House terrors and my growing annoyance

Twelve in12

Reading
Darkling ~ Yasmine Galenorn
The Saxon Shore ~ Jack Whyte
Uther ~ Jack Whyte

Finished
Mirror, Mirror ~ Gregory Macguire
Witchling ~ Yasmine Galenorn
Changeling ~ Yasmine Galenorn
Something Wicked ~ Catherine Mulvany
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ~ J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ~ J.K. Rowling
Myst: Book of Atrus ~ Rand Miller, Robyn Miller and David Wingrove
The Game of Kings ~ Dorothy Dunnett
The Other Boleyn Girl ~ Philippa Gregory

I love House.  Its got great flow, weaving story threads and witty lines.  I always enjoy watching it, and now that its on USA multiple times a day, I get my fix over and over.  Tuesday nights were always "House Nights" in my apartment.  With the start of the new season, I’m starting that up again.

What bothered me tonight was not the new episode, but an episode from season 2 aired on USA.  A patient with the usual unusual symptoms and inexplicable problems.  During the usual search of the patient’s personal space, the doctors find Topamax, which surprises them.  They identify it as an anti-convulsant, not prescribed to him and not among his symptoms.  I take Topamax, but not for seizures.  It was given to me by the neurologist who monitors the bulging disc on my spine.  It helps with the pain in my hand caused by the pinched nerves.  I knew it was an seizure medication when I began taking it.  So that was not new to me.

The surprising and somewhat disturbing part came later, when they finally diagnosed the patient.  He had some exotic bug, but what caught my attention was the explanation of the Topamax not prescribed to him.  He didn’t want his wife or employer to know he was bipolar.  The Topamax was his bipolar medication.

WHAT!?

How did I miss that on the label?!  Whenever I start taking a new med, I read that long sheet that the pharmacist attaches.  Its how I found out I can’t eat grapefruit while taking Seroquel.  (Don’t know exactly why, but its a huge no-no.  Causes death and destruction.)  Its also good to be aware of the side effects of a medication in case something goes wrong.  You never know how you might react to the meds, especially if there’s an allergic reaction.  So with all the medication I take now, I’ve just made it a habit of reading those labels.  And nowhere do I remember seeing that Topamax was for bipolarism.  I know it not only helps with nerve pain, but can help prevent migraines and I’ve seen results.  It at least reduces the frequency of my migraines, though not the severity.

So I got a little freaked.  I didn’t expect that medication to be doing that as well.  I went online and found various places where other people are taking it for either pain, or migraines, or bipolarism, or epilepsy.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  I also reminded myself that Jenny knows what meds I’m taking.  Whenever something changes, I always let her know.  She knows that I want to have kids some day and don’t want to take or mix any meds that might prevent that.  And I do trust her.  But whoaness.  I never knew that my pain meds were also helping out my bipolarism. Now I know its possible that I’m one of those people that Topamax doesn’t affect the bipolarism.  This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop taking the Lamictal or Seroquel.  That would just be stupid and irresponsible.  Besides, I just got myself back onto them.  But its just interesting how things work…

I’ve just transfered myself from the living room up to my bedroom.  The drugs are starting to kick in and I’d rather be in pjs, contacts out and in bed before they really take effect.  Downstairs was quiet and peaceful.  I had West Wing on and Cale purring next to me on the couch.  My bedroom is loud.  My neighbors are…  Wel, I don’t know what they’re doing.  They are all night-owls for whatever reason and most night I can hear them faintly on the other side.  Generally, it doesn’t bug me.  Its nice to know there are people around.  But their music is so loud I can nearly make out the words.  What gets me the most is I couldn’t hear them downstairs at all.  But up here, it seems to echo about me room.  A part of me wants to call the cops.  If they get into trouble enough, the landlord will kick them out.  To a degree, I’m hoping that happens, because they are really annoying.  When the weather is nice, they sit out on the deck and annoy the Young Blonde One through her window.  At night, they annoy me through my bedroom wall.  If was the middle of the afternoon, I’d get over it.  But its 2am on a Wednesday.  Not 2pm!  Not even Saturday!  I considered locating my iPod and plugging into that, but I don’t want music.  I want quiet.  I won’t wear ear plugs to bed because then I won’t hear a fire alarm or my wake-up alarms.  Besides, blocking out all noise is just not a good idea.  What if something happens to the Young Blonde One and she starts screaming?  I wouldn’t hear her.  Anyways – I’m waiting for the drugs to kick in and knock me out.  Or else I’m going to have to decide between going next door and attempting to get their attention, or calling the cops.  I hate calling the cops.  But its raining and I don’t really want to go outside!  This is another reason I’m glad my bed’s not against that wall.

The Young Blonde One is really getting on my nerves.  She’s starting to pull this crap of not doing anything around the apartment.  I know that I spend the majority of the time in the living room, so I’m complaining about that.  But the kitchen.  She never cleans the kitchen.  And last night.  I almost strangled her last night AND this morning.  Maybe I’m overreacting, but it’s kinda the last straw.  I mentioned I was going to cook lasagna for dinner.  She had complained before that I had made lasagna and she didn’t get any.  I partly didn’t understand why she was upset because I hadn’t used any of her food.  But whatever.  So when she asked if I could have some, I said sure.  I said I wasn’t positive I was going to make it, but I’d let her know once I made a decision.  After cleaning the kitchen, I decided that is what I really wanted.  So I went upstairs to her room, where she was playing WoW and told

her I was makin’ dinner and it would be ready in about 45 mins to an hour.  It takes a while to cook and I still needed to actually make it.  She said okay and kept on playing.  No big deal.  I do better cooking alone anyways.

I was happy as a clam cooking away and cleared off the table for us to sit down and eat.  When it was ready, I called up to her and she came down.  She grabbed a plate from a shelf (not noticing I already had plates) and said she wanted milk with it took.  I said I had plates and could I have milk as well.  She came over to where I was plating the lasagna and said she was going back upstairs to play WoW and could she have both her pieces.  She left the clean plate on the counter and ran back upstairs.  I never saw her again all night.  That ticked me off.  We’re both busy and she’s gone on the weekend.  She complains that we never get to hang out.  I made dinner and she just ran off to that stupid computer game.  It wasn’t like I surprised her in the middle of her doing somethine important.  I told her exactly when dinner would be ready.  And it wasn’t like she said she’d be down in five mins, just needed to finish something up.  It ticked me off.  But whatever.  What really got me going the next morning was finding Cale on the Young Blonde One’s desk, eating her leftover lasagna.

Now Cale is not a normal cat who likes milk and cream and such.  She likes tomato sauce.  Thankfully she doesn’t jump on the kitchen counters or the kitchen table.  But if I leave a bowl out on the coffee table, she’ll get to it.  Every once in a while, when I have some kind of pasta, I’ll let her lick a bit off the tip of my finger.  But I don’t want her getting used to "people" food and messing up her body.  I have no idea how much lasagna she had or if she was just licking up the sauce.  I sent the Young Blonde One a text, shooed Caled out and shut the bedroom door.  No way was I going to clean up her mess.

Now in my house (and just about every other place I’ve been) the cook doesn’t do the dishes.  If you’re hosting, that can be a little different.  But the family cook shouldn’t also do the dishes.  If nothing else, you at least offer and make an attempt.  The Young Blonde One did neither.  At some point, she brought her plate downstairs, threw out her leftovers and washed her plate.  JUST her plate.  Nothing else in the sink (which was only the lasagna dinner dishes – nothing else had been used).  She didn’t put away any of the clean dishes or even start on the pile.  I was annoyed that my yummy lasagna had gotten thrown out.  Its not great reheated, but its really not all that bad.  I wouldn’t have wanted it after the cat had eated at it either, but that was the beginning of her mistake.  Had she put it away the night before, I could have had leftovers.  Instead, she threw out about a quarter of my lasagna.  Pissed me off.  Pissed me off that she couldn’t be bothered to do any of the dishes either, considering I’ve done plenty of hers AND made her dinner last night.  What really got me, was the two hours I had set aside for practicing she ended up using for herself.  After she had played WoW for over 2 hours.  She played more after she practiced too.  The timing with the practicing wouldn’t have bothered me as much, except I hadn’t practiced earlier because I was cleaning up the kitchen.  She had done NOTHING about it.  And unless I ask her to do the dishes, I know they’ll never get done.

A part of me wants to wage passive-aggressive war.  Part of me wants to wage aggressive war.  And part of me wants to solve the conflict.  Should be interesting to see who wins out.

Durgs taking over now.  attempting to sleep over neighbors noise