Paint Scrapings and Insurance Dealings.
May 19th, 2008 by trancejen
I just spent three hours talking to Medicaid/care and finally, FINALLY got all of the computer glitches unglitched and found someone who knew their shit, was nice, and was willing to enroll me in a Medicare drug program.
Hallelujah.
I still won’t have any drug coverage until June first, so please feel free to continue to send me any unused Cymbalta, Lexapro, Topamax, Lyrica, and/or crack you have lying around the house.
I sincerely appreciate it.
Medicare is full of questions. What drugs are you on? How much? How often? Did you poop today? When was the last time you pooped? Are you taking fiber supplements for that??
Lord. I’m not kidding about the three hours. Questions, questions. What is my mother’s maiden name? Could I describe my last vivid dream?
I don’t generally mind talking on the phone, but today my house is being scraped. Yes, dermabrasion, now trendy enough to have reached the real estate market.
We are painting soon, and therefore we have hired Guys. I don’t like hiring Guys. I would rather do shit myself, but scraping windows on a ladder falls under the heading of Stuff That People Who Fall Down A Lot Can’t Do Real Well, so Guys it is. They sound as if they are jamming the scrapers directly into my brain, so lustily do they scrape. I am almost afraid to look outside for fear I will see windows loaded with gouges.
I suppose an enthusiastic scraper is a good thing, though. Even though the cats are going batshit crazy as the white paint rains down past their befuddled little craniums and even though the scrapers’ blaring of Rod Stewart is really not doing the ‘hood any favors, This Old House is getting a makeover.
This Old Jen could use one, too.
Happy Monday.
Cat Pharmacist Extraordinaire.
May 16th, 2008 by trancejen
You mean it’s May? And I have a web page?
Where am I again, exactly?
I hate logging onto the computer after a prolonged absence because the guilt trip I get from the box itself is just overwhelming. There are eight hundred pieces of Spam that I have not dealt with! My computer has been heaving underneath the very weight of it! My web page is fucking cluttered with casino crap! I have not been a good computer mama. Not at all. I suck.
So what have I been up to, with my sucky self? I had a forty-eight hour EEG this week. That was fun. You really haven’t enjoyed a good night’s sleep until you’ve rolled around with thirty-eight wires sticking out of your head. It was also a plus that the cats considered these to be Happy Fun Strings and kept leaping at my head like they were going for jump shots and I was the big-headed, fucked-up basket.
I can’t even begin to describe the pleasure.
I’ve also been on the phone. I have been on the phone all fucking day, every fucking day, with Medicare and Medicaid. I won’t get into the mind-numbing nitty gritty of it all, but there are Problems with my health coverage that have resulted in my having no medication, in my actually having to trick-or treat at doctors’ offices for samples like a raving fucking dope fiend; and consequently I have been listening to a lot of fucking hold music and talking to a lot of people named Shaquonda and Tiffany and Bob who could not possibly give less of a shit that I am really starting to go white girl crazy and lose my mind all over the floor.
So that is what I have been doing. And when I am kickboxing, I am picturing your face, Shaquonda. Right hand jab, rear hand hitting, right hook, ROUNDHOUSE UP YOUR SNARKY LITTLE ASS.
I actually have a caseworker who is supposed to be doing this stuff. My caseworker has approximately four thousand other clients. She works twenty-three and a half hours per day, never answers the phone, and probably cries a lot. She actually called me back once. I fell off of my fucking chair and cowered under the table, sure that schizophrenia had finally set in at long last. All I could do was babble incoherently throughout the entire twenty seconds we talked, thereby wasting the entire conversation and totally further screwing myself.
I can’t fully begin to express how much I hate dealing with Medicare and Medicaid. There are times I throw the fucking phone down and contemplate eating cigarettes by the pack.
I guess it should comfort me to know that everyone I deal with who does it for a living seems to hate it a lot more.
In other news, I nearly killed the kitten.
I spilled a bottle of Lyrica, which is a non-narcotic pain medication, all over the floor last week. My mom was in the kitchen with me and we frantically scrambled to grab the big red capsules before any of our cats did, because the damn cats act as if they are not fed and also as if anything dropped by a People is manna from heaven. People food! I’ve seen them eat all kinds of ridiculous shit. Salad. Coffee grounds. Crushed red pepper, that was fun. I dropped a contact lens once and had to dive for it for fear that the little buggers would be crapping my Acuvue.
Anyway, I thought that we got all of the pills. We were quick and careful.
I thought.
The next day I came upon a completely lethargic kitten splayed across the kitchen floor, eyes rolling around strangely.
“Skittles!” I said. “Kitty!!”
She looked at me weakly, lifted her head slightly and meowed the meow of a seriously fucked-up feline.
Oh God. She was stoned.
Now this is a large cat I’m talking about. She’s only six months old but she’s huge and fat. I thought that surely she could metabolize the drug like a People. Why not?
Then I thought, who the hell am I kidding? It was a two-hundred milligram pill! The cat was a goner. I was going to have to tell the J-Man I killed his cat. Mommy is a murderer, J. Mommy dosed your baby. This kitten is no more. She is an ex-kitten.
This was clearly no time for stupid jokes.
I called the vet while simultaneously lighting a cigarette in order to quell my nerves. My Keith Richards cat stared, lolling on the floor like a drunken sorority girl.
“Hello?”
“HELLO I THINK I POISONED MY CAT OH MY GOD WHAT DO I DO???”
The vet calmly explained to me that I was fucked, as it was too late to pump her stomach. (Too late! MY GOD) He told me to watch her and encourage her to eat and drink in order to get the medication to pass through her system more quickly.
“KITTY!! FOOD!”
“Meowwwwww.”
I ended up hand-feeding her every cat-delicacy I could think of. Tuna. Cheese. Chicken. She ate, but the next day she was still despondent, lazy, and drooling.
This was a cat who spent her days harrassing my other cats into panic attacks. I was sure she was dying.
I kept stuffing food into her slack mouth, and over the next couple of days she started to perk up, developed a kidney infection, and began peeing all over the house. We took her to the vet for a shot of antibiotics and now she seems to be fine.
Talk about your sighs of relief.
Bullshit, cat lover that he is, told me, “Next time only give her half a pill.”
I’ll have to remember that.
Happy Friday.
Stuff! and Nonsense!
April 23rd, 2008 by trancejen
Speaking of selling useless crap, did you know that I am still selling useless crap? Really.
It’s cool useless crap, though, so obviously there is a need for it.
Buy away. Buy for your friends. Buy your mother something for Mother’s Day. Buy something for your kids. I can attest to the fact that the J-Man loves his Mad Cat baseball shirt and wears it to bed almost every night.
Thankfully he hasn’t looked up the website yet.
If you have a suggestion for the products there or for another product that might not be there, shoot me an e-mail. I’d be happy to work with you.
In other news, I am eating a great deal of fiber. Consequently this morning I farted rather trumpetously and the kitten, ever-alert, spent a full five minutes trying to find said fart and attack it.
If that is not some funny shit then I don’t know what is.
Maybe you had to be there.
In still other news, I was awarded my gloves and wraps today during kickboxing. Right hand jab! Left hand hook! Roundhouse kick!
I am kicking some imaginary ass, people. There are some seriously fucked up imaginary villains walking the streets of the sout’ side, people with missing teeth and blackened eyes and broken noses.
Today we did circuit training, which I prefer to call the Seventh Circle of Hell. This torturous run through includes presses with fifteen-pound weights (this might not sound like much, but to my spaghetti arms they are MEDICINE BALLS), a stint at the heavy bag, punching with five-pound weights, and the bike, which is the easy station that everyone eyes greedily.
My arms now feel like Jell-O encased in a thin candy shell. I don’t even have enough energy to work up another fart for the cat to chase.
That said, I am now going to go collapse on the couch and watch Law and Order while all of you hungrily shop my website. Enjoy.
Happy Wednesday.
Bamzu Is a Virus.
April 15th, 2008 by trancejen
I have watched enough bad late-night television that I have started to become convinced that I actually need the products advertised on infomercials.
Sleep-Number Bed? Oh, yeah!! I fucking fantasize about turning the little dial on that glorified air mattress and snoozing my way to a better back, and I have actually become downright paranoid about the fact that my Old Ineffective (because even as we sleep we are supposed to be effective) Innerspring Mattress is KILLING me with added pressure points.
Don’t even get me started on the Tempurpedic. I have come very close to ordering free thirty-day trials of the Tempurpedic mattress under the name of every person I know to be delivered to this address, thereby ensuring at least a few years worth of gooshy mattress delight for the entire family.
I actually ordered a Ped Egg, a little device designed to scrape calloused skin from the bottom of the feet. It arrived in a few weeks, egg-shaped and innocuous-looking in a small box, and I thought, cute. Then I opened the thing up and saw that the bottom was covered in tiny razored fangs.
Being the ignorant sort of extremist person that I am, I thought that this was perfect and indicative of a superior product. This is going to work fucking great!
I was not wrong, as it turns out. It does work great. It removes the calloused skin with ease. However, the product is probably meant for a non-ignorant-extremist-person who will not use it with the force of a thousand angry men.
My feet have still not quite recovered.
The Bible is now available on DVD, for those devout and holy families who wish to worship all high-tech-like. I don’t know who is the featured reader, but it should be James Earl Jones, or me. I sound a little like James Earl Jones before I’ve had any coffee. Luke I am your fatherrr. And the glory of the Lord shone uponnnnn them.
James Earl Jones. Who else could it be, really?
One person whose voice I cannot quite deal with is Billy Mays, he of Orange Glo, of Mighty Putty, of Oxy Clean and Kaboom! - that dude is about as grating as Gilbert Gottfried on meth.
HEY, BILLY MAYS HERE! WATCH HOW I PULL THIS ENTIRE TRACTOR TRAILER FULL OF THE TWENTY-FIVE DIFFERENT CLEANSERS I HAWK WITH A PAPER CLIP AND THIS STICK OF MIGHTY PUTTY!! HA HA! YES!! I HAVE SOLD MY SOUL!! I’M SNORTING HIGH-GRADE CRANK OFF OF ORANGE-GLO-POLISHED MARBLE NOW, BUT I’LL BE GARGLING KABOOM! IN HELL!! IN HELL!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!
I imagine him to be quite sad in real life, when he’s not tweaking.
But then maybe I have an overactive imagination.
Happy Tuesday. What would you buy from the TV?
Kicking Ass, Or Trying, Part II.
April 14th, 2008 by trancejen
So far I have been to four kickboxing classes, and what I have learned is that I am fat and out of shape.
Jesus, am I fat and out of shape.
The kickboxing instructor is a former drill sergeant. This guy is like Billy Blanks on ‘roids. He likes to yell, and he likes push-ups.
He does not believe in girl push-ups.
I believe in girl push-ups. Prior to taking this class, I had never done a single man’s push-up. This led to a lot of flopping on the floor on my part, a lot of screaming on his part, and maybe a little crying. I practiced and swore and practiced and swore, and I can now do five regular push-ups. I also have actual breast pain.
I am doing pretty well, actually. I’m sort of exhausted after class, which lasts an hour and leaves me gasping for breath, but considering the fact that I am a medical mess and have four slipped discs I think I’m performing admirably.
Speaking of the four slipped discs, I did inform the pain clinic doctor that I was taking this class and I believe his exact words were, “You are a bigger glutton for punishment than I thought.”
Oh, if you only knew, Doctor.
I got the results of my neck MRI and went over it with the doctor, and he said that I don’t need surgery at this point but that I probably will before I’m forty. The numbness in my hands is typical of people with neck problems, I guess, and I just have to watch out for decreased motor function. Like BAdd TyPiing. I kid. He also ordered an MRI of my lower back, which I am having tomorrow. Next week I am seeing the neuro, where we will go over my brain MRI.
All this MRIing has left me wondering, do people hurl in the MRI machine often? Because I occasionally have gotten a bitching migraine in that sucker, and I sometimes have come close.
That would indeed suck.
The J-Man is well and is admirably excited about his karate lessons. He comes home from class (we have the same instructor) and shows me all his sweet moves.
He also has a new girlfriend. With whom he speaks on the phone.
I am not ready for this development. I feel that I just got done with potty-training. I am still working on table manners (I will be working on table manners forever). Can we not go back to Dr. Seuss and stacking blocks? Because I am not ready for some little preteen girly girl calling here, asking for the J-Man. Is the J-Man home? No he is not, you sparkle-fingered, High School Muscial loving little hussy! Go do your homework and leave my precious baby alone!!
Growl. Rawr. Keep your paws off of my cub.
It’s so ridiculous, I know. I just loathe the idea of the ensuing preteen heartbreak. Oh, the drama! The angst! Still, it’s a rite we must all go through, and at least at nine it’s still harmless.
I hope. If I’ve learned anything it’s that with today’s children, you can’t assume jack shit.
Happy Monday.
Kicking Ass. Or Trying. Part I.
April 7th, 2008 by trancejen
This morning I am attending my first kickboxing class.
I signed the J-Man up for karate at a place that offers a free trial week. That free trial week also comes with free kickboxing lessons for me, three times a week; and I figure if I’m going to pass out all the time I might as well do it fighting.
Actually I’ve been doing a bit better. I’m down to about twice a day, generally after I eat, so I just don’t eat all morning or I eat small meals to combat what seems to be food fighting me as much as I fight it. No passing out: no pissing and or/shitting myself. Although I do shit myself on a regular basis given the fact that I am a liberal and a Sox fan.
I’m leaving in five minutes.
I’m scared.
I’m happy, too, though. A week ago I was really, really ready to die. Now I think I’m ready to start trying again.
The results from my MRIs are in and I have an appointment with the neck doctor to discuss the progression in the damage to my neck and consider surgery as an option. I also have an appointment with the neurologist to discuss the fact that absolutely nothing has changed on my brain MRIs. Then I have an appointment to have my internal heart monitor read. Whoopee.
In a way, I really don’t care. Fuck all of that shit. I’m not taking it lying down anymore.
I’m kickboxing.
Happy Monday.
Losing Control.
March 21st, 2008 by trancejen
I’ve been debating about what I would say, you know; whether I would post some amusing yet inane story about going out, which I do approximately once every month or two after hauling my body out of the sizeable dent in the sofa, or whether I would post the real deal.
I guess today you’re getting the real deal.
Things are not good. I’ve been experiencing numbness in my face and hands for a while now but it’s been getting severe and accompanied by a weird painful tingling. This is something I can live with, but I guess the hand thing indicates trauma to the slipped discs in my neck from frequent falling that might require surgery. I’m having an MRI on my neck next week to find out more. The numbness in my face is a little more serious and my neurologist has ordered a brain MRI this week and a spinal tap pending the results.
I’ve also been losing control of my bladder and bowels, particularly when I fall. I guess no matter how politely you say you’re shitting yourself, you’re shitting yourself even more if you think it sounds polite. I am so embarrassed and disgusted by this that I can’t even begin to express it. And the fact that my son has seen this…
… I don’t have the words.
I do a couple of shots of Immodium if I plan to go anywhere. The other day I had a spinal epidural injection and all I could do was lie there and bite my tongue, praying I would not shit myself on the table while the handsome doctor lodged a fucking needle in my lower back.
This is unreal. This, me, who used to fucking pray, scream, cry and go to extreme measures to be able to take a shit.
I feel like I am living a nightmare.
Time is passing quickly, oddly enough. There hardly seems to be enough time to sit and while the day away watching endless Law and Order reruns. I blink and an hour is gone.
At night I think about suicide. I think about the bottles and bottles of pills I have at my disposal, but then I think about the shrink’s warnings that most people that OD end up brain damaged. I think about the razor blades in the box under the bed, but then I think about my mother finding a mattress soaked in blood.
I think about Jadon and what his life would be like. I think perhaps he would be pretty fucked up. I think perhaps he’s pretty fucked up now, watching his mother seize and piss herself on the floor. I think that I don’t fucking know which is worse.
I am so scared right now. I am so fucked up.
I am so lost in this. I am so terribly lost, and nobody can find me.
Trannies and MummyMethKitty.
March 10th, 2008 by trancejen
I had a nice weekend. Friday night I actually got up off of my fat (less fat, eleven pounds down!) ass and left the house to go see a friend of a friend sing at a nearby art gallery.
Afterward, fearing that too much culture would seep into our blood, said friend and I met my father out at a karaoke bar in an extremely bad neighborhood that seemed to cater to transvestites.
Rock. Never would I have figured my father for picking out such a cool little dive. And they offered two-dollar beers to boot!
Two-dollar beers!! If I were not on a diet, I may have moved in.
Trannies in the ‘hood wearing bad wigs and purple eyeshadow are enough to make my heart smile. Trannies in the ‘hood wearing bad wigs and purple eyeshadow that sing show tunes?? Pure gold, baby. Pure gold.
I love and am fascinated by transvestites. You are fucking fabulous and I admire your guts. Let’s talk about makeup.
The bar patrons loved my father and his renditions of popular dance tunes, too. My dad is always a hit whether belting out Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” or Akon’s “It Don’t Matter”.
Yeah, Akon. He also does Eminem. My father, the rap master. The Notorious J. E. W.
We also got MethKitty back from the vet this weekend. We brought her in just to have her declawed, but since the vet suggested we have her spayed at the same time we decided to take him up it. She did fine throughout the surgeries, but afterward she apparently was not down with the stitches and - gulp - gnawed them off.
I find that so completely abhorrent that I can’t even think about it for more than a few seconds.
Poor little gut-splayed kitty.
Gack.
OK.
Breathing.
Anyway, in order to prevent this from happening again, the vet wrapped her from armpits to hips like a little mummy. She has to keep the bandages on for ten days.
How this is going to be possible with the constant chewing of gauze that is going on, I have no idea. Since the cat has arrived home I have done nothing but chase it around the house attempting to pry its poor little face off of the bandages. When I’m not doing that, I’m trying to shove a dropperful of antibiotics down its tiny quivering throat.
If you’ve ever tried to give a cat medicine, you know what I’m talking about: Grab cat, who always seems to know what is about to come. Hold cat between knees in wrestling-like maneuver. Pry cat’s mouth open while cat bares teeth and grimaces in defiance. Shove medicine into squirming, squealing cat’s maw while simultaneously blowing into cat’s face so that cat will swallow. Let angry cat go. Stare in amazement as cat comes back, purring. Cats have tiny, forgetful brains.
For this reason, the cat does not hate me and sleeps curled up next to my pillow, purring furiously. This does nothing to assuage my guilt.
Sometimes it’s harder to mother the cat than it is to mother the kid. The J-Man and I spent a good four hours building a giant Lego ship from a kit and it went very well indeed except for the fact that we were missing several important parts. The J-Man intends to write to the Lego company to protest. I intend to join him due to the fact that Lego directions are so small and hard to read that I think I have now lost about forty percent of my remaining eyesight and now need a dog and a fucking white-tipped cane.
Happy Monday. Hug a tranny.
Old Clothes.
March 4th, 2008 by trancejen
What have I been up to? Carb counting. Weighing. Measuring my hips. This is what I do, obsessively, all day long.
In the interim I have been filling out mountains of paperwork for disability, taking the kitten to the vet to be spayed and declawed (and please refrain from bashing me in the comments, I was already informed that this was an evil practice and that I was SATAN and that the PETA people were going to come and Get Me the last time I stupidly mentioned declawing), grounding the J-Man for lying like a big lying liar, going out to dinner with Bullshit’s mother, and trying to figure out new recipes that don’t contain carbs.
Always it comes back to carbs.
Carbs. I have a one-track mind, and it is on a very boring track.
Today I cleaned out the closet and actually boxed up all of the clothing that doesn’t fit me to store in the garage for possible future use. I now have size four to size fourteen jeans neatly folded and waiting for me in copy paper boxes, and they are whispering.
“She’s not going to do it, you know.”
“Says you. She’ll fit into me.”
“You’re a fourteen. I haven’t seen her in eons. I don’t even remember what her ass looks like.”
“It looks pretty different now She went from bony to badonka-donk!”
“You’re fucking corduroy. You’re probably never going to see the light of day anyway.”
“Fuck off.”
My jeans are rude, but I can’t help wondering if they’re right. Will they languish in the damp, fusty garage forever? It seems that way.
The tops I tossed into boxes seemed impossibly tiny, like stuff my son would have worn two years ago. Did I ever actually wear that stuff?
Were my tits actually that small??
God.
I suppose at this point I’ve been fat for so long I forgot what it was like to wear thin clothes. Even though a lot of my played-out shirts and pants should probably have been earmarked for our annual summer garage sale, I just couldn’t let the stuff go, even the pink shirt artfully held together with safety pins or the ratty black t-shirts, of which I own ninety.
I want my skinny clothes because I want to need them. Even though I would probably need major reconstructive surgery to ever fit into a four again, giving those fours away would admit defeat.
I will never admit defeat.
So, I count carbs. I measure. I weigh and I weigh and I weigh. And damn it, I will fit into at least some of those rude pants come summer, mark my words.
That’ll shut ‘em up.
Happy Tuesday. I’m aware I’m being extremely boring.
Help.
February 28th, 2008 by trancejen
I have had a migraine for three days.
I am going to detach my head, hollow it out, and place a candle inside. Then I’m going to put it on the front porch steps. Jen-O’-Lanterns will become extremely popular, as will the holiday of Jenoween, during which schoolchildren all over the world will bleach their hair and roam their neighborhoods dressed in Old Navy pajama pants and oversized t-shirts begging for Vicodin and menthol cigarettes.
I am going to take my massively aching head and RAM it INTO a WALL SEVERAL TIMES because honestly, the outside pain would feel better than the inside pain.
I am going to take a hammer and smash my foot. Same principle. If someone else were here I might smash their foot. Different principle.
I am going to insert a crack pipe in my ear and pay a crack whore fi’-dolla’ to suck the migraine out.
I am going to smoke and smoke and smoke.
Oh, wait.
I am going to pull out all of my hair and knit a small blonde cat toy.
I am going to pull my eyeballs from their sockets and knock out a wall due to the pressure that will be released. Then I am going to remodel the kitchen. My mother will come home from work to an entirely new kitchen and say, “Dear God, it is beautiful - thank heavens you had that migraine!”
I am going to count the little stars that are appearing before my eyes. Then I am going to map out all of the constellations.
I am going to peel all of my skin off and then tape it back on with Scotch tape.
I am going to take the next cat that comes within a five-foot radius of me and thread it through the mini-blinds. Then I am going to take a series of artistic black and white photos which I will send to PETA.
I am going to remove my head. Then, making sure it has a happy, smiling expression, I am going to set it on the top shelf of the refrigerator, next to the milk. Hi, Mom! How was your day?
I need more drugs.
God, I need more drugs.
