I've been feeling sort of ... out of sorts lately. I thought it might help if I started writing on my long-forgotten blog.

Today I got to see my psychiatrist... on a SATURDAY! It was a productive visit. I got a lot of things off my chest. I got more drugs. I'm going to TRY to see if more drugs help. But he also wants me to go back to see Chad. Chad is my therapist. Heh... I sound like a psycho. Chad is great at talking to and getting me to talk things out. Jeremy, the psychiatrist, is there mostly because he's the one prescribing the meds.

Honestly, I'm not sure what effect the drugs are having. I just want to feel like I can grasp my own little version of reality again.

Ugh.

So anyways... after I went to see him, I went to Target in Mission Valley then to Rite-Aid & Vons... then home! I need to get up and do stuff... so I'm going to try to not sit at the computer for at LEAST 3 hours. Can I do it? I hope so!

Okay - yeah yeah ... welcome back, i know.

xoxo
erin

I have been sorta "Eh" lately.

I haven't written.

It doesn't mean i don't love you.

I'm going to San Francisco with my mom in 2 weeks.

Shelley is meeting us there.

We WILL have fun.

I have been assigned a task for my library.

I have to come up with two lists.

List One = order movies that are already in the library system, but we don't own them at our branch. I'm going for some gay/lesbian films, classic campy films, good artsy types.

List Two = order movies that SHOULD belong in the library system, but don't... yet.

If you have any favorites (um, the main thing is... they have to be out on DVD) just comment on this post. I'll let you know what we end up actually getting.

sorry... i have worn myself out with all of this unexpected activity :)

luv,
erin

----------------
Now playing: The Byrds - This Wheel's On Fire
http://foxytunes.com/artist/the+byrds/track/this+wheels+on+fire

And now I'm just here to tell you that I'm LEAVING!

I'm going to Scotland/England with my whole family! (Yipes!)

i'll take lots of pix and maybe even POST them when I come back.

Kiss Kiss!
love,
erin

Check out this quiz thingie

I went to the podiatrist today for a follow up appointment. THinking I'd just be getting another cortisone shot in the foot, I went.

But little did i know... I'd get the boot.

I have a big orthopedic boot I'm supposed to wear. I'll try to take a picture tonight when i get home.

It is cumbersome.

It makes my back hurt.

It makes my left knee hurt.

I'm leaving it at work because I don't feel quite comfortable with it to walk home from the bus stop at night in my neighborhood.

Ugh.

Someone please tell someone that I've had enough crap. K?

luv,
Erin

Poll #1167076
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What should Erin do with her hair?

This is a picture of my family from the mid-80s.

There's just too much to comment on here - even Kerry, "the normal one", looks sort of funky:



Linda, Dad, Kerry, Erin

- - - -



Taz and Joe (Artlung) ca. 1989? 1990?

- - - -

This is the back of my dad's truck - gotta be 1976-ish?


Linda, Erin, Matthew McMahan, Mary Ellen McMahan

- - - -

Oh yeah - and you should check out my flickr page for the latest addition to me.

Flickr

- - - -

me

i've been feeling crappy lately.

mentally and physically.

just thought i'd let you know that i'm still alive.

erin

Check out the pix of the rude awakening

Flickr

In one of the pix you can kind of see Frida's shaved side from where she had surgery.

Yay Frida!
e

Not much of an update, but here's a pic from Easter 1967



Happy Easter!

:)
erin

Welly welly welly...

Seems that my boss's last day is Thursday.

THIS THURSDAY!

I'm not sure what to make of it... really.

No word on who will be our new boss yet.

It should be uhhh INTERESTING!

I have already made my dream list for possible new bosses... but well, that hardly ever works out... But well... maybe i'll try some "wishcraft" and see if i can plant a few seeds :)

In other news... I've been home most of the past week, taking care of Frida while she's been recovering from surgery. Poor kitty had a chunk of cancer removed and now looks sort of alienesque with no fur on one side and well... she looks like she has a big owie.

She is starting to feel better and get around a little better. No more pills (YAY!) and she's eating nice mooshy wet canned food. Yay for Frida!

I know I'm a big johnny-come-lately on this... but ... I had some "Ugly Betty" episodes DVR'd and I really enjoyed it. It's SOOOO gay! Of course now I feel like an idiot choosing "Survivor" over the first season :P

I worked with Naomi today. The patrons seemed to enjoy our workplace shenanigans. It was freakin' busy most of the day. I thought that Buffy was going to either have an aneurysm or become a Martian Popping Thing. Thankfully THAT crisis was diverted.

I spoke to Mr VW on the phone tonight for quite a while. We live about six blocks away from each other and we hardly EVER see each other :(

So like - i guess i should get some rest now. I'll have to go back to work pretty soon :P

luv,
erin

Here's some pix from a while back...



Tracy, Jonquil, Erin & Jill - going out to see Tim Curry in "Me & My Girl"


My Ticket Stub from 1988

Tracy wants to remind you that this was when she was young & innocent.

Jill and I probably won't make a similar claim.

Of course Jonquil is pure and good always :)

e

I hadn't checked my email on cox.net for quite some time.

Everytime I checked it would lead to me being discouraged because it wouldn't take my password, even if i changed it through their website.

Finally I decided that I needed to call them and change the password with them.

I called, Tech Support changed the password, I hung up, I tried it... nothing.

I called back, a different Tech Support person changed the password, I tried it while still on the phone with him, nothing.

I was on hold for about ten minutes.

Finally he comes back, says that it won't let him change the password no matter what. He says the only thing he can think of is to delete it and re-add it. He asks if I have any important emails. It's been so long since I've checked it... ya know... whatever. No, just delete it.

It dawned on me after I hung up with him. He just deleted anything that was loaded on my webpage. Usually I just post pictures that I already have back-ups, but well, now I don't really know what was on there :(

So, if you're looking around on here and there's a broken image, could you comment on it? That way I can put it back online :P

I am seriously thinking about changing my services because I pay too much for Cox monthly. Any suggestions?

what a week... and it's only wednesday!
erin

- - - - -

IM with g from earlier this evening

e: i had a bad day
g: tell
e: how often do i just say that straight out?
e: I wanna tell you, but I want to also cook dinner
g: you say that once in a while
e: So i will give you the short version and then tell you more later when there's not food on the stove
g: ok
e: I was supposed to do three things today before work (at 10:30)
e: 1.) work out 2.) go get my loan papers signed 3.) get my bus pass
e: I was on the way out the door to work out and realized i had a shocking pain in my lower left abdomen
e: oh... um... which happens to be where my cancerous ovary was
g: yeah
e: so i was worried enough to go to urgent care.
e: after many problems with blood drawing and what not..
e: they came up with the diagnosis of diverticulitis...
e: which is sort of minorly troubling *
e: * more details later
g: ugh. ok. go cook. i'm here a while
e: wait - there's more i need to get out before i go cook
g: k
e: The other day when i was petting frida - i felt something ... funky - so i called in sick *
e: * more details later
g: k
e: and took her to the vet
e: She might have cancer
g: augh
e: Soooo she is scheduled for surgery on Feb 13th
e: and then i went to get my loan papers signed.
e: more details later - i swear
e: bbl
g: k
g: xoxo
6:15 PM
You left the chat by logging out or being disconnected.

----

The basics are:

I have been told that I've had diverticulitis before - mostly from diagnoses made at Urgent Care facilities. These times I've been sent to the ER to get tests done and I've had to undergo the Cipro/Flagyll one-two punch numerous times. The thing that's troubling me is that when I had The Cancer, the surgeon told me I DIDN'T have diverticulosis. So who to believe? The people in the Urgent Care or the person that actually went in there and checked out my innards?

I think I'm going to try to call my oncologist tomorrow to see if I should be worried about it. The good thing is my blood tests came back okay.

Okay - here's another thing about today... Why is it that sometimes some highly skilled nurses or technicians can not find my blood vessels and other times someone else can just go... DOOT... and find them instantly? Today they TRIED to get blood from a turnip... oops... the back of my hand... how painful does that sound? It was painful AND it led to them "blowing a vessel" to the point of where they had to send in a lab technician to draw it from my other arm. This guy used one of those little needles in my arm to fill 4 vials full (yeah, it took a lil while)

So after getting my rx filled (woohoo - i have $5.00 left for the week!) I went home and relaxed until I had my appointment with the vet for Frida.

Frida's vet is one of those dream vets. The kind you WISH would be a human doctor :) She was worried that it might be fibrosarcoma. So, little Frida has a surgery date set for February 13th. I just looked up fibrosarcoma for the first time. yikes.

If Frida was obviously not well or showing any signs of pain or discomfort, it would be a little easier to weigh out the possibilities of if I'm doing the right thing by getting the surgery done. What's the alternative? Slow and painful death? Nah, I think I'll spring for this surgery and see from there what the chances are for survival. She's the closest thing to a kid I've got! (okay, next to my nephews Justin and Garret, Tracy's kid Jeremy and Jill's kid Lucas... but they're like... HUMANS!)

Okay - so there's more that happened today, but well this is becoming more and more rambling as the night goes on.

I guess I'm going to zone out and relax with the kitty.

Before I do that, I'm going to post some pix on Flickr.

see ya later,
erin

Well, um... it's never too late to say Happy New Year, is it?

I just realized that it's been about a month since the last post.

I have been dealing with a lot of stuff. Mostly revolving around medications and such. At the beginning of January my psychiatrist gave me a new rx... Lexapro. I was instructed to take that and start phasing out the other crap I've been taking (Strattera and Wellbutrin) and then by the next visit on February 1st, I'd be only on one sort of psych med.

Well, here's the thing. I started having this weird allergic reaction about 2 weeks into the new med. Not really a rash, but sort of flushed and slightly itchy. It looked more like a sunburn all across my face, neck, chest and arms. It would only last for about 20-30 minutes, but it was very uncomfortable while it was happening. I decided to stop taking the Lexapro to see if that was the instigator. Hmm... it didn't happen AT ALL when I stopped it! So then I decided to stop taking everything, since I was already dwindling down in my other meds.

So yesterday was the first day of not taking anything psych-related. Let's see how it works! Maybe I don't need ANY medication. That would be EXCELLENT. Since nothing medical seems to fix my symptoms anyway, I might as well try to see if I can deal sans meds.

So let's see. Tracy, Jeremy and I went to Disneyland about a week ago. I thought it was funny that I had the same build-up as I did as a kid. I got really excited about YAY DISNEYLAND! It was almost like this commercial:



When I was a really young Ewon, I used to be scared of just about everything in Disneyland. My poor parents had to take me to cheesy things like The Swiss Family Treehouse, The Enchanted Tiki Room, Storybook Land, the quiet solitude of Tom Sawyer Island, anywhere that there was no ghosts, pirates, bobsleds, etc. Even rides like Dumbo (too high), Adventure Thru Inner Space (that eye looking at you at the end freaked me out), and the Skyway ride through the Matterhorn (okay, those rides in general ick me out - you're hanging on a CABLE!) were scary to me (I was afraid of heights, too). I don't know if it was some sibling sort of thing that shamed me into going on scarier rides, but eventually I started challenging myself to go on The Haunted Mansion, The Pirates of the Caribbean and The Matterhorn. By then I was thinking... wow, why have I wasted all of my time on those OTHER rides?

Well, Jeremy is a lot like the young MissEwon. His last trip, he'd found Tom Sawyer Island. It used to be a nice safe place where there was nothing scary. A kid could just run around and play. Well, now it's an extension of The Pirates of the Caribbean. Its official title is Pirate's Lair on Tom Sawyer Island. There's a treasure map that leads you all around the island. There are skeletons, bits of shipwrecks and the occasional animated pirate that talks to you. He freaked out in the middle of this one cave. I tried using stories of my youth to get him to expand his repertoire of rides, but it didn't totally work.

We DID get him on the Pirates ride though... he only got scared when they show Davey Jones.



But really that would've freaked ME out as a kid, too.

oops - i forgot that I was supposed to go get ready to go out with my Jonquil.

I'll try to write more later :)

luv,
e

A lot has been said about Amy Winehouse bringing back soul. Although I do have a fascination for Amy and love most of her music... the REAL new queen of soul is Miss Sharon Jones.

Check her out! Buy her CDs!



Other than that, well, things have been happening around here, but I am still not quite in the mood to write about stuff. WTF?

I had a nice Christmas, even though I spent most of Christmas Day sleeping.

I'm trying to get through to my psychiatrist's office to get my meds. Argh.

I spent a lot of time with my nephews the last few days. I'm want them to make me CDs of what they like. I fear it'll be all hip-hop or System of a Down type of rock. One thing that is helping the kids know more about some of my favorite music is Guitar Hero. I mean, they only know "I Wanna Be Sedated" from this game!

Okay - i'm going to go do something productive... i think. Unless I get distracted, which is a very good possibility.

luv,
erin

Sorry, Frida couldn't make it to the photo shoot.





Love,
Jonquil & Erin
:D

It's not that i haven't been doing anything. I've been doing plenty of things... I've just been sort of "blah" about recording details in my journal!

I put up some pix recently on my Flickr site.

I uhhhh have been doing LOTS! Why can I not think of anything right now?

Here's something Tracy sent me in my email. Her son, Jeremy, wrote this in the journal he keeps for school. I love it :)


December 8,2007

Today, my family started up our weekly game night since we didn't have it for a long time. We decided to play a game called "Are You Smarter Than a fifth Grader". Unfortunatly, my mom sceduled us to have dinner with two of her best friends, Jill and Erin (not the student Erin). Jill has a 3 year old son named Lucas who has a good language skill and in my opinion, he has some sort of obsession for stepping on my toes. After dinner, me, my mom, and Erin went over to Jill's house for a visit. Jill has two pugs named Cosmo and Newman (or is it spelled "Numan"?). Cosmo is a blonde colored pug that has a few problems about holding up his tail, and Newman is a black colored pug that Jill describes to be sort of a devil.


I am going to go relax.

Bye!
erin

"latoya, the meg griffin of the jackson family" --- hiding

hey - just a lil update.

i'm really stressing out about money. i was finally trying to get my crap together and figure out how much money i have and how i can get by with just the minimal on christmas presents... so I'm being all good and comparing and contrasting my checkbook register to my online statements and then I realize... the check I wrote to my landlady LAST MONTH has never cleared. So I DON'T have as much money as I thought :-/

So now we worked something out to where I can pay her a little bit for this coming month's rent and then get the rest at my next check.

I'm thinking about paying her in cash so i don't have to wait for a check to clear. Any ideas?

Any get rich quick schemes?

Anyone know any independently wealthy folks that are willing to part with some cash?

oy.

Oh, btw, Frida caught a mouse in my apartment! It was really thrilling! Thankfully, I wasn't here for the actual kill and just witnessed the dead mousie underneath her triumphant paw. Yay KITTY!

I was going to come up with an artist's rendition... hmm... maybe i will.

This Saturday is the Christmas parade in my old neighborhood Ocean Beach. I believe I'm going with Tracy and Jeremy. It's ALSO the night Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings are in town... and I'd LOVE to go, but don't know if I can swing both events in one night.

Well, I've got to go get ready for work. :-/

See ya later,
Erin

Hey there youngsters (and oldsters alike!)

i have not written.

like... duh... that's pretty obvious, ain't it?

I am taking the opportunity to write a little about what's going on since I am hopped up on caffeine and not going to sleep any time soon.

I had Monday off this last week because of Veteran's Day. I spent the day cowering in my room because I saw a mouse in my kitchen. Now, you'd THINK that my dear cat Frida would like... do something... so I don't have mice ANYWHERE in my house. She has forsaken me and has left me to fend for myself. HMPH, I say.

Since I am a nelly queen when it comes to small furry varmints, I begged and pleaded hannyasan to come save me from the mice. She actually DID! She came over to my house in the middle of the night and brought mouse traps, peanut butter (for the traps, not for me) and actually set them up in my dirty lil apartment. What a swell gal! I know she likes to have the reputation that she is actually pure evil... but... well, that was a rilly nice thing to do :)

I have not caught any mice dead or alive, but I'm going to keep the traps out there just so they don't get any ideas.

penny_pixie sent this:


Let’s see... what else is new?

For those of you that have been asking for a current picture... (all one of you) - I’ve added one to my Flickr page.

I've been to several events since I last posted:

A sneak preview of "Juno" with Christina at Ultra-Star Cinemas at Hazard Center.

Tracy and I went to see "Lars and the Real Girl" at AMC Mission Valley

Christina and I went to see The Swell Season and Martha Wainwright at 4th and B

Tracy and I went to Kelly Clarkson tonight at the Civic Theatre. She won the tickets from Star 94.1

Buffy, Steve, Christina and I watched "Tootsie" :) and a 99 cent DVD compilation of Gumby episodes. We love Nopey! I believe this guy watched the exact same DVD!

So, let's see - well, I guess it's 4 a.m. and I should start thinking about lying down and getting some sleep.

I'm going to Jill's house for Thanksgiving. Jonquil is going to be in New Orleans this whole week with her church. My lovely sister Kerry may go with me. It's always a good time. :)

Things I am not talking about in this post:

My diet.

My current prescriptions.

My messy apartment.

What my landlady said about the apartment and the mouse.

My bicycle.

So THERE!

love ya, bye!
e

VoicePost 150K 0:46

“Hey-- this is Erin. I'm calling from the lovely Qualcomm Stadium. I just passed by Al Roker and... just kept going. I'm walking around and just seeing happen to going, it's really pretty early in the morning and some people aren't up yet. I think some people are getting breakfast and it's just a really nice day, actually. Fresh air, at least it seems fresh compared to what it has been lately and people are in so good spirit and crowds are gonna turning out and that's about it. Alright, have a good day. Bye!” Transcribed by: artlung

Hey kids,

I just got off work at the library and I'm going to head to Qualcomm again to work. I think I'll be working all night and then sleeping all tomorrow.

My nose is sort of messed up from breathing all of the crap, but my lungs seem to be ok.

I guess I'll have more info posted sometime tomorrow!

Love,
e

Well, i thought i was going to get a call in the a.m. to send me on a volunteer mission. I had a hard time sleeping because I thought for sure they were going to send me to a shelter or something and I knew that would be difficult.

I called in early and said I'd be volunteering, so I wouldn't be at work.

I called in to work right after 8:30. I said "You know I'm not going to be there, right?" - right... okay!

More waiting.

More watching every local station for news. They're calling for volunteers at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, but I don't want to leave... The Red Cross might call me!

They're calling for volunteers at Qualcomm Stadium, but well, I kept thinking I was going to be instantly activated and put in to play.

Finally I decided to just go down to The Q (as some people call the stadium) and do whatever is needed. Unbeknownst to me, library employees got an email around the same time telling them to report to Qualcomm. So, mom & I went there and experienced such HUGE lines to get in... we weren't sure where the hell we were going and it didn't seem like anyone was directing traffic at that entrance closest to Lowe's and IKEA. Finally we asked someone where to go and then whiirrrrr... we were there at Gate A ready to do some work.

We were told that we weren't needed until 5:00. There didn't seem to be much we could do, so we walked around and looked at everything and everyone. You hear stories about people getting along so well in times of crisis. This was one of those times. We're so hardened by life that when that happens, it's hard to realize that it's genuine and true. People were everywhere asking if we wanted water, ice cream, toilet paper, folding beach chairs, whatever you needed, someone seemed to have it! I didn't want to use up all of the evacuees' stuff, so we helped ourselves to several bottles of water and just a few snackie things.

I saw one of my library gals, Jesica helping out in the kids' section. It turned out that they'd gone to the same meeting as I did last night. But they left after 15 minutes, thinking it was lame that there was a crisis going on and here we were learning about The History of The Red Cross.

My mom and I walked back to the original volunteer sign up area and realized there was a sign for city employees. More people were filtering in from different departments. Some volunteered for trash pick-up, some got to do interesting assignments. Kim N, mom and I got to tell some people that they'd have ice delivered soon. We got to clear up one little area that had been messy from breakfast time. We ALL wanted so badly to help, but finally... we got FOLDING DUTY. We folded donated clothes and put them into general stacks of Men / Women / Youth / Infants. We had a very good group leader and I think we all felt that we were working well together.

At some point we HAD to eat. So Christina W, mom and I ventured inside to forage for something/anything. We ended up getting these lil lunch bags from La Mesa Community Center - i had a sandwich, apple, bag of Fritos and some raisins. I traded Christina my Fritos for a granola bar. Yay!

While we were in the INSIDE of Qualcomm, we saw Katie Couric AND the very good-looking Anderson Cooper. (check out my Flickr for a funny picture of Anderson's back!)

We went back to the folding zone, but there were some obnoxious people and it seemed weird. We stayed there until about 6:15 and decided we'd done enough for today. Plus... now I'm in pain.

But hey - it was worth it - I'm thinking about going back tomorrow! :)

luv,
erin

This person is doing a far better job than I am on blogging the fire info

http://catdirtsez.blogspot.com/

Then there's always San Diego Blog (which doesn't appear to be doing all that much right now)

This is some good information for you kids that might need to get on the move:

What to take - Check List

I know I need to sleep, but I keep thinking about stuff.

Tomorrow should be a good day. At least for helping people. I hope it gets less windy so they can contain some of this danged fire :(

okay - TO BED!

nite
e

I got sent home tonight - they want us to eat a meal, get some sleep, drink lots of water and then someone will be calling me in the morning to figure out what's next.

As some of you know, my apartment is SMALL. So far I've invited several people to come over in case they need a place to stay. If they all need a place, it would get kinda frightening. I've invited my mom, tracy, jeremy, kerry, justin, garret and my friend christina!

All of those people are not QUITE in danger, but who knows? So far there are like eight fires going on in the county.

They had good maps here
NBC San Diego

If anyone wants to help out around the San Diego area, please do not hesitate in contacting
San Diego/Imperial County Red Cross

or call them at 858-309-1200

I'm not sure where I'll be tomorrow, but I'll update when I can :)

Okay then...

This is just something that made me laugh on a day when i needed a laugh. It is not safe for work and it is also probably not going to be THAT funny to some of you. I think Pennyass will like it though.