Notice me (notice me), Notice me! (notice me)

This song has been making me SO happy lately.  What a cute little diddy. :)

And then there was a time that wasp stung me. IN THE FACE.

I drew these at work.  Enjoy.

Minding my own business.  Putting on makeup to cover the last
time she stung me, when she hid in my face towel .  Bitch.

She rises majestically from her throne beneath my faucet.

Holy. Crap.  She is the wasp version of one of those Jersey Shore bitches.
Also, you should be imagining the "Darth Vader" theme music during this slide.

Obviously, I do battle with her.  NOT.  My "fight or flight" responses are heavily weighted toward flight.  See ya!

Done... I think?

Maybe if I made the margins wider?  Or changed the font?
Is this color too garish?? Oh bother...

I *think* I'm done messing with the blog design for now, but I'll probably come back and play with it more later.  If anyone knows a good system for learning HTML on one's own (like a particularly helpful website or book), I'd love to check that out.  My limited computer skills mean I'm never quite happy with the way things turn out!

This weekend was great, btw.  Didn't get sick, other than from too much funnel cake, saw some awesome friends and my fantastic little sister, and made it home in one piece to my friends, family, and the boy back up here.  I'm still not thrilled about taking the bright yellow, goopy, anti-malaria medicine (it's Mepron, btw), but you know what?  Things most definitely could be (and hi, have been) worse!

Also... NaNoWriMo starts next Monday!  Woohoo!  Who's ready to hit their head against a computer keyboard for 30 days?  I AM, I AM!  If you're a part of the insanity, you can find my page here and we can be the kind of crazy friends who attempt to write a novel in a month and cheer each other on at three in the morning.  Which is the best kind, really.

Under Construction

It's that time again, kiddies.  I want to start blogging more since NaNoWriMo is coming up, which is always ca-razy!  And I started a bunch of new medicines, including anti-malaria drugs, so that should just be a rollercoaster of fun and happiness.  Either way, this blog is a mess, and I intend to clean it up.  But it may get worse before it gets better.  Sorry!  I'll let you know when it's totally done!

Thanks for putting up with me my loves,
Robyn

*knock-knock* "Hello? Oh crap. No freakin' way. NOT YOU AGAIN."

No news is good news, or so they say, and the last few months, I'm happy to report, have been chock full of good news!  My classes are going swimmingly, I love everyone at my part-time job at Border's, and I've started dating someone whom I just love being around.  My best friend is back from Canada and I get her all to myself tomorrow night, and I've even managed to reconnect with friends who make me proud to call myself their friend.  Really, I can't emphasize this enough: in the general scheme of my life, this is a pretty good time to be me.

And yet... it's back.  By "it," those of you with personal knowledge of the big scary monster under the bed known as "my disease" (or "your disease," that's kind of my point), will understand my trepidation at even the tiniest signs that I could be thrust back into last year's state of affairs.

Click for larger image.  Dooo it, do it.

It started last night nearing the end of an ambitiously long day.  I got up at 6:30 to finish homework for a 9 am class, was in class until 1:15, drove straight to work where I stood without sitting at a kiosk for four hours straight, had dinner break from 6-7, and then ran around as a floater between the different stores for the next 2 hours.  I could feel it starting in my first class.  My hands starting to gnarl up, my joints locking and pretending to inflame.  No bueno.  I ignored it through my second class and went to work, where my back and shoulders started to follow suit.  Sometime around 4 pm the crazy part of my brain started to suggest that maybe all this standing had actually caused my bones to get mini-hairline-fractures, because that's what my calves were starting to feel like.  By the time 7 pm floater time came around, I was gripping stock between the palms of my hands to avoid having to curl my fingers into anything resembling a grip.

Ok, that part was kind of funny.  I looked really ridiculous.  My coworker was obviously nicer than me, because I probably would have laughed at the spectacle.  Well, maybe not, but I can laugh at myself anyway.

So now here I am, unable to hold my own body weight up with my arms, in pure awe that I finished this post, and seriously worried that this period of health I've been enjoying was a cosmic joke.  Sorry to be such a downer today, guys, but some days are just depressing, ya know?  And yeah, I'm calling my doctor today.  Provided I can work the buttons on the damn phone.  I'm kicking myself for scoffing at voice recognition technology. IT NEVER DIALS WHAT YOU TELL IT TO.  But, on the upside, no painful button pushing... and hey, maybe the random Hispanic man I end up accidentally calling will help connect me to my doctor.  Plus I'll make a new awesome friend.  Silver lining! Kind of! Whatever, I need a win today, so it counts!

Image courtesy of Allie Brosh of Hyperbole and a Half fame.
Click that link for the rest of the article.  She's AWESOME.

Speaking of needing wins, the new episode of "How I Met Your Mother" is hilarious.  Check it out immediately.  Robyn out.

Stop the world, I want to get off!

"The World Spins Madly On" by The Weepies, set to scenes from Across the Universe

My best friend pointed out in an email today that I've not been posting much.  While I think she was probably referring to my other blog, I just don't have the patience for a fashion post today.  In fact, I don't have the patience for much of anything lately, and that's kind of exactly the problem.  My health problems, today at least, are of my own creation.  My back and hips are killing me and I'm exhausted and a little nauseated.  I have unidentified bruises and unfortunately identified scrapes, all because I let my drinking take on a "no brain cell left behind" kind of fervor this past Saturday.  For the record, it was fun, and I'm not getting on anyone's back for the same behavior.  Sometimes it's totally okay and even downright HEALTHY to let loose and just have a good time, but my knowledge of myself and all of the tiny but telling things I've been doing to myself the past couple of weeks let me know that something's not quite right.  I'm off my diet, I'm unfocused, I'm completely aimless.  The only productive activity I've been keeping up with really is running, and that's more because, emotionally, it satisfies my need to escape from myself right now.

THE PENDULUM EFFECT.  Except this is just a picture of a pendulum.
But you get where I was going with this, right?

My best friend also pointed out that I may just be suffering from the pendulum effect.  I was stuck inside my house for so long, almost two years really.  I wasn't even able to go to my lame ass five-year reunion, which would have been fine if it were for the same reasons most of my friends skipped it-- they have a life, they're out of town, did I mention it was kind of lame?  But what BUGGED me about it was that the reason I missed it was because I was sick.  I was less than a mile away from the damn thing, under my covers, praying for my pain medication to kick in and let me sleep.

So her point was that now that I'm feeling better, it's completely natural to kick out in the opposite direction and try to do everything at once.  I'm applying for jobs, applying for a loan, trying to be at every party and reconnect with every person that I lost during my two-to-three-year absence from life.  And I'm being self-destructive while I'm at it.  I'm running around like the proverbial headless chicken, and I think the reason I'm doing it is because I'm so fantastically afraid that any minute, my time will be up, and I'll be sick again.  And I'll have to wait another two-to-three years to be fun again.  To be 24 again.  Or 21 again.  Or, what would it be then, 27 again?  The irony of the situation, of course, is that my current bedridden-ness-- the reason I slept til 2 and have spent my day wearing a path between the couch and the sofa-- is solely because of this kind of unhealthy behavior.  Because I've been super responsible at times to no end at all, and so now I'm testing to see exactly how irresponsible I can be before my body completely gives up on me.  And it's not healthy.  And frankly, it's starting to screw with my head in a big way.

So, readers, please meet me where I am today.  How do you move forward in a life where nothing is certain?  How do you move beyond punishing your body for being such a douchelord for so long?  Oh, and while I'm at it, how do you write a blog post where you don't use words like douchelord because your mom reads this blog?  HI MOM.

Seriously, I've got to know.  How do you get over the "tragedy" of your lost youth and just move forward with LIFE before that is lost too?

Failure at Facebook, but maybe not so much at life?

Image Source

Well, for the record, my no-Facebook pledge lasted maybe an hour before I got an email in my inbox and, you know, just HAD to go respond right away.  Oh brother.  I'll try again later when my will is more stalwart, but for now I think I've still dialed down some of the obsessiveness.  Though leaving the house would surely help as well.  I'm not housebound physically anymore, but since I currently work from home (freelance) and am fairly broke (um, results of the freelancing...), I don't have many reasons to leave the house during the day other than doctor's appointments and occasionally running/walking.  I do still go out at night sometimes, but it's just not the same-- sunlight makes me happy!  I'm just starting to feel like a vampire or something.  Bleh.

Image Source

My doctor's appointment on Monday went just fine.  Dr. M. put me back on antibiotics, but just doxycycline and not the other two, in order to mitigate the negative tummy reactions.  I'm still on probiotics and she prescribed a bunch of different supplements that I now have to go about collecting.  They're all from random online companies, too... one even from an Ebay store run by another doctor.  I've kind of been putting it off, but I'm totally going to get on that tomorrow.  By now, I've mostly learned my lesson about putting off my health for too long just because I feel fine now. Preventative action is the name of the game, people.

Image Source

In other news, I've actually been exercising lately.  Strange, right?  I've already got shin splints, but I'm determined to keep at it.  I've been 3 separate times in the last week, which is pretty on target for me.  I used to imagine the clothes I could wear if I were toned enough as an incentive to make myself work harder (yeah, I'm one of those girls sometimes.  What of it?).  I realize that's shallow or whatever, but if it works, it works.

It's not what I'm going on anymore though.  I try to imagine myself the way I was before I got sick, one semester in particular when I really got into running at night (unsafe but exhilerating), took up yoga, played intramural softball, and started rock-climbing for fun.  I felt strong. Solid.  Invincible.  Of course the next semester I became terribly ill, so there goes the whole invincible theory, but the point is that I've felt health and I'm trying so desperately to feel it again.  This is really cheesy, but I like to listen to Fort Minor's "Remember the Name," while I run to remind myself that anything worth having is hard work-- it's not just me and how life is unfair blah blah blah ad nauseum, lol.  Maybe it's silly, but the song makes me feel empowered and tends to send any leftover victim mentality issues right out the door.  I'm not in control of everything, but I'm in control of some things, and it's dumb to whine about how hard they are.  It doesn't make them any easier or get them done any more quickly.

Oh, one last tidbit before I go.  I heard back from WFU that I actually only have one more English class to take, which means that the last class can be anything I choose.  Woohoo!  I think I'm going to take a journalism class by this awesome professor who guest-taught one of my classes last semester.  She talked about social media and online journalism and how exciting the changing world we live in is.  I dug it.  So I emailed her and she's going to make room for me in the class.  Hooray!  She writes books about living simply, and her blog is here if you're curious.