a quick followup

hi everyone, thanks for the support and advice.
the good news is that elvis had a great time at my parents and they treated him as wonderfully as they have always done. my mother even took him for a very long walk yesterday. i seem to forget that she complains and vents and criticizes in advance of things and makes things out to be a disaster beforehand and then the reality works out much better. i know i get that quality from her myself and work on curbing it as i do recognize it in myself and denzel notices it when i do it and calls me on it. unfortunately my mother is not always so aware of her behaviors and it does not help to point things like that out to her.
but she really is very thoughtful and caring in the end and comes through.
however i am still in distress/stress about what to do soon when i have the baby. i'm hoping my parents will soften up and change their minds and offer to let elvis stay with them, especially if denzel can come over during the day to do some of the walks and then go back to the hospital.
meanwhile i guess i'll investigate other options, like finding a referral from the vet of a good person who might house sit and take care of elvis. there are people out there who are expert at taking good care of old dogs with specific issues and i'll have to do some research and consider spending time and money on it. a kennel or doggie day care is just out of the question. elvis will soon be sixteen and he is in good health at moment but has a chronic issue with his back and very specific diet and medications and also gets extremely worsened by stress of unfamiliar situations and my own stress, so putting him in an unfamiliar environment with total strangers and cages or whatever is not going to give me peace of mind...
i'll continue posting about this as it is a major source of stress along with everyhting else about having the baby soon, etc.

i'm also aware that i'm probably very nervous about how he will do with having the baby around. he is pretty much my first born child and i'm so attached to him that i want to make sure he's ok during this strange transition and change and addition of new member to the family.

by the way, we managed to have a great trip and it was nice to get away from the city and nice to come back and be reunited with elvis. i got my usual return to city adn my life anxiety tonight...

tag, i'm it... very late in the game...

ok. better late than never. thanks to nicole for tagging me. i hope i know how to insert the right codes for this. i'll of course tag people who visit me often. sorry if you've been tagged already. i guess you don't have to do this twice!

well ok. i realize what the problem is. I am using safari on a mac so i will have to just list the website addresses as they don't seem to give me options for making links within this post. sorry.

INSTRUCTIONS: Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot, like so.

1)Baby Moxie
2)Kicking You From The Inside
3)Third Time Lucky?
4) Just Crazy Enough To Try
5) bipolar notes from underground (off meds)

Next select five people to tag: (if you haven’t done it already) i have to just list the web address as i am not capable of linking directly. sorry
1) This Side of Reason; http://mydisplaced.blogspot.com/
2) Coming out of the Dark; http://bipolarmadness.blogspot.com/
3) Bipolar in the CIty; http://bipolarinthecity.blogspot.com/
4) Kill the Goat; http://saintvodkaofthemartini.blogspot.com/
5) The Wife of a Schizophrenic; http://the-wife-of-a-schizophrenic.blogspot.com/

What were you doing ten years ago?
may of 1997. i was probably dealing with a depressive episode and avoiding getting involved with anyone romanticwise...

What were you doing one year ago?
may of 2006. dealing with having just gone off meds to get pregnant. i was about two months into no meds and having a lot of sex. probably also worrying about my dog as he had diarrhea a lot around that time and needed special medications... maybe i had already started this blog. can't remember. dealing with anxiety for sure...

Five snacks you enjoy:
1. ice cream, ice cream, and more ice cream, often with peanut butter
2. potato chips, (the ruffles kind, salt and vinegar, the expensive kind with exotic flavors) with whipped chive cream cheese on them
3. really creamy hummous on rice cakes or pita
4. chocolate, dark or white, preferably with peanut butter
5. pickles of course...

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics:
1. when i'm 64, the beatles
2. denzel's special song for our unborn baby all about her name
3. jingle bells
4. michelle ma belle, the beatles
5. other beatles songs too numerous to list
(basically i'm terrible at singing and have a bad memory but the beatles were part of my childhood.)

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
1. get a huge new place, like a brownstone or building in our current neighborhood with a great baby room, lots of storage, a studio for me that's ideal, a great studio/workroom/music room for denzel, an outdoor space for doggie and us and a wonderful roof top and great basement!!!
2. pay off all my debts immediately and invest some of the money wisely...
3. plan a wonderful trip (maybe a short two week one for now before baby last minute and one for when she is around 8 months old to take her with us) and find the perfect caretaker for elvis who will take extra good care of him and have a lot of vet knowledge while we are away to housesit as well in the above mentioned mansion!
the trip would probably include a visit to japan
4. help out some starving artist friends with money, not purely a gift, but as an investment in their projects to help them get the projects off the ground...
5. buy land and build a really cool country house that denzel would design!

Five bad habits:
1. laziness, procrastination and disorganization, they all go together for me
2. eating too much ice cream and unbalanced diet, even and especially while pregnant
3. not putting things away, general slobbiness
4. self hatred
5. complaining and worrying

Five things you like doing:
1. being with my dog
2. drawing and painting
3. nothing (literally, i like sitting and doing nothing, staring into space and not moving)
4. camping with denzel
5. watching the food network channel

nightmare during sleep and stress during awake...

hi again and thanks for everyone's wonderful support. i plan to catch up on all your blogs after doing this post.

i'm doing better since last post but the past few days have been still difficult and my mood is still shaky. yesterday was quite stressful for various reasons. and we did not sleep much last night, denzel and i. we were supposed to go to the country with elvis to visit a friend but this morning we we're too tired and stressed out from yesterday. yesterday was difficult but good for our relationship as i was able to be there for denzel dealing with some difficult issues with people in his life.

anyway last night was not good for sleep and i had a horrible dream about having the baby and the surgery. the baby did not appear in the dream but it was leading up to getting the c section. i won't describe the dream but it was not restful sleep.

then when i woke up early and took little elvis out i noticed he was walking strangely. we had taken him out at about 4am when we were not sleeping and he had been fine. he seemed to be limping by a few hours later. then we decided not to go away anyway and i got very anxious about whether to take elvis on an emergency appontment to the vet or wait and see how he was doing. i called two of his vet offices and talked to a nurse at one. from what she said it did not sound terrible to wait and see how he is in the next few days. he is eating normally and just as excited to go out on his walks. he doesn't make any noise of any kind of pain and his front leg that seems to be limping does not seem abnormal or swollen. he puts weight on it when walking and peeing. he's been resting most of the day and doing his usual stuff so i decided not to panic and stress him out by rushing to the vet and having to pay an extra 100$ plus the visit as they had no regular appointments left.

i just took him out again and he was happy to be out. he even will run a little on some of his walks depending whether he has just got up from a nap or not. so i'm hoping he just pulled a muscle or something like that. right now he is sitting reclining near my chair totally relaxed so i'm trying not to worry too much. i made an appointment with his regular vet for tues. morning so i might take him in then if he is still walking strangely...

the irony is that we ended up bringing him to the vet yesterday to have the technician put the flea and tick liquid on him as i was too neurotic to do it myself and was worried about the chemicals being pregnant. i also did not want to put it on wrong and have a bad effect on him. i never take him to the country these days so i had thought i needed to get him a collar but it turns out the vets all recommend this liquid stuff that goes into the skin as being more effective. it lasts for a month so i guess it's good he has it in case we go somewhere another time. but he was fine yesterday when i took him for that. they were very nice and did not charge anything to do that for him...

needless to say today i was too stressed out and sort of depressed to do much. i'm still feeling the mood but i'm trying to relax and not worry about catching up on any of the things i need to do. after all everyone else is vacationing and doing nothing and we would have been in the country. i admit i'm relieved we did not end up going as taking elvis would have been stressful for me, worrying about him being ok on the trip and in a strange environment.

he's my real baby. i think i must have been a dog in another life. these days when i walk around outside and see people with a stroller and a dog, my maternal instincts go out to the dog. looking at the baby in the stroller does not bring out any desire to hold the baby or coo over him or her. in fact i'm kind of scared of babies and toddlers these days. but dogs just make me smile.

i hope to do a comic strip soon as this blog was supposed to be mostly comic strip form but my mood and mixed state have made it hard to get to it...

post vacation blues...

wow. they have a term for it. did not know that. and with this "post" i even have a double meaning going on, ha ha. posting about my post vacation blues...
ok. resorting to silly puns.
one of the reasons that i avoid going away is that i dread the return. the good thing about this time at least, lookin on the bright side, is that by the end of our stay in new mexico, i was a little tired of travelling and missed just being at home, not to mention of course, missing the doggie.
last time we went away, we were in a little cabin in the woods and it was even worse coming back to the big city because i just wanted to stay away in the woods for the rest of my life.

so on the bright side, this is not the worst "pvb" i've experienced.

so we arrive home after flying on redeye and walk in the door at about 7am and i realize we left the fucking heat on all week. our coned bill is dreadful and horrible every month so this week would have been great to not pay for the fucking heat. especially after i spent too much money on all kinds of fun things in new mexico from gifts to little handmade peices and jewelry etc. and a wonderful hand made doll that was worth every penny spent on it.

i left feeling stressed about money and not having done my taxes yet and thinking i have to get my finances together and be a responsible parent soon and my money situation is not great at the moment. we stayed in very inexpensive lodgings and we're lucky there was a roach in the room of a more pricey place we stayed. denzel complained about it and the other things wrong with the place and we got that night free (a wonderful savings of $66 that i immediately blew at a bead store the next day...) that place had a hot tub, probably the best thing about the place. and it was not too hot for pregnant lady to soak in.

in fact the only time i felt wierd from the high altitude and pregnancy was in the bead store in taos. i had just picked out all kinds of wonderful things and was trying to figure out what not to buy so as not to spend too much money. denzel came in with coffee and i started feeling weak and dizzy and had to sit down. of course he, being the sweetie he is, insisted i just get all the stuff i had wanted and figured it out for me while i sat there feeling faint. i was fine a few minutes later and many dollars later with some water and that was that...

i am basically terrible with money. i am both very frugal and "cheap" in many ways. don't mind in fact enjoy cheap motels. love eating out and trying good restaurants while on this type of vacation (normally with better weather and no pregnancy we'd be camping, sleeping in tent and eating food cooked on the fire, totally low budget) but don't have to go to fancy expensive restaurants. this vacation was a funny combo of low budget fun and then me shopping a lot-- it just does not feel like shopping when you buy little handmade things ranging between 2$ and $40 in little galleries and pueblo shops etc. after having a delightful conversation wtiht the shopowner, artisan, gallerist or whoever, but it all adds up...

it was really a great vacation. we spent most of our time driving through the countryside and in the mountains and stopping in small towns. we saw the gila cliff dwellings and the carlsbad caverns. the caverns were awesome in every sense of the word. i would descibe myself as very spiritual but not too comfortable with organized religion and indoors type of worship in groups, so to me, going into these cavers just felt so much like being in a natural temple that took millions of years of time and absense of humans to create. it was intense. it felt great to walk through the caverns and sense the immensity of time and the timelessness at the same time. stone is the most evocative incredible material. the caves were just so awesome and beautiful and "created" that i felt like i could not look at any human made thing ever again... and it was so great to walk through with denzel and the little one growing inside, of course the metaphor of being inside a big stone womb came up, ha ha.

anyway now back down to earth and concrete and garbage adn no mountains, except mountains of bills and things i've been putting off doing and an extreme mess of an apartment.

but also the little elvis! he got super good care from my parents and he is definitely the best thing about the homecoming. home is not where the heart is, home is where the DOG is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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.

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.