Rainy days are meant for cuddling

It's true.
Loverboy and I took today off. Ostensibly, he took today because he was still feeling ill after yesterday's migraine fiasco. He's particularly thankful for my fioricet, however, since it helped him not become a fetal ball on the bathroom floor, like last time. Youch. So today, we slept in, left our phones off, ate breakfast AND lunch in bed... and pretty much didn't leave the bedroom allll day long. It was TV and cuddles and kitties happy to see us... a perfect day. Especially since the rain was doing its raging thing outside. Yuck. He and I left at the same time - he for rehearsal, me to go watch Corpse Bride. I'm home and back to wondering if he'll ever get here. :(

Corpse Bride... hm. I loved the animation. Loved the ideas, and many of the executions. The colors and the sets and people were fun to watch. But the plot... and the music... not Danny Elfman's best on the music. Lots of potential, but I couldn't understand the damned lyrics!!! Grrr. Worst thing to do to a musical, pretty much ever. It means I noticed the thin and wispy plot, when you should have distracted me from that with bright lights and dancing skeletons. The best part? The dog. Yep. The dog. The maggot just annoyed me. Wasn't developed enough for the usual sidekick role. So, I'm disappointed. Which sucks because I was reallllly excited about going. Thank goodness for my classmates - if they didn't go with me, no one would have.

Speaking of... I'm really enjoying them. They're both a little bit older than I, and very intelligent with senses of humor... and a willingness to involve themselves in a new person/friend. I find that amazing, frankly. Most people can't be bothered. Reminds me why I talk to people I don't know - I meet people like these two every once in a while. Red is newer than Braless Wonder (I call her that cause she's always taking it off subtly in the middle of class or studying or whatever), only in that we recently started to see her a bit outside of class. Do you know, BW actually remembers things I tell her about my life? I just can't fathom it. I'm so boring and I talk so much!! (You'll see if you don't already know.) And all three of us are passionate cat lovers. Yes, I love my cats. Didn't you get that part yet??? They're such loving kitties!! You'd better watch it, or you'll fall in love with them too. (Except of course for the one friend they can kill. But that's not their fault, they're meant to be furry!)

Oh, dear, I'm rambling again.

A good day, despite further doses of the fioricet. Fourth day in a row. *grumble*

Loneliness despite TV

I am trying to decide why I'm lonely.

I happen to be alone at the moment, except for my two kitties (Sabrina and Punkin, best kitties ever). That doesn't seem to be a good enough reason. Even the TV is harping on themes of loneliness.

I am married, by the way. Happily. Delightedly. Ridiculously. Disgustingly. But the amazing, wonderful and frightening thing about loneliness is... it doesn't matter. Loneliness exists despite your family and friends. Despite someone loving you even though... well, just about everything. Despite your TV. I think it's at once illuminating and debilitating.

I've always envied my sister's ability and sheer enjoyment of being alone. I've never been good at it. It makes me nervous... I think I should call someone just to chat, or I watch TV (with the ever-familiar faces, since they never do anything new), or I read and lose myself in a book. And yet... and yet. I dislike being with people constantly. I want to be off by myself, doing my own thing, and I dislike feeling like I must talk to someone else, be concerned with someone else... But if I do it for too long - and sometimes, an evening is too long - I get anxious. I wonder if Loverboy is ever coming home, and I am terribly huggy when he gets there. (I plan to be extra huggy tonight.) Sometimes, it's too lonely even if he's in the next room, getting some of his own much-needed alone time. I just want to hear his voice, or get a hug. Sometimes, I'm lonely even when he is hugging me. It's not that he's not giving enough, it's that there's too much. And here's an odd one... I feel guilty for feeling lonely, knowing that I shouldn't be.

I am always fascinated by the studies about how babies (humans? monkeys? I'm not sure) grow healthier if they have human touch and affection throughout infancy. The babies who are not given physical touch are sickly, skinnier, fussier, despite all other factors being equal. I don't think we ever grow out of that. Clearly, people have developed into beings that need other people. Clearly, the TV is not enough.

Migraines.... and biology!

Today, I came into work late because I had a migraine, and I needed a little extra rest and time to let the hardcore medication work. Nothing unusual about this; frankly, I get these way too often to be seriously sideswiped by them. It's been a hard few days in this regard, mostly because I had one on Saturday night into Sunday morning, that the medication muted for a while until I had to take MORE meds Sunday afternoon. Monday was okay until the evening... and then it was meaner and meaner until finally, it woke me up at 4am, demanding more meds. I'm better now, but I'm betting I'll be taking fioricet later today.

The weird thing about today is that my husband (we'll call him Loverboy for amusement's sake) also had a migraine. He gets them about once a year, although it's been about 2 years since the last 'event'. Unfortunately, Loverboy gets the Classic Migraine - that means auras, light sensitivity, nausea, stomach cramps, and nasty amounts of high-octane pain. I am lucky (sort of), and only get the Common Migraine, specifically Cluster Headaches. They are nasty pieces of work as well - generally a spike into one eye, one side of my sinus becomes entirely stuffed, I only sometimes get the one teary eye, and the entire half of my head feels like it's on fire. They tend to be repeaters - you think you've gotten rid of it, and then you have a rebound, or a second one, or something like that and you are in pain again. But this time, you can't take the real medication (such as Maxalt or Imitrex) since that's just once per 24 hours, so you have to take your backup. Mine is Fioricet plus Codeine. (Fioricet is a barbituate plus caffeine.) Whee. I had never taken anything so hard core in all my life before this started happening.

Now to the pseudo-scientific part of the discussion. I think Loverboy's migraines are mostly due to exhaustion and stress. Plus, right now there happens to be a low-pressure system hovering over our semi-fair city. As for mine... I think they're all because of a malfunction in my smooth endoplasmic reticulum. Did I mention I'm taking Biology classes at night? :) Prepare your boredom shields!!

The smooth endoplasmic reticulum is an organelle in the cell. Its membrane is connected to the nuclear envelope, and it is joined to the rough endoplasmic reticulum. Several things happen in the smooth ER. The functions I'm concerned with are synthesizing sex hormones/steroids and cleansing toxins. In liver cells, the smooth ER is responsible for the toxin cleansing (specifically things like alcohol and barbituates) and in brain cells, it synthesizes the sex hormones. Did you know that when a person develops a higher "tolerance" for a drug, it's because their cells have grown more smooth endoplasmic reticulum to deal with the influx of toxins?

Here's where we get into pure hypothesis without benefit of scientific backup. I believe that when my hormones reach certain changes in level (those hormones that are produced in the smooth ER of those brain cells), that sends out messenger cells to my liver, my stomach, and the vein cells of my brain's meninges (the brain membrane.... insane in the membrane!! ahem.). Those messenger cells tell my liver's smooth ER to screw up detoxifying the alcohol from my blood stream, and my stomach's smooth ER to stop producing lactase (the enzyme for lactose, the lovely protein in all kinds of yummy dairy products), and then they tell the cells in my brain to start constricting my blood vessels so I can have a migraine!

At least, that's my theory.

What do I do with this theory? I dunno. I can't not eat dairy products... perhaps just not a quesadilla... when the hormones are running. Heh. Gives me the poos. I haven't yet figured out what to modify to affect my migraines, but I will. I will.

In the meantime... fioricet is our friend.

Welcoming and a bit Dotty

I haven't decided what I'd like to write about yet. That's not a good start, is it?

I wanted to find a place to be free and yet open, smart but silly, talkative but able to let the words just be. Sometimes I feel the need to wrap my whole life in words, as if discussion will clarify and rectify my bruises and worries and broken thoughts.

Most of the time... I'm pretty happy just being.

So, we'll discuss the world and my limited understanding of it, and perhaps some modern media and culture, and let's not forget pure unadulterated silliness. I love me some silliness. I'll also probably discuss other dorky things I find interesting, like science, medicine, linguistics, and things of that nature. Whee!

I'm not very good at keeping in touch, but this marks my first attempt at trying harder.