I'm not ignoring you. I just hate you.

The other morning I woke up, after hitting the snooze on my alarm eleventy gazillion times, and proceeded to go about my morning routine to prepare for a day at the Internship from Hell (which, by the way, has gotten much worse than what has been described here). I'm drinking my delicious French Roast coffee, reading the newspaper and checking my email. Same as always.

When I was taking my breakfast dishes to the sink, I noticed that the dishwasher was full of clean dishes, so I emptied it and then put the few dirty dishes from the sink into the dishwasher. I then proceeded to wipe down the counter, which morphed into pulling out the spray cleanser, moving each and every counter-top appliance, then vigorously cleaning the entire counter.

A thorough cleansing of the counter led to the microwave getting the star treatment makeover and each and every cupboard being wiped down until I noticed that the floor was in need of sweeping and mopping. After cleaning the kitchen floor to a state beyond pristine, I noticed the clock. A fair amount of time had passed since I'd finished my breakfast and I should've walked into the library over an hour ago.

Oh crap.

I stood there and fretted for a bit and then sampled various excuses in my head to explain my tardiness/absence. I was sick/had an appointment/had a family emergency/got into a car accident/etc. I feared using any of these excuses lest I jinx myself and have the inevitable karma-kickback occur. As I was pondering my escape, I noticed that the living room was in need of dusting.

My newly-dust-free living room also needed to be vacuumed and not just in a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am way, but really thoroughly and by moving every single item of furniture to clear away the underneath debris. I then proceeded to painstakingly vacuum every speck of dust from each and every stair leading to the upstairs portion of our townhouse. I windexed every glass surface, making every mirror sparkle and rendering nary a smudge on the tv, coffee table, china cabinet or on any of our hanging art. I wiped the dust off of the tops of the molding throughout the house and wiped down each and every faceplate of each and every lightswitch.

What the hell was happening here?

I looked at the clock and, noticed that it was in the middle of the afternoon. I felt a panic attack coming on and tried to consider my options. What should I say to them? I knew that if I emailed them, it would look cowardly and as if I were lying. I could call but, at this late in the afternoon, what on earth would I say? And would they really believe me? I hadn't planned on bailing for the day...I. Just. Didn't. Go.

I called my lovely wife, who suggested I call - and the sooner, the better. I told her I didn't think I could do it and that I had to leave for work soon and I still didn't know how I was going to handle the situation.

Despite feeling anxious and freaked out about my options and the ramifications of no-showing at my dreaded internship, I felt oddly calm and content at the same time. I couldn't really identify if what I'd experienced earlier in the day had been a full-blown anxiety attack or some sort of manic episode or something different altogether. What I did know was that I just couldn't leave the house and kept feeling compelled to clean (and to do so with a Martha Stewart-like standard). It was as if I was not able to leave the house at my own free will and a magnetic force was keeping me rooted.

I went to work later that afternoon feeling great and wishing I could blow off the remaining week of the internship. I'd figure out later how I would weasle out of my unexplained absence.

not an alter ego, mind you

Hey peeps!

I doth have me a doppelganger!!!

And she is a former Portlander!

I still don't know how she found me, though. My guess is that she did a search for 'bad kitty' to see what folks were saying about her/her cool art and then my shit popped up and she was all, "hey, wait a minute, that's MY name." Luckily, she didn't go all cease and desist on my ass and want to armwrestle me for the name or anything. Nah, she's a friendly bad kitty, so it's all good.

The Incredibly True and Heartbreaking Tale of my First Hollywood Breakup, Chapter 7

Part A : Look! A Pirate!

Since Amaris was in the film biz and working on a film lot, it was inevitable that she would see celebrities on occasion. It was not at all unusual for her to mention seeing Drew Barrymore at the ATM (Drew Barrymore uses an ATM?) or that Heather Graham was at the Poquito Mas (Heather Graham eats?). She would sometimes tell me about celeb sightings in and around the (what was then called) Warner Hollywood Lot, including the commissary, and she absolutely had my attention when she spoke of an I-spy of Johnny Depp!

Now I was really jealous. I love Johnny Depp! Amaris only saw him once, but felt compelled to inform me each and every time Hester saw him, which seemed to be often.

Part B: Can't I just take two aspirin and call you in the morning?

Amaris continues to spend what appears to be every waking moment with Hester and I continue to be perturbed by it. Amaris arrives home for the weekend with a gift for me - it's a sexy swimsuit and she wants me to try it on. It looks great and I find myself distracted by this, along with the attention I'm receiving because it looks great.

The weekend was going very well, in fact, until Amaris' cell phone rang at a most inopportune moment. Of course it was Hester and she was having a difficult and emotional time over some thing or another and needed to talk to Amaris in order to feel better. Amaris took the call. I laid there feeling resentful and wondering why Amaris couldn't see that she was being played. After what seemed an eternity, the phone call finally ended and it was inevitable that Amaris and I had angry words with one another, as opposed to the loving intimacy that was pending.

Somehow, the angry words turned into Amaris suggesting insisting that I find myself a good therapist and work this out in therapy. She even said that she would pay for it, provided that I stay within a $100/hour ceiling. Initially, I was really offended by this. How dare she think that this is all about me being screwy in the head and not even remotely about her and her shady behavior with someone who is clearly smitten with her? It seemed she was accepting no responsibility whatsoever for her actions and apparent loyalty to this Hester chick.

On the other hand, maybe it would be a good idea for me to work it out in therapy. Perhaps I'd find some validation because, of course, the therapist would agree that I am right in being concerned and freaked out by this situation.

Part C: GWF seeks confirmation that her gf isn't fucking around

I visit L.A.

OMG, Hester's homely! Yay! She's also really friendly to me and I don't get any weird vibes from her like there is anything going on at all. She even lends me her umbrella (which was also homely) so I can shop on Melrose in the rain (real Oregonians don't carry umbrellas on them) and, later, she is on Johnny Depp alert for me.

It's like she's trying to be my friend or something. I'm not sure if I'm in the market for new friends and I am then a little bit skeptical of her outward kindness toward me. I still plan to keep my eye on her (as painful as that may be, as she really isn't easy on the eyes).

Part D: Look, it's the Coppertone Baby all grown up! But her ass is covered this time...(damn, where's that dog when you need it?)

Life becomes momentarily grand again when I return from shopping and walk onto the lot toward the editing suite, just in time for a Jodie Foster sighting! Being the dork that I am, I look at the lovely woman emerging from the black BMW stationwagon and think to myself, "whoa, that chick looks like Jodie Foster." And, since I had not yet lived in Los Angeles, my world had mostly consisted of seeing people who resembled celebrities on occasion but, upon further inspection, would turn out NOT to be the presumed celebrity. Then it occurred to me that Ms. "even hotter in really true life" Foster was in the process of editing up Home for the Holidays on that very lot and so, of course, it was really her.

I tried to act normal and not seem like a gawker star-fucker, lest I be 86'd from the lot for good. She smiled at me while she grabbed some bags from her car and went into the building. I never saw her again. Well, until the trailers for Contact started to show up. But she didn't smile at me from those.

Part E: Donning the martini goggles at Musso & Frank

Amaris tells me that we will be going out for martinis with Hester at the famous old-timey restaurant on Hollywood Blvd., Musso & Frank. I wondered what it was that Hester drank and whether or not she was good at it. Amaris and I ordered Bombay Sapphire martinis and Hester copied us. I couldn't quite tell if that was really what she wanted to drink or if she was dying to feel as though she fit in. Our conversation was a little awkward and forced (what on earth did Amaris expect?) and Hester only seemed even remotely comfortable when she and Amaris were talking shop.

I return to the hotel with Amaris actually feeling A-OK about this situation. Not only is Hester homely, but she's super insecure to boot. What could there possibly be to worry about, right? Ah, what a load off my shoulders that is!

The New York Times thinks I'm a nutcase.

In the New York Times crossword puzzle of Monday, October 23, 2006, the clue for 5 down reads "Nutcase." Turns out the correct 6-letter response is: "maniac."

This is a problem.

Je Suis le mental case, Part 3

The Lack of Order within my Extremes

This last fall, I was diagnosed with Bipolar I Disorder. I've shared this information with some friends and only a handful of people in my family. Mostly, I chose to share only with people who might respond in an understanding and gentle manner. This is one of the ways I take care of myself.

As a result, my mother does not have any idea that I have (have had) Bipolar Disorder. I'm not sure if I will tell her and, if so, how I will tell her. Since Bipolar is often present in more than one family member, I'd like to learn if there might be someone in my family history who had Bipolar Disorder (even if it went undiagnosed) - I suspect this may have been the case with one of my grandparents.

I've struggled with telling people and worry that it makes some folks uncomfortable. People respond differently, though. It's interesting. Some get that "aha moment" look (sorry to quote Oprah) and I can tell that much of my mood swingage and behavior unpredictability suddenly all makes perfect sense to them. People who already know someone with Bipolar Disorder have been the greatest - they know how to respond in a very gentle and respectful way that doesn't make me feel defective. I get a little bit annoyed when I reveal this information to someone and their response is: "yeah, I think I might be Bipolar, too." I mean, I don't want to rain on anyone's parade or anything, but that just seems really insensitive and when I'm struggling to tell something that is difficult for me, "me too" is not the first thing I want to hear in response. Maybe that makes me a hypersensitive wuss, but I don't care.

There are a couple of reasons why I feel compelled to have this information out in the open.

First of all, I have been symptomatic for many years and have not been correctly diagnosed until recently. The new medication that I am on has completely changed my world and I wish I could have been diagnosed and medicated sooner (plus, if my words -here, or in my daily life- help even one person who is struggling the way I was, it's worth it). Why couldn't I get to this point any sooner? Let me explain.

Here are some of the red flags of my diagnosis: depressive episodes (both major and minor, recurring, sometimes without explanation or not pertaining to current upsetting situations), chronic and debilitating insomnia (during which time I would often experience bouts of creativity - writing all night long, or go on cleaning binges, or rearrange the furniture in the house, or cook gourmet dishes all night, etc.), extreme variances in energy levels and irritability levels and degree to which I would participate in things socially, then there were the sex and shopping binges.

Seems pretty cut and dry, huh? However, much of what a medical/psychiatric professional is able to conclude depends on how the information is reported. Without having any idea that I was skewing an analysis of my problems, I have always placed an emphasis on depression and insomnia when I sought treatment. And then I would be treated for depression and insomnia. Why wasn't I reporting manic episodes? Because I had no fucking clue that I was experiencing manic episodes. I even had a therapist, many years ago, ask if I ever experienced manic episodes. Not really knowing what this meant in psychological terms, only what I thought it meant socially/pop-culturally, I looked at him indignantly and gave him an adamant "no." Since he had no reason to believe that I didn't know what the hell he was really asking me, he accepted my response and moved on.

Herein lies the problem: when asked if I had manic episodes, my thought process went like this ---> manic episodes? ---> mania? ---> maniac? ---> who is a maniac? ---> Charles Manson, Hitler, Aileen Wuornos ---> have I gone on crazy-ass killing sprees? no, I have not ---> I'm not a maniac, what a dumb question. Hence, my response to him.

As a result, did I ever tell this therapist about some of the things I do in the middle of the night when I had insomnia and all of the energy I had that enabled me to do these things? Of course not! They just didn't seem important to me because I'd spent so many years experiencing these things on-again and off-again that I just thought it was no big deal - I'm just a little weird and that's just me.

So, I've been taking medication (Lamictal, no Lithium for me because it would make my Essential Tremor worse) since last fall and, not only have I not experienced any polar mood swings (or anything remotely resembling them), but my insomnia is virtually GONE. In the past few months, I've had insomnia about twice and, both times, it has been situationally related. This is a major improvement over having horrible insomnia 4-7 nights a week, every week. Sure, I got a lot of writing and schoolwork done then, but at some expense to my health. While I don't miss my depressive episodes and how they felt and all of the crappy thoughts and self-talk that come along with it, I have to admit that I miss my middle-of-the-night writing binges a little. I fear that I am less creative now (on medication) and less interesting, as a result. I worry that it will make me less successful, probably because I would often measure my self-worth by what I was able to accomplish in the middle of the night when the rest of the world is sleeping. Ultimately, though, I believe the medicated route is more beneficial to me in the long run, even though I hate the idea of having one more pill in the til-death-do-us-part pillbox. But now I know what normal feels like and what it's like to sleep seven hours a night every night and there's something really likable about those things.

There was another reason that I wanted to bring this issue up. Three years ago, an old friend of mine, E, shot herself. Sadly, she was struggling enormously and had been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, amongst other things. Even more sadly, she chose not to share this information with anyone she knew, including her closest of friends. As a result, when she would seemingly disappear and not return phone calls and barely acknowledge her disappearance when she would return, we all just thought she was a flake. And a liar. Consequently, E would frequently find herself losing friends and attempting to acquire new ones. After one too many times of dealing with her lying, betraying, and disappearing, I told her that I couldn't be friends with her any more. She responded to my lengthy letter of explanation as to why I could no longer be her friend with an email. It said, "Great to hear from you. Let me know when you're in Portland again [I lived in LA at the time] and we'll do lunch."

I didn't know what to make of her apparent denial and I had no clue about her mental diagnosis, nor had I really thought beyond the fact that she could be a flake and would get on my nerves. I never did rekindle the friendship or run into her when I moved back to Portland. It was about a year or so after I sent her that letter that she killed herself. I attended her memorial service with a dear friend of mine who was also close to E at one time and then later took some distance from her. It was then that we both learned that she had struggled with Bipolar, and all of its symptoms, and that she wasn't so good about staying on medication.

It breaks my heart that she was unable to reach out to anyone and perhaps, if she had, she might have had more empathy in her life and fewer people abandoning her. I was saddened when I once did a Google search for her after she had passed away. E had taught English Comp. at a couple of the local community colleges and I stumbled upon a site that posted student reviews of professors. E had two reviews, both of which were graded 'F.' One student even went so far as to explain her review by referring to E as 'Miss Flaky Pants.'

So this is the part where I get to my point. And it is this: if some of the symptoms I've described sound like you or someone you know, you might want to further investigate. Talk to your doctor, your therapist, or someone you know with a PhD (okay, kidding...or maybe not). Don't take my word for anything, I'm not a doctor - I'm just a kitty. But just remember that if you have a Miss Flaky Pants in your life, there might be more than meets the eye. If I knew then what I know now about E, I would have responded to her irrational behavior much differently, or so I like to think.

Also be kind to yourself and to others.

Ode to Avion

Since I've started a tradition of bidding farewell to the lives around me that cease to exist, it would only be fair for me to bid a farewell to Avion, even though I never really was able to see the fabulous and caring side of her that I am told does exist.

Above all else, my heart goes out to Whitney, Avion's on-again/off-again partner who nurtured her and took care of her for more than a year, while Avion's health posed unique challenges and Avion stubbornly refused a bone marrow transplant, claiming that her doctors didn't know what they were doing and that she was no closer to dying than she was to winning the lottery.

Sadly, she never did win the lottery. Instead, she passed away a week and a half ago, quietly at home, with loved ones by her side. She was 29 years old.

The tights mishap

So, here I am attending my first ever professional librarian conference in Seattle, Washington (my home away from home) and am doing my best to get it right. When packing for the trip, I selected mostly clothing on the casual/comfortable side of professional on account of you never know who you might bump into and what opportunities may be available to you (as it turned out, there was nobody and nothing, respectively, but, again, you never know). And, knowing that I'd be walking all over hilly downtown Seattle, I selected stylish, yet comfortable, boots to navigate the terrain.

The first discussion that my traveling companion, *Heather, and I chose to attend was, of course, on the other side of the urban landscape. No matter, the weather was ideal for a city trek and it felt good to be out and moving.

Because I would be co-hosting a reception for my graduate program later that evening and didn't know if I'd have an opportunity to return to the hotel to change my clothes, I selected an outfit that could be construed as "business casual," as that had been what I was instructed to wear for the reception. And, again, you never know who will be there. As it turned out, nobody with a job offer was following me around like a lost puppy - and if they had, I'd likely be wary of said offer. But Internet Celebrity blogger, iAsshole, was attending! She was surrounded by, presumably, a hoard of fans trying to acquire some tongue scrapings when iAsshole wasn't looking.

Here's what I selected for the day: a black cashmere sweater (ribbed for my pleasure), a black skirt that fell a good three inches above the knee, kicky chartreuse tights by DKNY, and black mid-calf boots. To accessorize, I added a lovely long scarf that was a sheer black with green stitching in a fancy way and, of course, my green-framed specs. Even Heather told me that my outfit was adorable (thanks Heather!), so I felt confident that I could blend in with the cosmopolitan Seattleites without a hitch.

Unfortunately, there was a hitch.

My elastic in my lovely kicky tights had, unbeknowst to me while I was dressing, decided to go suicidal on me and, about halfway into the walk to the Westin Hotel on the other side of town, slowly started to creep downward.

Uh oh. I saw where this was going.

I asked Heather to stop and pose as a barrier for me so that I could stand near a building and pull up my Southbound tights. So not very cosmopolitan. I couldn't tell how far South those tights were willing to go, but it seemed prudent to stop and hike them up as they were loitering at the fullest part of my ass.

Another two blocks later, the top of my non-elasticized tights were hovering at the equator of my ass again and I just couldn't foresee stopping every block to hoist them up. So I decided to grin and bear it. Or, to bear it anyway.

By the time we walked in through the grand entry of the swanky Westin Hotel, my tights had fallen down the slope of my ass and were pausing at the tops of my legs and I wondered what could possibly hold them in place at that point. An image flashed in my head of my attempt to look dignified while the tights were bunched around my ankles, preventing me to take a stride any longer than four inches. As we took the escalator to the fourth floor, I tried to calculate how much wiggle room I had from the tops of my legs to the hem of my skirt.

The overcrowded discussion meant that we had to sit on the floor. Somehow I was able to manage this sans incident. When the discussion ended, Heather asked what I wanted to do. I told her that I needed to get to the Nordstrom we'd passed stat and purchase a control garment to hold my tights in place for the remainder of the day. Sure, there were probably some other places where a desperate woman could purchase a control garment, but the Nordstrom was closest. She was fine with that and relegated herself to the shoe department while I sought freedom in the form of constraint.

Now, I have mixed feelings about control garments in general and have, for the most part, opted out of partaking in what is so clearly a man-made accoutrement. Worse yet, the damn things come in sizes small and extra small! What on earth would someone so tiny need with such a thing? And just to rub it in, the photos on the tags of these garments revealed a very slender woman - perhaps a size 2 - donning such an item, apparently to show that it is, indeed, slenderizing. I growled at these tags and pulled a couple of different styles in my size. As I pulled on these torture devices, I wondered how they were supposed to create a slenderizing effect - unless I were to cover every inch of my body with them. Sure, everything inside of the garment was contained, but then the distinction between the inside and outside of the garment was drastic and looked freakish. Ironically, I purchased the girdle (these were girdles, weren't they?) that was the LEAST tight so that - should my clothing hug my body at any time throughout the day - I would not resemble a sausage attempting to escape its casing.

Now, more so than ever, I remain of the opinion that control garments seem most suitable for those wishing to trans gender.

*not her real name

The Inept Intern

My introduction to the professional world of information organization began with watching Patricia pull up an unfamiliar computer screen from who-knows-where and proceed to rapidly click in various parts of a template, changing some things, adding others and then calling it good.

"See," she said, " that's all you need to do."

On my second day, it was revealed that I was conducting searches with the incorrect criteria and, since my method would often return the same results as the desired criteria, it didn't occur to me that I might be doing it incorrectly. Well, until it was pointed out to me:

"What are you doing? Why are you searching that way?"

Um, because I'm a total idiot and wasn't paying attention when you whipped through an instruction session that I wasn't able to follow, but thought that I had. That's what I wanted to say. Instead, I sat there somewhat paralyzed willing the ground to open up and swallow me whole and then wake up in my bed to discover that it was only a bad dream.

Nevermind that I'd never used this particular software and that I'd had no experience at all doing any hands-on cataloging. I started asking questions at the rate of one per millisecond. I wanted to know exactly what she was doing, how she was doing it and why.

I've taken on an internship in a local-ish suburban/rural public library where it seems many of the library employees don't really care so much about reading, aren't very friendly and know pretty much diddly-squat about pop culture. On top of that, none of them seemed to have any clue as to who Nancy Pearl was. This, it seemed, was a mere job to them. Employment and nothing more. What kind of Librarian Twilight Zone have I stumbled into?

I continued asking a lot of questions. I wanted to know what I was doing and not just learn the factory imprint of the task, but to capture a true understanding of the philosophy behind the required actions. This seemed to perturb Patricia. I suspect that when she signed on to obtain an intern, she saw this as an opportunity to keep costs down and productivity up and not so much as an opportunity to nurture a curious mind and mentor a student in her chosen field.

My suspicions of her irritation with my continued queries were confirmed when, several times throughout the day, others would say hello to her and ask her how she is doing and she would reply by bemoaning her lack of productivity due to "all of the interruptions" and then I would feel terrible about being the cause of 99.9% of those interruptions.

So I stopped interrupting her.

I would then save all of my items with questions in a pile so that I only had to interrupt her once. This didn't go over so well, either. She simply couldn't understand why on earth I would let it all pile up like that. Frankly, it made perfect sense to me, particularly since the same question would often apply to multiple items and so one answer to one question would knock out about four or five items. She reprimanded me with her words, telling me to ask her when I had a question. Of course, then she would don her headphones and privately listen to music while she worked.

I then seemed to be on the right track for a couple of weeks. Well, seemed anyway.

I came in one day to a stern Patricia face and when the lips moved, the words "We need to talk" emerged, piercing me and causing me to contemplate turning on my heels and walking out to my car, never to return again. What would happen if I did that? Would I still have enough credits to graduate in June? What about the $$$ I'd plunked down for this opportunity?

Turns out, there were some steps I was overlooking in my cataloging. Why was I overlooking these steps, you may ask? Because I had not been taught them - that is why.

Problem is, Patricia was convinced that she HAD taught me these things. How can this be, you ask?

Well, there is another intern, also in my grad program, who is there to learn the same things as I. Turns out Patricia (perhaps not realizing that there are two of us) sometimes teaches him things on days that I'm not there and is under the impression that she has taught me these things. So I am then held accountable for things I haven't even been taught.

Very frustrating, particularly when I try to tell Patricia that I haven't been shown how to do something yet and she is convinced that I have and tells me that she must not have made herself clear. Ayayayayay.

And if that weren't bad enough, I watched in horror as Patricia tormented a high-schooler (let's call him 'Tim') who is volunteering at the library and was under Patricia's charge. Tim was working on putting some labels on some new cd cases and was listening to his iPod and working quietly. He gets up to use the restroom and, after about 7 minutes, Patricia begins to wonder aloud what is keeping him. She exclaims, "I seem to have a student who is more interested in hiding in the bathroom than in working."

A pit began to form in my stomach and my heart ached for Tim, who was in for some sort of degradation that will likely be the cause of a lifetime of gastrointestinal issues. I began an attempt to telekinetically lure Tim from the bathroom to save him from what looked to be complete and utter humiliation.

But I have no telekinesis, I only pretend that I do.

A good three more minutes passed and Patricia was at the bathroom door, knocking loudly and saying, "Are you going to come out soon?"

It was then that I made a mental note to myself to only visit the restroom when Patricia was on her lunch break.