My cousin Nic has diarrhea so he and my Aunt Sally can't come to my graduation. My friend Holly can't come because her mom is dying a horrible death of cancer. My Opi is in the hospital. Crappy day for a graduation.

Dr thinks my Opi may have had a stroke. Omi lied about it this morning. Hopefully we get to see him tomorrow.

My graduation party is in two days and fully half the people invited won't say if they're coming. I have offered them them the most open-ended conversations possible to respond to. All this time and nobody fucking cares about the prosecco and fancy cake.

Bo has an infection on the upper right hand side of his mouth. The whole segment of gums is red and swollen.

My mom called me the calm parent with reference to my cat, but I can't tell you how much less obsessed I feel now that he is behaving more like himself.

We had to go back to the vet again yesterday for a new bandage, because the whole family tried, and we couldn't bandage Bo ourselves. The vet wouldn't stitch Bo back up again, so he will have a big pink scar across the black pad of his paw. He is doing a three-legged hop to show his displeasure with the bandage, which is as sad as it is entertaining. Before he pulled the stitches out he was leaving little bloody footprints; afterwards he did not bleed. So far the bandage looks like it will hold. Also, I got a good look inside his mouth during a big yawn and the gums looked pink and happy and healing well.

Bastard cat pulled off his bandage and out his stitches.

My mom received the very good news that her colleagues refused to take her job and lobbied the principal to give her another year to get back to work. This combined with cutting off her lithium abruptly seems to have made her feel fantastic, as it well should. She is also doing mindfulness meditation guided by various cd's and self-help gurus. I think she's one for charismatic healers.

Bo is wondering how the fuck a day that started out so good ended up in (1) having to get back in the car for (2) a trip back to the veterinarian and (3) a bandage change. It is a smaller bandage, which the vet said he would chew on because it would help him to feel more normal. He's feeling pretty close to normal, by the looks of things. The healing is reportedly going well. Bo is pretty pissed off though, so I am ignoring him.

Bo greeted me with cuddles this morning. He let me lift him down when we got up. I gave him breakfast, which he gobbled up, once before his antibiotic and once after. He just hopped up on my desk to drink water from the fish bowl... things are getting back to normal :)

2pm and Bo is sleeping. Think I might have a go at that too.

Bo's pupils returned to normal size somewhere between noon, staring out my bedroom window, and eating a small lunch. Now he has taken up again his perch on the back of the couch. I haven't seen him get any good sleep apart from a nap in the hallway between 8:30 and 9.

Got a call from a vet tech to check on Bo. Apparently the doctor who did the surgery texted from the airport to check on him.

I woke up at 3:30am to check on Bo. His pupils are still enormous (he is med sensitive like the rest of his human family) but he purred and accepted my company without getting rattled. His eyes closed a few times, then he ate breakfast and vehemently refused his antibiotic pill. I let that go because he had had a less effective injectable antibiotic and had just eaten dry kibble. It's an open buffet of kibble today because he didn't eat at all yesterday. I will try again with the pill this evening. Then he fell asleep in the hallway.

My poor cat had a bad reaction to the dose or type of pain medication he was prescribed. When we got there the vet was very gentle with him and explained that he could be hallucinating. He's home again with new pain meds on board, which will hopefully treat him better. It will be another few hours before the old medication wears off.

We brought home my cat. He was still bleeding a little down both sides of his face and wearing an ugly little bandana and plastic name tag around his neck. He was not going to have any cloth near his face so I got him out of the bad duds and he took care of the rest. We didn't know if he knew where he was so decided to put him on his favourite cushion. He didn't like that AT ALL and loped unsteadily to my bedroom, swaying on his back legs, kicking his bandaged left front paw out at on odd angle, going first for his food dish, second for cuddles as I followed down the hallway, and then third to look out of the open window. Then much more cuddles, and back to the food that had by this time softened up in some warm water and turned cold. Nice priorities.

They're just finishing up the surgery on Bo now. I have an order from the vet to pick up special cat litter, and to pick the cat up at 6:30 tonight.

My cat was so good about taking his pre-surgery antibiotics this morning. He even came for a second snuggle afterward... probably because he'd got a second breakfast without having asked. I want him fed so that he is fit for surgery and healing and also so that the pills don't make him sick.

I gave my mom a ripe yellow guava this morning, to get her in a cheery mood. She is going off of all of her medications. She has never been so fragile; maybe the medications are bad for her. I am trying to be supportive, both in keeping her animated company and in helping out with the cleaning.

My cat is a dapper fellow

Watching my goldfish discover a taste for itty bitty pieces of skinned peas yesterday was a lot of fun. I think he might have eaten 1 pea total. File under things that are surprisingly exciting.

I took Bo out for a walk in the cool garden when I woke up early this morning. It was several hours before I could call the vet and say we'd found the money for his surgery. I checked that the antibiotic the doctor prescribed wouldn't be the same one that made him so ill last year and it was a good thing I did. We're going to take good care of my little buddy and it feels very good.

I didn't tell you my goldfish was sick because Lost Gander finds it depressing. My fish ate too fast and started swimming in spirals like a tumbling pigeon then collapsing on his side: his swim bladder was compressed. Anyway, I followed the treatment plan suggested by Dr Google and he's fine again.

The vet says, don't worry too much about the lump, worry about his teeth, for which we need to save up $700 before the surgery, with $300 to be paid in installments after, with a payment plan. So that plus possibly antibiotics for 6 months while I save up. We can remove the lump when we remove his teeth.

Yesterday my cat was doing a good job at ignoring me. "Perhaps you are being a bit intense." Lying on the carpet staring at him. "I thought I was holding it together pretty well." Being an old soul my cat forgave me and slept on my bed while I rolled around, waking early, trying not to kick him. He moved over to curl up with me. His most recent thing is to lie half on my chest while I wake up. We did that. I opened a fresh bag of cat food. Later this morning we will go to the veterinarian.

I found out that pet insurance is not such a great deal (unless your pet is in an accident and can be reconstructed for $2500, plus 20% and $150) and opened a small savings account for the sole purpose of saving for my cat's medical bills.

I was rolling around on the floor with my cat and found a hard growth on the pad of his left front paw. Here's to rolling around with your cat as a health measure :(

My mom's problem was that she was taking more mood stabilizer.

Last night I slept about 3 hours and woke up at 12:30am.  None of my tricks for sleep helped. The cat curled up beside me in bed. I may have gotten a little of the kind of sleep that feels like you're not sleeping. I got up at 4:30 and worked on my paper. My body ached with tiredness but I felt alert. I tried sleeping again in the early afternoon, with a small handful of pills designed to combat the possibility of mania and napped for a few hours.

So. This week I am exercising. If I lose any weight I will consider keeping the new pills; if I gain weight I'm going back to the old ones.

I walked up to my appointment herding cats this afternoon. I made all the cats purr except for the baby kittens who I wanted to let sleep. Two cats sat in my lap. I thought about how nice it would be to have three black and white cats you could only tell apart by their disparate markings.

When I came home my mom had been crying. She is worried she won't get her old job back even though she has gotten cards in the mail from her principal every month.

The dog is sitting in the other chair, keeping me company as I type this. I am having a beer I was going to save for next weekend on ice because the dog and I are on the same page about a crying mom. I don't think she's getting better. She seems to be getting more dependent. Instead of mindfulness classes I want to send her to Womens' Studies 101.

I talked to my nurse. Just so you know. I am taking care of myself and being taken care of.

I could deal with random paranoia; I don't like this current feeling of being ambiently scared for no reason. It happens in the afternoon. I tie it to the reduction in my old medication working its way through my system. I can sleep now, which is great, but I've gained another 5 lbs and my favourite jeans don't fit :(

I am inhabiting sleeping animal central. Mom is away and the dog wanted to go for two walks today but I told her I had to study. It was extremely difficult, she was persistent. I studied until I became paranoid and then I did the dishes.

So. I have read a book on Kierkegaard, sung Zou Bisou to a cat to get her to come out of hiding, and traded tea with a shop girl as we each evangelized our favourite blends. I now have a fair amount of pretty amazing tea that I have been drinking non-stop, except now I can drink coffee too. Cue the citrusy-floral Ethopian coffee that doesn't come in decaf. I have been listening to music and falling asleep by myself, but I still sleep 11-12 hours. Tomorrow I walk and I write.

Cleaned up the green algae bloom in my fish bowl indicating all is once again well with the microorganisms that break down ammonia. My fish is like 3 years old and still going.

It's nice when my cat misses me and curls up next to me to sleep at night. Then this morning as we were waking up he stretched out on his back with his feet tossed over my shoulder and head at my hip: the ultimate in kitty trust.

After waking up every hour until midnight I took some of my old medication. Not with food at dinner time, so no time for akathesia to set in, but it helped me sleep.

I am having trouble sleeping but either way I did the medication thing it was going to suck. So far no paranoia, just a cat running around at 6 am shredding all available paper.

It's 8:00 and I'm not in bed :)

I quit my old medication last night because the low dose was making me miserably restless, as it did when I was going on it. I feel good, and hopefully that continues over the next several days. Maybe the paranoid glimpses won't hang on? I am falling asleep because I am tired, not because my medication makes me for the first time since I've been on medication. Hopefully my caffeine sensitivity goes away now too so that I can drink all the roasts of coffee. I may decide to lie about this all and pretend to still be taking the old medication to smooth relations with my doctor or I may tell him I was following his suggestions which I originally overruled on account of his wanting to drop the old medication before I got to a therapeutic dose of the new one. My memory has gaps this semester from all the med changes; it is time to stabilize before I have to write my final exam.

Did not get an interview at the hospital.

The professor had his books organized by colour.

The professor I was talking to today told me about waking up and thinking he was dead, and going to tell his lover who was on the couch, and being told, "no, you are waking me up." Sometimes we crazies have cute delusions. The professor and I are on the same medication but it is causing him sleep problems. I provided my recipes for sleep.

The sleepy animals have surrounded me.

so pleased my black violas returned for spring

I wish I could sue the psychiatrist who put me on Stelazine, which caused crazy side effects (I then refused to take it and demanded to be let out of the treatment facility) and permanent neurological damage. I have a tremor under my right eye with this new drug now that I doubt would have happened otherwise.

More popular than my better known zebra striped socks.

My leopard print socks are very popular.

I guess the thing with this medication is that the line where sanity meets insanity remains visible. I can peer over and see what a crazy person would, only without becoming terrified. In this way the crazy remains an active part of my identity, which it hasn't been for 3 years. I am still not sure how strong I can be, this makes everything seem fragile. On the other hand I feel calmer, which makes me feel more confident. My new living space.

I got my act together and applied for some volunteer jobs in a hospital. Hopefully something will work out.