Was reminded by my friend Kat that I haven't updated this in quite a while. My blood tests all came back normal - although she did recommend taking Vitamin D supplements. I have to call to schedule a follow up appointment today or tomorrow. I'm still getting headaches, they aren't constant but they are regular, usually every night or every other day. I'm just happy I got through my finals without completely losing it. The constant pain piled on top of the stress of school and the pressure I was putting on myself was certainly pushing me - but I was able to get through. I'm getting a lot better at knowing my limits and knowing when to let myself take a break and when to push through, and what I can do to make it easier for myself. I can get through a difficult class or a long research paper if I have a little treat - some tea or coffee or a snack. I can be proud of myself.

Speaking of which, I got my grades back, and I'm pretty happy with how I did. I got an A in Legal Environment of Business and A-'s in Legal Ethics, Political Science and Intro to Law. My GPA is 3.79, and I'm on the Dean's List - which I'm pretty excited about. I was expecting at least one B in there, but I surprised myself. I'm hoping to do as well next semester, but I'm taking an Algebra class and that's the subject I'm weakest in. My other classes I'm looking forward to though, Psychology 101, Composition, and Litigation. I looked up all my professors before choosing my classes to ensure they were all nice - I got lucky last semester - and my Algebra teacher is said to be very patient and good at explaining things. Plus, they have free tutors at the school, which I plan on utilizing, and Paul has already said he will help me.

Christmas was good, I got a slew of Hello Kitty stuff which was heavenly. Paul got me three HK tees and a HK hoody, plus a cute knit sweater from Delia's. My parents got me a $25 Starbucks gift card, a mini fridge (so exciting - we can have cold drinks in our room now! Plus I don't have to worry about Paul's parents accidentally taking our food or not having enough room in their fridge for our food), a bunch of candy, a HK ornament, plus new boots and gloves. My grandmother and bio. father gave me money, and Paul's mom gave me HK socks. This year was a good one. It was relaxing and warm. We stayed over my parent's house Christmas Eve, made a Rice Krispy treat train, watched Die Hard, and then went to bed. We woke up and ate cinnamon rolls, drank coffee and opened presents, and then around 2:30 we ate an early dinner of steak. The best steak ever, mind you. The most tender steak. Mmm.

Christmas shopping for us this year was low key, as we are less poor, but still pretty damn poor. I got Dem a used Lego Star Wars game that he picked out himself, and a little stocking with a Christmas ornament and some candy. I got my mother a feather owl necklace for use as a wall decoration, and a cute plaque to go alone with it that says "Follow Your Heart", plus her own stocking with an owl and a penguin decoration, plus candy. For Paul I bought a book on anatomy for artists and a burgundy zip-up that he wanted, plus another stocking with candy. My grandmother received a masquerade mask to decorate with, and Paul's mother got a ladybug wind-chime and a magnetic wall calendar.

Our New Years Eve plans are kind of up in the air. We plan on stopping by our friend Sal's house for a get together, but we aren't sure what we are going to do besides that.

We are looking into perhaps getting an apartment with our friend Devin. We viewed this amazing apartment in Manchester - about 5 minutes away from my school and not too far away from Paul's job. The master bedroom is gorgeous, it's located in a room that's in a sort of "tower", so it's sort of a half octagon and there is a window on each wall. Next to the bedroom is the living room, with a beautiful built in cabinet with glass doors. Then the kitchen/dining room, which is huge and also has a built in cabinet with glass walls. Then you can either go into the bathroom, which is small, but still a pretty decent size, or the second bedroom. Plus we have access to the basement for storage. I am so in love with it. It's right above Paul's boss, who told us about it in the first place. It's $850 a month, not including utilities. If we had a roommate who was even paying just $350 we would be able to afford it. Right now we might be able to without a roommate, but it would be extremely difficult.

I truly want to get out of Paul's parent's house though. It's way too stressful living here, for reasons I won't go into, but definitely have to do with my extreme social anxiety and love of privacy.

I'm off to go read for a bit while Paul is out running errands. I've been working on The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Steinbeck is surely one of my favorite authors. I'm only about 100 pages in, and Paul warned me that it starts off rather slow, but it's still rather good. It feels good to be able to read for pleasure, although it feels weird to not have school work.

Thursday finally came and Paul and I went to my doctor's appointment at 3:00. I don't think I got into a room until 4 though. Luckily, the doctor read my symptoms and did some neurological tests and then ordered some blood tests (she didn't tell me what they were, but I had to fill four huge vials and two smaller ones, and I gathered that a few of them were for Lyme Disease, Thyroid levels, and Vitamin D deficiency) that I should get back in a few days. In the meantime she gave me Atenolol for what she diagnosed as migraines. I really, truly hope that this doctor will be the one to find out what is wrong with me.

In the meantime, my headache has been somewhat bearable, with the exception of a few hours at, and after the doctor's appointment.

I have to research, and write, a paper for my Intro To Law class on Tuesday, a project I haven't been able to even touch since these headaches have been making it impossible to concentrate on anything, or remember anything that I have managed to read.

Just two more weeks of school, and then I have a while off before next semester. Hopefully in that interim I can get this health matter squared away and not have to worry about new medications, headaches, and other health issues next semester.

I have been experiencing another bout of chronic headaches - tonight is going on six days nonstop. This has been happening more frequently, with my last nonstop headache in August/September and lasting for more than a month. At times it's unbearable, making it impossible for me to do much of anything except lay in the dark. I had to call out of work on Friday because I couldn't get out of bed, and I knew that not only would I not be able to work, especially with a band playing, but I wouldn't be able to drive to Middletown to get there. When my headache is at it's worst, my vision can get really blurry, and I have to close my eyes for short periods of time.
Finally, today, after a weekend of tears and frustration, I called a doctor. Since I'm going to the community health center, which has a sliding scale fee, I'm hoping the visit will be relatively cheap, but even if it's not, I have to go. My appointment is for Thursday at 3:00 and I'm hoping that Paul can come with me. I can't live like this anymore. I rewrote the list of symptoms I've been keeping track of for a few months now, and added some detail for the doctor, and just my everyday symptoms are 3/4 of a page long. I don't know what is wrong with me (my suspicion is along the lines of Fibromyalgia - something I have all the symptoms of) but I want to find out and I want to have a plan of action of how to relieve me pain. I'm only 24 and the older I get the worse the symptoms get, and while I don't want to say I have a disability, I am certainly disabled to do many everyday things. A simple task of going to the store to do an errand depletes me of my energy. Going to the mall weakens me to the point of nausea. While I do have "good" days, where I have energy to do some things, my bad days I can hardly get out of bed. A simple touch burns my skin. At my worst I don't even have energy to read a book. I can't watch television because the flashes of color hurts my eyes. I end up sitting in bed, just staring at my hands. I don't want to live like this, if you can even call it living. I want to be able to travel, work, go hiking, go to the beach, go to concerts (the last concert I went to I had to leave early), hang out with friends. Because of my symptoms I've had to switch jobs, call out of work, cancel plans, and almost drop out of high school. I need someone to take me seriously and look past my age, and my history of depression, and stop writing it off as mental. There is no doubt that I have mental health issues, but I have also learned how to cope with my bouts of depression and mental illness, and I have been able to control them quite well these past few years. I know what depression feels like. I know what anxiety feels like. And while I know that those things exacerbate my symptoms, I honestly do not believe that that's what causes them. In fact, usually my most severe depression (for example, this past week) is spurred by my physical ailments, not the other way around. I really, truly hope that the doctor takes me seriously. I'm not expecting some magical, instant cure, but I want some place to start. I need to know what I'm battling so I know what weapons to use.

This semester is only a few weeks away from being over, and I am amazed at how quickly time flew by. I've already picked out my classes for next term, and am pretty excited about a few of them. I've decided to get my math class over with, and then take Composition, General Psychology, and Litigation. I wanted to get some of the core classes out of the way this term, and the selection of legal classes this term was few, I think only six or seven, and most were three hour night classes, which are tough to get through. So for this semester I decided to only take the Litigation class.

The rest of this semester I have to still get through three quizzes for Political Science (the first being today), a test (on Tuesday) and a research paper for Introduction To Law and then my final exams, one which is a take home exam (for Legal Environment) and all four final exams are based on what we have covered since the last tests we have taken, not cumulative, which is good, and then I'm done. A few weeks of winter vacation, and then back to school. I wanted to take intercession (winter and summer) courses, but as of right now there is no way I can afford them, so that's out of the question, which means that most like it will take me an extra year, or at least a semester, to finish all my credits and get my Associates.

Besides school, Paul has been introducing me to all of Harao Miyazaki's movies, which I have been absolutely loving. We started with The Cat Returns, then Kiki's Delivery Service, The Castle In The Sky, Spirited Away (which was one I had actually already seen before), Laputa, Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, and Howl's Moving Castle. I have already seen Ponyo a few times (it's one of my favorite movies now) and so all I have left for the Studio Ghibli collection is Porco Rosso. I wish I could find his short films, but no luck so far.

I had never been a fan of anime before, but Paul has definitely turned me on to some of the genre. I still don't like a lot of the anime that has to do with fighting, which is what I thought all anime was at first, but I am loving the new world of entertainment this form of animation has opened up for me. It's like learning a new language and getting to watch decades of movies you had never seen before. Plus, all these characters are ridiculously adorable.

I have been failing miserably with my reading goal. Ever since school started I have been so busy with schoolwork, or so bone tired from school, that I haven't had any time or energy to read anything but magazines. This month the only book I could get through was The Magician's Nephew. Before that I think I finished The Night Castle. But lately I have been in the habit of starting books, and then getting bored of them, starting a new book, getting bored of that book, starting another book, and then not being able to decide which book to read and giving up all together. I think I have at least four or five books started and left unfinished. I can write three papers, take four tests, and attend all my classes, but if I don't read more than one book a month I feel like a total failure.

During the power outage that took over CT, I did get a lot of writing done. Granted, it was all over the place, but I did start a few short stories, which is more than I have done in a long time. I was going to do NanoWrimo this year, but it's too much to focus on with school. Maybe over break I will have my own, personal, NanoWrimo.

Edit:
I just updated my Reading List for anyone interested.

I have just survived not only my 24th birthday, but also a week long power outage due to a freak October snowstorm that brought down many trees and power lines. Some parts of CT are still without power, but thankfully East Hartford got ours back Sunday afternoon. Paul's parents have a generator, so luckily we were still able to do things like shower, cook, and have heat - at least until Paul's dad went to bed at 10:30 at night and shut it all down. I wasn't feeling well at all last week - even more so than usual - and so instead of taking the downtime to catch up on some reading and writing, I mostly slept a lot and watched movies on my laptop. I don't know what is wrong with me, but I have been feeling extremely run down lately, and have had unexplained hot flashes/fevers off and on. Friday and Saturday, and even the first part of Sunday I felt decent, but with the exception of those two and a half days, I have been down for the count. I can probably attribute a lot of that to stress. Even though I didn't have school or work at all this week, thanks to the snowstorm and taking off work for my birthday, I almost get more stressed out at home than at school. Even normal days stress me out living here, but pair that with no power and cramming a whole other family in here (two adults, one young child, one constantly SCREAMING infant) plus a slew of neighbors here every day, I have been dealing with constant noise, and constant noise with no way to drown it out often leaves me feeling very, very tense, anxious, angry, and drained. Loud noises and bright lights (plus a lack of privacy) are the main contributors to my everyday stress, and often lead to migraines and panic attacks. Usually if there is loud noise I can drown it out with a fan or some non-stressful noise, but without electricity, this was impossible to do. A noise I particularly can't stand is child noise, and if that makes me a bad person then so be it, but I can not stand child noise. Loud, screeching laughter or crying - I just can't. It makes me see red. Often Paul would get home and I would feel like I had just ran around all day punching myself in the head, and then it would continue on the rest of the day and into the night. 24 hour a day uncontrollable noise. Just thinking about it makes me want to cry. So I spent the majority of this week fighting off a panic attack. I'm already living in a house that I am completely uncomfortable in, but to add even more people crammed in to the mix - I'm honestly surprised I didn't honestly have a break down. I do not handle stress well, and holding it all in is probably the cause of my sick, tired, achy, fevery feeling. Luckily, on Tuesday, Wednesday and the second half of Thursday I was lucky enough to be able to go to work with Paul, where there was electricity and the internet, and more important, less uncontrollable noise. Thank goodness that Paul's job is so family orientated and friendly, because it probably saved my brain from being the first to ever implode in on itself with frustration and anxiety.

Thursday morning Paul's brother hooked up the internet to the generator, and so I was able to spend most of the morning watching Jenna Marble's Youtube videos and falling in love. I then decided that since it was my birthday I would do my best to not look like a lazy slob, and actually put on makeup, then Paul picked me up to head to his work so I could email my professor my essay that was due that day (I found out too late that the campus was open and classes resumed that day, and missed my first class, where we had an essay due. My professor wrote me back later that it was postponed anyway, but I didn't want to just not show up and not turn in the essay, which I thankfully have more time to work on, since I didn't get as much time as I would have liked thanks to the power outage) and relax. We had planned to go to my grandmother's house after he got off of work, since she had left to take a road trip to Florida that morning, and we were going to house-sit and make good use of her power, which had come back the previous day, but I had to go to my 5:30 class before we could go to Middletown, especially since in that class I had an exam scheduled. Thankfully, when I went to that class, the exam was also postponed, and we just went over the next chapter. After that class we headed to Middletown, saw my parents for a little bit and got some delicious pork roast, and then headed to my grandmother's house to relax, watch television and spend some time in the wonderful, amazing, peace and quiet. My birthday was relatively uneventful, to be honest, and we celebrated by going out with some friends on Friday night to La Boca and then coming back to my grandmother's to watch a movie.

Saturday Paul and I went to the mall to do some window shopping, which quickly turned into actual shopping. I got five pairs of panties, since they are probably one of my favorite clothing articles to shop for, a really cute pair of dark red jeans (mine have only one button, although I did try this pair on as well, but they didn't have anything lower than a size 27) and a simple grey dress from Forever 21 (I also put aside an amazing black double breasted belted wool pea coat that has cute little matching "belts" around the wrists - kind of like this only with a belt and different pockets -and came back for it Sunday, since we didn't have enough money for it that day - however, I have been looking everywhere for the perfect pea coat that I can wear for dressier occasions during the cold months, and after probably three years of looking for something cute and reasonably priced that fit me, I found it - for only $30! I am in love.) I spent a little bit more money than I should have, since I should have spent nothing, but they are honestly pieces of clothing that I can wear all the time, and are more "professional" (I know red jeans aren't really professional, but trust me, they are amazing).

I was thinking about writing an entry that required some thinking, doing some soul searching now that I am 24 and closer and closer to being too old to be such a loser, but I am extremely exhausted, and therefore want to talk about happy things, like awesome new clothes.

Maybe next time my blogging will be more interesting. But probably not.

I seem to be slowly getting into the routine of going to classes all the time, and sometimes on my days off, I actually miss going into school. It helps that I'm actually interested in a lot of my writing, and have quickly rekindled my love of praise and good grades that I used to thrive on back in middle school (when I was cripplingly shy and lived through my grades). I do have to learn to not doubt myself so much, as every time I take a test I stress out about how horribly I think I've done until I get it back, even so far as worrying that I will have to drop the class because I have failed a test worth 30% of my grade, and so far have made all A's. In my Political Science class I scored a 90 on my first test and a 98 on my second, on my Ethics exam (the one worth 30% that I was positive I had failed horribly) I scored a 93, and on my Legal Environment of Business exam (another one I thought I had done poorly on) I scored a 96, only getting two questions wrong. I had forgotten how much I love getting good grades, but also how much pressure I put on myself when I think that I might not get a good grade. As I get more and more A's I know that I will be a lot harder on myself for getting a B, which is a perfectly acceptable grade, but I can feel that perfectionist in me trying to rear it's ugly head and crave those "Excellent!" exclamations on all my papers. Oh professor praise, you are like a drug to me. Case in point, I have a paper due tomorrow for Political Science that I have not only been working on for a week (in high school I would always wait last minute to do all my papers, skating by on the fact that I knew how to write while most people didn't), but have also revised it about ten times, if not more. All my confidence lies in being a decent writer, not even a good writer, just a decent one, and if I get a poor score on this paper, after putting in so much work, I will definitely be let down. It doesn't help that I have writer's block when it comes to my other paper, due on October 11th for my Intro To Law class, the class my favorite professor teaches, and therefore the class that I will always put in the most work, because I want nice, funny professors to like me even more than all the others.
At least the problems I was most worried about - my laziness, lack of motivation, and the general fear that years out of a school setting (and some ample drug abuse) depleted my brain muscle - aren't coming into play too much anymore, unfortunately I forgot that if you put me into classes that I love, I turn into a Type A perfectionist, neat freak, PLEASE GIVE ME AN A AND TELL ME I'M SMART, kind of crazy person...

I posted this to my livejournal earlier today, but decided to cross post it here as well. I miss updating this baby, and need to keep it up. Now that I have a somewhat productive life, hopefully I will have more to write about. Speaking of which, I've been itching to write a series of short stories. I've always attempted to write novels and never got very far, so I'm going to aim for a short story instead. A solid beginning, middle, and end. I need a spark to flow out some creativity, but I just read a great article on publishing and am going to dig around for some short stories to get some inspiration. It feels like it's been forever since I've written anything substantial and need to get some action going. I feel like a part of me is missing when I don't write. I used to do nothing but write and now I do everything but write.

Also a quick health update that I didn't include in my entry below. I went and got the biopsy done, which didn't hurt as much as I had feared, but still felt uncomfortable, weird, and a little bit painful. The results came back a little less than a week later (during which we suffered a tropical storm and went without power for three days, although on the plus side I got a lot of reading done) and showed that I had mostly type 3 pre-cancer cells, but because there were some type 2 cells mixed in there, I could choose to wait six months, and at that time get another colopscopy and go from there. She said it was a lot worse than she had thought, but because of the mix of type 2 and the fact that I am young, she has hopes that my body may heal itself in time. If I have progressed by February, we will have to take action, probably with Cyro, or LEEP, but at this point, while I am right at the threshold of cervical cancer, I have not yet crossed the line. This is both good and bad news, as I am worse than expected, but at least not so bad that I have to treat immediately, as that would be a huge burden on my school work, my body, my stress levels, and my bank account. I'm hoping my body will heal itself, and while the threat of cancer lingering over my head has made me make some life changes (quitting smoking - for the most part) I'm doing my best to push it out of my head and not worry about it until February. I'm hoping it's the right decision and I don't go back and find out that it's now full blown cancer and has spread, but I'm going to trust the doctor for now.

Anyway, here's the entry from my livejournal, just a quick update about school, a small rant, etc.

Getting into the swing of things now that school is back in session. The way I arranged my schedule is thankfully easy-going, so that even though I have four classes, I only have one class Monday and Wednesday and two classes Thursday and Friday. To be honest, I thought I was going to have a horrible time getting back into the student mind set, but I'm really enjoying it. I have always loved learning, and I'm glad that although I have abused and misuses my brain and mind these last few years, it isn't rusty enough to fail me yet. I'm enjoying the majority of my classes, and only one class in particular is really a drag to go to, but one out of four isn't bad. My favorite class is my Intro to Law class, which unfortunately only meets once a week for about three hours. My political science class is also interesting, although in a different way and for different reasons. It's more of a repeat of a few high school courses I've taken, but it is helpful in that it covers a lot of basic information that my other classes are also going through, and it offers up more class participation than any other class except maybe my Paralegal Ethics class. My Ethics class is also great. It's probably the class that I feel like I'm learning the most in so far. Everything is new to me in this class, and while my teacher can mumble a bit and be a little hard to understand, it's a close second for my favorite class because it seems to have the nicest, friendliest students. (I think they are all older, since it's a very specific class and is held at night, so it's aimed for working adults who are serious about school and know what they want to do.)
It is difficult to be around a lot of younger people. I've never gotten along with younger people, even when I was one, and so it can be extremely frustrating to have to listen to them talk, especially when they talk about their opinions or outlooks on things that they have no clue about. For example, I was in the library on Thursday in between a seminar at the school and my Ethics class. Two young kids behind me (probably just out of high school) were complaining about having to be in classes with "old" people, and said they couldn't understand why adults come back to school so late. They remarked that one girl in their class graduated all the way back in 2006 ("what's what, like 7 years ago?" they grumbled) and added that she must have been a bum since apparently the only think a person can do after high school is go to college or sit around eating hot pockets and begging for change. This not only made me feel old and bad about myself (I graduated in 2005, so I'm apparently even older, shitter, and more of a bum than this poor girl, whose probably only fault is that she made these two assholes feel stupid in class for knowing more than they did about life), but also made me wonder who the hell these people think they are? Not everyone knows what they want to do after high school, and of the ones that do know, not everyone can afford to go, or has parents that can pay their way. I wanted to turn around and let them know that those adults that are going back to class are improving themselves, which is a good thing, not something to be scoffed at. Not to mention a lot of these people are going back to school because the economy is so horrible that they have to either go to school or fear not being qualified to have another job, since the people with college degrees are stuck working the minimum wage jobs that the people who may only have diplomas, or nothing at all, usually work. Besides, what does it matter to these stupid kids if someone older than them is in their class? The only thing I can imagine is that it makes them feel stupid, or young, or intrudes on their image of college as a place of the movies. On a closing note, these kids are probably, what... 18? Shouldn't they be thrilled that they are surrounded by older woman, who are more experienced, can buy them alcohol, and maybe even have their own apartments? Even if they were at a regular college campus, they would still be surrounded by people in their early to late 20's. Most people don't graduate from a four year university until they are 22 or older. I don't think I've thought someone in their 20's was old since I was in single digits.
Oh well, the opinions of two, obviously simple young boys shouldn't sway me too much. I'm doing what's right for me and the people I care about, and the hell to anyone who thinks I'm too old, or have missed my chance and should go crawl under a rock and die and/or waitress for the rest of my life. These kids are missing the obvious opportunity presented to them of "older" woman. Although what they're really pissed off about is that he probably thought she was cute, and she won't give him the time of day because he's still a child. And if this didn't happen, I hope it does in the future, it would be terrific karma.

Along with school, I feel that Paul and I are finally, slowly, getting our adult lives in order. He has a great new job doing what he loves and that not only pays well, but promises to be a career for him and not just another job. Plus he is still working in the deli to make extra money enabling me to pare down my work hours to attend school full time and not get overwhelmed. If we really wanted to, we could probably afford out own apartment, or at least have the ability to share rent with someone, but we haven't decided if it's right for us to do just yet. Hopefully, after Paul's ticket is paid off and my doctors bills are squared away we can start to save again. At one point we had almost $800 stored away, but then I got sick and things had to be taken care of and that flew out the window. Now once again my doctors bills (and Paul's bad luck) are knocking at our wallets, but hopefully that will soon be taken care of.

I may have wasted a lot of time these last few years battling my addiction and my mental health problems, but now that I'm here and I know that I have worked and struggled, I know that I have accomplished something and am ridiculously grateful to be where I am. I may be "old" but no amount of school could have given me the life lessons and the wisdom that I gained through failure and suffering. I may have spent five years "wasting" my life, but those five years made me more grateful for contentness, comfort, safety, and security than anything else could have.