we’re meant to conduct a “textual analysis” and THAT’S worth 40%  of the course.

GET ON WITH IT!

*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

Oh, and did I mention there was a lovely situation last Tuesday night out the front of our place where a very violent young man assaulting a young woman… we called 000, it took forever for the police to come, and then the police just left them there (because there was nothing the police could do since the young woman wouldn’t press charges…)Eventually they moved on but it was fraught and took several cups of sweet tea before I calmed down.  I started working on some of my past trauma in therapy this week.  Yep.  Much fun.

And now I’m going to finish this !@*^&% assignment and get back into finding examples of ontological metaphors so I’m very sure I understand them.

It’s not that the work itself is difficult to understand.  Yes, there are new things to learn – that’s why I’m going, after all.

What I’m finding hard is just the sheer amount if TIME it take me to do everything.  We’re supposed to do 10 hours of private study per week as well as the lecture and tute – it’s taking me closer to 20 to get through the coursework and reading.   And that’s NOT because I’m being a perfectionist – I am firmly keeping in mind that “P’s get degrees” – I do not need a High Distinction pass, I just need a Pass. But as my Helpful Psychiatrist wrote on my medical certificate, I now have a “decreased capacity to concentrate, assimilate and demonstrate knowledge”.  20 + years of mental illness and various psych drugs, and chronic pain will do that to you.

So I need to get back to it.   But if you want someone to explain the difference between structural, orientational, and ontological metaphors, I can do that… provided you get in NOW, before my brain has to take in something else….