separation anxiety!!!

tomorrow i'm dropping elvis off with my parents and training them to give him his morning and evening medications. denzel and i are leaving early friday morning for new mexico. i will have to endure a lovely vacation of one week without my precious elvis.

i will miss him sooo much. i need a vacation extremely badly but i wish it did not involve separation from my most special best in the world little doggie.

my dad gives him excellent walks and he will be fed and looked after. i just get very anxious when i can't see his cute little face everyday.

it's like a catch 22. vacation. opportunity to go to a place i've been fantasizing about for years. and at the same time separation from my special dog who is like my first baby. the baby will be the second baby really.

send elvis extra amounts of love and health and safety so he will be ok while i'm gone. he gets a little droopy when i go away.

he just got his second part of his spring haircut last sunday and he looks extra adorable and ten years younger than his age of 14 and a half years!

so i will miss blogging too for about a week. i'll check in tomorrow as we leave early friday morning... maybe i'll even be able to post from new mexico.

a fantasy moment in bipolar pregnancy...

finally, a comic strip after a long dry spell...

head still in the trash...

my head is still in the trash, metaphorically speaking.
i was going to do a comic strip today. i had some ideas and denzel even had a funny idea based on a self-deprecating remark i made about how i'd even lose if i was a contestant in the depression olympics.
i managed to make it to yoga class but then spent the day napping on the couch.
then later tonight could not get to sleep of course, so now it's even later than last time i posted. it's 2:45 in the morning.

meanwhile the more often i post the less i feel like people read my blog. thanks to the few who do comment, i really do appreciate your support. i feel like ever since i've been pregnant and depressed and whiny, the men who used to visit and make comments have gotten sick of or bored with my blog. so i'm also trashing myself for not being popular and not doing a good enough blog...

i should just do a comic strip now but i have no creative energy.
just getting through each day, doing as little as possible as things i need to be doing pile up and everything gets messier and messier and more and more disorganized.

but i'm just trying to follow my psychiatrist's backup's advice to take it easy on myself and lower my stress. seems to involve doing very little whatsoever. i guess elvis is lucky he's getting his walks and my teeth are lucky i'm still brushing them.

late night post...

it's actually sat. early almost 1am my time... happy st. patty's day. actually i'm not too psyched about this holiday. love the irish but i live on a block with an irish bar that gets annoyingly rowdy, spilling onto the sidewalk, on regular weekends. it's not fun going out there to walk elvis and having to deal with rude underage drinkers. so st. patrick's day is extra awful adn there will be vomit on the sidewalk to avoid especially while walking the doggie...

i decided to alternate comic strip posts with writing posts and hope to post about twice a week as i need the extra support. it's been a very tough week, dealing with moodswings, no meds and additional stress of pregnancy emotions and whatever hormones are running around in me.

my head is back on, did not end up in the trash!

i went to see my psychiatrist's backup. he's on vacation. she was great, very supportive and nice, spent an hour wtih me on wed. and gave me her cell number in case of emergency. we talked about possibilities of taking medications but none of those options were too great and i was managing to cope better by then with the depression and extreme anxiety and fear of losing it/falling apart/getting into a mixed state.

basically prozac is safest but could cause mania. then i'd have to take haldol which gives awful side effects and makes it impossible to function. (i took it for two days this summer and had to stop...) and i can't take cogentin or the other meds to get rid of those side effects...

so it seemed best to follow her other recommendations to replace medication. such as going to therapy again, which i was already considering, lowering my stress and avoiding watching emotionally difficult movies and shows, avoiding stressful conversations and allowing myself to relax, not trying to accomplish too much, being nicer to myself, going to yoga, etc...

so i'm returning a few netflix dvds that seem like they'd be disturbing. started therapy with a new person yesterday. (probably will put something in the comic strip about that.) he seems very nice and comforting, just what i need right now... and i've been allowing myself to be lazy, sleep late, take extra naps etc.

elvis is always a good relaxing being to hang out with and certainly the least likely to get me into any kidn of stressful conversation!

and denzel has been super extra sweet. brought me two bouquets of flowers, calling to check in during the day, sitting with me at night, offering to get me a prenatal massage, buying special juice and foods that i like etc...

the worst of it is over. just need to chill out and recognize that being pregnant on no meds is no picnic...

to end on a good note: great pregnant find, my new favorite juice: all natural cranberry and pomegranite, organic, yum!

trash head...

up late can't sleep

up late. can't sleep. anxious. going to the baby doctor early tom. morning. about half an hour ago saying goodnight to denzel i got a weird chestpain and shoulder pain and couldn't stop laughing, especially when denzel thought i was having a heart attack. i'm pretty sure it was not. i never heard of anyone getting heart attack pains and then being unable to stop laughing. it went away.
anxious about vacation we're trying to plan but we're both disorganized last minute people plus i have anxiety about going away and leaving elvis even in the good care of my parents so i procrastinate for that reason. we were going to go to hawaii but it's too expensive so we're probably going to new mexico. i've never been there.it's extremely dumb to have conversations about planning a vacation when one of you should already be asleep (him).
i should be asleep too because of the doctor's appointment. i usually get extremely anxious before going to any kind of dr. appointment but i feel a bit better this time because i really like the doctor and we just got the good news about the cvs test.
i should just go to sleep as i have nothing interesting to write and i just can't get to sleep partly because i skipped yoga class and took a nap earlier.

i have terrible time motivating to do any form of exercise. i changed yoga studios to go to one about one block from where i live and i still have huge issues getting my ass out of the door. i skipped my sunday class too.
i'm just in a real blah mood. hoping it will be gone by tomorrow.

WEIRD DREAM
this morning early i woke up from a weird dream that i was on a big 747 plane that was supposed to be taxiing in the runway but it had too much stuff on the plane, was too heavy, and was veering to the sides like it was going to fall over, more like a drunken person who can't stand up. it was quite scary. then they were taking things out of the plane to make it lighter so it could stand better and move without falling (it was on the ground on the wheels, not in the air). i suddenly realized i had left elvis in some other part of the plane and panicked about finding him and worrying he was not on the plane or something. i went and found him and picked him up and was much relieved. by then i was so focused on finding him and reuniting with him that my anxiety about the plane falling over and crashing was not there anymore.

hmm. if the plane represents my psyche, i'm not in control. someone else is driving it and it is not in balance. is it also anxiety about my body on its way to getting too heavy and feeling like i'm not in control of it and like i won't be able to go where i need to, that i'll fall apart from being pregnant and lose sight of the core of my pre pregnant self (symbolized by elvis, my inner child and instincts and innocent side, or the part of me that needs someone else to look after me)??? am i carrying too much baggage ha ha??? no longer able to get the last leg of my journey done and be safely on the ground???
do i feel separate from some important part of myself...
any other suggestions?
what will i dream next as i'll have to go to sleep before morning.

finally, it's up or, better late than never...

here it is... the comic strip i drew last week that i've been too lazy to color in or scan. note the ridiculous drawing skills, my tits are practically coming into my throat in the second frame... obviously not a realistic rendition. and i should have made my hair look better as the one great improvement to appearance i find in pregnancy is thicker hair (denzel would disagree with me here as he is constantly doing the good expectant father thing of telling me i'm looking super sexy.) anyway something comic strip wise is better than nothing. actually today denzel suggested i call the comic strip "the hourly catastrophe" as i guess my anxiety is up!

i don't know what to call this...

i don't know what to call this post or what to call what goes on in my mind. what a strange day, at least the end of it. at the end of the shower i threw for a very pregnant friend, i randomly opened this book i have, frederick frank's "art as a way" to show someone about his method of art and zen and came across these old lost peices of paper i had ripped out of the book and written on during my first manic episode about almost 19 years ago. i didn't look too closely as it was really creepy and crazy stuff, though there was a nice photo of me i had ripped out of my high school yearbook, a friend at the party gave me a lovely compliment by saying i hardly look any different. i may be more sane now but i'm also more vain!
anyway i just looked at the pages and read them and they brought me back to how super psycho beyond just mania i had gotten at that time. i probably wrote that stuff the day before or day i ended up in the hospital.

well the weird thing was after the party i forgot about the pages in the book and eventually went off to see a movie by myself, "little children". i was not prepared for it. i like kate winslett, i'm a big fan and go to all her movies. i just thought it was a typical movie about a dissatisfied lonely mother who has a suburban affair. instead, i was transported into the world of the minor character who pervades the movie, ronnie, the mentally ill guy recently release from jail who is a child molester. ( i think in the book it's more spelled out that he molested someone and in the movie they suggest he flashed a minor but they don't get too specific although he's obviously done some creepy things.) so there i am expecting to just be watching a modern day madame bovary but instead the intense part of the movie involves this guy. i wont' give it away in terms of what happens, but his character is well written, to the point where i really felt for this lost lonely alienated guy who lives with his mother and can't be a "normal" person. after seeing the movie, i was so disturbed by what happens to him that i started to feel "crazy" myself. i just started getting this familiar feeling of feeling like i'd been doing a great performance pretending to be a functioning adult and suddenly felt like i did when i was crazy. it's hard to describe. i managed to call denzel and get home and talked to a good friend who had read the book and understands a lot about my bipolar stuff.

now i'm feeling a little more grounded but was weirded out when i remembered seeing those pages from the past and took them out before writing this post. among all the disturbing psychotic stuff on the pages there are some funny things i wrote like" TRY TO BE MORE CONFUSING THAN I AM" . it's all written in capital letters. on one page i glued a picture of janis joplin who was my idol at the time and wrote some weird stuff about her becoming part of me after she died. it's too embarrassing to quote the stuff in these pages. i can't throw them out though. somehow they feel quite poignant, a reminder of a former self who still resides somewhere in me.

i just wonder what will happen one day if my child sees that stuff. i'll certainly keep it hidden so the child would only see it many years hence when i'm dead and s/he's reading my old journals and seeing how crazy his/her mom really was...

truly it is hard to convey the extreme intensity of what i felt after seeing that movie. it's happened before, like with the movie "a beautiful mind". objectively i did not like how the movie avoided some real things about the man and kind of sugar coated things that were too "difficult" like his bisexuality. but the scene at the end when he talks about the price of sanity for him being that he has to ignore and not engage with or listen to his "delusions" the private friends in his mind that he'd been so close to for so many years of his life, that got to me a lot. it seemed to really express the aspect of loss that occurs with trying to be sane. to be continued. i thought if i wrote about this i'd feel less crazy...

lazy lazy lazy pregnant lady...

hi everyone,
thanks for all the great comments. i can't believe i've been so out of it and unable to keep things going that it's been a total of 12 days since my last post...
i even finally did a comic strip a few days ago but i've been too lazy to scan and upload it,
so i thought i better get something up here now before people give up on visiting this blog. i seem to be more paranoid, or at least caught up in fantasizing that people are thinking things about me, a sort of sign of grand ol' narcisissm...
elvis told me to get off my pregnant ass and post. he's in fine form, actually sleeping soundly at the moment as is denzel. it's almost 1 am and i have the end of my 12 weeks insomnia can't get to sleep at night thing going on. same thing happened last night. i chose to lie on the couch and watch "little miss sunshine" again while finishing a baby blanket for a friend.

ok, so that's my big excuse! i organized a small baby shower for a friend that's happening tomorrow and then of course this evening got depressed and annoyed at myself as i had no energy or motivation to clean up the place and get it ready for tomorrow. all my ambitions of making fun decorations and welcoming posters went down the drain but i managed to clean up a little.
i'm excited to wear my new dress, green with apples all over it, a recent impulsive ebay purchase, but not so bad as it's worth over $100 and i got it for 25$. can still fit into most of my clothes...

so some updates on the pregnancy:
almost at week 13! that means the first trimester almost over and the fun best one begins! i hope i'll have more energy. the indigestion has subsided a lot. i've been lucky to have no morning sickness at all, just my regular awful excema and IBS that i had before anyway.
so far no mania, just a bunch of ups and downs with anxiety and irritability, grouchiness, mild dips in mood that don't last long and some nice sunny happy feelings and lots of good days, i am grateful for.
plus the big news i'm grateful for is that the CVS test came out fine. no genetic abnormalities, and since i got it out of the way about a week ago, i won't need to have an amnio!!! super good news for me as i'm super squeamish.
the CVS was stressful but i wont bore you with the details. highlights were dealing with an overly full bladder, having it done with a needle in the abdomen, and getting to see the little one moving lots beforehand...

i'll post the comic soon and you can read about my fascinating cravings. pickles and mint chocolate cookie (ben and jerry's of course) ice cream are the very latest. i love ice cream anyway but the baby is definitely into the mint flavors which i do not normally go for. i tend to go for chocolatey flavors but the baby has not been wanting any of that...

the newest odd thing is feeling like my belly is really expanding. at times i am kind of delusional and think it feels and looks gigantic already. then sometimes i look in the mirror and see that it's not that much bigger and most people who don't know me would have no idea i'm pregnant. it, the belly, feels much different though. it's a bizarre sensation, i'll try to describe it in a comic strip soon. it's also funny at times i want to tell total strangers that i'm pregnant, most of the time i refrain. there's a weird back and forth between wanting it to be obvious and feeling like it's too early to look really pregnant and wanting it to be a secret that isn't physically obvious and only my friends, family and blogfriends know about it...

also, we just found out the gender because the CVS test shows all the chromosomes. but i'll wait to do a comic strip about it and keep you in suspense to make sure you have reason to come back soon!
sorry for the text. i know the pictures and color are more exciting and a quick read.
elvis will be back soon in full form. his spring grooming is coming up in a week, so that will be big news...