Really need to be in bed

My Ambien is going to knock me out any minute now. I've had a productive day. Although getting to writing out the Final Exam for my class could have been done earlier than squeezing it in two days before it was scheduled, nonetheless, the exam is ready for a group of panicky students, some really will be panicky. I have never understood the concept of signing up for a class that requires mounds of visual information and not participate hardly a bit, hardly in class. I don't get it, no comprehension. I guess I feel if you are paying for your education, you would want the best for the buck, earn that top grade for the buck because you will be paid bucks for earning top notch. I'm starting to ramble about this, next topic.

I accomplished writing a 76 question/answer final exam ready to be taken on Monday, all done on the school's Canvas website which will make grading so much easier for me. Now if only I can get the assignment papers graded quickly I could wrap up this semester with a pretty bow and turn my work in.I have a week.

Speaking of a week, my biological system is running late. It has been 29 days. For someone who has been disgusted by the constant 25 day inconvenience, I'm feeling a tad concern over the interruption. On the usual biological schedule, I should be finishing up not still waiting for it to make up its mind. All the symptoms are there, just give me a sign so I can stop this nagging thought of "what if I am pregnant?"

I can't get pregnant, my husband had that fixed and there has been no scares for four years. I don't need to be pregnant, I'm in no emotional health to take care of another little one. I just can't be pregnant.

I'm going to bed before I place myself in a frenzy of worry.

Late at night

I sometimes like to walk around my house in the quiet dark. There is a sense of security seeing all my girls soundly asleep, the kitty curled up in Celeste's bed, the dogs snoring on their pillows, and my husband stretch out in bed breathing deeply, the sign that he is finally sleeping. I can hear a neighborhood dog casually barking at the night. The soft tick of the clock near the door. My mind is actually in a zen moment, feeling quiet for once. I have been grueling over the final exam questions all day, trying to get it done before the weekend is done. I delivered my last lecture yesterday evening and for the first time I moved through art history from Stonehenge to the Abstract Expressionist. All that is left is finishing up the exam questions before publishing on Canvas website.

Thoughts of work can be saved for tomorrow. And extra work it will be with three kids home all day. Maybe I'll go to my Mom's and let them fly free around her safe yard while I sit at her kitchen table struggling to get these questions and answers just right. I believe that will be the plan.

My Ambien is going to black me out any moment now. Last night I found myself hugging this laptop after I blacked out in mid sentence. Strong stuff, keeps the disturbing dreams low level. Prozac has the tendency to really enhance dream imagery. Makes for a rough night of sleep waking up to violent scenarios. And once I wake out of an Ambien sleep, I hardly ever get back to sleep.So Ambien take me away.

I'm starting to feel the slowness in my writing, probably time to go and find some rest.However, one more round around the house will feel tranquil, almost meditative. Go to sleep.......

Recuperating

It has been 24 hours since my mild breakdown, my drop into the low levels of reality. I woke up still with the bad attitude, I was cross with the girls. I am trying hard not to take out my gloom on these little girls. My walls were up and I felt expressionless. The girls were fairly cooperative getting ready for school. However my small one likes to compete for the attention, creating aggravating situations that could be avoided if she would just sit down and finish eating her breakfast. The competition is unreal sometimes.

I got the two oldest to school, laid down on the couch and be useless. What point was there to get up and do anything. Sierra snuggled behind my back as I faced the couch. It was cute until she started climbing on me and especially sitting on my head - she has a thing about that. Needless to say, I got up and found some kitchen cleaning to do. Of course, why not? Next was the laundry. The clean ones needed sorting. And I would really love to slice up my hands with a blade to make this pain of feeling insignificance to go away.   But what do I do instead? I picked out another horse photo to start another painting. What an idiot. I guess I'm going to torture myself by making more useless work. Another way to stab me with insignificance.

Although, not expecting to happen, I begin to feel the creative drive, a purpose. My husband, the sweet thing that he is, took me and Sierra out to lunch to cheer me up. He knew I would be upset by the rejection so he was prepared to handle me. He has been going through his frustration as well. We have had sole ownership of the canyoneering business here in Blanding but now we have a competitor. This person apparently has money coming out of the wazoo and, in a short time, has set up shop with gear and guided tours. That is our specialty and Jared feels everything is going to be taken away from him. I hate competition.

However, Jared has decided not to worry about what the other guy is doing and focus on what he has accomplished. He suggested I do the same. So now I have a canvas sketched out ready for paint. I'm still feeling useless but I guess the Prozac is actually working.I stopped taking the Zyprexa so now I can start feeling productive again, even if it is useless.             

Useless

Well I got my answer if I'm exhibiting or not - not. Why do I bother with these things? Probably because I want to feel successful in art. I want to be successful. Maybe this is a strong hint that after 40 years of doing art, I suck at it. I can't make a living working in a studio. I can't pay my student loans because I am going no where. All that positive feedback from school - lies. I don't have it and I don't know why I continue to bother with it. The expenses, the time, the frustration. I have lost touch. I probably suck as a teacher. The students are doing surveys now. Why not add another blow?

I want to tear up my art magazine because I'm a joke and all those pages of artwork are mocking me. I tore up a pastel drawing I finished today. It turned into a dud. I was already feeling like I didn't know what I was doing. That was proof. I don't work enough to be any kind of good anymore. Screw all my projects. They're expensive and waste of time. The only thing I'm okay at is cleaning dishes and sometimes laundry.

I'm packing up everything. My art is worth nothing which makes me not worth anything. I have depended on art all my life so that I don't know what I am anymore since my art is useless. I'm not even enjoying creating art. What do I have to show my girls? Nothing. I have nothing to show them, for them to be proud of. I'm quitting, I have nothing.

Impatience

It has been a week since the acceptance/rejection letters should have been mailed out from the Springville Museum of Art. I spent too much money to try to get into the Spring Salon. I bought two encaustic boards to look professional instead of my homemade variety. I spent a full tank of gas to drive the four hours to physically place my work into their hands. That's an eight hour round trip not including the hour and half at Walmart trying to find a nice Sunday dress for my oldest daughter. Apparently fashion trends forgot the tall 11 year old size. So here I am pacing trying to think of how I will respond to the notice. If it's a rejection, then I foresee myself wanting to throw my art material all over the room and giving up on art. I'm not making a living or even influencing anything with my work. Makes you feel worthless after awhile. Then I imagine if my work was actually accepted. I see myself jumping and squealing, waving the letter around. When I have this thought, I quickly jerk myself back to the rejection scenario because I don't want to set myself up for disappointment. If only the notice will come so I can move on with my excitement or disappointment. I'm bored waiting.

Bored

Yikes..Goggle changed their blog appearance since this morning. I hate it when servers change things.

I am Bored....bored...bored...bored...bored. I hate feeling boredom, it is so unlike me. I never get bored. I can entertain myself quite easily with drawing, crocheting, blogging, designing, and I have plenty of papers to read. But I'm not motivated to do any thing. I sit and stare at the TV. Blah. Like I said earlier, I even get bored with my shower.

I wonder if PMS has anything to do with my blahness. I do bloat, I do eat more, I feel fatigue, my schedule seems about right. Oh I hope it is just biological issues and not mental. Well, this particular issue does mess with my moods but they seem a bit more under control this time around. Possibly the increase in Prozac? That would be great because then I won't have the urge to drive over pedestrians. I experience Premenstrual Dysmorphic Syndrome. It's when a nice girl becomes murderous for a few days. The rage was unreal, and overwhelming from the slightest irritation. The symptoms were just evil. But I'm at a calm right now which is a good sign. Now I just need to work on my self-image.

Last week of teaching

Yes, it's the last week of teaching. However, not the last week for grading. I have 25 Semester Papers to read and some of the students make it so hard. I worked as an editor in some of my previous jobs. Grading Freshman and Sophmore papers can be quite difficult to digest. I'm not their English teacher I keep telling myself but some of the papers are as abstract as the paintings they are writing about. I still have three weeks to turn in grades so I'm not going to fret too much. What I do need to fret about is getting the Final Exam set up for next week. I have been so bad about postponing or procrastinating things lately. Maybe it is Spring fever. I have started my garden a bit early than I probably should considering the weather extremes of southern Utah. I'm also waiting for that high that usually comes in May. Then I'll get alot done.

Writing for Therapy

I was just reading in the BP magazine how writing is an effective tool for letting out feelings of depression or even highs. One tip is to write for 20 minutes without editing or worrying about how the words come out. So here I go -

I've been bored with taking showers. I don't like to stand in the hot water anymore. It's not that I have something better to do, I'm just bored. Or maybe I'm still in my unmotivated phase.

I actually felt the difference in breaking half of my Olazapine last night. I was worried about how my sleep would do but I did pretty well, even after sneezing in the middle of the night, I went right back to sleep. I didn't feel that hang over, sluggish feeling that I have been experiencing for the past two months. I wish I had done it earlier but I kept hoping it would ease up. It didn't. Now I'm hoping I haven't disrupted anything again. I at times will get on these what I call a "rebellious kick" and begin to mess with my treatment. I have a stubborn streak and it is still hard to accept that I have to do maintenance and that I will have relapses. It has taken some years to discover the pattern but my husband keeps an eye on me to make sure by stubbornness stays in check. I just hate taking medicine. I hate sounding like a skipping CD. I hate not having control over this condition because when I think things are going smoothly - BAM - a mood shift. Then I will question myself, question the medicines, question therapy, question if all of this trouble is worth it.

Right now I am at an okay place. Prozac is up to 40 and Zyprexa is at 2.5. Hopefully my therapist will be alright with that when I tell him this week. He knows my frustration. I've been extremely fortunate to have had the same therapist for 11 years. He has seen many sides of me. I almost kinda think of him like a big brother. He has that personality that shows he genuinely cares about you.

It's been 20 minutes and I'm getting sucked into watching the Celebrity Apprentice. Donald Trump just irritates me and yet I'm still watching. They're in the Board Room ready to argue and insult each other. Does this actually happen in the average board room?

Weed Pulling for Distraction

My hands are aching from pulling chucks of matted grass out of my Mom's flower bed. She's been trying to clean out the grass for years. It's quite ferocious and consuming of flower space. In my attempt to find ways to keep from eating and to find exercise, I volunteered to dig up the grass. Now I have a project that I feel compelled by guilt to finish. So instead of working on grading papers or my last lecture, I will probably be pulling more grass in a desperate search to find new growth of the perennials.

I hate the fact that I feel hunger frequently because I have always been the opposite. Usually I have to be told to eat because I don't have the time to waste on eating or I'm stressed or I'm too anxious. I don't have a love relationship with food except every now and then with chocolate chip cookies or Krispy Kreme donuts. I'm hoping I can get this under control and work the willpower - my pants are feeling tight, yikes.

The reason I got sucked into pulling grass was to manage my girls after school. My hubby was off in a canyon with clients and my girls can get bored real quick if they don't have enough stimulation to occupy there busy brains. They're banned from the Wii and the main computer keeps messing up. I do encourage playing outside but the two oldest would have to keep an eye on their baby sister which in turn means I watch all three of them and get nothing done. My Mom has five acres and no busy neighborhood street to worry over. I figure five acres should give each kid their own space from antagonizing each other. What do they do? They find the one spot with mud to crowd around and make mud pies. They're cute when covered in mud playing, but then one person has more mud than the other person, one person shakes mud onto the other's hair, and then we have genuine mud slinging. I tell them mud is done. Now I have to be in the same general area as them to keep the peace - so much for doing much in the garden. This is where the grass pulling came into play, a neutral location among warring sisters. However Mom appreciated the effort and I feel less guilty as well as productive. Feeling productive is good. Although by the end of tomorrow I will probably wish to have been more productive on other projects.

Hello

I have been encouraged to journal my thoughts about what I do daily to keep my sanity. I'm an artist so that makes me emotionally raw and self-critical of my work. I am a mom to three little girls - 4, 7, and 11 years old. That makes me busy with cleaning, washing, cooking, school assignments, refereeing territorial kids, and meeting extra-curricular activities like ballet and gymnastics. I am a wife which makes me emotionally needed, a good listener, a partner, an unconditional friend, and a lover. I am bipolar. That makes me unpredictable with my moods. And that is the condition I need to record so I can keep track of which episode I am feeling and how it will affect my family and work.

So far as I begin this blog, my condition has been stable with the medication Prozac and Olazepine. The most annoying side effect is still feeling sedative in the morning and the constant hunger pains. Unfortunately I have begun to gain weight and feel too sleepy to attempt any exercising. I'm trying to find a place in my cluttered house to put my mom's treadmill so that I can throw myself on it and break a sweat. I'm still in that process and my pants are feeling tight. Ugh. However, my moods have been functional. I'm not flaring up when my girls are being uncooperative, especially my youngest. She is mastering the art of being passive/aggressive with me. For example, I ask her to come here to put on shoes so we can go pick up her sisters at school. She comes but with slow steps, then she falls onto the couch, stretches, stick her feet up in the air, then tells me she doesn't want those shoes, and then I finally start threatening. She knows what she is doing and she knows my button is about pushed. I have never understood why they do these things to get me mad and themselves in trouble. Anyways, I'm not flaring up and that is a good thing.

My motivation is dragging but I think it is the Olazepine sedative effect causing the problem. I have to force myself to jump start. In a way, I'm hoping the increased Prozac from this week will trigger a hypomania. I love feeling productive and I have plenty of projects that need working on. We'll see what happens in the next couple of days. At least I'm stable finally after months and months of fighting with medications. But that is a story for another day.