Wednesday 20 July 2005

So Bored


So Bored
Wanna read, go to sleep, eat Funyuns - just do anything other than work right now. What makes it worse is that the day is c r a w l i n g by. I'm willing myself to hold on until quitting time without screaming.

Brought in my own coffeemaker yesterday. Surprised to see it this morning, still sitting on my office bookshelf, all shiny blue and coffeemakery. It makes ten cups, so I can share with a lot of people. I send an email when a fresh pot's ready, but only after I've checked the pot to make sure no coffee grounds have eluded the filter and immigrated to my coffeepot. Whew, no grounds floating in the pot, so we're good. I hope they like Folgers.

More research. Project manager wants me to summarize 2 big-a$$ reports into a simple table. Okay. I'll give it a shot, comb through all this government legalese. PM'll probably tell me it's not exactly what she wants but it's a start.

Sure enough, PM gives it back to me with lots of questions marked in red. Says she wants me to 'dig deeper'. Okay. But it's 3:15 now and I leave at 4 (since I came in at 7am). And if I go back to reading this stuff for the second time today, my head will explode and several sharp screams will burst from my mouth. [Note to self: Check thesaurus for synonyms of the word 'scream'. May need to call on them frequently.]

Netflix sent me The Boondock Saints, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Bar Girls. Watched Boondock Saints after work. Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery play these twin brothers that feel called by God to rid the world of evildoers - permanently. They run through the Boston mafia and run from a mysterious assassin who in the end is not that mysterious. It was good and reaffirmed my faith in indie films. You just get the coolest stories and most interesting characterization from independent films.

Tuesday 19 July 2005

Cymbalta Chronicles, Vol. 2


Cymbalta Chronicles, Vol. 2
Effing meds. Woke up at 3:50 am so nauseous I thought any moment I would spew from both ends. Have to get up at 5:00 and get ready to go to work. There's some research I have to do for a meeting this afternoon. I was planning to get in by 7:00 am and cram all that in before 1:30. Well, God and Cymbalta both laughed at those plans. After missing a couple days last week to go to court and fix my car, I can't in good conscience call my supervisor and tell her I'm not coming in because my happy pills are giving me the poopies.

I drag my a$$ to work and mainline coffee just to get the job done. At 12:30, I meet with my therapist who has never heard of Cymbalta either. She takes a look at the information that Dr. T left me, hand-scrawled instructions for taking the medicine and a photocopied chart that's supposed to explain how the medication works on certain neurotransmitters. My therapist thinks that since I told Dr. T that Wellbutrin hadn't worked that he wanted to try something different, perhaps more powerful. Wellbutrin works on dopamine (and norepinephrine to some extent) while Cymbalta works on serotonin and norepinephrine. So now, we have a rationalization but I wish Dr. T had taken the time to tell me this. Getting psychiatric treatment should not resemble a trip to Mickey D's. My therapist suggests that I called the McChiatrist, tell him about the nausea and the loss of sleep and see what he advises. We spend the rest of the hours bitching about court and my jerky soon-to-be-ex brother-in-law.

By 4:00, I've blown that popstand and race to the on-ramp for 495 to Northern Virginia. I get home in record time (almost an hour) and find that the plumbers came and gutted the bathtub/shower in the Master Bedroom after I'd called last weekend to reschedule. Effing eff. Of course, the plumbers don't listen to or acknowledge my sister's requests to reschedule. Instead they call the condo owner, who vetos my sister by telling the plumbers to go ahead, yells at her and tells her, 'this does not bode well for you renewing your lease'. Effing jerk. Like we'd want to renew a damn thing with him. He has no idea what my sister has been through in the last WEEK, much less the last five months since my brother-in-law left(and has stated that he doesn't care). He thinks we should be eternally grateful to pay inflated prices for a condo that he makes little effort to repair. On the first of the month he nags my sister about the rent, when contractually it is not late until 5:00 pm on the fourth. During the yearly condo inspection he tells my sister, 'You know I could sell this place for (insert beaucoup amount of $$$)'. He is, in short, a collossal a$$hole. I hope we can move once the lease is up and that he never gets another tenant after us. Yeah, I know it's unrealistic, sour grapes and all that, but he really is such a pr*ck. When my sister asks if he's thinking about selling, he says no. He loves to mindf*ck his us like this. Does he do this to all his tenants or just the black women in the middle of a painful, complicated divorce and custody battle?

Tried the Cymbalta again after dinner. Didn't get as sick this time, but I still didn't get much sleep. Dr. T said that it might make me drowsy and then I wouldn't need the Ambien he prescribed for me. No such luck. Read the new Harry Potter (so many typos in the first chapter!) until I fell into a stupor.

Monday 18 July 2005

Cymbalta Chronicles, Vol. 1


Met with Dr. T at noon. He's a fast-talking, tanned, late forty-ish doctor whose appointments are backed up till Kingdom Come with scheduled patients and walk-ins. Why aren't their more doctors at places like this? It just seems incredibly greedy and non-client centered to have one MD at a psychological assessment and treatment center in the middle of a large Metropolitan area. But that was just my first time there, so I don't have all the facts.

Anyway, I think he talked to me for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Then he quickly scribbled down a prescription to some 'new' anti-depressant called Cymbalta.

I'd never heard of this medication and neither did the pharmacist when I filled the prescription after work. Dr. T told me it didn't matter when I took it but he recommended that I take it with dinner, because it might make me drowsy. The pharmacist (a lovely Vietnamese woman) told me to take it in the morning. During our consultation, she tried to look up some info on Cymbalta (I suspect she Googled it) and didn't find much. My eyebrow and my suspicions are officially raised.