Grrrrr...Testing

OK, now I am finding this Deepest Sender extension difficult to work with in Firefox. It would not for the life of me configure my Wordpress account even though it said that it could. Hah! I guess that I should just shut up considering I even have Firefox available on this work computer. Normally our work stations have nothing more than Internet Explorer although there are a select few that also have Netscape plus two that have SlimBrowser. As I am a huge Firefox fan this is a most excellent discovery to be sure. I love all of the customizations that this browser has potentially available to it.OK I am actually doing this on work's quarter so I must dash. I was just doing a real quick test!

Just another day...

I am back at work today after having taken three days off of work sick. I still do not feel 100% but as Thursdays are my Fridays I thought it best that I put in an appearance. I am up to 70mg for my methadone which certainly does seem to be helping. I am trying to stay away from all other opiates as I really don’t need to supplement my dose anymore. I am doing pills really more out of habit than anything else and not a very good one at that!

I think what really made me ill was the speed that I ended up doing over the weekend. To be honest, I have yet to really regain feeling in both of my hands which is kind of frightening. Both of my arms although mostly my right also fall asleep at a moment’s notice. I also broke out in some horrific cold sores around my mouth which are almost healed but while I had them they were most painful. Oh well, maybe my lesson is learned now.

Backstreets

I am at home right now and I actually have the place to myself which is quite unusual. I am very much enjoying the solitude. I also feel pretty good about everything right about now. Today turned out to be a decent day after all surprisingly enough. Go figure. I worked until 6pm and then I had to rush down to the klinic for my doctor’s appointment. Jim was supposed to pick me up to take me there because I had less than half an hour to get there before it closed but at the last minute his father showed up and dragged him away to work. Not to worry. I hustled my butt down there and made it in the nick of time. I knew that he would have been all done with his Dad by the time I was finished at the klinic, but the evening was just so beautiful that I decided not to call him to come pick me up. I had my snow gear with me - my snowboarding pants, ski jacket, proper boots, etc - so I thought that it would do me good to take the forty five minutes and walk home. It was such a lovely evening considering how crazy the weather had been today.

I had almost forgotten that it was still winter so when I got up this morning I was shocked to see how much it had snowed overnight. There was a good six inches on the ground and the plows had yet to get out to clear it all away so the walk to work at 7:30am was a little on the rough side. Twelve hours later, even though it had been snowing for most of the day, most of the roads and sidewalks had been cleared nicely so it was a little easier going on my return home. The air was perfectly still and there was a slight sliver of the moon up in the sky that it just seermed so peaceful and I didn’t want this peace interrupted by the roar of the truck’s engine so…

By the time I got home, I felt very calm and at peace with myself. I almost had a natural high going good for me, something I had long since forgotten about. It felt good and it made me feel young again. I was actually smiling when I came through the door. Now almost four hours later, I have managed to hold onto this great mood. Hope that this is a sign of things to come. I know that I still have a long way to go and I don’t want to disappoint myself with unrealistic expectations, baby steps and all, but I have a gut feeling that this may be a preview of what is to come. Sweet.

Thunder Road

I have another journal at why do anything when you can forget everything? and I tend to update that more frequently than I do here. I like it here and all but I just don't have the time to update both although I am sure going to start making time as I see livejournal has sure done a lot of updates and I like them!

Well, I woke up this morning in a fantastic mood and I am still shaking my head in near disbelief cause this is truly a unique position for me. Don’t want to lose that vibe either! Jim even had a coffee all ready for me to drink when I opened my eyes. Wonderful. We will also be getting the truck back today around twelve so another good thing. Finally. Looks like the bill is going to be about $4900 but at least we will now have a vehicle with a brand new engine and a one year warranty on the rebuild. Oh yeah.

Now if I could just get my eyes to stop watering all would be good. At least my nose is not running as much as normal. It seems the moment that I get into work, my eyes literally start tearing. They don’t quite go bloodshot but they have this sheen to them, they kind of glisten. I will be leaving to grab my dose of methadone in a half an hour or so so hopefully this will put an end to this.

This past week and weekend we were pretty low on funds. I don’t get paid until this Friday and Jim’s parents were away so he wasn’t getting the normal money that he gets from them. Thank goodness they got back yesterday cause they dropped a hundred in our account so I was able to grab some groceries last night after work plus grab a couple of pills. The only things around were 100mg morphine so I only grabbed a few of them. I used to be a huge morphine fan way back when but lately I find them irritating at best although they do seem to break through my dose of methadone and the dilaudids definitely do not. I did a hit last night but left the rest for Jim cause he is not yet on methadone and is not sure if he even wants to go on it. I got off on the morphine just fine though.

The moment that I did it I felt my insides start to warm up and then tingle. I could feel my face turning a bright red. Morphine affects me beautifully when I nail that vein just right. Then the itch starts, that warm, comforting itch. Gotta love that. It takes about ten minutes for my skin to calm down. It is so obvious to anyone that knows when I do a hit of morphine. Must be that fair, Irish complexion of mine!

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

For the past decade my brother and I have had a tenuous relationship at best. A lot of this has to do with his choice of partners unfortunately. Try as I might I have never been able to warm up to his wife, someone that I actually knew for seven years prior to their dating. They actually hooked up because of Jim and I but that is a story for another day. Since my father died almost three years ago and since the birth of my brother's third child, we have seen little of each other. We work opposite hours and we no longer share similar interests. We did meet for brunch a week or so ago after not seeing each other for a few months. It wasn't as awkward as I expected but not as comfortable as I had hoped.

Of course the conversation started to travel in the direction of addiction, etc and the moment that this started I attempted to stop it. He was about to go all self-righteous on me and I was not in the mood to entertain this, especially from someone who smokes a fatty every single day without fail whose wife is a falling down closet alcoholic. The one thing that I did manage to sqeeze in was my asking for an explanation as to the differance in my life to his. His answer? Responsibility. Excuse me?

OK yes I live in this 24ftx45ft apartment in a congested, downtown city but appropriate for me, I guess. Maybe I'm just habitually drawn to it. I walk, take the bus and drive from time to time. Taxis are for running late, and late nights. So I live a pretty low profile lifestyle. I go to work, pay my bills (eventually) and observe from a distance (frequently).

My brother, married with three children and newly chained to a mortgage in the suburbs, judging me at this junction of our lives. Please...How can you say something nice to a statement like this? What should I say? "Well, I'm not working 14 hours a day to maintain a too big house that always needs repairs, to make monthly debt and insurance payments on a car that loses value every minute, to buy a flat panel TV." What do you get out of it?

I do believe money can buy happiness. But happiness for me isn't necessarily a big house, car, or job title, offspring, STUFF to show for myself. Almost all of what I have is in my experience and growth, so it's hard for certain people to see my success. And sometimes hard for me to see it but I know deep down that it exists. At least I am fairly confident that it does.

18th Nervous Breakdown

To say that I had a bad day yesterday is an understatement. Bad in the sense that I was not too proud of my behaviour. I ended up being pretty darn rude to someone who is really no more than an acquaintance but still there is no excuse for my behaviour. We had money yesterday for dope but no connection so things were getting a little panicky by the time I needed to go to work. Called my last resort and she said that she had a couple of pills on her but that she needed a ride to get some errands done. Now Jim isn't crazy about being left with her and I don''t blame him but sometimes you know, you got to do what you got to do.

So we pick her up and we buy two pills off of her. She said that she would give us a couple more for driving around plus some money for gas. She had one more on her so I asked if I could grab that now cause I had to go to work but she came up with some lame excuse but said that she would drop something off to me in a bit. Now it is almost six and I have called a number of times and they are still not back at work so I am getting a little annoyed as well as anxious to say the least. When I was talking to Jim once he said that they had already done another hit so for some reason I pretty much freaked out cause I felt left out and forgotten at work. I literally started spinning on him and said that I wanted him to come get me right now. He hung up on me about three times but he did come to work to get me.

When they pulled up in the truck I basically said for her to get out, that I didn't want to see her anymore. She started screaming at me that she wanted the pill back that she gave Jim and I said go ahead. This whole scene was also basically right in front of my work too. I threw the pill back at her and it wasn't even a whole pill, barely half. She said that she was going to punch me and I am like go ahead which is absolutely ridiculous coming from me as I have never been in a fight in my life nor could I really ever imagine being in one. I screamed at her that she still owed me $20 so she threw this half pill back saying that this was payment. Not bloody likely. Funny thing is that we have all of her stuff in the back of our truck cause she just got evicted from her apartment and she was calling at 7am this morning looking for it. Like good luck her getting it anytime soon from me. Again though I was pretty mortified with my behaviour.

In the meantime while we were screaming, Jim decides he wants no part of this scene so he takes off. I had already put my work bag and purse in the car so now I am stranded downtown without anything. I skulk back into work to use the phone and ask him to turn around and come back. At first he is like walk but then he comes back saying that I better be waiting out in front when he gets there. I was waiting out in front but on the other side of the street cause I was still feeling kind of embarrassed and all so when he gets there he doesn't see me right away so he starts freaking out at me. The rest of the ride home is in silence. I go into the living room to watch a movie and he goes into the bedroom to do the same.

As the half pill really didn't do much for me, I resign myself to an awful night and next day as I don''t get paid until 5pm today. I lay down on the couch and decide I should try to sleep. Just before eleven, Jim comes out of the bedroom to say that *** is on the phone and he wanted to know why he hadn't heard from us today. I said that I didn't get paid until Friday but he said that was cool to come see him. Yes, my night is saved. I expected him to toss me two pills to get through the night but he gives me eight! Bless his little heart. My savior. So just when I thought my day was an absolute right off, it is saved in overtime!

I saved one until today so I am not feeling too too bad now that I am at work. Jim is going to come downtown to meet me at five so that he can cash my cheque and pick up as I am at work until 8pm today and he has the day off cause he is going to Mexico tomorrow - more on this later - and he is supposed to be home packing. OK now I must at least pretend to work.

UPDATE: I just got called into my manager''s office concerning my mini-meltdown at work last night. He was really cool about it. I guess the shift supervisor put in his summary something like I was upset and nothing else. I explained that it was a family emergency and that was good with him. He said that if that ever happens again to simply email him about the situation and he would be fine with it. Sweet. I am lucky enough here at work with what I sometimes get away with that is for sure.