The Hubcap Massacre

Yesterday was a scary driving day. 

I still didn't do any of the things I assumed I was going to do by now…

Like hit a bird,

or get smashed by a deer,



or destroy a mailbox,



and I haven't even knocked a side-view mirror off yet! 
 

YAY!

However, it IS Winter,
and the roads look like a giant infant took a hammer to them.
 

My father had trouble with a few potholes recently, so you'd think I would have seen this coming.

NOPE. 

Mom, after the fact, said she saw it… but we're going to ignore how that would have been nice to mention BEFORE I hit it.  Mom. 

*ahem*

So, I whacked a giant hole in the ground and while it sounded scary, most of the road had sounded scary, so I didn't think much of it. 

There were also so many potholes, some of which stretched across the whole area, so it was difficult to avoid them. 

Usually I'm the only one making horrible noises while I drive, but this time Mom chimed in.
 

You know that noise Lucile Ball makes on I Love Lucy? 
It was like that.  

Every.  Time. 

Still, not nearly as bad as the noises my father makes as soon as I get behind the wheel at all.  

Seriously, I could be parked and he'll still hit the imaginary brake on his side.

Anyway, I didn't know anything was horribly wrong until I went into a "lane" over on the side, thinking a car in front of me was in a turning lane, rather than, you know, parked.

Then another car came up next to me in the correct lane. 

I figured I was trapped and Mom and I would have to eat parts of the car to survive until we were rescued from my stupidity.

The man in the other car honked, which I assumed was an angry honk. 

It was not. 
I rolled down the window and he mentioned that our hubcap (read: Mom's hubcap that I slammed off of her poor car) was by the town hall, in a snow bank. 

Thank you, Stranger-Man. 

I had this weird swell of embarrassment from having been driving around with only three hubcaps. 

I pictured getting laughed at by more fashionable drivers.

Because Mom mentioned that I need to be careful with the next potholes so as not to damage the tire, my severe lack of car-knowledge showed.  

I was under the assumption that the hubcap was usually bolted on, keeping the tire in place. 
 

I imagined the tire now flying off without it's metal seat belt, and me going to some kind of car-jail for committing tire manslaughter. 

Anyway, Mom found the hubcap after wandering around a bit. 
 



This brings up a few questions. 

Did it fly off of the car into the snowbank? 

Did the kindly neighbors take the time to get out of their car to pick it off of the road and leave it where we could find it? 

Did they follow us that whole way to tell us, or was it by chance that they happened to see a car missing a hubcap later on and fill in the blanks? 

Either way, Mom and I weren't entirely positive we could put it back on right then and there, so she just plopped it in the car. 

I was still a little shaken by "OH MY FUCK I BROKE YOUR CAR I'M SO SORRY" so I asked her to do the driving until our next errand was done. 

I've been calling that my first accident just because I want that part of my life to be over with and it didn't involve anyone else being damaged.

Let me think this. 

Shhh...

Therapathetic

People find themselves drawn to different professions for a lot of reasons.  

Personally, if I had my way and all the money required, I'd be a cartoonist.  

Still, gotta make a living somehow, and being a Psychologist not only makes sense for me, but allows me the opportunity to help someone...
...Or accidentally screw someone up pretty badly. 

Exciting!  

Okay, so I'm actually pretty terrified.  

That being said, I learned what to do from my classes, and what NOT to do from most of my therapists.  

I've had a lot of therapists.

I take this as a strength.  
I've been where the client is.  
Also, as a therapist, I'll know that not all cases will be the same.

I even had a therapist direct me to a hypnotist who got SUPER excited over the idea of me puking in her office.

Let me explain that one.

See, I told her that I was having nightmares.  
She asked what happens when I wake up.
I told her that if they are really bad, I get sick.
Her response was: 

And so my response was: 

And my mother promptly removed me from the woman's office.

Mind you, I've had nice, sane therapists too.  
My current one, in fact.  

She's been very helpful, which means she's been supportive in a way that allows me to come up with what I need to do for myself. 

She guides without telling, and gives hope when needed.  

The one before her also wasn't awful.  

She was an art therapist and helped me learn that I like art therapy techniques but would like to do other things with clients.

The one before that one was mostly...  Good?  
...ish? 
 
She went out of her way to say that once I was diagnosed with PTSD, that would be my life forever.  

Don't tell your client, who is in your office to get better, that there is no such thing as healing or a future without intense psychological pain.  

Not cool.

Also, she was wrong. 

So, let's get to the utter shit of it, shall we? 

When I was of Bat Mitzvah age, I went to a woman about my crippling anxiety and dealing with some physical pain.  

After hearing that I was not going through this traditional Jewish ceremony (which was a very minor part of my story), she explained to me that: 

Yeah.  

She decided to let me know that I'd be "letting my congregation down" and that the rabbi and my own PARENTS would hate me for not doing it. 

This was utter crap. 

I responded with a: 

And my parents reassured me that they weren't going to disown me AND that I didn't have to see that woman ever again.  

It turned out that my family actually knew her, but didn't realize that she had a different last name than her child.  

My father was training her child for his/her Bar/Bat Mitzvah.  

Projection!  Don't do it!  

Next up was a woman I actually had twice.  

What I mean by that is that I saw her for many months, then switched to someone else, and then tried her again.

I had left the first time because she was very open about also being the therapist for a frienemy of mine.  

She'd talk openly about said friend/enemy and I felt uncomfortable, realizing she was probably doing the same about me.  

Breach of confidentiality, for one thing.  

The second time was somehow worse.

I was talking about something... I don't remember what.  

It triggered her. 
She started crying.
A lot. 

I was not crying. 

Pretty much everything this lady did went on my "Don't do this to people" list.

Still, not as bad as a woman who forced me to take drugs. 

Look, if you have a chemical imbalance and want to be on medication, more power to you.  
It can be helpful. 

I didn't want it. 

Beyond that, I had ZERO signs of clinical ANYTHING that wasn't direct cause and effect.  

I had anxiety and some depression because my legs didn't work right and my sister was scary.  

I wanted to talk about it. 

I wanted to find ways to work with it and build my life into something better.

She decided that would be too difficult, and handed me a pill. 

Since I had said from day one that I did not want to take any medications, and she had agreed...

I figured I must be REALLY screwed up for her to demand I try them.  

...So I took the pill.

It didn't take long before I started feeling like I wanted to kill myself.

I had never felt like that before.  

Thankfully, I was able to see that it was the medication having a strange effect on me.

In retrospect, the fact that she didn't mention that as a possible side effect, the fact that she talked me into taking something at all, and the fact that she didn't mention just STOPPING instead of weening off of it could be dangerous... 

Bitch could have killed me. 

DON'T DO THIS TO PEOPLE.

And you know what her response was when I said I wasn't going to take it anymore?

Thankfully, I had brought Dad in that day. 
I don't even know why I had dragged him in.  

Maybe I was afraid of what else she'd ask me to do. 

He told me I never had to see her again.
...She had always silently repeated everything I said with her own lips anyway.
That was really creepy.  

Like I said before, there have been good therapists in my life.  

They don't need to be on this list in pictures because every day that I talk about the progress I've made shows how not-shitty they are. 

Those are the people I hope to emulate. 
I hope to be a not-shitty therapist.

Playing Chicken

I hate chickens.  

Don't get me wrong, I love eating them...  
In fact, I think my hatred of them as an animal just makes my love for eating them all the sweeter.  

And you know what?  
They started it.  

Actually, I have no idea how it started.  I just know that as a child, I didn't like seeing chickens unless they were fully cooked.  Their eyes creeped me out.  

To add to this, my fear of enormous animals led to a chicken... maybe a rooster, actually, mocking me.  

Let me explain that one.

Because I was afraid to ride the horse, the owners of said horse placed the fowl on said large animal to show me that I was more chicken than the chicken.  

Screw that chicken.

Mind you, my mom has fond memories of a rooster named Elvis.  He started as one of those dangerously dyed pretty colored chicks for Easter (which we don't celebrate) and grew up instead of dying from the poison or just a general failure of the average child to take care of a chicken.  

But this was not my personal experience.  

Chickens creep me out.  

I'm a big fan of Ripley's Believe it Or Not, and generally we're all good... 

And then there was this: 

Instead of dying like it was supposed to, this guy stayed alive without a head for years.  He was fed through the neck hole. 

A. Why would you ever do this to a living creature?  Just kill the fucking thing.

B. I cannot respect anything that can keep on walking around while missing that much of it's head, and all of it's basic thinking brain parts.  

Also, there was the "Big, Scary Chicken" incident...

I wrote about that already a bit here. 

Eventually, my well meaning friends started calling me by making chicken noises.  
This was actually unrelated to my hatred of chickens, oddly enough, and just that my legal name sounded like a chicken when said in the most obnoxious way possible to utter a sound.

This was made even worse when I left for the other side of the country and lived next to a bunch of chickens.  

I'd wake up thinking they were calling me.  

Guh.

You know, I actually have a lot of chicken stories...  

But I'll leave it at this one last part... 

My first real meeting of Rob's mother was a thing.  

Lovely lady.  I like her a lot.  

One of the first things we talked about was how she wanted a pet-

And I responded with, 

*Note:  Eyebrows thickened for emphasis* 

I actually said the word "veto" at a woman I was just meeting and trying to impress.  

I immediately regretted it, thinking I'd be thrown out, stoned, and/or burned alive, but she just chuckled and asked why...  

...and I went on to tell her all about the crap on this very post. 

 

Of Blood and Butterflies

So, lemme tell you 'bout yesterday morning and why I didn't go to class last night. 

As you may have gathered by now, my health has been questionable for the past two years, but it's mostly been my mental health, with a dash of "WHY CAN'T I SWALLOW ANYTHING???"

Yesterday, my physical health had an interesting turn. 

See, I was all sure of myself, and I had eaten breakfast and everything…

I was gonna be an adult.

So, I decide I'm going to make myself some pizza rolls (adults do that, right?) and I reach my hand into the bag, which is frozen… 

And holy shit it hurts.

Now, normally, cold does kind of suck on my hands… but this was different.  This was a shocking pain.  I attempted to run warm water over my hand, but it couldn't get warm enough. 

Then my head got unreasonably cold, and a slight nausea started. 

It was kind of like Spidey-senses were going off but there was nothing going on. 

At first, I thought I was having an allergic reaction, because that is always my assumption.  

Then, I looked into it and checked my symptoms, which is generally how I calm myself down. 

I noticed that I wasn't having a panic attack because my heart wasn't racing.  In fact, I had trouble finding my pulse at all. 

This thought did cross my mind: 

I went to the bathroom, because the nausea had pretty much stopped, but I figured maybe something was going on down there.  

When I sat down, my vision started to go. 

I'd like it stated here that I, among the panic and thinking I'm dying, took the time to consciously decide to flush the toilet.  

Like, I thought to myself, "Well, that would just be impolite." 

So, then I rush to the bedroom. 

I have experienced little bouts of vertigo before, but they are normally when I just get up way too fast, and then I sit down, or lay down for a second and I'm fine. 

This wasn't that. 

Here is a rough blueprint of how not-right I was in my mostly blacked out state:
 

If that doesn't make any sense, basically, all I had to do was go straight forward from the door to the bed. 

Instead, I took a hard left and found myself in a tiny area between stuff on the floor next to a giant computer desk and the guitar. 

EDIT:  I realize that we have a lot of guitars in this place, so this is what I woke up to: 

My Knight figures I subconsciously wanted to play on the computer while being blacked out. 

Our housemate found me.  I woke up to him very gently trying to remove the stuff that had fallen onto my feet, and looking concerned as to whether I had hit my head or broken my leg or anything like that.

Thankfully, I was fine. 

He handed me juice and I climbed into bed. 

At some point, I started texting people about what had happened, because I realized that it was not normal.  


Naturally, my Knight flipped out and wanted to come save me… from… something?

I got an appointment with my doctor and fled with my mother to see what could be wrong.  My Knight met us there. 

My doctor was understandably confused as to why I had a posse with me to talk about my period lasting two weeks, a possible inner ear problem, and hey, lets do blood work for good measure. 

She agreed with all of these points.

What didn't get said, for whatever reason, is that my mother used to faint a lot when she was my age.  My grandmother used to faint too.

THIS RUNS IN THE FAMILY but my mom just like… forgot.  I guess. 

So, hopefully that means it's fine.  My thought is that if no one else ever went to the doctor about it, maybe there is a way to fix it, and even if not, clearly they both lived their lives just fine.

I'm hoping it's not a thyroid issue.  Every lady in my family has one. 

Some hyper, some hypo, but everyone does.  

I've had mine tested a few times already, though it would explain a lot if there was actually something wrong with it now. 

It's also not the worst thing in the world, but since I'm still panicking over taking a new kind of Advil if I ever have a headache, I can't imagine the intense stress that would come from having to take a pill for my thyroid every day. 

Obviously, I would do whatever I need to do…

But come on.  I just want a break, you know?  For a little bit? 
 
It all comes down to the fact that I do freak out inside my head about every single thing ever, so when there is actually something dire going on, I tend to assume that there is no reason to panic. 

I don't trust myself anymore, and so I automatically become MORE chill if something is actually wrong. 

In any case, I was really nervous about getting blood work done.

I have gotten a lot of blood drawn in the past couple of years, but I'm always nervous. 

About everything, really.

The lady was really nice though. 

Plus, she didn't blink an eye when I asked for a sticker after getting my blood drawn. 

She asked the logical question, of course, which was, "Do you have any children?"

The answer is no…  I just wanted stickers.  I responded, "Nope, but I have a boyfriend."

Her perfect response?  "Ah.  Well, that's pretty much the same thing." 

She gave me the prettiest (and probably most adult she had) stickers ever:

 CLOSE UPS:

 Can you tell I'm really excited? 

My Knight and I stopped by my parent's house for some well needed protein, then went off to shop for food.  I got interestingly irritable at some points, like a panic attack wanted to show up but just wouldn't come. 

It was like the emotional equivalent of not wanting to burp, needing to burp, and just having it not happen either way. 

We bought pumpkins!  I still want a slightly larger one, but these are decent sized pumpkins… and the big one I wanted was full of bug holes. 

Worms and bugs have become a thing in my life.  …  I'll get to that in the next post.

In any case, by the time we got back home, I had an hour left of class, but about half an hour to get there.  It just wasn't worth it. 

I sent a few emails back and forth to my teacher.  She asked if I should talk to my advisor about having some time off. 

The fact is that even if this was partly from stress, I'm not willing to take any other years off from school.  I've already been in it too long, and already have started questioning over and over what I'm doing with my life. 

I have to finish.  I'm doing well enough in two out of three of them that I'm not concerned (yet) and I'm half way though. 
 

The trick will be doing well on my presentations, which is what screwed me up a bit in my Wednesday class. 

I still assume I'm not going to fail that class, but that doesn't mean my grade will be particularly stellar either. 

We'll see. 

For now, I'm going to just… Keep going. 

And if it turns out there is something wrong that needs fixing, so be it.  

Dress Number Two!

For the first dress, I was learning how to properly use a pattern (and making shit up on the fly anyway)...  
So, for the second dress, it was all about altering a known pattern into a slightly different dress, and also using a different kind of fabric. 

The basic shape of the neckline started the same as the first dress, for example: 

Then, I wanted to see if I could add a cowl-neck.  I made up how I was going to do it, so... THAT was interesting:

 Instead of long sleeves in three pieces, this has capped sleeves:

Finally, I think the biggest change to the design was the bottom.  I cut it a little higher on the sides, and let it drop to a point a little lower: 

I'm still working on the way the stitches should look.  I'll admit, Mom helped me a lot with the machine.  

  
After many days of working a bit, stopping, questioning everything in my life, and then starting again, this is the final product: 

EDIT: The cowl neck is actually much cleaner looking now than it is in these photos. 

If I ever get around to doing a third dress, it will be time to learn how to make a pattern.  
In fact, I don't think I'd start with a dress there.  

That seems...  No.  

I'll make something small so that I can figure out how to design and cut flat pieces to build a three dimensional, wearable object. 

That might not be for a while though.  This coming semester is over filled with not-so-simple classes, and one class too many.  

Also, I might be moving yet again, which would be awesome.  It would also take up A LOT of time.  Time is a thing I will not have this semester.  

However, the hope is that in a better, safer environment, I'll get more work done more often.  

Fingers crossed!  

Lastly, a reminder that the Etsy site is up!

Also, the Deddrie site is... up?  But there is nothing currently there.  
We (Rob) are figuring it out.  We still have everything saved, so no worries there.  I'll keep you all posted. 

Meanwhile, my portfolio site IS up and running at RowynGolde.com. 

Drawings and commission info is not yet up, but prints and commissions are available.  That will be more apparent soon.  

For now, you can email me at deddrie@gmail.com for a specific question or commission. 

Guinea Loaf and Other Rodent Mishaps

I already spoke about Frodo the Gerbil and how terribly that went. 

Well, a few of the other pets accidentally led to traumatic events as well. 

We had two mice, for example.  One was grey and one was tan.  They were adorable and tiny and I remember very little about them aside from the death of the grey one.

You see, the mouse was in my hand at the time of her demise. 

I didn't do anything to kill her, but I certainly felt like it was my fault as she spazzed around and had a tiny mousey seizure. 

My friend was there that day.  She told me to put her down and in my panic, I placed the mouse on top of the cage. 

On the one hand, I doubt dying on a metal grid was more comfortable than dying on my hand. 

On the other, she was probably too busy heading towards that mousey light at the end of the rodent tunnel to give a damn.

The second mouse died soon after, and I always assumed it was due to loneliness.  

 EDIT: "Oh dear.  Could you feel it's little mouse heart stop beating?"-My mom.  

She immediately regretted asking this, but what the fuck, Mom?  Who asks that??

I also had two hamsters.  I think they were dwarf hamsters specifically, and no, I didn't have them at the same time.  However, neither one lasted very long.

I believe they were "Grim" and "Grim 2" respectively.

Hamsters are delicate creatures. 

No, I didn't smoosh them or anything like that.

As it turns out, they don't always travel well.  Most people have no problem with this.  They go from the pet store to the car to the home and everything is fine.

Some hamsters are not so fine.

When mine started shitting himself, we took him to the vet.   The vet explained that the stress of moving occasionally makes hamsters have diarrhea, and often this is incurable. 

…

Kay.

So my hamsters shat themselves to death. 

The mouse was still worse. 

This post, however, is meant to talk mainly about the guinea pigs in my life. 

They will clearly one day evolve into tribbles.

We've had many. 

Heidi:

She used to ride in my Barbie convertible too.

Bunny:

...Apparently, guinea pigs substituting for my Barbies was a thing.

There was Furball, Silky...

I even made a plush guinea pig in school:

Hmm.  I'm not entirely sure where the other ear went.  

Oh well. 

Along the line of this long list of rodents, two guinea pigs were mine, so of course they were the ones to suffer really awful deaths that I could do nothing to stop.

'Cause, you know, my life.

One was named Theodore Edward Bear, or just Ted E. Bear because I was super clever. 

When he had a tumor removed, (which took up most of his body because he was a freaking guinea pig) the hair never grew back and the scar was enormous.  So, he became "Frankenpig"

None of us seem to remember the name of the other one.  He was smooth and brown.  I think I used to call him Poopie because of that, but I'm sure he had another name. 

In any case, my mother called him a "she" up until the day he died, which was only problematic because he died from a piggy version of testicular cancer. 

It got to the point where he couldn't stand up because his balls were too big. 

This was another case of a vet saying, "There really isn't much we can do.  …  He's a guinea pig." 

Currently, we have Cutie:

So far, so good.

Lets go back to the first pig for a moment though.  You see, she was super fun when she was alive.  Eventually though, like all things, Heidi passed away. 

Here is where my family's ability to be well meaning smacks into their terrible timing and my over active imagination. 

My mother has this meatloaf she makes, and she went through a phase where she tried to make it more interesting.  She worked very hard on this particular loaf, which is why she was very confused by my reaction to it.

You see, in order to help us mourn the loss of our pet, she attempted to fashion this particular loaf into the shape of beloved Sesame Street character, Snuffleupagus. 

The nose wouldn't stay up and it very quickly stopped looking even remotely like a muppet. 

Instead, it kinda looked like a guinea pig.

My immediate assumption was, of course, "OH MY GOD.  MY FAMILY IS EATING OUR DEAD GUINEA PIG." 

Because, you know, I was totally stable.  

...

Yep.