early morning with leftover horchata
Tuesday 27 March 2007 | I like a cookie
Last night the Brujo came over for dinner and found me so mentally interesting that he instead took me out for Mexican food. Before his very eyes, your narrator unpurposefully meandered around the house, staggery and noodley, carrying herself as if fragile and elderly, bewildered by the onset of symptoms like good old psychomotor retardation, also the abrupt inability to concentrate on anything as particular as non-fiction books about death and dying. But why? The EMSAM + Colonel M’Butu cocktail has been working so efficiently for so long that it has to be something else…juniper allergies? Allegra and Claritin? Daylight Savings Time? April is the cruelest month? the fact that Pyewacket routinely wakes me at a revoltingly early hour? or the contemplation of life without the B.?
On ne sais pas. Only that it’s 6:30, the cat’s zanting ravenously around my feet wanting breakfast, and I’m drinking last night’s horchata out of a waxed paper cup gone soft overnight in the fridge (where reside also my leftover cheese enchiladas). It’s amazing that this salutary beverage is made out of raw rice. As the B. notes, someone was both awfully thirsty and had a lot of time on his/her hands. (But after some research I discover that it was originally made from the tiger nut, or chufa; and come to think of it rice is an old-world import; besides, restaurant horchata probably comes from a packet anyway; so never mind.)
Appetite is an interesting phenomenon. With Col. Olanzapine, I’ve been relieved to discover that my incapacity to think beyond the next carb is really not my fault. As Jerod of crazymeds.org states, “You’ll gain five pounds just by filling the prescription.” Zyprexa’s apparently notorious for messing with glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity. Translation: I know I just ate fifteen minutes ago, but is it really too soon to have just one little-bitty cashew-butter-and-honey sandwich on toast? After a lifetime of weighing between 95 and 105 pounds, I reckon I now clock at a dollar twenty. I’m almost 5′6″ tall, so maybe this doesn’t sound like the end of the world, but none of my clothes fit and I feel like a) the Goodyear blimp b) a Holstein c) Gertrude Stein d) the broad side of a barn e) five months pregnant, depending on which cliché I reach for first. My internal proprioception, in short, informs me that I am massive, and maybe one sandwich short of diabetes type II. The Cool Psychiatrist thought olanzapine/Zyprexa was a great med for me because I tend to run underweight when mentally interesting (because there are just too many things to rearrange and sort and alphabetize to bother with eating!) and she hoped I might gain some weight on it; and sure enough. But as Jerod also observes, “When combined with the right antidepressant, it could be just the thing to conquer that treatment-resistant depression that nothing else will deal with.” And so it has.
Now, however, with the last couple of weeks’ resurgence of symptoms, I’m not sure what to do. Is it time, finally, after all these happy years of denial and mixed-state overcompensating, for lithium? Another atypical antipsychotic? A different antidepressant 2qqq swwwwwwa (Pyewacket types her breakfast request)? Or raw food, which Annika assures us will solve all problems from ingrown hairs to bipolarity? I feel terribly guilty that the Cool Psychiatrist’s carefully titrated cocktail isn’t cutting it anymore, as if it were my fault, as if I could by force of will or dint of effort make my synapses respond the way they were. And we only just got all the patient assistance stuff straightened out! Dammit.
The good news is, as you’ll all be relieved to hear, that we’ve solved that pesky handbag problem (”Day Nine!” the Brujo intones comically, after our multiple recon visits to World Market and two returns). A quick peek inside Ross Dress for Less of all places and moments later we were the happy possessor of a Lily Waters quilted tote, color “Twilight” paisley, normally $40 but ours for a mere $15 with tax.
It has four handy little pockets for cellphone and iPod and sunglasses and wallet (the next thing to replace…circa 1992, it’s black and sober and boring). And yes it does look a bit like a diaper bag, but it’s washable and foldable and the perfect size for an 8×6 journal or trade paperback plus pencil bag etc., and we love it, so there.
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