Not too long ago I asked the girls at Iowa Chicks Knitting if I could buy a set of stitch markers. They, being superior, just sent me some for no reason. I mean, it really makes your week to find a present in your mailbox and it’s not even a holiday.

Dear Internetizens,

Stop the madness! And STOP USING MSN TO SURF FOR PORN! MSN BRINGS YOU HERE UNDER FALSE PRETENSES.

Note that in the past day, in every instance in which MSN brought you here, YOU DID NOT FIND what you were looking for because MSN Search sucks. So. Very. Hard.

Please learn to surf for porn with a decent search engine, one with, like, clever search algorhythms.

I live two and a half miles south of Hwy 34, between Fairfield and Batavia. There’s a big project to upgrade all of 34 from a two-lane highway to a four-lane Interstate all the way across Iowa.

For the past year or so, we’ve been watching the new highway take shape. First many houses along 34 were moved or downed, then several million dollars worth of large equipment appeared and moved earth for months. Then they put down blacktop. (It was cool. They have this gigantic machine that does the entire road surface at once. One time they covered a couple MILES worth of new blacktop with tarps because it looked like rain.) Watching the new road come into being has been pretty fun.

I’ve been wanting to drive on the virgin concrete for months. Yesterday afternoon, Mr. Brett called to tell me it was open and that he was driving on it! I couldn’t wait to drive home and try it out myself.

After Gita class last night I got to drive on it. About half-way between Fairfield and Batavia, the old, cracked, bumpy, shitty 34 veered off onto the NEW BLACKTOP. It’s divine: smooth, smooth, smooth! It made the Jeep feel ten years younger, I swear. I’m really quite excited about the whole thing.

Soon I’ll be able to go 65 MPH from my house to 1-Stop Rental!

– – –
Today I was Joe’s lunch date. He has The Dread, poor dear. I feel for him. And the weather today – overcast, chilly, forboding – certainly doesn’t help.

We had iteration #47 of the “What the fuck am I doing?” conversation over mediocre Mexican food at La Hacienda restaurant. If you’re not familiar with it, #47 goes something like this: ‘I have no energy, I don’t care about anything, even partying seems stupid and unsatisfying and insipid, I want to move to Canada because then at least I wouldn’t be an ignorant fucking American, everyone seems to feels like this lately, maybe the Russians really are bombarding us with bad mental vibes after all. I mean, it’s no worse than Jyotish for explaining this shit.’

The Dread. It isn’t fair. I don’t have the dread right now myself, I have mild anxiety. But it still sucks and makes me ponder my “quality of life.” (The fact that my quality of life is so high that I have ample time in which to ponder it does not escape me. Which is a good sign.)

– – –
I love happy endings even in non-fiction, so here’s the obligatory wedding and a baby:

[13:32] reni: i have an idea
[13:33] reni: what say you about you and me flying out to see dharmaja’s wedding the end of june, complete with an extra added bonus of seeing her be married by Amma on the same day?
[13:34] Administratrix@work: WHAT?!?!?!
[13:34] Administratrix@work: I didn’t even know she had a boyfriend!
[13:34] Administratrix@work: I thought she was NEVER. GETTING. MARRIED.
[13:34] reni: she’s pregnant too
[13:35] Administratrix@work: WHAT WHAT WHAT?!?!??!??!??!??!??!
[13:35] reni: due in the fall
[13:35] Administratrix@work: ARE YOU TRYING TO *KILL* ME, WOMAN?!?
[13:35] reni: yeah, pretty much

I am now having to post how you found this site keywords as an image, because when I type things like “naked pussy” into an entry, it just increases some poor porn surfer’s chances of ending up here. (PEOPLE! STOP SURFING FOR PORN WITH MSN SEARCH! THAT SEARCH ENGINE SUCKS! You’ll just end up here, and THERE’S NO PORN HERE!) (Although you’ll be even more likely to end up here tomorrow, since now I’ve typed the word “porn” three, er, FOUR times now. Snort!)

Anyway, my favorite thing in the world: it’s today’s installment of how you found this site.

God I want to dig up enough cash for tattoos this weekend! Seriously! The last time we went to Chicago, Brett got his famous cartoon tat (of the terrified nail running away from the mean scary hammer) but I got only a simple Japanese character. This time I want this (or maybe this) in the middle of my back. I’ve been wanting to get this tattooed on my body for at least six years now AND THIS IS THE TIME, DAMN IT!

So today I’d like to vent about being broke. Broke, broke, broke. Ugh. I hate it. We’re so cash-poor right now I can’t even explain how cash-poor we are.

Suffice it to say that several bills are excruciatingly late, and I hope they don’t turn off my cell before I get paid on the 16th. And no, I have no idea how we’ll even afford gas to go see Todd this weekend in Chicago, let alone the hotel, food, drinks, and the tattoos we both need.

I guess I shouldn’t bitch; we haven’t been this flat broke in ages. And I’m still only working part-time – it’s not so bad I’ve had to think about another P/T job or anything.

Brett and Jimbo are working a job and are being paid from Canada. They’ve turned in two bills and haven’t seen any payment yet, and when they do it will be in the form of an International money order (which means they’ll probably have to wait a week for the funds to clear before they can actually pay themselves). I suppose I should take some comfort in knowing that Joy is probably feeling quite as broke as I am, since her hubby hasn’t been paid in as long as mine hasn’t!
Continue reading Cash flow: NO →

My mom called. She and my step-Doug are moving to Laramie, WY. In eleven days. How cool is that? I could drive there for Thanksgiving!

I’ve done nothing useful this weekend.

Friday I went to lunch at the ashram with the girls (C & NLW) and they were wonderful as ever and I’m absurdly grateful to have girlfriends to go to lunch with. After, NLW gave me a cape she was getting rid of and I’m excited to wear it next Fall. I hit the grocery store on the way out of town and made it home around four.

Saturday, yesterday, I slept in. When I got up, I worked on a website a bit. When I went downstairs, Bread was asleep on the couch, sleeping the way he always sleeps: with total abandon. He sleeps like a little kid, sprawled, with a fine sheen of sweat on his face. Very little wakes him up. I don’t know how he can sleep with the TV on, but he does it every day of his life. He’s cuter asleep than he ever is awake because he’s such a man when he’s awake, so macho and crass. *giggle*

We went to town around three-thirty for malts from the Dairy Bar, and cigarettes, and so he could clean his truck. There are scratches beneath both windows from dogs’ nails as they used the windows for entry – he said it happened a couple of weeks ago at 1-Stop. It’s a bummer; the paint was so nice before. There are a few other scratches on it too, because it’s a work truck, but the dog scratches look like shit when the truck’s washed and clean. He’s really pissed off about it. I mean, you’d have to see it: the door panels both have about a hundred deep vertical scratches from dogs’ back legs as they scrabbled up into the cab.

After cleaning his truck, we drove home. Bread made noises about pulling the dump truck up to the house and cleaning out the junk in the future kitchen/Truck’s old room, but then said, “or I might just do absolutely nothing.”

He pulled a muscle in his lower abdomen earlier this week. It’s hurting him, so he should probably take it easy anyway. He was a little worried about it because it’s a sharp pain he says, but I looked up Gray’s Anatomy over at Yahoo! and where he’s got pain there’s basically nothing but muscle and some small intestine. I think he’s got a mild groin injury from the work he does – there really isn’t much else there to hurt but the muscles that hold the pelvis together. So I think he should lie around in front of the glass teat and rest.

The weather is fucking gorgeous. My dad took the cold to Tahoe with him, thank God. I’m always amazed at how tropical Iowa can feel – humid, lush, loud with birds and insects, and how disturbingly fecund it is. One week the trees are bare; you go to work a few times and one evening coming up the driveway you realize all the trees are fully in leaf again and you can’t see the rooster shed from the driveway any more. Nature in this part of the country is on steroids. I love it for its vitality and inevitability, but it’s a little spooky. And it’s a pain in the ass to try to keep anything weeded, since weeds grow so fast here you can actually see it.

When I woke up this morning, it was to a thousand birds chatting in the woods outside. And a stupid Junebug, walking down my arm. I grabbed it and threw it across the room. It bounced. Over the years, Bread’s yanked the screens out of most of the windows in the house for some reason or another and he sucks at putting things back. I ask him to put the screens back in, he says he will. He doesn’t. It’s just how he is. I do take unladylike joy in saying, when he complains that there are bugs buzzing around the living room, that it’s his own damn fault for never putting any of the screens back. He ignores me, because that’s how he is, and swears up a blue streak about the fucking bugs.

Since this is window-open weather, they are, and if there’s a light on the dumb Junebugs come in and bash themselves against things. Last night one spent a few minutes walking around on my keyboard and was inevitably on the letter I wanted at any given moment. I finally flicked it off my desk, but of course it buzzed back to crash itself into my monitor over and over. I used to be really freaked out by them, Junebugs that is, but I’ve lived in Iowa long enough to know that their hard shells and sticky feet are just annoying, not truly gross.

Ticks are gross. I hate ticks. I’d never seen a tick in my LIFE until I moved out here. The Northwest is virtually bug-free, compared to the insanity that is the Midwest. But I guess ticks are nearly balanced out by fireflies, another bug I’d never seen ’til I moved here. I mean, fireflies are gorgeous.

Generally, I like bugs. I rarely kill them. I don’t kill spiders because they eat other bugs (and it’s supposed to be bad luck to kill spiders in your home). Junebugs are too stupid and earnest to be angry with. Box elder bugs have such a short season and are so ubiquitious that it’s a waste of time to be pissed off at them either, because there’s literally nothing you can do about them – they will be everywhere and that’s all there is to it. Ants are too small to care about. And I’ve always rather liked roaches, because once I caught one in my dorm room and told it that it and its family had to move out or I’d wage chemical war upon them (and I visualized the location of a kitchen and a nearby dumpster they could relocate to), and I never had a roach problem again. I think they might be smarter than most people think.

I kill ticks, fleas, and houseflies. I HATE HOUSEFLIES. Lord of the Flies? Oh yes, the fly IS the symbol of evil. They are stupid, horrible, annoying little fucks. God, how I hate houseflies. Bzzz.

I listened to the answering machine this morning. I do it about once a month, if at all. We don’t use the land line for anything but dial-up and faxes, and we keep an answering machine on the line so it only rings four times instead of ten when telemarketers call. My mom left a message that she’s moving to Wyoming. As soon as my cell finishes recharging I’m gonna call her up. Plus it’s Mother’s Day and I haven’t spoken to her in over a year. We’re not phone people.

Now I’m going to finish an MT installation for a client, and then maybe take a blanket and go lie in the yard while it’s still nice out… in no time it will be too hot and too sticky to be outside for fun.

Now you’re sorry you didn’t rent my dad! Last night Brett wasn’t around when I got home, and my pop wanted to “go do something” since it was his last night here. He and I stopped at the Dew Drop for a couple of cocktails, then he took me out for Indian food. (Although, lemmie tell ya: cocktails and Indian food do not a happy G.I. tract make the next morning!)

After leaving India Cafe, I picked up some drive-thru for Mr. Brett and we returned to the farm a little after nine. I had a great time.

I’d promised dear ol’ dad a pair of felted wool slippers, back when he was going to be here longer, and they weren’t done. So I sat myself in the recliner and knit like a mad woman until ten of eleven. Ta-dah! They’re done! I put the slippers and felting instructions into a plastic grocery bag, debated taking them up to dad’s RV right then, but went to bed instead.

Mr. Brett had had a few beers at Libertyville after work and then gone to a friend’s house that evening, so he was pretty much passed out drunk on the couch by the time I went up to bed.

Dad took off this morning for Tahoe, but I didn’t give him his slippers. I’ll have to mail them when I forward the rest of his mail next week. But when he gets them, they’ll be so superior! (I love felted wool slippers; I wear mine all the time. But I think I like the heathered charcoal I used for his better. I might need a new pair.)

Great news… not. They’re from my dad. The panic attacks! HE’S HAD THEM SINCE HE WAS A TEENAGER. (I had had no idea.)

Dad thinks it’s some kind of congenital brain malfunction that sends out bad signals to the old adrenals. (He doesn’t call them “panic attacks,” of course. He has the same strange judgement against panic disorder being a “mental illness” that I used to have. But his episodes sound the same as mine: double-beats, skipped beats, rapid beats, sweating, adrenaline, the works.)

Today I had a little surge during my morning commute, but it was brief and I was fine until after lunch when all hell broke loose. My heart was racing and I was so terribly uncomfortable… I kept leaving my desk to walk around the block. I couldn’t just ignore the episode because my heart was beating so hard I couldn’t NOT be aware of it. I’d tell you what my BPM was, but I was too chicken to count it. Take my word for it, it was just absurdly hard and fast. THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP. (It was what your pulse would be like after sprinting as hard as you could for a hundred yards, but I wasn’t doing anything.) My breathing was too fast, trying to get oxygen into my rapidly-circulating blood. I felt amped and freaked out – that’s the adrenaline and/or attendant hormones – and I just wanted it to stop so much that I was stuck in a negative feedback loop. I’d think it was easing off, then my chest would hammer and I’d have a little spike of “oh shit, it’s NOT over,” and that would be enough for my brain to tell my adrenals that I was afraid of something, and then there’d be another hormone flood.

Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.

I must have sat down at my desk and gone back outside at least six times. Finally I gave up and paced ’round the block again and then I sat in my car. The attack eased up a little after ten minutes of my mental litany (“You’re not dying. Your heart is strong. This is inappropriate application of fight-or-flight hormones. You’re not even in PAIN for chrissakes. This has never killed you before, and it won’t kill you now. You don’t even really think you’re dying, you’re just reacting to all the symptoms, which while uncomfortable are neither painful nor harmful. If you were gonna drop dead you’d’ve done it by now. You’re hyperventilating, which isn’t helping, by the way.”). I went back in to sit at my desk. Jordan took one look at me and blurted, “Are you okay?” (I said I wasn’t feeling well. He said he was sorry.) By now I’d been fucking around with the stupid thing for 45 minutes. I tried to do a little work but all I could do was fidget and bounce my knee and try to breathe normally… Finally I just grabbed my purse and walked out.

I visited the chiropractor – sometimes it helps quite a bit to get my ribs and neck adjusted – and, feeling like an asshole, I gave up on feeling better. I was amped and exhausted; it’s hard work maintaining that level of intensity and it makes me feel drowsy. I drove home where I waited it out, then I meditated a wee bit, then napped. When I woke up all the symptoms were gone… for about an hour. Now they’re back. Mild, but still there. This has been a shitty week as far as symptoms go.

Having done tons of ‘net research on this crap, I’ve learned that the old school approach is to consider panic syndrome a mental problem and treat it with antidepressants and therapy. The new pardigm is that there’s some underlying physical malfunction that creates the original symptoms, but then the sufferer develops fear of the attacks themselves and that anxiety is what causes more attacks. It becomes a mental issue, but not a mental illness. (Having suffered numerous panic attacks, I’ll tell you that being afraid of them is SO a normal reaction. They SUCK. Believe me. You really do feel like you’re gonna die. A lot of people actually end up in the emergency room the first time they have one because they feel so terribly unnatural and scary.)

Anyway, this guy thinks the offending brain structure in question is the amygdala, part of the lymbic system, which controls panic responses to dangerous stimuli. He says:

Anxiety disorder and panic attacks are not mental illnesses, they are behavioural conditions. They’re caused by a tiny change in the way the brain handles anxiety signals from the sensory organs.

The ‘anxiety switch’, (the Amygdala), is either ‘anxiety ON’ or ‘anxiety OFF’; when the switch is anxiety off it can be activated only by real danger, when it becomes ‘stuck on’ it can produce anxiety disorder symptoms, panic attacks, OCD, PTSD and phobias.

The symptoms of anxiety disorder are so real and so frightening that they can cause us to become scared and wrought with anxiety and panic attacks.

I don’t like the term anxiety disorder. Your increased anxiety isn’t actually a disorder (the word disorder suggests illness, panic attacks and anxiety are not illnesses!). The Amygdala has become ‘re-set’ at a higher ‘resting’ level of anxiety and it is this that causes your condition, whether that be General Anxiety Disorder, Panic Attacks, OCD, PTSD or phobias. This ‘re-set’ happens through a process called Operant Conditioning – it’s the same process that happens when you learn new activities – like driving or playing an instrument – learning through repitition.

This is why the slightest anxious thought or sensation sends you into anxiety and/or panic attacks mode. It’s why you don’t cope with normal situations like you used to, it’s why you have constant anxiety disorder symptoms or panic attacks (anxiety attacks), strange thoughts, pains, sensations, phobias and emotions…

The idea that you can train yourself to a better operational level is a fantastically hopeful one, but the question remains: what the hell caused the problem in the first place?

I wasn’t stressed out or unhappy when I developed these symptoms. Now that I have them, I’m very unhappy about them, yes – but what was the beginning? The beginning, I’m convinced, was a plain old physical malfunction. Can behavioral therapy fix THAT for me?

*wanders off, muttering obscenities*

Behold a screenshot of today’s How You Found This Site!

Please note that most if not all of the naughty search strings were typed into MSN Search, which is THE most useless search engine there is (puh-leese learn to use Google instead, like the rest of the free world) and which brings porno-surfing folks here on false pretenses. There’s no porn here, I just happen to talk like a longshoreman.