herbal gherl

After over a week of Chinese herbs, Dong Quai tea, and an acupuncture/hypnotherapy session last week can't say I feel any better.... Hmm... I guess it's just me being very impatient and wanting immediate results. It's that lovely time of the month again when my hormones kick into overdrive and I sprout hairs, grow fangs, and howl at the moon (and everyone else around me too). Oh, and I also changed my diet - lots of steamed greens for me - bleh. Oh well, I'm not giving up yet. I'd far rather endure more weeks of nastiness before the herbs finally kick in than try multiple pharmaceuticals that will jump start my mood in a day.

I have been sleeping better, but that's mostly because I stopped taking one of my other medications in the afternoons. I think. Anyway, this stuff is boring.

What's really interesting is the fact that when I urinate after taking these super high powered vitamins of which I now take 4 every day I see green like the antifreeze that leaks out of cars! Yipee! And I, for the first time in perhaps my life, can say that I use the toilet at the proper time in the morning like most people! But then again that may be from the new coffee I've been making at home with a "Moral Fiber" blueberry muffin from Trader Joes for breakfast. Or it could be the Aloe Vera capsules I take with the vitamins. Aw heck, who knows!

What it boils down to is I'm damn sick of trying to feel better. Nothing helps - at least not for long. I'm the same down and out depressed, moody, self-centered, snarly, bitchy, icky, nasty, lazy, good for nothin', ignorant, shit kickin', (oh wait, I was starting to talk about someone I knew in Kansas), p.m.s.in', rantin' and ravin' lunatic of a woman there ever was!

So there.

So I'll take my herbs, but don't expect much more from me y'all.

Best of 2006

Time to look at the positive. I need to make a list of the things I'm grateful for, so I'll narrow it down to the best of '06:

1. Neko Case's "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood"
2. Crispy mild Chicago winter mornings
3. Evan David (my new nephew)
4. My dentist, Dr. Wallace
5. Dr. Jacobs (Dave's and my doctor)
6. Graduating from massage school
7. Tony Zayner, my Asian studies teacher
8. long drives by myself
9. CD shopping
10. Shopping at Presence
11. Kuhlman's for guy shirts and ties
12. Douglas Fur
13. Allie cat
14. Harrison
15. Adat
16. Reverend Billy, my hair stylist
17. Beans and Bagels espresso chip muffins
18. unsweetened soy milk on cereal
19. Gerolsteiner w/ lemons
20. soy yogurt/soy ice cream
21. my new iPod nano
22. massages at Ken & Amy's
23. Dax hair pomade
24. Listening to the iPod on the el
25. lavender scented anything
26. our new bedroom furniture arrangement
27. yoga
28. Listening to the iPod while doing dishes
29. My mother-in-law, Cathy
30. My job

Oh yes, time to break out a Plath poem!

Insomniac

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole . . .
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue . . .
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.

Sylvia Plath



(A few years ago I wrote a "response" poem to this called "Daysleeper". I had the opposite problem then: couldn't stop sleeping! Sorry to throw such a dark one up here, but its good isn't it? Anyone who's ever experienced insomnia - most of us, I imagine, can relate. The first time I read this poem it was handed to me by one of my old art professors after I complained to him about having a bout with insomnia. Huh, it has been a while since I've dealt with this one! Maybe one of these days I'll post an old poem. I don't write them anymore, but it was fun and useful to do so while it lasted.)

FINISHED!

I finished massage school! It has been about a year minus a couple of weeks, and I'm done! I had a busy finals week this week, then I just slept and relaxed a lot. Today I picked up my diploma and treated myself to a massage at my school. Yay! I can't believe it is over already. My evenings are now free (until I get a massage job!), I can go to bed at normal hours, I don't have to study on the weekends (except to study for the national certification exam), and best of all I'm ALMOST a massage therapist! I just have to get my license. This will take about a month. I have to apply for the exam, pay $225, notarize a copy of my diploma, have my picture taken, make sure my transcripts are sent and THEN I can take the test! I'm not concerned about the actual exam, but the part that I'm a little concerned about is finding the time to apply for jobs, and then finding a job that is suitable for me while I stay in my present job. Sigh. But I'm not going to think about that right now. I'm going to focus on how good it feels to be done!