Well, I made it through the holiday and weekend without killing somebody or getting disowned. Barely. Dinner with the in-laws actually wasn’t *quite* as bad as I expected, perhaps because this time they were forced to talk to us without my mother there. I nearly said a few inappropriate things but managed to catch it in time. The food was better than previous years thanks to my subtle and sometimes-secret intervention. You see, his dad doesn’t use salt, butter, etc on most standard things…no seasonings. It is my firm opinion that mashed potatoes need salt, butter, milk. I think he just mashed them up with the starchy potato water. But I covertly threw in about 1/4 cup of kosher salt into the boiling water, so they weren’t completely awful. I also snuck salt & pepper into the gravy while I helped stir. Due to me buying him one of those digital probe thermometers that are endorsed by Alton Brown, the turkey turned out beautifully – shockingly, he listened to me about time and temp. Of course, he still kept obsessively wondering if the goddamn “button” had popped yet despite me telling him it wouldn’t pop, it didn’t pop last year, its meant to pop up at higher temps than we want.

Dinner with my family on Saturday ended up being a nightmare. My mom was in a shit ton of back pain and sick from it. No matter what I did or said it was nearly impossible to get her to just let me handle it so she could lay down. When the extended family showed up to help, it became this chaotic nightmare. Between having 7 adult women and 2 teenage girls in the kitchen and having 3 younger kids literally running and screaming through the house, my nerves were fried before we sat down to eat. In fact, I couldn’t even sit at the table at first, I wanted to just run away. I felt claustrophobic, and just wanted to be alone. Had to take a valium to get through it. Saturday cemented the fact that I’m not ready for kids, and when I am, I am adopting a girl. The boys…..I don’t know why I’m surprised, they’ve been hell-spawn since the age of 3 but holy mother of pearl I told them to stop running, stop jumping, stop the pillow fight, 45 times if I said it once and it all made me want to stab my cousins for not discplining their kids better (or at all).

Apparently being off of most of my psychiatric drugs is really messing with me in bizarre ways. I was on one ADD stimulant and 2 antidepressants (which are a stimulant in their own way) (wellbutrin and a new one for fibromyalgia pain). They took me off the Wellbutrin because the one day I was in to see the psych my blood pressure was elevated. He then said that I didn’t NEED to be on two anti-depressants and so he took me off the Wellbutrin….forgetting that the other one is slightly different and given to me for my fibromyalgia, forgetting that the Wellbutrin affects dopamine whereas the other one does not. I’m always too overwhelmed when I’m at the doc and so I didn’t think of my comeback till later: “The reason I came to see YOU was to work out if it was alright for me to be adding that fibro med onto my current psych meds and you said it was fine. Now it’s not??”.  And then my pill-taking schedule got all out of whack (breaks in routine do that – the NY trip was a big break in routine and then I was out of the ADD med for a week and then the med change) and I have consistently forgotten the ADD med now for 2 weeks. The other one I mostly remember at night, mostly forget during the day. But somehow being off the stimulants has made me manic.

When I was first put on all three at the same time, I now realise, was when the writer’s block first kicked in. I’m able to do a little bit more now, but I’m still having problems. However I’m not in the fog that I was in back then. I’m such a puzzle, and I need a better doctor to figure me out. I’ve been on so many meds, so many diagnosis and nothing yet appeases Psychiatric Goldilocks….nothing is just right. It seems that the more stimulants I am on, the more asleep I am. Which can make some sense….its why they give ADHD patients (some of whom are already notoriously hyper) a stimulant to calm them and their brain down. In some ways I kinda like this manic phase. Sure, my ability to focus and shit is way off kilter but I’m liking the nervous energy. Of course not when it results in the “Lilly wants to cower in the corner and cry” just from being in a loud chaotic mass of family members.

WOW. That was a fucking rambling scrambled mess, wasn’t it…..

This is why I haven’t yet written much these last two weeks since the manic has kicked in….sure the beginnings of ideas and ability are there but I can’t make it proper and pretty and…..readable lol. Um so yeah….sorry….but Rage asked for it!