KatScan

Neck fusion and coughing or flu symptoms.

2008-11-21T07:12:27Z

Most of my readers know that I had my neck fusion surgery on September 8th 2008, and have been healing as well as can be expected.
I will also be having a revision surgery in just a few months, because my head placement is all wrong.
My head is tilted and stuck downward, instead of straight ahead.
The surgery was supposed to prevent me from turning side to side, not up and down.
I can turn my head side to side no problem, but up and down is a no go.

But anyway, both of my teen sons have been battling a really nasty cold/virus since last week, and tonight I started getting it.
I'm coughing, sneezing, sniffly and runny nosing it since about 6pm today.
The sniffling, sneezing, and runny nose are not a huge issue, but coughing?
Holy hell it's painful.
Every cough makes my chest muscles, upper back and neck muscles, and head, move and twitch and spasm.
This is not fun at all, it's actually quite painful.
You know what else is really painful as well as super scary?
Throwing up.
Because of the way my head is tilted downward, my jaw cannot open as wide as it did before, and the neck opening is almost compressed like, so throwing up is a very painful and scary ordeal.
Sorry to be graphic, but this is a health blog right?

The rest is behind the cut, it is kind of graphic and sorta gross, so you have been warned.

]]> The vomit comes up, but feels like it's getting stuck, and because my mouth does not open wide anymore, and the force of the vomit coming up, it has almost caused me to choke several times.
My mouth becomes full of vomit as even more is still coming up, I try so hard to open my mouth to get it all out, but it can't open wide enough.
I end up coughing, gagging, choking and trying to get it all up and out of my mouth.
Several times now, I have started to choke on the vomit, and let me tell you, it is a very frightening experience.
A few of the times I have thrown up have been when I was at home alone, when my sons were at school, and I was so terrified that I was going to choke to death on my own vomit and that would be it.
My sons would come home and find me dead on the bathroom floor, probably covered in vomit, maybe a cut open head from falling and hitting my head on the toilet or bathroom cupboard cabinet.
It's happened enough times now that I have actually gotten really scared while throwing up, I start to panic as I'm choking on it, and because I do not want my sons to come home and find me dead like that, I have taken my fingers and scraped out the vomit stuck in my mouth and throat.
A few times, my fingers didn't feel like they were getting it fast enough, so I grabbed my toothbrush off the sink and used the handle part to help scrape it all out until it started to come out easily on it's own again.

This is a huge problem for me.
I need to have this revision surgery as soon as possible, they need to fix this problem of my jaw not opening, fix the downward turn of my head, so that I no longer choke on my own vomit.
When I go in for my 3 month post-op appointment in December, this is something I am going to tell my doctor about, hopefully it will be enough of a concern for him to pick a date for the revision surgery.
I really do not want to die like that.
I'm totally ok with dying, we all have to die sometime, and I know that every time I have a surgery that it it could be the last time I see my sons, so I always tell them how much I love them before I leave for the hospital, I call them before I get wheeled down to the OR and tell them again how very much I love them, how proud I am of them, and to just keep on being awesome young men, and I also tell them that I will see them soon so as not to scare them.
But I do NOT want to die from choking on my own vomit in my home and have my sons find me dead like that.

Sorry this was so graphic and gross, but this stuff is happening to me, these are the things I have been dealing with on my own, and so the times I have been depressed from the surgery, this is part of the reasons why.
I've been dealing with moments where I have been alone and terrified, and even when I manage to stop myself from choking to death, it's scary enough to really do a number on my thought patterns.

Is there a kick me sign on my back?

2008-11-21T04:20:37Z

Ya know, just when I think things are getting better, starting to looking up, life decides to kick me in the ass again.
Both of the teens have been really sick all week, I've ~~so far remained unscathed~~, finally starting coming down with it myself.
They started theirs last Thursday, a full week and neither of them are better yet, well Mark is starting to get a little color in his face, but Sebastian is in pretty bad shape.

Around 6pm or so this evening, my nose started getting wicked stuffed up, I coughed and nearly hacked up a lung, (I'm pretty sure my right lung is still loose from being jarred like that) my chest hurts, and while I was coughing up that lung, this ripping and burning sensation tore all the way up through my esophagus and throat, and my tongue also started twitching and feeling scratchy too.
I'm trying to fight it off, I have echinachea, some antibiotics left over from my surgery, Nyquil, Tylenol, multivitamins, and lots of juice even though that will give me hives. (allergic to orange juice and most juices)

As far as my insomnia, it's not really any better.
I was awake from about 7am Tuesday, and didn't go to sleep until about 5am today, Thursday, and only slept for about 5 hours.
I've been wide awake all day, and right on schedule it seems, I caught my second wind and am so wide awake that if it wasn't so late at night, I'd be cleaning the house.
This has to stop but all sleeping aids, even prescription ones, have the exact opposite effect.
Instead of putting me to sleep, they perk me right up and make me behave like I took 20 hits of speed or drank 5 gallons of coffee.
I'm hoping because I'm starting to get sick, that it will somehow make me get some sleep tonight.

I have some stuff to do and then need to get back to answering all kinds of emails.
They are built up in there and I'm working on it all k?
O-k.

Stuck (2008)

2008-11-20T03:48:41Z

Tonight for our nightly dinner and a show, the teens and I watched the most bad-ass movie I have seen in a long time, Stuck.
It stars Mena Suvari (American Beauty) unforgettably stars as Brandi, a hard-partying, overworked nursing assistant in this delicious, darkly humorous psychological thriller from director Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, From Beyond). Brandi accidentally steers her car into a homeless man, movingly played by Stephen Rea (The Crying Game), sending him flying through the windshield. Not wanting to jeopardize a possible job promotion, she chooses not to get him medical help, leaving him clinging to life in her garage. But soon her psyche begins to unravel as captor and captive are pitted against each other in a bloody...even outrageous battle for survival. Director Stuart Gordon delivers what Variety called "ingeniously nasty and often shockingly funny" entertainment.

I saw this movie under new releases on Netflix, and after reading the above synopsis, I decided it might be worth the viewing.
Oh how right I was!
This movie is dark, it's violent, but hysterically funny at the same time.
The teens and I laughed out loud multiple times while watching it, and we simply couldn't believe how far Brandi was willing to go to try and get that job promotion.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, including a dying man in her car's windshield, was going to screw up her plans to get ahead at work for a supervisor who constantly asked too much of her, and the other employees as well.
The supervisor held the promotion over her head in such a twisted way, that Brandi seemed to have no choice but to keep the dying man in her car, in her garage, at any and all costs.
If you like deeply twisted movies, dark comedies, you have to see this movie.
It has become one of my favorite movies of 2008 after just 1 viewing.

Can we get in line for some bailout money too?

2008-11-19T00:24:39Z

I'm so over this bailout shit.
Why are we the people, the tax payers, having to pay for the private sectors mistakes?
What right do these private companies have to go to the government and ask for billions of dollars from us, to fix their fucking mistakes?!

The big 3 auto makers went to congress today to ask for bailout money, they ran their companies to bankruptcy, gave their top level execs million dollar bonuses, sometimes several million dollar bonuses, and now they want us taxpayers to fix their money problems.
Several states have also gone to congress to ask for money, everybody is on their way there to ask for money.

All these private companies that made huge financial mistakes, they over spent, they gave bonuses out when the shouldn't have, and now all of them are getting in line to get a hand out from the government, from us.
What do we get?
What do we the people get from this bail out?
Nothing.
We aren't getting any of this bailout money, yet we are the ones who should have gotten the money, this is our money.
If the government gave every single tax payer in the country, $100,000 each, the people could pay off their debts, they could pay their mortgages, auto loans, insurance bills etc etc etc, and these companies would all be getting their money the right way, from the people who have the mortgages and loans.
People wouldn't have to lose their homes, they wouldn't have to lose their cars, or their insurance, but no, the government is seriously considering giving all of these companies money while the people still struggle, still go into foreclosure, lose their life's savings because the banks are going belly up.

If the big 3 auto makers go under, don't get this money, there is going to be such a huge problem in this country, an even bigger financial shit pile than it already is.
I'm glad that congress is giving them a hard time, really debating with them over how they mismanaged their companies and money, and that's how it should be.
It shouldn't be a get in line and get some money, it should be hard scrutiny, demanding to see all of their financial records, seeing where and how they all fucked up, demanding to know how they will use the money to fix everything, demanding to know if it will really secure them and make it so they won't come back asking for more.
The big 3 will probably get the money because there are over 2 million jobs at stake if these companies go bankrupt.
2 million people who work at these automakers, will be unemployed.
That's huge.

But isn't this unconstitutional?
Mike Huckabee was on The View today, and he said it's unconstitutional, I don't know how, he didn't get to explain it, because that dimwit Sherri Shepherd interrupted him with some stupid question about his talk show, and a whole bunch of stupid giggling like she always does, but I would have loved to hear him explain how wrong this is and why.

This whole thing is just mind blowing and numbing.
All of these private companies all worked hard to become huge businesses, they were living the American dream, then they got greedy and overspent, really screwed it all up, and now they want someone to fix it for them.
I've always believed that you could do whatever you wanted, be as successful as you could possibly be as long as you worked hard for it, and if you screwed up, it's on you, it's your fault, and you need to fix it yourself, that no one else should have to help you fix your mistakes.
But here are all these companies and banks, standing in line, waiting their turn to ask for some of this $700 billion in bailout money.
Why are we bailing them out for their mistakes?
Why can't they be allowed to fail?
They screwed up, they should have to face that themselves, fix it themselves.
All those big execs who took the big bonuses, should have to take massive pay cuts, hell, give some of the money back, they can't possibly have spent it all yet, so they should all have to give it back to help their companies survive.
If they don't want to lose the company, they need to do what it takes to save it themselves, and if that means they have to reinvest their bonus money, then so be it.

Everybody bitches about welfare, they say that people shouldn't just get a handout, that they should have to get back out there and get a job again, earn their own way.
This bailout is basically welfare for big companies who had earned billions and billions of dollars and screwed up.
Why is no one calling this what it really is?
This isn't a bailout, it's welfare for the rich companies.
They are calling it a loan, they say they will pay it all back when the economy gets better, but the economy can't get better if more people lose their homes and their jobs, people are saving their money, tucking it in between the mattress, holding onto it as tight as they can because this is a bad situation with no sign of getting better, the people are scared and rightly so.

This whole thing is just such a huge fucking mess.
I want to believe that our government is trying to do the right thing, trying to help the economy, but with all of these big companies in line wanting a cut of this money because of their mismanagement, I don't have much faith in the companies or the government.
If they screwed up their companies this badly when times were good, how can we trust them to fix it now when times are really bad?

18 movies I won't be seeing in the theater.

2008-11-18T09:06:06Z

I love movies, I love seeing them in the theater, but I can't stand sitting in the theater.
The seats, no matter how nice the theater is with their seats that recline back, the extra over stuffed cushions, and the cushioned arm rests, it doesn't matter, it is far too painful for me to sit in one of the seats for 2 hours.
So I wait and wait, I add them to my Netflix queue using the saved feature for whenever it gets released to DVD, and I continue to watch almost every new released DVD I can with Netflix.
I am home 24/7, so I watch movies and blog.
So here's my list of upcoming theater releases that I will be adding to my saved Netflix queue.

Star Trek I like all the Star Trek movies and shows.
Friday the 13th is a remake, but doesn't look too bad. Plus, it has the hottie Jared Padalecki in it. W00t!
Timecrimes I can deal with subtitles if the story is good enough. This one looks interesting.
Seven Pounds It looks interesting too.
The Lodger
Transporter 3 I liked the first two.
The Alphabet Killer Based on a true story. Looks decent.
Up I LOVE Pixar movies! Yay!
Angels & Demons I loved the book, and Tom Hanks is back portraying Robert Langdon again.
My Bloody Valentine in 3D I loved the original movie which came out in 1981. It was probably the very first slasher film I ever saw. I was 11 years old and my passion for horror movies began.
Let the Right One In A foreign vampire movie where the vampire is a young girl. Coolness.
The Unborn Oooooh, this looks good!
Plague Town Looks kinda scary. Yay!
My Name is Bruce Haha! I LOVE Bruce Campbell. He's playing himself in a movie about himself.
The Uninvited Another remake of Japanese horror movies. Looks pretty decent.
Twilight I've never read the books, (OMG!) but I love vampire stuff, so yeah, I'd like to see it.
The Haunting In Connecticut Ooooh, another scary based on a true story movie.
And finally, Sunshine Cleaning A movie about cleaning up crime scenes like murders, suicides etc. This is the exact line of work my sister in law heather does and she loves it, plus it pays awesome.

Do you have both?

2008-11-18T06:55:53Z

Do you suffer from chronic pain and insomnia?
I'd really like to know just how many people are out there suffering day in and day out, like I do.

I have chronic pain from both of my spine surgeries, I take pain meds to help fight that off, and they work fairly well most of the time, but I can't sleep.
And the no sleeping things is 100 times worse if I don't take my pain meds.

I'd say I get roughly about 2-3 hours of sleep per night, and that's on a good night.
Most of the time I lay wide awake in my bed until the alarm goes off to wake the teens for school, or I am just sitting here at my computer all night waiting for the alarm to go off.
Then, I'm awake almost the entire day, sometimes I get tired enough around noon-ish to take a quick 1 hour nap, and that's it, that's all my body needs because once I wake from the nap, I feel completely refreshed again.

So what about you?
Do you suffer from both chronic pain and insomnia at the same time?
Please answer my poll to the right.
The poll has no end date, so anyone can answer whenever.

Thanks!

Movies we've watched.

2008-11-17T23:52:13Z

I'm still not feeling all that great, so I thought I'd do a quick review of all of the movies we've watched in the last 2 months from our Netflix account.
And when I say quick, I mean like really short reviews, one sentence each.

Sex and the City: The Movie - I really enjoyed this one, didn't think I was going to, but ended up liking it a lot.
Kung Fu Panda - I LOVED this one. Animated movies are really cool.
War, Inc. - John Cusack flick, very entertaining.
Indiana Jones/Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - I was really disappointed. Not my fave one of all the Indiana movies.
The Happening - Freaking stupid.
Starship Troopers - Sebastian wanted to see this one.
Iron Man - Great movie, heavy action, liked it.
Smart People - Never watched it, returned it.
Saw IV - I enjoyed the gore.
White Noise - Stupid, hated it.
Street Kings - We liked it.
Pathology - Kinda stupid.
Evolution - The teens rented this while I was in the hospital. They like it.
The Breakfast Club - Classic 80's flick.
Martian Child - Excellent John Cusack movie. Must see IMO.
Harold and Kumar...Guantanamo Bay - I freaking hate these movies, but the teens liked it.
The Bank Job - Pretty decent action flick.
The Secret - Really very interesting movie. You should watch it.
Vantage Point - Pretty decent action movie.
The Ruins - Not too bad for a horror movie.
Doomsday - Stupid.
Definitely, Maybe - Cute romance story.
Stop-Loss - Pretty decent war/soldier story.
The Tattooist- Pretty good horror flick, nothing too gorey, but good story.

Still in the dumps.

2008-11-15T02:40:09Z

I can't shake this, I simply cannot get myself out of this feeling of just blah and sadness, and worthlessness.
I know I'm not worthless, I know that, but I feel that way. I can't even cook a decent meal without being in absolute agony the whole time, and having to ask one of the teens to come help me get stuff out of the cupboards because I can't look up to even see what I'm trying to reach for.
It's just ugh.
I think the economy stuff has me bummed out too, not that I have an actual job outside of the home to lose due to mass layoffs, but it still has me all bummed out.
It's affecting lots of other people too.
The girls on the local forums are all worried about their jobs, wondering if they should invest in some type of franchises for women or something, try and find some sort of job that they can do on the side, build it up a bit, and hope that it can sustain them should they lose their jobs.
So they're asking what other women would buy even in a bad economy and we're all like the basics, the needed things, no splurging so don't go selling jewelry and stuff like that.

I got my order from Misikko today, and I loved it, i want to get in the shower and use the new clarifying shampoo and conditioners, use the new awesome blow dryer, but meh, I really just want to lay on the couch and watch stupid crap on tv.
I just want this funk to go away but I don't know how to make it go away.

I wanna walk.

2008-11-14T02:18:25Z

I miss being able to go for my daily walks with Sebastian at night, or by myself in the morning, every day.
I used to put on my stinky walking shoes, my mp3 player, and my hand weights that are actually self defense products.
In one of the weights, is some mace, and it's easily accessible with your thumb, you just flip and press, bam, the would be attacker gets shot in the face with mace.
I always carried them with me, not that anyone around here has been attacked while walking or jogging in awhile, but I always just felt better carrying them with me.

I just miss being able to go for walks, it was my way of trying to stay in shape and lose weight, but now I can't do that and it is really bumming me out.
I know that eventually I'll get there, that this will all be fixed and stuff, but right now it's totally bumming.

Organizing my office space.

2008-11-13T18:13:01Z

I have a ton of office supplies that I need to re-organize to make it easier for me to do all the various things I do and need to do.
Filing, writing, printing etc etc.
I need to get new inks for my printer or just a new printer totally, and I need a way to be able to write comfortably.
Because of the way my head is, I have a really hard time filling out forms that I need to write the answers in.
I don't have a good height on my desk or table.
I did get a wicked good deal last night on a HP Photosmart A524 Compact Photo Printer,
just like the one in this deal, minus the camera.
It's brand new, well used once, comes with everything, including about 80 sheets of photo printing paper.
Guess how much?
$25.
Yup, I got it from a guy on the local forums for just $25 plus like $10 for him to ship it to me because I have no way of picking it up in St. Pete, so he's packing it up and mailing it to me today.
Awesome.
Now I'll be able to print out the best pics of the teens and mail them to Great Gram.
Mom and Dad can save them to their computer, but Great Gram doesn't have a computer, so I sill have to snail mail her pictures and stuff.
So anyway, I need to make room on my desk and table for all of the stuff I have.
My tower, my scanner, and now the photo printer.

If this blog looks weird....

2008-11-11T02:51:10Z

If the far right sidebar is being cut off, like half of the Blogads graphics or other buttons appear to be cut in half, and you're using Firefox, you will need to upgrade to Firefox 3.0.3

This blog looks fine in IE, Opera, Safari, and Firefox, but if your Firefox shows the sidebar being cut off, upgrade to the newest version and it will be fine.

Thanks to Jenn for letting me know.

When depression speaks through me.

2008-11-11T02:50:13Z

I'm officially in a depressing state of funk.
Is it a funk, or is it depression?
I think it's both really.
I have no motivation to do much of anything, my thoughts are all over the place, and I'm battling another horrible round of insomnia too.
I'm awake all night long, right up until I have to wake the teens for school, then I'm sleeping for 3, maybe 4 hours, and then still not doing anything, not doing what I need to be doing.

I have work to do but I can't seem to make myself do it.
When I finally do force myself to do it, it's not good, not good at all.
I needed to get a video done for my product review of that new grill I got, and it was already late due to the septic flooding issue we had here, and then I forced myself through the pain to make the video, I did do it, and then I played it back on my pc, and I was absolutely mortified by how I sounded in it.
My speech was slurred like I was drunk, but I wasn't drunk, I haven't had a drink in months, so it has to be the pain meds and muscle relaxers I'm taking.
It was bad, really bad, and that made me feel even worse than I was feeling before.
I deleted it and bought the ingredients to do it again, but because of how I'm feeling, the pain, the depression, I haven't done it again yet.
I AM going to do it tomorrow.
I WILL do it tomorrow.
I have to because I made a promise, and I always keep my word, I just need to not take any of my meds before doing it this time because I don't want to sound like a drunken idiot again.

I also need to get these sporadic migraines under control too.
It seems that every other day now, I'm getting a migraine that knocks me out of commission for a few hours. I have to go lay down in my pitch black room and just wait it out.
I curl up as much as my stupid body will curl up, and clutch my blanket until it passes.
I'm really trying to move out of this funk, to get past this depression over how my body is, how little I'm capable of doing anymore, but when I try to talk myself into feeling better, it doesn't work.
There's so much I can't do anymore, it bothers me so much, I have to walk with a cane now because my head is looking down and I end up losing my balance because I can't properly see in front of me.
I hate this.
I hate how this is, and I hate that I have to have another surgery again, and I hate being miserable inside.
I fake it every single day, I put on a big fake smile for my sons, I put it on for friends and family, it's a big fake smile because everyone else thinks I'm doing just great, that I'm recovering just fine, and physically, yeah, I suppose I am recovering just fine, but mentally?
Fuck no, no, I'm not.
I'm not happy.
I'm not ok with all of this, I'm not ok with the amount of medications, I'm not ok with the pain without taking them, I'm not ok with my body the way it is, and yes, I know, there are people who have it so much worse, I should stop feeling sorry myself, but dammit, none of this is ok.
I'm told it will all be ok, but when?
When is it going to be better, because it's been years now since I've even felt halfway human.
And how am I supposed to feel human with all this hardware inside me?
I know how my body moves, or how little it moves I should say, and it's not human type movements, it's stiff and sore, planned, careful movements so I don't get hurt, so I don't hurt myself.
People look at me like I'm some sort of freak, they stare at me when I go to the store, and I'm so tired of being stared at because of this damn body.
Before the first spine fusion, they stared at me because of the huge hump on my back, then they stared at me because of the huge back brace, now they stare at me because of the neck brace and the cane, and the way my head looks down.
I'm tired of people asking me what happened too.
They always think it was some sort of accident, and I'm tired of saying no, I had scoliosis, and they don't know what that is so I have to explain, and they still don't get it.
It all makes me want to just stay in the house and not go out anywhere again unless I absoluely have to, and until the next surgery to fix my head is done and I'm fully recovered.
I'm tired, just so tired of it all.

It was hideous.

2008-11-10T00:29:24Z

I was digging around in my phone's pictures, and I found this pic I took of myself in the hospital.
That's the first brace I had right after surgery.
It was so uncomfortable and painful to wear, even though I was laying in bed the whole time with a pain pump.
And it smelled funny.
Not funny good, but funny gross.
I actually got nauseous a few times when I caught a whiff of it.
The nurses would come in and give me a bath with this awesome smelling body wash, and my whole body would smell really nice, and then just like 5 minutes later, I'd catch a whiff of the brace, either the plastic parts of it or the padding parts, but something on that brace just really stunk badly.
So between how it smelled and how painful it was on my chest, they switched me to another type of brace.

You can see how swollen my face was too.
My left eye was swollen and black and blue underneath, my left cheek was swollen, my top lip was swollen, basically, my whole face and neck were swollen up.
I also had that bandage on the side of my head from the bolt holes where they bolted me to the table for the surgery.

Just thinking about having to go through that again makes me kind of ill.

So it's after 4am again....

2008-11-09T10:31:01Z

And here I am, wide awake again.
It seems that when I'm physically feeling better, I can't sleep at all, and when my body aches badly, all I can do is sleep in 20 minute intervals every other hour, for days at a time until the muscle aches go away.

So anyway, I am really bored at this late hour, just blog hopping and forum surfing, when my other blog started getting slammed by spammers who post those nonsensical urls.
You know the ones, http://xhgeteiihjhxgsueipow.hgu
Yeah, they don't work, and they don't make any sense at all.
I think they post those urls in an attempt to see if the ip addresses get banned.
I'm not sure if that's the reason, but it seems logical to me.

Anyway, so I was going through the unpublished-waiting to be moderated comments on the other blog, which were mostly spam, when I came across a few comments that I never allowed to be published because it was replies that assumed they knew what I was venting about.
I read them all, and yes, I can see how they could be misunderstood, but only 1 person ever emailed me and outright asked me what I was ranting about when I had offered to answer what the rants were about to anyone who asked and just needed to know.
And I told her, and I even linked her to the actual forums that were causing me the stress.
She understood, it was all good after that, and life went on until the next time I ranted/vented about the forums again.

The forums were about cars, auto parts franchises , people who did cheap auto repairs, auto painting, auto detailing, cars for sale, and a sub-forum for sex and relationships, home businesses, work at home jobs for moms, a single parents sub-forum, and an all women sub-forum, on the huge network of forums that housed all of these topics.
I was the moderator of 5 of those sub-forums for about 1 and a half years, before I finally had to quit doing any of them because of the constant stress.
That network of forums and sub-forums went through moderators faster than a cruise ship full of people with e-coli and food poisoning, could go through 5,000 rolls of toilet paper before they reached port.
It seemed that every week there was a new moderator, or 10, and most of the older mods left in a final blaze of typing glory.
When I was posting to my other blog all of those rants, I was venting there so as not to go out in a crazed posting frenzy calling everyone immature idiots and a few other choice names, before I finally quit.
Things were bad and getting worse as each day passed, it would become apparent later on that another online forum had found these forums, and had created tons of troll names simply to come on and cause drama.
They were playing a game with us and the members of our forums.
The game was called how many e-fights and e-drama can be started before our user-name gets banned or a moderator blows their lid and quits.
It may have been fun for them, but for us it was a nightmare.
Our long standing members were messaging daily for some kind of help, begging us to ban certain user names, all kinds of nasty posts, and emotions were on high strung with no xanax to be found anywhere.
]]> I was getting paid to mod the forums, that's another sign of how bad things had gotten. They never used to pay their mods, so when things went bad, the mods just up and quit, and they had to find new mods very quickly.
So they started paying some of the mods of the tougher to control sub-forums so that we wouldn't all just up and quit too.
I was stuck at home for my health reasons already, recovering from my first spine fusion, doing some paid blogging here and there, and these forums were paying me, and I needed the money, so I stuck it out as long as I could before finally stepping down as one of their mods.
The place drove me insane, but the money was really good, I had bills and rent to pay, food to buy, shoes and clothes for the teens to buy, so quitting and losing that money sucked.
When I quit being one of their mods, I lost $400 per month in income.
Ouch.

Someone asked me once why I even post on forums, how can I stand it because a lot of people are really immature and it's nothing but e-drama all of the time.
My answer was and still is pretty simple.
When you are stuck at home for health reasons for years and years, you can no longer work outside the home, your kids are at school all day long, you crave human interaction, adult conversations, and forums provide that for me.
Forums provide that for a lot of people, they post from home all night long, and then they get to work and post on the company time and dime.
Over the last 4 years that I've had this blog on this hosting provider, I've posted a pretty big amount of posts for the various forums that I was either just a member of, or I was being paid to moderate.
Just do a simple search for the word 'forum', and tons of my posted entries come up as results.
114 posts where I blogged about things that were subjects on forums, or other forums where I found out how to do something online, get help with browser or computer issues, etc etc etc.
So when people started assuming that they knew the "ONLY" forum I could have possibly been blogging about, I chuckled.
I am still a member of 7 active forums, and I only moderate two now, one is for paid blogging, and the other is a music forum.
Neither one pay me.
Forums help me pass the time when I'm bored and lonely, or have insomnia like I am having again ~~tonight~~, er, this morning, uh, today, they provide me with entertainment, laughs, blog worthy subjects to post about, and instant interaction with other people.
And sometimes those forums actually save someone's life.
And there was a time when a post on a forum saved my life, when I was feeling exactly the same way my friend was the night my posted reply saved hers.

So these silly forums, this internet is serious business, this blogging thing where we share small bits and pieces of ourselves with the world, can be a really cool thing.
It can be fun and entertaining, it can be serious, and it can be all e-dramatic, but just don't go assuming that you ever really know anybody because of a few blog posts.
Don't ever just assume that the blogger's life that you are reading, is blogging about the same e-drama that you are, and so you start some more e-drama over it.
If you ever really, just absolutely, need to know, just ask me, just email me and ask.
I'll answer you honestly.

Through winter snow, the scarf's a flying.

2008-11-08T06:59:53Z

Mark's Big and his wife Amy, gave me a gorgeous silk scarf a few years ago for Christmas.
It's this really beautiful long silk tie or scarf, whatever you call it depending on where you were raised.
The base color is white, and it has hand embroidered red and pink roses with various shades of green for the stems and leaves.
I don't wear it often, but when I do, I get tons of compliments on it.
I think Amy used to sell them at her store down in St. Armand's Circle.
She sold her shop for quite a nice profit last year sometime.
Amy used to sell a huge selection of products from all over for a bunch of high end items.
She sold a ton of really awesome beauty products that I could never afford, but she used to give me some products sometimes.
She also sold scarves like the one she gave me, silk ties shirts, dresses, skirts, wine, candles, all kinds of stuff. It was a really beautiful store right down in the circle.
I love going there, but I can't walk it much anymore, but when I do go, my last stop before leaving is always the Ben & Jerry's ice cream shop, for a small cone with some Phish Food.
Yum.