500 Posts!!! Wow!

Wow, I opened up my WordPress this morning to see in my notifications that I had 500 public posts!  That’s a helluva lot of posts for this country bumpkin to put up…of course it’s been over several years.  And I have a couple of hundred private and draft posts that I haven’t published for one reason or another, either they were too personal or I just didn’t see them as “post worthy”.

Yes, I enjoy writing and will probably always have a blog.  I like WordPress over any of the other blogging formats – and I’ve tried a few of them.  I should change up the way my page looks more frequently than I do. And I should post more photos and videos.  But I have a Youtube page as well, and I do my video blogging on that.

I was reading in the Yahoo news about the Pulse massacre and it seems that there is one body of one of the victims that is going unclaimed because the family didn’t like it that their  son was gay.  Sad, sad, sad.  Even in death the guy can’t be accepted by his own family.  I think it’s just cruel and shows that the family is ignorant and intolerant.

I am very lucky to have a very supportive family.  My being lesbian has never been an issue with them and they support me very much.  Love is the key.  Love is love.  No matter what.  And if you love someone, in whatever form from parental love to romantic love you accept that person for who they are, I believe.  If that man’s family loved him they should bury him properly and with the basic honor and respect that any person deserves in the end.  It makes me very sad that they cannot see past their own homophobia and prejudice to do this final thing for him.

I have to take this laptop in for service.  It seems to have a mind of it’s own sometimes.  The mouse keeps freezing, I have NO audio at all so watching videos or listening to pod casts is out for me.  And I suspect it has a virus or two that got by my firewall.  This means I may be without computer service for a few days, so no blogging for a little while.  I have my phone which has full internet access, but I can’t see blogging on that little keyboard!  Hahaha. But I will still be able to get messages and emails.  And I will still be able to check my facebook page and the such.  Oh, I got my original facebook page back finally.  It took a basic act of God with Facebook’s admin but I did get it restored and I am using it again.

I am off to start my day – albeit a bit earlier than usual as I got up at 3:30am.  I hope you all have a great day!

Peace!!!  ~MB

Saying Good-Bye

Sometimes you are surprised with the news that just knocks you for a loop.  Last night, shortly after I crawled into bed somewhere around 11:30pm I got a text from a buddy on the west coast telling me that a mutual friend in Texas had died in her sleep. She was so young!  I don’t know the details at all, but simply the loss of this wonderful young woman for any reason just doesn’t make sense.  She had so much to offer the world.  I guess I could say that God had bigger plans for her and that her job here was done.  She left behind children whom I am sure are asking the very question we all are today – why?

Life is much bigger than us all.  And death can come so quickly.  It doesn’t discriminate, we are all eligible at any given moment.  But we cannot live in fear of death, just because it is the inevitable outcome of life, does not mean we have to fear it or be burdened by thinking about it.  Living with a chronic illness like I do I try not to think about dying at all.   Back in the 80’s people were dropping like flies from HIV/AIDS and today I have the luxury of modern medicine to keep me alive and healthy.  I had mentioned that I took a hiatus from my meds a while ago, I am back on them full bore now and won’t be going off again, it scared the bejesus out of me when I got sick and my immune system got so low.

I will miss my friend and our conversations.  I just wish I had maintained a closer relationship with her in recent months.  You know you sometimes take for granted that people are alright even when you don’t hear much from them; one assumes that all is well and life is going on as usual. Like I say…you just never know when that proverbial bus will come along…so make the most of this day and all of your days, they are a gift.

Make sure you tell people that you love them – often.  You never know when that last time you will see or speak to them will be.  I’ve heard this said a million times, but it makes more sense today than ever.  I wish I had had the opportunity to let my friend know how much I appreicated her and the difference she made in my life with our conversations and her moral support for me.  I will miss you my friend.  Rest in Peace.

Just a Bit…

I was just reminded tonight that I have not blogged in quite a while, so I should put something together here and let you all know that I am doing stupendously well!  things have really been turning around for me, I’m getting myself together and it feels great.

The weather helps a lot, it’s been like summer here for a couple of weeks now, in the 80’s and sunny almost every day.  Honestly, we could use some rain as everything is very dry and parched.  I have to water my plants almost every night. And my outside water spigot is not working, so I am having to bucket water from the house out to the gardens and water each plant by hand.  Pain in my ass.  But my gardens, both flower and veggetable, are looking pretty damned great if I do say so myself.  I’ve put in all of the flowers that I am going to do for this season, maybe in the fall I will add some bulbs for tulips and daffodils next spring.  But for this year all the perennials are in and doing quite well.  They’ll all come back next season and it will look even better as the whole garden comes together and matures.  I will try to add some recent photos of the flowers I am growing at the end of this blog.

Health wise I am doing awesome as well.  I’m over the scare and stuff from the beginning of the month.  Doctors all say that I am doing well, altough I have some more neurological blood testing to be done, some enzymes are off for some reason.  I don’t understand most of the medical mumbo-jumbo, but I can follow directions.  I am doing well with the relapse too, haven’t touched a thing since I ended up in the hospital.  I can look back now and see all those things that triggered it in the first place too.  I was on the phone with someone tonight and she reminded me of the stresses that I was under, which probably helped lead to my relapse.  Anyway, that’s behind me now, and it’s staying there for good!

The dogs are doing great.  My Dad bought them both matching rainbow collars at the local Strawberry Festival that we attended together with my Mother this last weekend.  I thought it was quite sweet of him to give them those collars, and it was his mild way of showing support for me as well.  Being a staunch Republican he and I don’t talk much about politics or anything about the LGBT issues.  I’d rather not get into that with him.

So at work things are going well.  But I am about tired of being called “sir” all the time.  Summer doesn’t help, I wear a t-shirt (company issued) and black jeans and boots to work every day. It’s obvious that I have a flat chest (as I like it) and I keep my hair in a crew cut….so perhaps some would say I am asking for it. Yes, I am very masculine and present as very androgynous.  But when you thank someone do you have to add “sir” or “m’am” to the end of it?  Can’t we keep things more neutral and just say “thanks”?  Today I counted….11 “sirs” – a couple of them I swear were in a sarcastic kind of way, which irks me to no end.

I have really been trying to be more social lately, going to the fairs and festivals, attending parties that I usually didn’t go to, and being more friendly and nice to people in general.  I feel the change in myself as well, I’m loosening up and it feels good.  I’ve even been making plans for the rest of the summer, little things here and there to make sure that I stay out and involved in life.

So, that’s what’s going on with me.  Just an update of sorts.  I hope that you are all doing well and are in the best of health and spirits —AND enjoying this lovely Spring/Summer!!!!    Peace!!!  ~MB

Hatred or Terror?

I have been simmering over the Orlando nightclub massacre; still trying to make some sense or come to how I really feel about it – other than very sad for those people and their families and very angry…although I am not sure just who I am the angriest at.  The shooter, his wife, failed intelligence, gun control….

One of my facebook friends asked the question yesterday, and I paraphrase here “Was Orlando a hate crime or a terror attack?”  That question has been stuck in my head.

Really.  Which was it?  We know only what we are being told by other people that he hated gays and was angered by seeing 2 men kissing, but then other little weird things are coming to light like the one woman in his apartment building says that he would hang out in one of the apartments with the gay men that occupied them. Maybe he was questioning his sexuality…?

The whole shebang is very complicated and we will probably never know the real reason.

His apartment showed little connection to ISIS or radicals.  He had scoped out other locations to do this dastardly deed, even went to the Pulse himself a few times – scoping for this or for a date?

Now his wife has acknowledged that she had known full well what this man was going to do.  THIS angers me to the core.  She should be prosecuted for premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder just to start with, in my opinion, which is based on what the news media is reporting.

I could get into all of the little angles, facts, alleged happenings and the such here, but the point that is stuck so hard for me is the question of did he do this because he hated gays or because he wanted to instill terror in the hearts of Americans.  What was his primary motive?  We all know he was a certified lunatic and very evil.   Did he kill because he hated gays or because he wanted to be a terrorist and wanted a location rich with targets, that he knew already.

I could talk about all of the missed chances the FBI and other homeland security operations dropped the proverbial ball on this as well.  Could they have stopped it before it happened?  I think they could have made it more difficult for him at the very least.

There are so many questions surrounding this horrible tragic and needless killing of so many innocent people who were just out to have a fun night with friends.

Hate or Terror?

Maybe the guy did “hate gays” as reported.

I doubt he had much – if any – direction or connection to ISIS and radicals.  They (ISIS) claims he was one of theirs, but they would do that anyway, it’s their way from the pattern I’ve noticed since 2011….if it is a terrifying act against the US then they’ll claim they ordered it and take responsibility for it, like getting another notch in your belt kind of thinking.

Orlando was a senseless loss for the LGBT community.  Particularly the Hispanic part of our community .  I don’t think we will ever be able to comprehend the multiple ways in which this brought such loss to our country.

As part of the LGBT community, I don’t feel that this was a hate crime against us.  I think it was a hate crime against America.  AND it also could be a terror attack that could have been aimed against any one of the multiple groups that man claimed to hate.

So, what, dear reader, do YOU think?  Was this a direct assault against the gay community or a terror attack against American values?  Or both?  I’d love to hear your comments, or perhaps a blog of your own on it.

Be Safe.   Peace to ALL   ~MB

 

 

An Addict’s Disclosure

I got up this morning to get ready for my daily hospital visit and Jamie Ray’s post A boy and her dog was just stuck in my head. He wrote about losing his friend Ryan to a heroin overdose recently.  I didn’t know Ryan, and sadly now I never will.  I don’t know a little about the struggles that were his to bare; those struggles where using made it all better for a while.  But I do know first hand the attempt to make that happen.  Drug addiction is no stranger to me.  I battle it whenever I’m down and that little voice deep in my head says “I know what will make it better for a little while…” Fuck that little voice, it just drives me insane sometimes. Sometimes even there is no reasoning with it.

We don’t talk about some things out loud. There is a heroin epidemic in this country, it’s rampant and is just getting worse. We’re losing wonderful people over this, not just your street users as everyone pictures, but we’re losing kids in high school,  teachers, lawyers, Prince even!   (fentanal is what most heroin is cut with so the dealer can make more money, and it’s 100’s of times stronger than the heroin itself).

It’s a fairly easy drug to be stealth about.  You can snort it which leaves no trace that your doing it – except for the inquisitive person who wants to know how you get your pupils so small.  And you can shoot – or inject it.  This poses a slight problem of keeping your injection sites out of sight but believe me when you want it badly enough you know all the tricks.

Our government has this thing they cal the War on Drugs, started in the 80’s by Reagan.  I think it’s a farce. If we took the money we spend doing that and opened some quality rehabilitation and recovery programs  – both medical and non-medical (let that be up to the individual seeking treatment and recovery).   One can kick this aweful habit.  I did it back in 1992 and stayed clean for many years, but then I slipped up and started to back slide into it again.  Yeah, I admit it I am not perfect, I have this demon that haunts me to hell and back. How can such a small amount of a powdery substance get ahold of a person like this shit does?  It baffles me. I’ve been fighting like crazy not to give in to my cravings.  I’m doing pretty good, trying to keep myself upbeat and positive and away from anything to do with it.  Problem is that it seems to be everywhere up here in the coastal area. I wish it was eradicated from the earth.

I know my triggers, and am constantly working on staying clean.  I have a good amount of familial support, as well as friends who have been there that I can talk to when I have to. My doctors are pushing me to go to the rehab program and medically maintain my cravings with a drug called Methadone. It blocks the pleasure receptors that the heroin attaches to and keeps the cravings away.  I, as block headed as I am, have thus far refrained.  Seems like I would be swapping one drug for another in a way.  Plus I heard that the Methadone can be addictive too. I don’t know what’s best yet.  I’m clean now, and putting all I have into keeping it that way.  I’m just afraid of slipping again, and I don’t’ want that kind of life.  And I don’t want to repeat the cycle of using/clean/using….it’s like a roller coaster and this Butch is OFF. Plus, I don’t want to die from it for sure.

I haven’t previously written about any of this because I have a good healthy amount of shame about it.  I never wanted this to be part of my life.  I didn’t get born and say “hey I’m going to be a junkie!”  No, these things seem to happen through the course of  life events and moments of weakness,experimentation or curiousity, and sometimes even peer pressure.

So.  Now you know a shameful secret I have kept for many years.  I feel that until I said it out loud here that it was just going to eat me up inside.  This is part of my recovery, coming clean with what’s going on and has gone on.

BUTCH: Femmes Know

Excellently written piece, VV does it again! I don’t must have missed this on during my hiatus, glad I found it, Rock on Girl!

Vulnerable Verbiage

 

I will write this to the best of my knowledge about BUTCH. For, I have loved and admired this gender since I was a young girl. I have been hopelessly drawn to butch women for as long as I can remember. Observed them and heard them. Touched them and experienced their love. Their convictions and their passion. Their strength and their vulnerabilities. They truly are a sexy force to be reckoned with.

Butch is neither male or female. There is no “man’s role” to the butch.

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Long Haul

These last 3-4 weeks have really been a bitch.  I’m much better now, guess the daily shots of antibiotics, bed rest and taking it easy for a while have paid off, as I am feeling much, much better tonight. I spent 8 hours at the hospital today doing tests, getting my stitches out and doing more tests, but I feel like I am getting my strength back, I’m not walking like a fucking drunk, staggering and falling on my face like I was a few days ago.

The hospital and a great team of doctors have been right on top of my case.  I had what I hope was my last blood draws today.  They’ll now compare and analyze the multiple draws to see where the problems lay.  The vertigo is most likely coming from my ears, which I had been complaining that they hurt like hell for a couple of months.  I wish we had caught it a bit earlier.  I will be seeing an ENT specialist in the next week who will look into that angle.  All I know is that I have never been so damned sick, and for such a long period of time.

Living with HIV is scary.   You never know if the little cold you have is going to turn into PCP pneumonia or what could happen.  I had let my immune system sort of go for a while, like I said in my last blog, I quit taking my meds…big fuck up.  My counts went wacky and then I got really sick. I hate living with this disease.  But hey, something is going to take everyone of us out of this world at some point right?  I figure the proverbial bus is just waiting.

I want to thank everyone who has writing me encouraging notes and comments.  They are very much appreciated. It’s amazing to me that people I have known only through the internet (albeit some for years now!) can care and take the time to let me know they do.

I cured my computer issue.  I bought a new computer. Yeah, it was a splurge, but I was so sick of the issues my Toshiba was giving me that I gave up.  I did make sure that I saved all the pictures and documents from it, backed it up, updated my DropBox and didn’t lose anything vital before I neatly packed her up and put her away.  One day next winter I am going to set up and go through every picture I have….there are some I should definitely not have and should delete.  There are a lot of duplicates and just junk pictures, stuff I don’t care to keep or that I don’t remember.  I have YET to figure out how to organize pictures on my computer, although DropBox does help.

I’m trying to catch up on news and events, I haven’t been watching too much television lately actually.  The political antics make me sick.  This country is going to implode at some point here over all this bullshit. We are so divided it’s not even funny.  If it was 1800 we would be at war already I swear.  I need to catch up on my blog reading tonight and see what all of you have been up to and writing about.  I feel like I am a bit out of the loop here.

Got some new jeans and a nice new button down short-sleeved shirt at Aeropostale and Old Navy.  For some reason Old Navy’s jeans fit better or are sized more accurately.   OH!  I had to have some new boxer briefs, in fun summer surf style patterns even!  I’m going to a party on Saturday and wanted to look good.

Work called me today, I’ve been out battling these medical problems for a month now. I am feeling like I need to go back and I suggested next week, but my boss said take another week to get good and solidly on my feet.  So I’ll return to work on the 20th.  I’ll be glad to get back to my regular schedule once again.  All I want is for my world to be right and back on track again!  No more shots, IV’s or surgeries.

So what do you do when your whole life gets blown out of the water like mine has been the last month?  How do you cope?  How do you put things back into order and do you make new goals with a fresh slate?  Or are you happy if they just go back to what they were?  Personally I need to make changes….good ones.

 

 

 

 

Whassuppp?

ahh…I sitting at my desk and doing a little bit of writing for a change.  I know that I’ve been on  the missing in action list for quite some time due to a bucket load of issues. For me, life doesn’t just revolve around a computer, technology or being connected to the world by an electronic leash.  When my main PC started having major issues I just sort of switched it off and stopped writing. I didn’t pay any attention to Facebook  – during which time some moron hacked my pictures, pirated my page completely. I I complained to FB and they disabled MY account…great logic FB!  It turned out to be a pretty good think I think it’s a great thing to just put i all down and disconnect from the cyber world for a nice period of time once in a while.  Oh, I did put up a new page, just doewn’t have much on it and is set to mostly private for my friends list.

So, I broke out my Toshiba laptop and fired her up a few days ago, and while she’s got some bugs that I am working out it will have to work for now. Really, these days what do I use it for? WordPress, Facebook, my email accounts, maybe some shopping on eBay or Amazon.  Once in a while, I use it like a repair manual, looking up how to change a part on the truck or something……heeeey….wait, maybe it is fairly useful in many ways.  But honestly, I could live without all that stupid SPAM.   (couldn’t we all?!haha)

So, I’m doing alright now.  I have been super sick the last month or so.  I’ve been in and out of the hospital a couple of times.  I have to be at the hospital every day at 8:00am for a big shot in the ass – as you can imagine it’s a little tough to sit down (go ahead laugh!)  I have to have the shot because it’s super tough to get an IV line into me so after the first 3 days that I was in there they had about 12 different people try.  They stuck me with needles like a pincushion and my veins just wouldn’t cooperate.  They the words, “neck” and PIC lines came up and I said no way.  So we agreed that if I could go in every day for the shots I could go home and be more comfortable in my own space.

Periodically I got sort of run down and angry with life.  I stopped taking my HIV meds completely and that did not sit well with my immune system.  I got injured and then one thing led to another and I had a blood infection that wanted to kill me.  All of which could have been prevented, had I not been such an idiot.  I just got so tired of all the medications, the testing and everything that goes along with this stupid disease.  I take medications 3 times a day.   Got them set up in those little plastic boxes that tell me if I took  them or not.  I used to be diligent about it, but over the years, and with the wear on my mind I got easily discouraged.

I should have known something was amiss when  I started feeling so run down and was tired and sleeping all the time.  I originally went to the doctor for a very sore throat, which turned out to be strep and she put me on antibiotic for that, but my throat didn’t respond so we went to a higher antibiotic…it got better but not 100% .  Just so happened that I had another appointment with my specialist a few days later.  I felt like shit, looked horrible I am sure. I had a fever and really just wanted to be in bed.  She didn’t take 3 minutes to tell me she was having me admitted to the hospital and was going to run a barrage of tests.  And they sure did !   At that point I was pretty cooperative, I knew it was the best and safest place for me to be.

Once they got me settled into a nice private room (lucky me…?) Then came the troops to get that blood.  Seems they wanted a LOT of it.  Ideally, if they could get a good IV line in they could take the blood from it and then hook up the IV.    No such luck.  After a good couple of hours of “let’s try this one” they got an IV, but not one big enough to give all that blood they needed.  But we were half way there, now they could administer my meds at least.  Another phlebotomist did finally get the blood from my other hand.  I was pretty fevered up and out of it.  By this time, I didn’t care about all the needle sticks.  They did have to relocate the IV line a couple of times.

After a couple of days of solid bed rest (my friends took care of Lulu and Nola for me) and a constant drip of some super power juices, pain meds, and all the regular stuff my fevers weren’t so bad, I was just incredibly tired.  The stupid IV gave away again, so they came to put a new one in just about the time my specialist came to see me.  I refused to be IV ed again and asked her if I could just go home with meds.

The only way they would let me go was for me to go into the hospital daily and get a shot of the super juice for 21 days.  So that is the cycle I am in now.

I’ve been out of work now for 3 weeks.  They understand that I am having health issues and have been dealing with hospitals and doctors every day.  So I think they are pretty cool.  Plus they have hired some other part time help as well. After I get my stitches out of Friday I hope to be cleared to return to work I do miss that job.

Through out all of this my mom has been an angel.   I can’t drive because I have developed some neurolgical quirks, and they are doing a CT scan tomorrow to make sure that there are no blood clots, which they saw on the ultrasound and put me on Eliquis for them. Hopefully they will have disolved now and that’s not going to be a problem.  Mom drives me where I need to go, and she’s just awesome.  I am very lucky to have such a loving, caring mother.

The clots or something is making me very unsteady on my feet.  I’ve taken a few good falls, lucky not to break more bones!  I have to be really careful getting up and down from standing or sitting positions and can’t be moving too fast.  I’m sort of a fast mover to begin with, being a little hyper already.  But I m working at it!

The veggie garden is all up and started.   it turned out to be 8′ wide by 16′ long and is a raised bed (I used landscaping timbers for the box, which came out very nicely.  Put in 5 yards of nice screened loam and she’s all setr to grow away.  We (me and Charlie by neighbor who is working the garden with me) jhave been getting plants in like different varieties of tomatoes, squash, zuchinni, bail, herb, beans, and pumpkins of course.  At this point everything just has to grow. I do have to get some beans grown and perhaps a couple more things.  It should grow to be a nice little veggie garden.

So that my friend is where I have been for the last month or so….sick and dealing with some tough medical issues.  I’ sorry that I haven’t had more time to write.  But as my strength improves I am sure you will see more from me.

Pease~  MB

 

 

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