Happy Canada Day!

To celebrate, I have TWO, count ‘em, TWO big reasons to be happy.

The first is obvious just by stating I have a reason to be happy - the walking boot is off after only one week and I’m in a tiny air cast, which is like an ace bandage.  And to top it all off, I got rid of the crutches and I’m wearing TWO, count’em, TWO shoes!!!!

The other great news really doesn’t have the number two in it, but yet it’s a big deal number all the same.

Whenever I go the doctor’s office for anything, I turn around so I don’t have to look at the scale, but I always have some idea based upon all the “chunk” noises the weights make.  I have a scale at home, but the last time I weighed myself was probably over a year ago.  But my pants were fitting a lot looser than they had in the past, so I decided to see if I truly had lost any weight.

Imagine my surprise when the number came up.  I lost FIFTEEN, coun’tem, FIFTEEN pounds!!!!!

I have no idea how it happened - I certainly haven’t exercised much, especially with this ankle fiasco.

Maybe that parasite thing was good after all?

Last week my friend Marley texted me and asked if I wanted to go to the Stevie Wonder concert with her and her mom.  I’m not sure Marley is even old enough to know more than one Stevie Wonder song (nor did I really remember more than one until I got to the concert!).  But since it was free, hey, sure why not!  (Plus her mom is really cool so I knew it would be a lot of fun.)

Well, the concert happened to be Friday night, which was of course the day after Michael Jackson died.

Sure, I was a Michael Jackson fan back in the ’80s (who wasn’t?), but yeah, like most people, I just considered him these days a freak covered in the tabloids.

So I wasn’t sure how to feel about his death.

Stevie Wonder of course knew Michael personally.  So it seemed appropriate for him to dedicate the concert to Michael (as opposed to say, Guns and Roses doing a dedication).  He covered a lot of Michael Jackson songs - Beat It, Hard to Say Goodbye (quite appropriate, yes).  The crowd stood and sang along.  At the end, after Stevie and his band took their bows, they didn’t go backstage right away, but stood there for a brief montage of Michael Jackson songs.

Stevie cried.

It was a perfect tribute.

And to me it was the perfect way to remember a man who was everywhere in my formative years and truly was the King of Pop.

After realizing this morning before taking a shower that I had no duct tape left, I lost it.  HOW THE HELL AM I TO SECURE THE GARBAGE BAG AROUND THIS F*@#ING CAST?

Making do with masking tape, I promptly called my doctor and said GET THIS CAST OFF OF ME!  I had already been able to walk almost an hour at a time without any crutch at all and I felt like I was a 9-month pregnant lady who wanted the damn baby out already (not that I would know first hand about pregnancy.)

I apparently made my case, because at lunch they removed the cast and gave me the big walking boot.  Toe touching only, but when my foot is at rest (on the couch, on the wheelchair footrest at work, but unfortunately not while I’m asleep), I can take the walking boot off.

THANK GOD!

And the biggie - I can take it off to take a shower!  No more garbage bags!

The jungle that is my leg hair - beware of the razor!!!

Whoooo Hooooo!

After over two weeks of couch rest per the doctor, I’m healing fast and last night tried just one crutch.  Not bad! I know I’ll hurt a bit more after the day is over, but I’m frankly sick and tired of the wheelchair.  (Basically the only way I could function and have at least one hand available to carry things - ie feed the dogs each morning - was to use a rented wheelchair.)  I’m in the cast for at least another two weeks, but hopefully after July 1 they can put me in a walking boot that I’ll be able to take off (and shower properly - god I don’t want to see the jungle growing underneath that cast!).

So what else is new?  Well, this trip to India got REALLY expensive really fast ($500 in extra airline fees, $500 phone bill, god knows how much in doctor bills, etc., etc., etc.).  Plus a credit card I had a wonderful rate on (9.3%) has now decided to up the rate to 15% - guess that Congressional bill really helped me out huh?  Thus I’ve been looking for any way to cut costs possible and have decided to take the 10% penalty on withdrawing from my Roth IRA early to pay it off - better 10% than 15% eh?

So what else got cut?  Pretty much the remainder of my trips (excepting Iceland because the non-refundable airline ticket was the biggest expense since the krone tanked and everything else was prepaid.  However, it had to get shifted from July 4th to the end of August because of this damn ankle thing.)  Luckily most foreign airlines in Peru, Ethiopia, Dubai, etc. WILL refund your money minus a small fee, UNLIKE American airlines. (My Peru trip was frequent-flyer miles, so I can just redeposit those in my account - which frankly is now worth three domestic trips and a trip to Hawaii, so thank god those miles don’t expire.)

I still have the airline ticket to Dubai in January which doesn’t  happen to be refundable because I booked it through an American site.  I have no idea what I’m going to do with it because I could exchange it for a credit and fly elsewhere that Emirates flies, but there’s two problems - right now I really don’t want to go anywhere else that they fly (India put me off on non-Western countries for a while) and two, for some reason most all of their other fares are like $11,000, which is truly outrageous, even for Emirates.  Don’t ask me how I got a $1000 ticket - I have no idea how, but apparently it was a steal.  However, my friend M has taken an internship in Tunisia for next year (but may be in Rome on vacation in January), so I may use the ticket to go visit her in either Tunisia or Rome, but well, there’s another $700-900 ticket to get from Dubai to those places.  AAGGHH!  I guess I’ll just sit on it for a while.

Then I’ve had to quit shopping at the local community mercantile, complete with local and organic foods, which I still believe in strongly but just can’t justify the expense at this juncture in my life.  Bologna salad is back for this summer (although I admit to probably having made it anyway because it’s the perfect summer food and reminds me so much of my grandma).

* Aside - I’ve determined that June is my absolutely favorite month of the year, and not because of my birthday.  The breeze is still moving, the birds are chirping, fireflies are out and my first try at strawberries was successful!  Every day I’d wheel my way down to the end of my driveway where my kitchen garden bed is and pluck a fresh strawberry (or two!).  Ahhh … nothing better!

Back to cutting costs (because well, no raises or cost-of-living adjustments this year of course, even though it’s a state job) - I decided to cancel my Internet.

SHOCK!

Actually, I have time at work to surf the most important things, and if all else fails on the weekend, I can go to work (a short ten-minute drive), go to the library, or take advantage of a bunch of free wifi spots in town (provided I don’t buy some expensive coffee or something).  I also realized when talking to my therapist (yes, I picked that up again right before I left for India - thank god I did!) that the Internet can be deadly for me.  Not only did I spend too much time on it at home (after surfing it lots at work too!) and neglected the poor puppies more than I should have, but it also made it waaaaay to easy to purchase things and spend money I really didn’t have.

So now I have a challenge - pay off the rest of my credit cards as quickly as possible, which will be a slow and painful process.  However, I’ve confessed my debt to my therapist (as well as the entire Internet world now) and I have to confess weekly to her if I’ve fallen off the wagon.  I’d never carried debt other than a mortgage until last year when I hurt my back and had to take leave without pay (thank god that wasn’t the case this time), but once I put stuff on the card then to cover my bills, it was like stepping off the cliff.  You can run up a lot of debt in a year, trust me.

In the end, I guess it’s ironic - I’m trying to get rid of my physical crutches one at a time and I’m also trying to get rid of my financial crutches as well.  Wish me luck - I’m gonna need it.

Well, it’s time for a post post-India.  Let’s just say a broken ankle and a parasite left the end of the trip with much to be desired in the way of pleasure.  So I’m sure I’ll re-evaluate the whole trip later as a positive, but right now I’m just very happy to be home and resting on my couch per doctor’s orders.  Anyway, I’ll post some pics anyway:

But it was the people who made the trip:

My wonderful driver Junun.  I couldn’t have done without him.

Thanks everyone for all your kind comments lately.  Last week was sheer hell, but I made it through and my new meds finally seem to be kicking in and I’m feeling much better.  Just in time for India!  I leave next Friday (10 days!), so I guess I’d better progress on to Argentina Part 2:  Architecture:

I love architectural history and am slowly finishing my BA (degree three!) in Architectural Studies.  So a big reason why I wanted to go to Buenos Aires was to see the architecture.  The boom in Argentina’s economy happened late 19th/early 20th century, so a huge amount of building happened.  Because of its vast number of European immigrants, they looked to Europe for inspiration.  Thus, lots of Buenos Aires really looks like Paris:

(This is actually an abandoned Engineering School!)

This seems more Germanic or Dutch to me.

This one seems Swiss.

One of the few churches I saw.  My friends in Argentina told me that although the Catholic church has political power in Argentina, it has no cultural power - people don’t really marry, they just live together.  Ironic for what we perceive as all-Catholic Latin America eh?

Ironic also is that the most expensive real estate in Buenos Aires is Recoletta Cemetery, where Evita is buried.  The architecture of all these crypts is amazing:

This was my favorite, of course, as she has her pet dog:

And just to be fair to the cat lovers out there, the cemetery is literally claimed by feral cats:

Unfortunately, however, the relatives of the deceased must continue to pay to maintain these crypts and many are in poor shape.  Additionally, it seems such a strange thing to see so much money literally wasted on the dead when so many people in Argentina, historically and still today, live in poverty.  I left the cemetery with very mixed feelings.

Other famous architecture:

This is La Boca, which is now basically a tourist trap area, but originally this area of Buenos Aires was settled by poor immigrants who could not afford much, so they took leftover paint from the port area near where they lived and covered their tin shacks with it.  To this day, every home in the area is painted these wild colors.

This is a famous bridge designed by a Spaniard as part of an effort to revive part of the waterfront area of Buenos Aires (note all the modern skyscrapers in the back).  It was meant to evoke the pose of two tango dancers, which I can kinda see.

Finally, this isn’t quite architecture, more sculpture. It is a mechanical metal flower “Floralis Genericas” and its petals open and close with the light, just like a real flower.  When I was flying into the domestic airport back from visiting my friends, it was at night and we flew right over it and it was lit up as well.  WAAAAAYY COOL!

So now I have one last installment, Argentina Part 3: Friends and Waterfalls.  I promise I’ll get it done soon as the clock is ticking … India’s coming up soon!

Well, I’m back.  Yet another round.  God has deemed that today I am to be alive, so I am.

Yesterday I went home for a few hours and cried myself to sleep.  I promised I would be back to cover the receptionist’s trip to the doctor, but honestly, I didn’t think I’d make it much longer once she got back.  But she didn’t.  There was potential for strep throat.  It was a sheer act of will for me to last those four hours.

I did make it to the Stop Day (free day before finals start) Eve Party at church last night, but only lasted an hour.  I didn’t want to go home and sleep (I’m really not physically tired at all) - I just couldn’t be social anymore.

Today, though our receptionist is back and luckily does not have strep throat, so I am no longer covering the front desk entirely by myself.  That is a relief in itself.  I hope the day looks up, but I don’t count on it.

I’ve investigated the research and have discovered that having to switch medicines is normal, as well, BiPolar does get worse.  That in itself is also depressing.  So I contine to fight the number one depression of the illness and the depression over the illness.

Pray for a so-so day and I’ll be back again tomorrow, writing at home where my photos are, so perhaps I’ll add another post about Argentina.  This of course, while I should be writing my final paper due Tuesday (which of course I have not started).

Wish me luck for Day Three.

Yesterday’s post was a bit of a catharsis.  For some reason lately I don’t want to share, but it felt good to dump it all out, and you know, I’m not sure that I have many readers anymore anyway.

I’m exhausted.  It takes all my energy to go to work.  I’m not physically tired when I wake up, but the mere mental work it takes to face yet another day of uncertainty - will it be a good day, a bad day, or please just a so-so day - leaves me exhausted.  On a bad day, I get out of my car at the parking garage and start crying.  I can break into tears at it seems like anything.

And I’m exhausted from work.  I sit in the front office and am responsible for sharing receptionist duties.  When our main receptionist is out sick (like she was the last two days), it’s all I can do to smile when people come in and be cheerful on the phone.  Then there’s the other stuff I’m supposed to be doing as well, but I don’t have the energy or mental focusing skills to do them.

When I get home, all I can do is sleep.  Again, my body is not tired, but my mind is.  My housework has gone undone for over a month.  There are ants streaming in to lick up the remnants of the multiple ice cream containers sitting on my counters, some of which whose contents were eaten in one sitting.  I can’t remember the last time I took out my trash.  I’m about out of clothes in my closet that are clean.  I just don’t care or even have the energy to care.

And yet there are those random semi-manic moments when I seem to blow thinking of finances out the door - let’s order a pizza!  Let’s deliver flowers to myself on May Day!  Let’s order another cute dress from that expensive catalog!  Let’s go to Iceland for a ridiculous three-day weekend!

And then three hours later I’m ready to cry again.

I got new meds to try yesterday, so perhaps they will help.  I’m not holding out much hope.

I write the following with a cautionary note:  If  you have suffered from mental illness and depression for any amount of time, the thought of suicide is hard-wired into your mental chain of reasoning.  These thoughts are usually very fleeting, and when they’re not, they’re scary.  I hadn’t had even any fleeting thoughts of such for several months and that was a relief.  But lately the fleeting thoughts have showed up again.  They’re not serious, but the mere idea of “giving up” is certainly appealing at times when you are just exhausted.

So here I am at work again, exhausted and ready to cry at a drop of a hat.  I’m jumpy and even basic “good morning” “how was your evening” conversation between the folks in my office is making me jittery and anxious.  And of course I left my anti-anxiety meds at home.

So thanks for listening if you’re out there.  Tomorrow I’ll get up again and repeat.

Every time I think I’m going to spend an evening uploading some more photos of Argentina, I never get around to it.  And then I get stressed out because I realize I’m leaving for India on the 22nd and I have yet to share the last trip!

And stressed out is not what I need right now.  I’m struggling so emotionally.  At the same time I lost Toby, for various reasons that are just too complicated for me to explain, I realized that one of my longest friendships, 20 years, was over.  She hadn’t been talking to me for six months anyways, which everyone has assured me was her issue and not mine, but that same week I lost Toby, I realized that she was gone as a friend as well.  I’m grieving for two, not just one.

I’ve been working hard with my doctor to try to get meds sorted out so this depression finally can begin to lift - we keep trying different combinations and I’m just not making it.  Tonight I go to pick up yet another prescription at the pharmacy and try to get things back to somewhat normal again (and especially before I go off galavanting around the world again).

I’m exhausted with the process.  People can understand easily how a person with a chronic illness can become depressed because of the illness.  Just lately I realized that it is possible as well to become depressed because of chronic depression/mania mood swings.  I told my aunt this morning in our daily phone calls that I can see how people with mental illnesses may not necessarily die younger because of suicide, but perhaps also because their body is just worn out from coping with all the ups and downs of their illness.

And yet little manic periods still appear.  I shouldn’t be spending as much money as I am, but I go on these little jags and do things like book a three-day-trip to Iceland over July 4th weekend.  And I justify it saying, well, no more clothes for awhile.  And then I buy a cute sweater on the Internet.  And the Internet is often a bad place to be when you’re manic.

Especially when you hit the dating sites.  I am not a slender, athletic and toned woman; I have grey hairs appearing; I prefer reading outside on the porch to riding a bicycle 20 miles; I prefer doing most anything to watching TV and especially professional sports.  Needless to say, I am not an ideal match for any guys currently on the dating websites in my area.  And that makes me feel depressed - I weigh too much, I’m not coloring my hair anymore because I’m saving my money instead for those trips to Iceland and Peru and wherever else I’m going.  And anyone I meet otherwise is either my age and already married or college age and of course way too young.

So, yup, I’m struggling.

But when I have the energy, I’m enjoying Walter (a pure delight of a dog), reading up on my Indian history, religion and culture (Hinduism is just so confusing at first!), and trying to enjoy puttering in the garden when it’s not raining or too wet.  I have my last class paper to write this weekend, but I really am not all that excited about it.  I have to figure out the lowest grade possible that I can receive and still get a decent grade.  A’s are no longer necessary.

So keep me in your thoughts and prayers.  I’ll try to get the rest of those Argentina photos up for you soon.

I’m still really fighting depression and really haven’t felt much like reading or writing blog posts, but I know I am long overdue and owe you stories/photos of Argentina, so here goes.

Cutting to the chase of the famous stuff, let’s just jump right in:

Evita

Where She Used to Live, the Casa Rosada.

Where She Lives Now, Recoleta Cemetery

Yes, Madonna really did sing from the balcony at Casa Rosada when they filmed the movie Evita.  However, more interesting was listening to some recordings that were at the Evita Museum of the real Evita speaking from the balcony.  Very powerful speaker, to say the least. For those of you that don’t know the story: After Evita died from ovarian cancer in her early 30s and her husband fell from power shortly thereafter, Evita’s body was hidden throughout the city, mutilated, smuggled to Italy and buried under a different name for many years, then found and buried in Spain, and then finally brought back to Argentina to her family tomb in Buenos Aires.  The Evita Museum was actually one of my favorite things in Buenos Aires - well done and some really cool exhibits of her clothes, which were definitely fabulous.  (Sorry folks, no pics there!)  (And I’ll talk more about Recoleta Cemetery itself in another post.)

Tango

After Evita, Buenos Aires is probably best known for Tango.  I went to the Tango Museum in the morning, had a private lesson at my hotel (great fun!!) in the afternoon and then went to a Tango Show at a famous turn-of-the-century cafe that night (the famous Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was a regular patron).  The musicians were fabulous as were the dancers, and they did a really nice rendition of my favorite Astor Piazola piece (he’s a famous Argentine composer who took tango to the classical music world).

Protests

Protests are a daily occurrence in the bizarre political world of Argentina.  This is the mother, literally, of all protests.   During the military dictatorship from 1976-83, thousands of middle-class people, largely students, were abducted, tortured and killed, most for no reason at all.  They became known as the “Disappeared.”  When the dictatorship was overthrown, a group of Mothers of the Disappeared, wearing their white scarves, started protesting for the release of information about these tortures and this period of history.  Every Thursday at 3pm the mothers continue to protest for this information, walking in a circle around a statue in the middle of the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Casa Rosada (note the white scarf painted on the sidewalk denoting their path).

Machismo

Okay, what else could one say about this huge obelisk in the middle of the widest boulevard in the world?  Seriously - it’s like 32 lanes wide and takes two cycles of traffic lights to cross - you can’t even do it in one if you run.  But regardless, Argentina lives up to the preconceptions of military/goverment machismo.  This boulevard is named the Ave. de 9 de Julio, and every other street/plaza/building/whatever seems to be named after an important military/government date or something.  May 25th was apparently another important date besides July 9th.  I have no idea why.  But the preconceptions are true - the big, massive, impressive buildings were all government ones.  Elsewhere in Latin America the Catholic Cathedral dominates the landscape, but in Buenos Aires they were hard to find.

And speaking of military … remember the Faulkland Island War?  (Okay, if you’re in Argentina, it’s the Malvinas Islands.)  Anyways, the Argentines really remember it (their spectacular failure in invading the Islands is a big reason the military dictatorship was overthrown).  So much so that this lovely tower which the British (a big trading power with the Argentines in the late 19th/early 20th century) gave the city:

Now faces this Memorial to those Argentines who died in the War of the Malvinas:

Think they’re still bitter they lost?

And finally …

Lots of Dogs

See …. I’m not the only one with lots of dogs!  No, seriously, this is a professional dogwalker and Buenos Aires is known for their dog walkers.  They’re everywhere (as is the poop!) and made me smile the whole trip.  And speaking of dogs, this is Fernando:

Resistencia, the city in the north where my friends are doing their mission work, is filled with stray dogs.  Back in the ’60s, a prominent businessman took a stray under his wing, named him Fernando, and he soon became a mascot of sorts for the city.  This statue is on the main square, and another is near the cafe where Fernando is buried.  A local artisan at one of the evening fairs had sculptures of Fernando, so I had to buy one of course.  The sculpture is anatomically correct, which is yet just another reflection of machismo Argentine society and the reason why there are so many strays in Resistencia to this day.  Stealing from Bob Barker … remember to spay and neuter your pets!

Next Installment:  Argentina Part II, Architecture