I have bipolar disorder. My moods have a mind of their own. Without medication, I have mood slams. With medication, I have mood swings. It’s an improvement.
There’s nothing in my life at the moment that would necessitate a depressive episode. In fact, things are going remarkably well. I got into a painting class that I wanted. My brain is going into overdrive coming up with ideas for paintings. I drew out on canvas the first painting and I like what I am seeing. In class today, I’ll work on color charts. I want to work with one color plus white and ivory black. Ivory black has blue in it so when it’s mixed with yellow and white, interesting greens appear. I’m curious to see what happens if I use reds, violets, and yellows. Do the reds make violet when mixed with white and ivory black?
I got into the writing class that I wanted. This is going to be an interesting class. Much younger than the creative writing classes I’ve taken in the past. I’m looking forward to writing some of the scary stuff I’ve been thinking of. What I’ll be writing is what’s inside of me.
I’ve finally reached the point where I can start to integrate the crap that happened to me growing up, feel the feelings it wasn’t safe to feel then, and start to heal both mentally and physically. If you’re wondering what I’m writing about, it’s child abuse. My mother was a violent, drunken narcissist who had four children she didn’t want and made real sure we knew she didn’t want us. Her husband was a violent drunk. By the time I was 10, I had myself and three siblings to raise. I mirrored what I was my mother doing and did a lousy job of raising myself and siblings. I grew up hiding in my room so I wouldn’t have to hear them yell, literally, at me and hit me. I had no idea there was anything unusual about my family. At the age of 9, I had such severe depression that even the kids in my class noticed. One boy asked me what was wrong. His words had to go through many layers of water before I could hear them. Then, I had to formulate an answer, and the words had to go through many layers of water before I could say them. I eventually told him nothing was wrong. I wasn’t lying or covering anything up. I truly had no idea that there was any other kind of family.
I’ve been reading The Body Keeps The Score. It’s not an easy book to read and I can only read it in small doses. I’ve been doing micro-dosing with ketamine for little longer than a year and I finally found a therapist who takes my insurance and accepts new patients. The combination is allowing me to feel what I felt at the time the crap was happening. I’m even getting the stress pains I had at the time. It sucks. But it’s the only way to integrate what happened into whole memories and process them into something I can live with. At the moment, they are fractured memories that cause a plethora of physical problems.
Meanwhile, I’m working my way through the current trauma of a hate crime, antisemitism, and confronting terrorist wannabes – students being manipulated by real terrorists and being conned into thinking antisemitism is a good thing. I’m angry. I’m pissed. I want to scream. I’m considering a civil rights suit against the university.
And so I’m not myself. I’m having reactions out of proportion to events. I’m sounding like a crazed woman. I’m not having fun. It sucks.
Art. It ain’t called art therapy for nothing. I can lose myself in art. I can figure myself out in art. So often, I don’t understand what’s going on inside of me until it comes out of my hands. I’m working on a sequel to the novel I finished. Like the first novel, the main characters are a woman who is my age, Jewish, and a criminal defense attorney. Her lover is a police officer. In the first novel, I wrote about an officer involved shooting, mental illness and people who are homeless. (Unhoused is such a sanitary, offensive PC word and I won’t use it.) This time, I’ll be writing about antisemitism and hate crimes. What’s inside of me needs a voice. I’m considering taking a writing class in the fall. That could be dangerous for me. I’m hoping I can bring Brady, my service dog in training and the world’s cutest labradoodle, to class with me.
I’ve been playing around with my embroidery machine. And I’ve been surfing eBay for embroidery thread bargains. I found a doozy and it will arrive on Monday. I’ve played a bit with making my own designs.
The ferns are my design, the border is a stock design from the embroidery machine.
I bought a set of Hebrew fonts and started playing with them. The Hebrew is shalom. Shalom is one of those multi-purpose words. It’s use for hello, goodby and peace. Peace meaning the absence of war, but also a deep personal inner peace. The Star of David is done with variegated thread and I like how it came out.
We had a particularly bright moon last night. It’s a smidge past full, but well worth photographing. I used a 400mm lens. Sure would be nice to have something like a 12,000 mm lens, but that’s far outside of my photography budget.
It took a mere 5 hours to set up my iPhone 15. And it still isn’t right. All my data was supposed to transfer from my iPhone 8+ to my iPhone 15. Contacts transferred, but nothing else. I had to manually add some photos. I had to reinstall my apps. I had to do a hard reset and then pair my Apple Watch.
Why did I buy this phone? Because the iPhone 8+ was not holding a charge all that well and it couldn’t be updated with new IOS versions. My Apple Watch cannot be updated unless I update my phone which cannot be updated. Hence, I broke down and bought an iPhone 15. Now, I’m updating my Apple Watch. Per my phone, it will take 3 hours to update. Apparently, I missed a few updates.
After much angst, I settled upon the design for my next painting. The painting will be a study for a fiber piece. In descending order of size, the Stars of David represent: soldiers killed by Hamas, men murdered by Hamas, women murdered by Hamas, children murdered by Hamas.
I’m still furious about what happened in my painting class last Tuesday. In case you missed the previous blog post, here’s what happened.
There is more than one class taking place in the painting studio when my class time is. As I was packing up to leave, a teacher, who isn’t my teacher but who knows me and my art, asked if I had family in Israel. I do not. We spoke briefly about what’s happening and I said that Hamas had kidnapped a Holocaust survivor. At that point, a woman who wasn’t part of the conversation and who was on the other side of the room told us to talk about something else. The woman wears a hijab so I assume she’s Muslim. I was so stunned, I did nothing.
When I got home, I filed a formal complaint with the appropriate department of the university. I expected them to do nothing, and they met my expectations. The same day, there was a mass email from the president of the university to all faculty and students. We were told if we were having difficulty with current events, to get counseling. I sent a reply saying I didn’t need counseling; I needed to know if the university’s inclusion policy included Jews. I received no response.
Obviously, I’m on my own and I am armed every time I’m on campus. I carry bear spray and a stun gun both of which are legal in New Mexico.
I’m old enough (I’m 71) to audit classes for $5 per credit. I’m not working towards another degree and my purpose in taking this class is to improve my painting skill and to have a place to paint. With the exception of Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-5:30, the painting studio is open to any student who wishes to paint. I prefer working when it’s quiet so utilizing open studio time is perfect for me. My teacher is willing to meet with me during open studio time.
I hate being afraid. I survived 16 years of child abuse. I put myself through college and law school. I’ve been a criminal defense attorney for 29+ years. I’m a fighter. I’m used to fighting alone. I’m still afraid and I’m royally ****** that I have to fight this battle alone.
Complex PTSD is pretty depressing. C-PTSD and depression together and are bone numbing. C-PTSD comes from a series of traumas over a period of time when there’s no hope of escape. Translation: child abuse causes C-PTSD.
I’ve been working my way through the Mindbloom series on depression. Mindbloom is ketamine at home with support from Mindbloom clinicians and guides.
For years, I felt nothing when I had a flashback. I longed to feel now what I felt when the child abuse was happening. Then, the flashbacks allowed me to see the horror of what I lived through. Then, the flashbacks arrived with the same emotions I felt at the time of the child abuse.
I have a theory about flashbacks. At the time of the trauma, the part of our brain that is for self preservation blocks the overwhelming emotions that happen at the time of the trauma. Then, when our brains know we are ready, we have flashbacks. Flashbacks are part of healing. One day, being tired of the flashbacks, I decided to look at the flashback I was having, acknowledge what happened was horrible, and the flashback sunk down and never returned. That’s the secret to flashbacks. Look at them. Acknowledge them. They lose their power.
The flashbacks I’m having now are part of the healing and recovery process. I no longer have the repeating nightmares. I don’t remember when I had the last one. The flashbacks are no longer debilitating. But 51 years after leaving a toxic home, I’m still having flashbacks. I doubt I will ever be free of the flashbacks.
We watched a movie the other night. I had no reason to think this movie would trigger flashbacks. But it did. One brief scene and so much of the crap from my childhood came rushing through my brain. I’m starting to see the refusal of the adults who lied to me acknowledge their lies, the adults who beat the crap out of me and refused to admit they did anything wrong, and when I finally got the courage to disclose the abuse, the adults refused to believe me and blamed me for getting beaten – all of that was truly horrible. There’s some fierce pissed off just behind that realization. The thought of all that pissed off coming out is scary. But it has to come out. I will never be free until the fury comes out of me.
Except for extreme stupidity. Extreme stupidity is usually easy to spot. Attorneys have to sit through seminars in order to keep their licenses. I sat through one about emotional support dogs. Although emotional support dogs don’t have the access rights that service dogs have, they have more access rights than Fido the Family Pet. Aside from the fact the attorney giving the presentation gave advice that would ensure a landlord would be sued for discrimination, the attorney said that if presented with a letter from a doctor attesting to a person’s disability and you don’t see a disability, the letter is a fake. Just because you can’t see my disability doesn’t mean I don’t have a disability. I left a scathing review in which I thanked the presenter for teaching people how to discriminate against me.
Jim was at physical therapy yesterday. A couple with a small dog came in. The man was getting physical therapy while the woman and the small dog waited. The dog was wearing a vest and was labeled “service dog.” The dog was jumping up and down and playing with the physical therapist. Fake service dog? Or dog that needs a whole lot more training? Service dogs in training have the same access rights in New Mexico as fully-trained service dogs although service dogs in training should have a label stating service dog in training on the dog’s vest. Neither service dogs nor service dogs in training are required by law to have labels on their vests or even wear a vest.
That’s not accurate. Although Brady can accompany me in the emergency room, be with me in the psych ward, and be with me in a regular hospital room, she cannot accompany me into the operating room. A service dog can almost never be denied access to a public place, but access can be denied for health and safety reasons.
People who don’t have service dogs don’t understand service dogs. Although most people are familiar with guide dogs for people who are blind or visually impaired and service dogs trained to help veterans who have PTSD, many people have no idea what else a service dog can be trained to do. Dogs have an incredible sense of smell. Dogs can smell changes in glucose levels and service dogs are trained to alert a diabetic human if the glucose level is too high or too low. Dogs can smell mood swings and can be trained to alert the bipolar human when a mood swing starts. Dogs can smell an impending seizure and are trained to alert humans with seizure disorders when they are about to have a seizure. Dogs have been trained to assist people who are autistic, have anxiety and panic disorders, and a whole lot of stuff I haven’t thought of.
Brady is my service dog in training.
She knows when I’m having a rough day, and gets distressed when she can’t figure out what to do to help me. We start that training later this week. I’ve been giving her new experiences such as taking her to a fabric shop she had never visited. We went to the post office when I knew it wasn’t crowded. She has gone with me to see my chiropractor although that wasn’t particularly successful. Brady monitored the door and barked when a patient came in. We’re now working on keeping her from monitoring the door This is done by having her face away from the door and preferably face a corner. There’s a homeless man who frequents our favorite Starbucks. For some reason, she barks at him although she doesn’t bark at other homeless people. We went to Starbucks on a day when the outside temp was 108. Way too hot to sit outside. The only free chair was next to the homeless man. Brady ignored him and faced into the corner. I was both thrilled and relieved. As expected, her training isn’t going in a straight line. She’s ahead of where we think she is in some respects and behind in some other respects.
Do you know the proper etiquette for behavior towards service dogs? I’m discovering many people don’t. Never distract a service dog. Do not talk to a service dog. Do not make eye contact with a service dog. Do not pet a service dog. Distracting a service dog can be deadly for the service dog’s human.
Although there are days when I don’t feel like interacting with people, I have to force myself to remember that any person accompanied by a dog in a public place is going to be asked two questions that ought to be answered: What kind of dog is that? Where did you get your dog? Then I have to force myself to give a polite answer.
My online store, Deb Thuman Art, featuring really cool, deluxe dog bandanas is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com
Some days, and this is one, the best I can do is get through the day without screaming.
I had to go back down on the wellbutrin dose because the brain fog was driving me nuts. Today, I’m irritable and worried that I will eat everything in the house. Wellbutrin takes away the food cravings.
We’re having work done on the heating and cooling. The furnace and air conditioners are 21 years old and cantankerous. The work is badly needed, but it has disrupted the house. Today is the last day they will be working here which is good because I’m not sure I could get through another day. I wanted to spend the day in the sewing room, but that’s a bad idea. They are working across the hall from the sewing room and I don’t want to be interrupting them every time I need to go in or out of the sewing room.
Brady is going nuts barking and trying to drive off the intruders. I’m not able to deal with a barking dog today. I feel guilty because I’m not being loving to Brady today. She still loves me, though. Amazing how a dog can give unconditional love no matter how the human is feeling.
My ears are messed up again and the vertigo is back. I see the physical therapist tomorrow.
I’m behind in my painting class. This is an independent study and I’m auditing. It’s okay if some of my work is not finished. I’m finishing the 15th and 16th painting this semester. Some of the art majors can’t manage to finish two paintings. Still, I’m bothered by the specter of not finishing my work.
While reading the New York Times this morning, I felt as if I absolutely cannot write. I’m not writing great stuff. I’m writing about bipolar disorder, loving a cop, an officer involved shooting, and the crap that was my childhood.
Both my husband and I need to make some radical changes in our eating for a host of health reasons. Great, but not only don’t I want to cook, I can’t cook for beans.
I only had 3.5 hours sleep, and I want to go back to bed….except I can’t while workmen are here.
I’m filled with unease. Unsatisfaction. Emptiness. Depression. There’s an unspeakable lack inside. Something so basic, and something which cannot be discussed. Discussion won’t fill the emptiness. I know; I’ve tried. I don’t have any answers. At least I’m not suicidal. Yet this misery disappears as quickly as it appears. While it’s here, I think whatever art I’m working on sucks. The photos I take don’t amaze me, yet I can’t tell if they are bad shots. The necklaces I’m working on look ugly to me. There’s no magic in them.
I’m about to embark on another Magical Mystery Ketamine Tour. I have a zoom meeting on Tuesday. I’ll get sent my supply of Ketamine and I will be working on how to love myself.
I’ve finished writing the novel. Now, I need to find an agent; but to do that, I need to distill 43,000 words into one gut-grabbing sentence. Writing the novel was easier. In the meantime, I’ve started writing the second novel. I’m not looking forward to writing pages only to discard them. It’s the only way I know to write a novel.
I’ve been working on some fabric designs. I’m waiting for a good sale at Spoonflower so I can get 168+ designs proofed.
I’ve been playing around with lines and dots.
And squiggles
I love designing with metallic colors.
I think this one might work with the kaleidoscope faces for Apple Watch.
This one is just for fun. I may do some more faces.
There’s a fairy ring in the back yard. It’s not made of mushrooms and toad stools. This one is made of yucca plants. The circle of yuccas was growing wild, and we left it where it was. We’ve been here 21 years and this is the first time the fairy ring bloomed.
Fairy ring.
Blossoms hiding among the leaves.
This was a tough one to expose. Get the plant exposed properly, and the sky blows out. Get the sky exposed properly, and the plant is black.
Peek a boo.
I haven’t decided if I like this next shot. I usually avoid the traditional golden hours when the world has a golden cast. When I got up yesterday, I saw the fairy ring, and started photographing the blooms in the back yard.
I seem to be having a mixed episode where I get to be simultaneously manic and depressed. So far today, I walked into a shit storm and got viciously attacked. Next, I made the mistake of believing someone who said they wanted to understand. Hah! Found out the hard way the person wasn’t serious. I have a good reason for being depressed. I can’t solve the problem my myself and I’m the only one who wants to solve the problem. Alternative options aren’t ones I’m willing to pursue – mostly because the options are irreversible and likely worse than the original problem. Although I try hard to handle customer service issues via email, that’s not always possible. I had no choice but to make a phone call. Naturally the customer service number on the website wasn’t the correct number. I did get the issue resolved, but there’s no reason for it to be this difficult to rectify a simple matter.
So. What do I do? I don’t feel like making art. I don’t feel like reading. I don’t feel like doing anything. I had to force myself to take my psych meds. I wish my dog were fully trained to be my service dog. I know she could help me if only she had learned what smells needed her attention. We’ve just started the service dog training. At present, she’s learning how to navigate Hobby Lobby and JoAnn’s.
I feel like eating everything that isn’t nailed down, but that would only make me feel worse. And it’s Passover so treats are difficult and I don’t feel like driving to the store to buy chocolate chips so I could make matzoh crack.
And so I sit here feeling depressed, miserable and not finding a viable solution. Today, being bipolar sucks.
I’ve finished five ketamine treatments and have one to go. My original goal was to be able to decrease the dose of my psych meds. I was trying to find a dosage that was high enough to be effective and low enough that I didn’t turn into a zombie.
Ketamine is supposed to cause the brain to form new neural connections. And it does. After I had a ketamine infusion in 2021, my brain felt full and illuminated by a golden white light. Suddenly, the debilitating depression was gone. I was hoping at home ketamine would be as helpful.
I’ve been able to decrease the dosage of lamictal and wellbutrin. I have less brain fog. I still lose words and thoughts, but not as often as before ketamine.
There have been some interesting effects I hadn’t expected. Sixteen years of child abuse followed by 18 years of being treated like crap left me with complex PTSD. While I don’t remember the last time I had a repeating nightmare, I still had flashbacks. The flashbacks were no longer debilitating, but they were unwanted and irritating. After struggling with flashbacks for more than 50 years, the flashbacks are gone. The memories are now powerless. I feel stable. Freedom from complex PTSD was unexpected, and wonderful.
I find I’m eating less. My misery with food has a history. The earliest memories are about my grandmother making me toast and a soft boiled egg for breakfast and my mother making pancakes on a weekend. The pancake memory features me sitting in a high chair. A month before my 4th birthday, my mother married, and my life became confusing hell in which I tried to stay quiet and small enough that I wouldn’t get hit. I was never successful. My mother didn’t eat breakfast, so she refused to feed me, or my siblings, breakfast. I remember sitting in school being so hungry and waiting for lunch. Food became a symbol of love. As I tried so hard to get my mother and her husband to love me, all I had of love was food. And fear of fat. So I ate. Or I didn’t eat. Am I “cured” of emotional eating? I don’t know. I just know I’m not eating as much.
My sixth and final dose of ketamine will be sometime this coming week. I haven’t yet scheduled the session. I have options. I can do nothing and watch my emotional responses. I can go to the next step, going deeper, and have another six sessions. I haven’t yet made a decision although I’m leaning towards going deeper. I don’t want to lose the healing momentum.
After a couple false starts, the Magical Mystery Tour commenced last week. I had to be put on blood pressure med only because my blood pressure was reliably in the dangerous range. Now, it’s in the normal range. That’s the good part. The bad part is that it’s taking way longer than I would like to get through med adjustment. I’m exhausted. I have flutters in my chest. I will be so glad when med adjustment is finished.
The ketamine dosage for the Magical Mystery Tour has been raised because I had minimal response the first Magical Mystery Tour trip. I don’t expect ketamine to cure bipolar disorder, but I’m hoping I can get by with a lower dose of my meds.
I’ve been reading Dean Ornish’ book UnDo It. He writes about lifestyle medicine and has about 40 years of research to back up his assertions. Years ago, I had a nasty cholesterol result and a friend recommended I read Ornish’ book abut reversing heart disease with a low fat vegetarian diet. I dropped my cholesterol 40 points in 6 weeks. I know his lifestyle plan works. Now, we need to go back to low fat vegetarian eating. Jim has clogged arteries and I need to get rid of inflamation as well as getting rid of more weight than I like to admit. Yes, there will be updates. Hopefully good updates.
I’ve been working with a physical therapist to banish my vertigo. Turns out, there are crystals in my ears and the crystals got stuck in a particularly difficult place from which to dislodge them. Two sessions, and I’m significantly steadier. I was steady enough last night to shoot a crooked grin moon.
I used focus merge and cropped the shot because I didn’t think I was stable enough to use my 150-600 mm lens so I stuck with the 18-400mm lens.
Then, I started playing.
Remember when the moon was made of green cheese? The magic of the moon disappeared that day in July 1969 when Neil Armstrong’s foot touched the surface of the moon. We learned, but we lost the magic.
Ignore the squares on the photo above. This is the original shot. I cropped off the squares on the bottom so I could upload a design that had no blank space.
Getting all my designs into my Spoonflower shop took longer than I thought because I had to deal with Social Security. They insist on telephone interviews, but they fart around with their phone system so my phone won’t ring. My phone will have no record anyone called me. If I go to my voice mail, I might inadvertently find a voice mail from someone at the Social Security office. Finally, I managed to reach a human who wanted to call me back. So I went through all the reasons why that wouldn’t work and can’t we do this now? He agreed. I’ll start drawing on my Social Security account in October. I have been drawing spouse benefits under an program that doesn’t exist any more. While I have been drawing spouse benefits the last four years, my account kept growing. I’ll be getting about twice what I get now, and about $1000 more than what I would have gotten when I turned 66.
NMSU decided to switch where we get our prescription meds. As much as I hated Express Scripts, I hate CVS more. Not all of my prescriptions switched over. Jim had to talk to customer service to find out I need to set up my account within his account. I’ve no idea when or if the refills I ordered will arrive. I wanted to talk to customer service because any company that makes it so hard to do the simplest thing deserves to discover what a pissed off, bipolar attorney sounds like.
Only one thing to do when I have that much stress: grab the camera and find something to photograph.
Some of the cacti in my yard are blooming. I thought I wanted a shot of this cactus flower to make a whole quilt design. Then, I realized this was the absolute worst type of photo for quilting. Too busy and I can’t quilt around each of the petals.
I’m finally at a point where I can talk about what the misogynous judges on the Supreme Court did when they overturned Roe v Wade and sent us back into the 19th century.
If you don’t know what the items in the photo are for, you better learn because the Supreme Court has made pregnancy mandatory.
In the mid-70’s, I went to Planned Parenthood for my annual checkup. I got checked by a foreign doctor whose English vocabulary consisted of “you’re pregnant.” I was on the pill, and told the doctor that I wasn’t even one day late. He still insisted I was pregnant. After I gave a urine sample which showed I wasn’t pregnant, he still insisted I was pregnant. I got hysterical, and one of the Planned Parenthood workers led me through the waiting room to another room to discuss options. I was crying hysterically and felt like telling the women in the waiting room that it was okay, I didn’t have to have both breasts lopped off, I was only pregnant. I got referred to a gyn who performed abortions. I asked about birth control and the woman opened her desk drawer and brought out a handful of condoms in assorted colors. I told her I better use plain condoms because I couldn’t stand any more excitement.
At the time, a husband’s signature was required for a wife to get an abortion. I had no money of my own. I’d have to take off my wedding band, pretend I was single and had no health insurance in order to get an abortion. At the time, the cost of an abortion was about $180.00 and I only had a about 6 weeks to come up with the money.
I took the bus home, and got to listen to a screaming baby. I remember what I thought at that moment. “That’s what I’m going to get stuck with.” The next day, I had blood, lots of blood, in my urine. I weighed 110 at the time, and I lost 6 pounds in two days. Shortly thereafter, I got my period. Crisis averted.
I thought this trauma was just me until I found someone else who had the same horrendous experience with the same doctor.
As I write this, the horror comes back to me. No woman should ever have to go through what I went through.
I’ve been working on getting more designs into my Spoonflower shop. 82 down, 125 to go. It’s going slowly because there’s only so much time I can spend on loading designs into my shop before my eyes cross and my head hurts. My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman
Some if my latest fabric designs…
I’d like to have a great shot of one of the cactus flowers in the yard. I’d like to have the shot printed on fabric and use the fabric for a quilted wall hanging.
If I crop out the extra stuff, then the photo is too small to print in the center of a yard of fabric. I’ll keep trying.
I’m trying to deal with Social Security. I turn 70 in August. That’s when my Social Security account stops growing. I’ve been collecting spouse benefits for the last four years. All the parts fell in place for me just before that program ended. You’d think it would be a simple matter to get an in-person appointment. Nope. Got to be a telephone appointment. That would work if the person who was supposed to call me actually called me. For the first telephone appointment, there was no record of any incoming call that entire day. Yesterday, I got calls, but rather than being from Las Cruces, NM, they were from Salt Lake City, Utah and Las Vegas, Nevada. I finally got someone to admit they hide the telephone numbers. They wouldn’t have to do that if they stopped jerking people around. After two hours, most of that time on hold, I was told I couldn’t have an in person appointment. The excuse is it would be illegal to let me into the office. Meanwhile, the Social Security Administration sent me a letter saying I could go into the local office. I was so upset after that horrendous two hours that I shook for four days. Brady knew something was very wrong and kept trying to help me. She left me a toy to play with so I’d feel better. She let me hug her. Usually when I try to hug her, she squirms. It took four hours before I was calm enough to find a novel, light a smelly candle, and soak in the tub. It was the worst manic event I’ve ever had.
I had another go round with social security this morning. After being hung up on three times, I actually got to talk to a human. Still no in person appointment. Still refusing to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act, and someone will call me some time next week. Who do these people think they are? Even delivery people give you a day and a four-hour time window
I’ve filed a complaint with the Social Security Administration and the Department of Justice explaining how I’ve been discriminated against by the local office refusing to give me reasonable accommodations. I’m exploring the feasibility of filing a civil rights suit in Federal Court. The filing fee is $350. Plus the fee to file electronically. I think by grudgingly trying to help me, the local office is heading off a civil rights suit. If I win, which I would, I could receive back payments, damages, and I could recover attorney’s fees. I’m the attorney and I will be billing my time at $300.00 an hour. That’s a mid-range price among local attorneys.
My online shop, Deb Thuman Art is where I sell my jewelry creations and my yarn creations. You can find it here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com Look for a small link that says “shop.” It’s located at the top of the page and easy to miss. I’m going to be doing some major overhauling of my shop soon, so if there’s something you’ve been wanting, now is the time to buy it because it may not be available after the overhaul.
4. Discover the printer was set wrong and all 37 pages have to be reprinted.
5. Print out pattern.
6. Tape 37 pages together matching notches.
7. Mark correct cutting lines on the multi-size pattern.
8. Trace pattern onto pattern paper.
9. Make a muslin.
10. Discover the size that matches my measurements is waaaay to big.
11. Adjust pattern pieces.
12. Discover that the special order fabric has disappeared.
13. Find suitable fabric in stash.
14. Iron fabric.
15. Discover that 42″ fabric isn’t wide enough for the pattern.
16. Find the sewing directions.
17. Find the instructions for the seam allowance.
18. Remove center seams on the front and back.
19.Discover I hate the dress.
20. Discover one pattern piece is cut 4 and I cut 2.
21. Discover there’s not enough fabric to cut 2 additional pieces.
22. Design begins when there’s not enough fabric.
I’ve got the dress and interfacing cut out. I’m working on this dress in small increments because I’m afraid I’ll make irreparable mistakes if I try to make the dress in one day.
The wildfire in the Gila – due west of us – is causing haze, stinky air, triggering allergies, and hiding the mountains.
The wildfire in northern New Mexico has consumed more than 300,000 acres. It was started by a controlled burn that got out of control. The Forest Service didn’t follow their own protocol, set a fire on a windy day, and now we have a disaster. The governor wants the feds to pay for firefighting, cleanup, reforestation, repair and rebuild structures that were burnt.
I’ve been battling severe depression for several weeks. My doctor tweaked my psych meds, and I’m much better. The depression is gone. I have energy and a desire to do things.
I wanted to set up the tripod, use my 150-600mm lens and shoot the eclipse. I had a neuropathy flare up and had to use my TENS unit. I had leads going from my feet to the waistband of my pants. Using a tripod under those circumstances is both stupid and dangerous. I used my 18-400mm lens, leaned against a post, and shot the moon.
One day, my neurobiology teacher asked the class what they thought about people who were mentally ill.
“Scary.”
“Batshit crazy.” That was said by a graduate student who knew, prior to saying I’m batshit crazy, that I’m bipolar. I know he knew because I had told him.
I’m not scary. I’m not batshit crazy. I’m in pain. The kind of pain that an OTC painkiller won’t kill. The kind of pain that is bone deep. The kind of pain that doesn’t go away. The kind if pain caused by 16 years of child abuse, by a violent, drunken, narcissistic mother who hated me, by her violent drunken husband, by a family that taught seeking help was the worst thing that a person could do. That kind of pain.
The first time I tried to kill myself, I was 11. I stood at the kitchen sink holding the knife in my hand. “This is going to hurt.” That’s what stopped me.
Six times in my life, I’ve been suicidal. People who are bipolar have a suicide rate 20 times that of the rest of the population. I live in terror that my life will end by suicide. Suicide has been called a permanent solution. Bipolar disorder is a permanent problem.
I’m on psych meds. They help. They don’t cure. They dull symptoms of depression and mania. They do nothing to protect me from the ignorance and fear of others. Some of the others are well meaning, but aren’t ready to look at mental illness. Some are repulsed as if I had some horrible, contagious disease. Some are terrified of me. Some try to push me back into a closet. Some, don’t want to hear me when I say that those who stay in the closet are a huge part of the stigma of mental illness.
“If I read the words, why do I have to keep looking at this painting?”
You have to keep looking, because I have to keep living in this mental hell. I make you look because I refuse to live in a closet. If my painting were about a broken leg, would you have the same criticism? You have to keep looking because that painting isn’t abstract; it’s realism. It’s my reality.
May is Mental Illness Awareness Month. Look at me. Listen to me. I am not batshit crazy. I am not scary. I am scared. I am in pain. I’m locked in a mental hell from which I cannot escape.
Deb's Art 