my inner lizard: November 2003 Archives

she takes to her bed fully dressed with offline content downloaded to the laptop & faces the day this way, wearing the size four uncommonly roomy abercrombie & fitch jeans as a reminder they no longer truly fit her they cannot for instance be washed & still worn at this weight they hurt just a bit she will not eat in these pants this is necessary she thinks. it is going to be a long day.

gravity it would seem pulls her down to the car she hasn't quite unpacked at all she digs through sizes, sixes mostly, some eights. she says to her self honest brutal things fat drunk & stupid is no way to go through life sense of resignation retrieving the size eight express flares she also retrieves the eight pound hand weights hopefully reviewing the calorie intake of her recent foray into drunken numbness figures it at approximately two pounds a week she's been here (wherever that is) a month now you do the math she resolves it ends here no matter how much it hurts reality that is.

she trudges up the stairs with a load of clothes mostly too small folds the silent rebuke of the size sixes & stacks it neatly in the closet changes into something she thought was a button down cardigan discovers it has only one button admires the way the regained pounds fill out her skin hates the way they spill over the waistband of the uncommonly roomy a&f size fours. she sighs as she peels off the fours & slips into the baggy comfy size eight did i say eight? that was a lie ... the size nine express flares & subsequently into the skintight charcoal tshirt she'd rejected earlier for revealing the truth about the uncommonly roomy size four abercrombie & fitch jeans, that is, that they do not fit.

she hates the thoughts she feels studying her (physical) self in the mirror, somewhere between an objective fondness & a desire to hate what she sees in spite of this (where did this come from?) this desire to be punishingly thin.

disclaimer for those unfamilliar with womens' pantsizes: numbers can't be used for comparison of actual differences between actual sizes of different brands, but if i'd explained the actual meaning attached to all my different pants & their sizing (& yes, my pants all have meanings) this would have been even more boring, hard to imagine i know, but there it is

... have i mentioned i am not sure if i am getting enough attention? it is entirely possible i am not. when i used to be kd i was all about the attention, i lived for it blogged for it i played to those cheapseats yes i did. & i discovered disquiet in my self & i knew it/shit had to change & change big i knew i had to stop stopping my self from expressing itself, had to learn to say shit like 'sell my ass for cigarettes' without worrying that somebody was gonna get shocky on my ass & stop reading me & godforbid delink me i mean i was in the topten of blogrolling back then, & i treasured whatever that meant to me in some major way & then almost abruptly i gave that shit up.

walked away. tried to be someone anonymously notme but that didn't work out it takes time too much time to build a new you & get that new you to be someone somebody will read. so i resorted to revealing my old identity in a slick & secretive fashion involving utilizing the email field to say (it's me kd) in comment boxes &/or confessing my identity shift to anyone who thought to take the time to email to ask wtf? because i make people ask wtf? it's what i do.

dunno wtf i am trying to say here really or well yes i do but no it doesn't matter & also i do not have a point particularly.

oh whatthefucking well. waitaminute wherewas/were ... i/we? ohright. attention. i don't have the time the bandwidth the attentionspan to deal with the bandwidth issue & therefore i cannot make the comment rounds for that attention & i know i know this is all about reciprocity & i can't right now it's not just this but then again it is & what about the attention? what am i supposed to do? about the attention?

for a little while i was not myself this morning. i was not who or what i am or have been i was simply the occupant of approximately one carlength worth of openroad & very very little else, i was energy singing innocuous popsongs including but not limited to very early madonna (pre-personal tranier era) which made me feel either very old or very young. i didn't like those songs back then. i do now. i did however go through a 'dress like madonna phase'. well, onstage anyway. and today there is this manic energy, this euphoric rage, alive somewhere in between laughter & homicide. on the surface it gives an appearance like focus, while inside it's dancing to la isla bonita.

wander past the computer into the kitchen and only then does it hit me, [never you mind what it was that hit me]. stand at the window eyeing the heavy sky realizing i can breathe as well as almost anyone for once without serious expensive prescription medical intervention and really there's no reason. decide it will not last but will appreciate the respite while it does.

& so. since i have all the inspiration of an ... uninspired thing, and the highest google ranking since the last time i had a high google ranking, i've decided to do what my friends in medicine & academia advised me to do about this discovery, that is, put some keywords in the page title & blog it.

prior to the day quoted above, which was several days after i'd begun taking prescription strength aleve for a toothache, i was debilitated by my asthma. would wake up gasping for breath & needed many blasts off the inhaler just to get getting air, & i would need the inhaler more or less constantly all day & still barely be able to negotiate a 'normal' life. the only thing that had helped was serevent, but loss of medical insurance made that $140/month inhaler out of budget, & i went back to being sick as hell all the time.

so the toothache faded & i stopped taking the naproxen & the breathing got worse. being analytical by nature i looked back & realized the only thing i'd done different those breathing days was to take naproxen.

i started taking the naproxen again. one in the morning one at night 1,000mg per day. i started being able to breathe again.

i ran out of prescription strength & started taking over the counter generic aleve, and i googled to see if this was known anywhere, all i found was warnings about naproxen being bad for asthmatics with sensitivity to aspirin & other ... n-saids? but i have no such sensitivities.

now let me tell you the weirdest part. even on expensive serevent, i was still subject to my worst symptom trigger -- that is, getting somewhere & finding i was without my inhaler. instant acute attack, severe symptoms, panic. on aleve, i go days not even knowing where my inhaler is. discovering i've forgotten it happens more often than discovering i've remembered it, & it just doesn't matter anymore. i mean, i have as close to zero symptoms as i have ever had in my entire life right now, however it should be noted i also have (sort of inadvertently it just happened) cut down smoking to approx. 1 pack a week, before the cutting down i did still have the occasional symptom. occasional.

disclaimer: i may be a medical freak. this isn't a scientific study. i do know for sure it's the aleve i've experimented again & again. one doctor said it makes sense there is a smooth muscle relaxant in naproxen sodium, that's the most medically scientific i can get for you. try at own risk i'm not a doctor i'm a web designer.

i currently take 440mg morning, and 440mg before bed, that's double the recommended overthecounter dosage. i take it with food in my stomach & with a full glass of water & have no gastric side effects however i have one of those castiron type stomachs, ymmv.

today? i have no idea where i left my inhaler. and i don't use prescription inhalers anymore, a basic primatene will do & it lasts forever, months & months. i live like a person with mild almost nonexistent asthma. this is utterly fucking miraculous in case i haven't mentioned that.