Papier Mâché and Related Nonsense

I splashed (a tiny amount of) water on my pointe shoes while lounging on the couch this evening (they were close at hand because I am supposed to be wearing them around the house to break them in. I made it for about three hours today and then my ankle went "BITCH, PLEASE" and I knocked that shit right off.) and I went "ARGH ARGH ARGH OH NOOOOO! MY PAPIER MÂCHÉ SHOES! THEY MUSN'T GET WET! HOLY CRAP! BRING ME SOME TISSUES AND A TOWEL AND PERHAPS ALSO SOME SMELLING SALTS BECAUSE I THINK I AM GOING TO PASS OUT OH MY GOD"
and my husband was like "What? I thought you were kidding about pointe shoes being made out of papier mâché."
And I was all "NO OH MY GOD WHY WOULD I EVEN JOKE ABOUT THAT?"
Maybe next time I will get modern plastic shoes and save myself the horror. After all, I am pretty damn clumsy.

Also: sort of ballet-related only not really? I was watching the ancient 1955 TV version of the Scarlet Pimpernel at the time, which stars Marius Goring, AKA Julian, AKA the Love Interest That You Aren't Sure Whether You Like Or Not in The Red Shoes. See? Sort of ballet-related. 
But not much.

Poof, Puff, Pizazz!

The problem with ballet is familiarization. You stare at tutus and pointe shoes long enough and you slowly start to think of that sort of thing as... well... pretty. It's like when I worked at a fabric store. It wasn't a Jo-Anns type place it was a real fabric store that specialized in bridal, tailoring, and formal wear. And we had racks and cases and binders chock-full of sequined lace, Swarovski crystals, tiaras, tutu netting, etc. All the theaters in town, as well as all the pageant moms (shudder) and ice-skating costumiers shop there. And when I started I was kind of icked out by the bling, but after five years I had fully embraced the glitter and glam and I now paillet far more stuff than I probably should. I like to think I do it tastefully, but it is all relative. Anyway.
So. Ballet.
I was looking through best-and-worst-dressed celebrity lists (don't judge me!) and came across this on one of the latter:

 This is some variety of popular music star? I don't know, I haven't listened to radio outside of a grocery store in YEARS.

And anyway, I kind of liked it? I am not a big-skirt person. I kind of inwardly cringe whenever I attend a wedding with a bride in a giant poofy quinceanera skirt. My own wedding dress had a petticoat but was certainly not so big it forced my husband to stand several feet away from me. But six months of looking at tutus on the internet and I think this is adorable, guys.

 

Craving For Creativity

Okay, someone needs to tell me that I don't need a rehearsal tutu. Come on, guys. Tell me that I don't have the room to store it because it is huge and awkward and I live in a one bedroom apartment. Tell me that I should be focusing my creative energy on projects that will earn money. Tell me that I would never wear the silly thing anyway so I shouldn't bother. Or that my funds are limited because I have two sick cats.
Please.
Or else this lady right here (*gesture*) is buying 14 yards of diamond net on Tuesday.

Ballet Riot!

Oh my goodness!
You should read this article, it isn't very long and there is a video! With kind of not very good costumes! Anyway, I think it's interesting that the same music was considered awful while being danced and revolutionary and brilliant when the dancers were removed from the equation. Also, did you know that Stravinski hated the Rite Of Spring bit in Fantasia? I can't say it's my favorite part, but that is mostly because the 1950s idea of dinosaurs is all blocky and brown. Like boxy T-rex battling a big lumpy stegosaurus! RAR!

Guess How Many Pills I Take Everyday. It is 7.

So. The next chapter in the saga of chemical substances that are being pumped in to my body.

I was feeling like the nortriptyline (a tricyclic used for treating chronic pain for those of you playing at home) was making me feel crazy and distressed. It has a suicidal ideation warning on the bottle, but the way I was feeling wasn't exactly depression. One of the symptoms of rheumatic conditions is depression, and it runs rampant through my family. Me and clinical depression are not what I would call old friends, but we are certainly old acquaintances. It was more like the sort of manic emotional state that you (okay, I) experience right before a period starts. You know, fine for a while and then tetchy and angry, and then despairing and fatalistic. Unable to concentrate on large quantities of anything. Extremely tired and unable to cope with people or things. Looking at the dishes like a mountain too high to climb. If you had never experienced clinical depression you might think that was what was going on.

Anyhow, so I emailed my doctor and said "get me off this crap, and make it snappy" and he emailed me back saying "no, we will just put you on another thing on top of it and that will solve the problem". I was FURIOUS. I actually spent a week or so sitting on it because I couldn't quite figure out what to say that didn't use curse words and would fit in the 1000 character limit that Kaiser imposes on it's emails. I also couldn't do research, because I would type something in to google and then look at the 11,735 related hits... and my mind would just shut right down and I would need to go take a nap and a shot. In the end I had to have my (poor sweet wonderful) husband research it for me and then cut and paste relevant bits of information, with highlighted sections so I would know what I needed to look at first, and send it to me as an email.
 Then I took about five hours trying to whittle down an email to a few talking points. And then I had my husband look it over to make sure it was intelligible. And finally, at 1am one morning, I hit send and off it went.
The bad news is I am now on ANOTHER !@#$ing drug on top of my original drugs. The good news is that I have been taking it for three days and feel a lot better (mentally, anyway) already. Cons: couldn't sleep last night which wasn't awesome. Supposed to make me gain even more weight. Can't wait to see how wide my ass can actually get before I snap in half. Pros: this is supposed to help with the pain as well as with the crazy. It's basically low-dose zoloft which is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor and interacts with the tricylic (theoretically) to decrease pain and smack down some of the side effects.
We shall see.

Bury Him For Ninety Years, Then See If He Talks

So I started taking one of my prescriptions about... 8 months ago? Something like that. And it messes with your brain chemistry so for a few months I was REALLY TETCHY and grumpy all the time and could not suffer fools terribly gladly. Then a couple months back they doubled the dose on this shiznit. I am pretty much INTOLERABLE to be around, now. My mom gave me a Happy Light for Christmas. No joke.
Christmas with family was... oooooh yeah. So I had to travel by car for a couple of hours in the same vehicle as my parents. Who had an ipod hooked up to their car stereo, so I have to give them credit for that. But the speakers weren't all actually functioning? Or something? And there was this song playing that I didn't recognize, by an artist I couldn't pick out of a line up but it went on for something like ten minutes and all I could think was that it sounded like what you would get if you shot an angel, and then chained it to the wall in your basement, and forced it to sing at gunpoint. I told my husband this when I got home this evening and he said "oh man, you really need to get off that medication"
Anyway, that is my plan for this week. Researching other nerve blockers and their side effects and then pointedly emailing my doctor about what he NEEDS TO DO before my family locks me in a box.