But I’m not at all like rubber –
I’m porous like the earth,
soaking up your every word and glance.
I’m fragile like a hot house flower
trapped in a conservatory
below the Tropic of Capricorn.
And just like the lilac tree,
I wilt in stormy winter weather
only to blossom heaven for
two weeks every spring.

Still, you think I’m like a rubber tree –
to be bandied about at your will.
Exported and shared, favors
granted to the highest bidder.
But my heart is not made of elastic.
My will cannot be bent.

What was once a sign of the working class is now a sign of the bourgeois. Except I’m basically unemployed, can’t afford a manicure, and every job I have held in the past decade has been in a form of the service industry, give or take. I don’t have a high school diploma, let alone college, my “middle class values” are laughable, and my husband and I barely slide into the DC area economic middle class — we make it by a paltry few thousand per year. Last year, the two of us combined made half the average D.C. wage for one person, and this year I’m not working so we will be making about two-thirds to half the average wage.

So how bourgeois is soil under my nails, really? Are urban gardening and farming really a food revolution, or short-lived hobby for fiscally comfortable foodies? Once the aching backs and cracking knees of their proletariat forefathers set in, and the first longing for the old conveniences that our grandparents so eagerly embraced at the supermarket, maybe reality will set in for some. For others, maybe dirt in the skirt will stick. Maybe some will truly embrace their newly founded Victory Gardens.

My husband asked me, if folks are calling them Victory Gardens again, what are they emblematic of this time around? Our food buying and eating habits certainly are not making an impact on Afghanistan, so what are we seeking to be victorious of? I think this time around, the fight is against ourselves and the relationships we have cultivated with food: with reliance upon ease of access, with our desire for sugars and starches and all things super-sized, with comfort grazing, with the rise in eating disorders, with Big Agra and the failing regulators at the Department of Agriculture, and with our own crumbling health due to the above factors.

There was an increase in small scale gardening and farming in the 1960′s and 70′s due to the hippies back-to-the-land movement.  What we are experiencing now is similar.  Of course, most of those ideals failed to stick then, though there are quite a few stubborn stalwarts from that era who have gone on to mentor the new generation.  I like to hope that some of what is going on now will catch on at a national level and really sink in deep, make solid change where it is badly needed.  Optimist/pessimist.  Only one can win.

We laid a fitted sheet next to the fawn and then used a pillowcase to grab its ankles and drag it on top of the sheet. We then lifted the sheet and moved it off the road, onto someone’s lawn. I called the county animal control line after to report it.

I don’t know much about the decay of larger animals. I’ve read a few non-fiction books about forensic science in humans (most notably ‘Corpse,’), but I don’t know about the decay rate of 60lb baby deer. My dad said he had seen it dead on the road earlier in the morning and we moved it at 3:30pm, yet I didn’t notice any flies (much less maggots, and yeah, I was really looking because I was wondering if I had the stomach for that sort of thing).

It looked like the deer fell onto its forehooves(? not sure of the proper term for deer) and broke its ankles(?) when it was struck by a vehicle, as there was bone sticking out on the front legs just above the hooves. And its lower guts were burst, leaking intestines, bile, shit, and all the rest onto the body and all over the road. Of course, when we lifted the fawn, more of its insides fell out. And the smell, despite the breeze, was heady, overpowering, already of rotten flesh. I’ve been around human death but not after blunt force trauma. The smell was…actually, it was as bad as I expected but not as strong as I expected. Then again, I didn’t exactly go about sticking my face into the deer’s stomach.

My brother wanted to be a veterinarian but couldn’t because of the nerve damage in his arm — he can’t hold his arm steady for surgeries and injections. He’s doing environmental biologics instead, which makes him just as, if not more happy. I’d love to work with animals but have always feared I wouldn’t be able to separate my emotions from the task at hand — I tend to cry when I see a loose dog near traffic, for example. I’ve helped out on the side of the road a couple times, but this was my first very dead animal. I think I handled it well. Definitely kept my composure, did what needed to be done, didn’t think about how gross it was until now that I’m writing about it. The real test, I guess, will be at therapy on Thursday, to see if I can talk about it without breaking down.

* * *

In other animal news, we brought home a cat perch (still in the box) from a pet store, and within a week both dogs, two of the cats, the rug in the basement, one of the couches in the living room, and perhaps our bedding all had fleas. We’re not totally infested, as we seem to have caught it before they laid eggs, but I’m remembering someone on my flist (name suppressed for privacy) who dealt with fleas at his/her home recently, and it makes all three of the bites I’ve received thus far seem like a coming epidemic. We’ve got Advantix going, flea baths, sprays, and all that stuff, so we shall see how it goes. The real bitch is that one of our dogs has very sensitive skin, so he really tore himself up with scratching. Additionally, the two cats that are infested are Maine Coons — very thick, long-haired cats — who are really hard to de-flea. Then there’s the puppy, who somehow just keeps managing to get more fleas, and our short-haired cat, who somehow has managed to not have any fleas. Matt hasn’t been bitten at all, lucky bastard. I’m doing psychosomatic itching just writing this, so enough from me for now.

Friday morning I had 5-6 episodes where I temporarily lost my sight, hearing, and couldn’t move. Each episode lasted for several seconds at a time. Some felt stronger than others, though I don’t know how to describe how. I don’t know if they were painful when they were happening, because all I can remember is being terrified while they took place. There didn’t seem to be any warning, just suddenly this violent pitch blackness overtook me.

They weren’t catalepsy episodes. Because of having narcolepsy, I have had several to many catalepsy attacks in the past, so I know the difference. catalepsy attacks the muscles and causes the body to “drop,” but it doesn’t cause temporary blindness or deafness. [Aside: it just occurred to me that I'm not sure if I was still able to breathe or not, as I was so utterly panicked I failed to pay attention. But during catalepsy, most people can still breathe. There have been cases (very rarely) where people have actually been accidentally declared dead, but I've never experienced that kind of catalepsy. My experiences have never been anywhere near as strong. Most cataleptic attacks leave the patient completely aware of what is going on around them, which means sight and sound are intact -- those are the types of cataleptic episodes I have always experienced before.]

My psychiatrist, a second psychiatrist, and my general physician all say that they do not believe the episodes to in any way be a side effect of any of medications I am on. They also agree that because my history with catalepsy does not mimic these episodes, they don’t think it’s related. They all say that it sounds like “seizure activity” (exact quote). I’m supposed to get an EEG and an MRA. I’ve been waiting for the right paperwork from the insurance to do so.

I’m not allowed to drive until the test results come back, which mean I’m housebound again.

My blood work for the infection now comes back negative but I’m still getting a lot of wicked migraines and still running fevers several times a week. The CT scan of my sinuses came back okay; there is still congestion (infection) in my sinuses but nothing horrible. There’s still fluid in my lungs and ears as well; it simply doesn’t seem to respond to the antibiotics. Since May I’ve been on two months worth of antibitotics: zithromax, clarithromycin, ciprofloxacin; as well as diflucan; guaifenesin with codeine, chlorpheniramine with hydrocodone; claritin-d, allegra-d; flonase, nasonex; albuterol, adavair; treximet, ib profen 600s; and some other stuff I’m not remembering the names of at the moment.

* * *

Under Word Web’s definition for catalepsy, it says “See: psycho, psychotic, psychotic person.” That pisses me off, a lot. Under the definition for psycho, it says “A person afflicted with psychosis; Synonyms: psychotic, psychotic person.” It doesn’t say anything about those usages being offensive at all. Under the definitions for queer and nigger, it does point out that they’re considered offensive.

I might not be the most politically correct of people, but I do think that says a lot about what we as a society still consider to be acceptable to look down upon and what we don’t. People with illnesses and disorders of the brain still have a hell of a long way to go before they’re given equal treatment on the human rights bandwagon.

* * *

Something I’ve been interested in for years but am currently feeling a resurgence of is how people refer to chronic illnesses, from a socio-linguistic perspective. A lot of people in Western culture talk about “Lauren’s diabetes,” “my spasms,” “our fibromyalgia,” as though the illness is “owned” or perhaps “ruled” by the person who has it.

For example, it may not be as common to hear [individual experience may vary, and as a sick person my experience is skewed because people will talk to me about illness of their own or of their friends or relatives in order to have a "common ground" or "bonding experience"] “I get headaches which prevent me from going to the movie theater” as it may be to hear “my headaches prevent me from going to the movie theater.”

The change of language personalizes the experience: the speaker is emphasizing that these are their own experiences that happen frequently, and not something that just can come and go like with other people. It also shifts responsibility onto the illness: the speaker won’t take a chance on an activity because a symptom doesn’t just happen — it reliably happens. (I am not getting this out of my head in the way that I want and upon rereading this can see where my statements are quite contentious; they’re not meant to be. I’m trying to semantically dissect statements and that seems to be beyond my capability at the moment.)

Do other cultures do this (do they take linguistic and then perhaps psychological ownership or subservience of or to chronic illness)? If not, what about their cultures prevents them from doing such?

Anyway, this interests me, in the way that Kristin K. Barker’s ‘The Fibromyalgia Story’ interested me. It’s an anthropological study that I found myself both agreeing with and getting angry at — in other words, it was really well done. (Angry at because it WAS well done and did not actually take a side about whether or not the author believed fibromyalgia to exist or not; in that, it was a true anthro study.)

Ow, my head. I’m afraid I’m never going to get anything done with my life except say “ow.”