hollyslowly | Recent Entries

In other fun things that have happened this year, I had a CT scan last month that was supposed to be covered by insurance and the doctor got pre-authorization for it as well. As it turns out, $1200 of the cost was covered by insurance, leaving me with a $100 copay, $100 payment to the radiologist, and then, today, $786 to the hospital that owns the machine. I called the hospital - I don't qualify for financial assistance because I have insurance. I called my insurance - yes, it was processed correctly; I can file an appeal if I want but the subtext was "don't waste your time." So the last of the money I was saving for a vacation (not happening this year, obviously) has gone to a CT scan that wound up not showing anything (yay, I guess) and the chronic sinus pain and pressure that I had been suffering from for six months, the reason aforementioned CT scan was ordered in the first place, disappeared about three days after I stopped taking a birth control pill with estrogen in it. Which none of the doctors I saw paid attention to.

I guess I get it, because I was on that pill for a few months before I started having the issue, but my blood pressure was also in the hypertension zone, and they just wrote it off to white coat anxiety? Without mentioning it to me - I read my visit notes online and they had it noted down for the record. And since then, I've discovered that BC pills with estrogen are NOT recommended to people who deal with migraines or chronic headaches - the headaches I had, the migraines I had when I was a kid. So I'm on a mini pill now, without estrogen, and it seems to be okay so far. BUT WHO KNOWS.

[It is JUST SO FUNNY that they decided men couldn't possibly be expected to deal with the side effects of hormonal birth control pills, so that idea was discarded and WOMEN were given the pill and side effects. SO FUNNY. HA HA.)

So, so ready for the weekend.

Crossposts: https://formanymiles.livejournal.com/30393.html

So I watched The Old Guard on Netflix last night and here is actual footage of me. It reminded me a little bit of The Losers, which I continue to love after all this time, and now I am going to have to order the comic book.

I would request it from my local library, but over the weekend I drunkenly placed 25 books on hold and APPARENTLY that is the limit.

Crossposts: https://formanymiles.livejournal.com/30124.html

I don't even know. I DON'T EVEN KNOW.

I still have my same irritating, boring job, but I did get a 3% raise last winter and my boss only yells at me sometimes.

Cute nerd from OkCupid is now a sheriff deputy after completing his law enforcement program in the fall of 2017.

ALSO WE LIVE TOGETHER NOW. AND WE HAVE TWO CATS. I was pretty nervous about living with someone, but as it turns out it's actually awesome. Our two year anniversary is next month.

What wasn't awesome was the last couple months I lived at my old apartment, my landlord started texting me about whether I had a "roommate full-time" now. I didn't - deputy works nights, 12 hour shifts, two days on/two off, so his car would be there a few times a week. NOW I'M JUSTIFYING IT.

Anyway, landlord increases my rent by $50, which I constantly refer to as my guest fee. And then the jerk kept my security deposit. I'm still mad about that - I kept that place in excellent condition as I am a tidy asshole at heart, and I cleaned it from top to bottom before I moved out. If I'd known he was going to keep my deposit no matter what I did, fuck no I would not have spent time cleaning the damn windows. AND SCRUBBING THE REFRIGERATOR DRAWERS.

Our new place is great, though. We're working on turning the second bedroom into an office/gym space and there's a community doggo named Dozer who hangs around and walks me from the car to my front door. He's a big fella with a mean bark, but last month I accidentally set off my car alarm and he threw up from anxiety.

I get to see my best friend every day now, which is the bee's knees. Night shift sucks, but I guess it does give both of us time to spend alone and soothe our introversion. And next week he'll be on a regular 8-5 schedule for a continuing education certification, which I'm terribly excited about.

I turned 30 last August (ahhhhhhhh) and wound up taking a solo trip to Tennessee to hike Mt. LeConte. It was really hard, and a lot of fun, and I also got to see

lauramoon! I did the Alum Cave Trail, which was incredibly hard. Got to the trailhead early in the morning because there are very few parking spots, and about two miles in, it started drizzling rain. The closer I got to the summit, the tireder I was, but it felt like I flew back on the way down. The restorative powers of summer sausage and trail mix with M&Ms in it. Almost walked past the turn-off for the lodge where you could buy snack bags - I walked several hundred feet further than I should have because of the heavy fog, but thankfully saw a wooden signpost notifying me that my stupid ass had meandered onto the Appalachian Trail.

I actually have been using Instagram a bit here and there, @bluish_dahlia. It's very low effort.

It snowed and iced our county last night, so I spent the morning working from home. Whyyyyyy I came to the office at noon I do not know. I should definitely have just stayed at home in comfy clothes. (Stupidly clicked on my work tag and realizing anew how long I've been unhappy here oops. The post about getting a new job within two years. . . from four years ago. HA HA. Ha. That doesn't even go into my boss having LOST HER FUCKING MIND last year.)

Crossposts: https://formanymiles.livejournal.com/29679.html

And I got an instagram. Which I will likely ALSO never use. @bluish_dahlia

Crossposts: https://formanymiles.livejournal.com/29372.html

Let me be in your service
like the others
mumbling predictions,
mouth dry with jealousy.
Parched tongue
thirsting, not even for the word—
for me the dry air is empty
again without you.

I’m not jealous any more
but I want you.
I carry myself like a victim
to the hangman.
I will not call you
either joy or love.
All my own blood is gone.
Something strange paces there now.

Another moment
and I will tell you:
it's not joy but torture
you give me.
I'm drawn to you
as to a crime—
to your ragged mouth,
to the soft bitten cherry.

Come back to me,
I'm frightened without you.
Never had you such power
over me as now.
Everything I desire
appears to me.
I'm not jealous any more.
I'm calling you.

Osip Mandelstam, trans. Clarence Brown and W.S. Merwin.

Crossposts: http://formanymiles.livejournal.com/28761.html

So a fun thing that happens every month is that my baseline anxiety level amps up by a factor of about 10 either right before or right at the start of my period. TMI. I've been on the same anti-depressant for several years, and miraculously that is mostly under control, but I'm still about 5'10" of anxiety most of the time, let alone when my hormones are doing the weird thing. Last week was ~The Special Time,~ and I was really wrought up for the whole day on Wednesday.

At the beginning of June a 22 year old kid from the next county over was killed in Afghanistan, along with two other soldiers. My podunk county actually has a regional airport, because this used to be where the corporate headquarters of a Fortune 50 company was located, so they flew his body here last Wednesday to bring him home. If you've never visited a small town - maybe just a small Southern town - funeral processions are a big deal. When one goes by you in the opposite lane, you pull to the side of the road until it passes. The hearse had a big escort - our cops, firefighters, and assorted Army guys lead it through town, and all along the route, people lined up on the side of the road to pay their respects. It was sad as hell.

Anyway, my, like, boyfriend or whatever (????????) texted me that afternoon to say hello and asked how I was, and in the spirit of 2017 being the year I'm fucking honest about my feelings, I told him that I was having a pretty bad anxiety day, and about the kid and the funeral procession. He asked if he could do anything to help, and I made a joke about him ending my work day early, because I really have to work at being vulnerable and my brain was trying to eat itself. About an hour later, he texted again and asked if he could come over and see me, even though we had plans to see each other the next day. And, in a surprise to myself, I actually wanted him to come over. So he did, and I sat on my couch in my pajamas and we watched a dumb comedy and he cuddled the shit out of me. Why is he so sweet, why is this going so well, and other questions: at nine.

Crossposts: http://formanymiles.livejournal.com/28631.html

I wanted to see where beauty comes from
without you in the world, hauling my heart
across sixty acres of northeast meadow,
my pockets filling with flowers.
Then I remembered,
it’s you I miss in the brightness
and body of every living name:
rattlebox, yarrow, wild vetch.
You are the green wonder of June,
root and quasar, the thirst for salt.
When I finally understand that people fail
at love, what is left but cinquefoil, thistle,
the paper wings of the dragonfly
aeroplaning the soul with a sudden blue hilarity?
If I get the story right, desire is continuous,
equatorial. There is still so much
I want to know: what you believe
can never be removed from us,
what you dreamed on Walnut Street
in the unanswerable dark of your childhood,
learning pleasure on your own.
Tell me our story: are we impetuous,
are we kind to each other, do we surrender
to what the mind cannot think past?
Where is the evidence I will learn
to be good at loving?
The black dog orbits the horseshoe pond
for treefrogs in their plangent emergencies.
There are violet hills,
there is the covenant of duskbirds.
The moon comes over the mountain
like a big peach, and I want to tell you
what I couldn’t say the night we rushed
North, how I love the seriousness of your fingers
and the way you go into yourself,
calling my half-name like a secret.
I stand between taproot and treespire.
Here is the compass rose
to help me live through this.
Here are twelve ways of knowing
what blooms even in the blindness
of such longing. Yellow oxeye,
viper’s bugloss with its set of pink arms
pleading do not forget me.
We hunger for eloquence.
We measure the isopleths.
I am visiting my life with reckless plenitude.
The air is fragrant with tiny strawberries.
Fireflies turn on their electric wills:
an effulgence. Let me come back
whole, let me remember how to touch you
before it is too late.

Stacie Cassarino.

Crossposts: http://formanymiles.livejournal.com/28236.html

I've finally found a good MeetUp group. I signed up for that site last summer when I was going through my 28 Years Old and No Clue What to Do Crisis; the first one that I went to was at a state park about 30 minutes from my apartment, which I'd been to before. So I figured at least if things got weird, I wouldn't be anywhere totally unfamiliar and I could bail easily back to my couch. But no one else from the group showed up! I waited at the designated trailhead for 20 minutes before just going on the hike on my own, but that definitely soured me on the MeetUp experience for a while.

I've been hiking a lot more over the past year or two--it's a good way to periodically collect the sunshine vitamins and it makes me feel closer to my grandmother who passed away four years ago. When my sister and I were kids, we always spent the weekend at their house, and Saturdays they'd haul us out onto the Parkway for general running around and roadside picnicking.

Anyway, a few months ago I found a group that had regular events at places I wanted to go, including the park near my house. I took the guy I'm seeing along with me for the first one -- although I did not realize we were dating at that point, despite having met him on a dating site, because there is a reason my dad calls me Spock, and it is because I do not understand humans, their emotions, or their ways -- and had SUCH a great time. There are a couple of different "hosts" for the group events, and the lady who lead this one and the last two we went on is a tiny redheaded terminator with a robot hip. She's a total delight. That was probably the best day I'd had since my grandmother died in January.

The second one we went to was physically the hardest thing I've ever done -- about 14 miles of incline, cabling, ladders, and rock scrambling. It was also the best hike I've been on so far. So challenging, but everyone really worked together to look out for each other and point out danger spots/loose rocks, and came out of it with a "we just went through a very pretty hell together" bond. I burned 5,000+ calories and ate my weight in BBQ, fried fixins, and Corona afterward. Great day. I'm really proud of myself for having done it.

It's so different hiking with a group of 8-10 other folks; way less stranger danger weirdness of being six miles up a mountain by myself and some 40 year old guy telling me, "Be careful out there!" while staring at my legs.

About two weeks ago, I did the stupid thing where you stand up too fast and all the blood rushes out of your head, swooned (LITERALLY SWOONED), and fell on the ankle I broke in high school, spraining the heck out of it. Scared the life out of Tripp and didn't do much for me either. It's mostly better now -- we went on a less arduous hike yesterday (with ponies! wild baby ponies!) and it held up pretty well; I'm still keeping it wrapped for most of the day, but the swelling has gone out of it, and it only feels slightly wobbly when I squat. We've been to four now and a lot of the same people show up each time, so I've started to make buddies. It's good to be around other people. I guess. To observe and record their behaviors, if nothing else.

Going to the beach in two weeks with my family. I had a good talk with my sister a couple of days ago about my relationship with her boyfriend -- they've been together over four years probably, he comes to most of our family stuff, we visit his parents at Christmas. I honestly love the guy and think of him as my brother. But around Christmas of 2015, they started fighting a lot and it seemed like they were going to break up; things would be fine for a day when they'd visit, and then they'd fight, and there would be a lot of miserable tension until they left. Hard for me to know how to deal with that, because I am 100% mean big sister when it comes to Shannon being upset, and I responded by emotionally withdrawing from my friendship with Max and being less patient with him. Which is a shitty thing that I do that I'm trying to do less of. She was really glad to hear that, because she was beginning to think I only tolerated him. I'm glad I said something, even if it took me up to my quota of talking about feelings before the year is half over.

Oh, and she introduced me to the band/singer Lord Huron, which I've been listening to almost nonstop since last week.

Dating stuff is going well. I haven't gone out with the same person for this long -- two months, which as Sara pointed out is not even that long! -- in a couple of years. I'm a friendly person, but when it comes down to it, I just don't like that many people, which is why the friends that I hang out with are ones I've had since middle school. Had the string of pleasant but unmemorable first dates before I met this one. I'm pretty reserved and I like my alone time, so I was really surprised after that stupidly hard hike where we spent all day together -- left home at 6:30am, got back at 8:30pm -- that I still wanted to check in with him before I passed out from exhaustion, and see him again the next day. It's nice. We have stuff that's "our stuff", like Trivia Night and the hiking group and the monthly used book sale. I might introduce him to my friends, which I have never done before.

But, like, WHAT IF THAT GOES WELL??? /Spock

Crossposts: http://formanymiles.livejournal.com/28095.html

Each grief has its unique side.
Choose the one that appeals to you.
Go gently.
Your body needs energy to repair the amputation.
Humor phantom pain.

Your brain cells are soaked with salt;
connections fail unexpectedly and often.
Ask for help.
Accept help.

Read your grief like the daily newspaper:
headlines may have information you need.
Scream. Drop-kick the garbage can across the street.

Don’t feel guilty if you have a good time.
Don’t act as if you haven’t been hit by a Mack Truck.
Do things a little differently
but don’t make a lot of changes.
Revel in contradiction.

Talk to the person who died.
Give her a piece of your mind.

Try to touch someone at least once a day.
Approach grief with determination.
Pretend the finish line doesn’t keep receding.
Lean into the pain.
You can’t outrun it.