Cabin Fever

Today is my second day spent mostly inside the apartment. Yesterday I was sick and spent most of the day on the couch in the fetal position with wicked stomach cramps. I feel better today, but after spending one day cooped up here alone I was ready to go out and have some fun.

Alas, Mike couldn’t go anywhere because of his album-recording thing. I couldn’t visit my friend Erica because our plans couldn’t come together and I couldn’t visit my sister and her boyfriend because of her schedule. And I couldn’t take the walk around the neighborhood I’d wanted to take because it’s TOO DAMN COLD. It’s currently one degree in beautiful Milwaukee, Wisconsin and that’s too cold to go anywhere. I did take a walk to the store this morning, and my shins are still smarting from the wind burn.

I did consider doing the following things:

1. Getting my nipples pierced

2. Buying a used guitar and teaching myself how to play

3. Buying a book at the store (but I didn’t, because Mike is insistent that I only buy books from bookstores, not Pick’n’Save)

4. Drinking until I was too sloshed to notice the cold, then go out walking

Instead, I did the following:

1. Napped

2. Went out for awhile to buy some screen printing ink

3. Wished it wasn’t so fucking cold

It’s supposed to be even colder tomorrow. I’m not sure I can take it.

FPC:MoE

Things have a way of growing.

Remember how I said yesterday I was going to take a photo a day for all of February? Well, my friend Dave liked the idea. In fact, he liked it so much that he thought others might like it too. So he's christened it the Focal Plane Challenge: Month of Exposure. Here's what he came up with in terms of rules:

0. The contest begins March 1st.
1. Don't just snap a picture. That's too easy. Select a subject. Compose the shot. Think about the meaning. Try to be a photographer.
2. One image per day. You can take more than that if you like, but the idea is that it's a picture a day. No more, no less.
3. No missing days. Take a picture EVERY DAY. Even if it sucks, it's just a photoblog.
4. Keep your images private until April 1st. Then post them. I'll have mine up on Flickr, and I'll x-post them here.
5. Enjoy it! This is supposed to be a fun challenge!

We're going to have a website, any maybe we can link to people's photo collections. If you don't want a Flickr account (even though it's free!) it's really easy to make a free photo album on Photobucket or Freewebs.

I think it'll be cool, and I'd love to see a collection of 31 photos from people. I'm still going to take photos this month for practice, but next month it's for real.

Comment or email if you'd like to get in on this. I'll post the URL to the site when we get one.

Photography

This month Mike is participating in the musical version of NaNoWriMo, which means that he's trying to record an entire album's worth of music in just one month. He's really looking forward to his project (although, apparently, not enough to forgo his usual Thursday night routine of My Name Is Earl/The Office/Scrubs/30 Rock). Since it will take up a lot of time, though, I'll be left with a lot of free time of my own.

I've decided to try again at the photo blogging thing. I deleted my old one because I wasn't motivated to do it every day, but I like looking at photo blogs so much that I want to try again. I figured that doing one entry every day for the month of February would be feasible. It's a much more realistic goal than doing it every day forever. And hey, I might actually get into a routine that will spur me to take more photos.

This does, of course, mean that for those of you who I know and who live locally, you might be getting calls to spend your Saturday mornings tramping around looking for a good photo. Prepare your excuses - you have been warned.

If I succeed, you'll find a link to my efforts on March 1st. And if I fail, well, hopefully you all will have forgotten about it by then.

My Little Ponies

You know, I really liked My Little Ponies as a kid. And yet, this looks absolutely terrifying.

Uh-oh

Yesterday I wrote about my sister's plans to move in with her boyfriend. The ever-wise Dykewife commented that it sounded like my sister's Borderline Personality Disorder was influencing her behavior.

I frowned when I read it. What Karen's doing is stupid, but it's not from being sick, I thought to myself. She's just being dumb. She'll come to her senses. This isn't mental illness again. She doesn't have that anymore. But it kept nagging me at the back of my mind, and I wondered if it was true. Karen hasn't had any trouble for years, and she'd been doing so well. Surely this was just typical twenty-something stupidity.

So when I got to work early I Googled "Borderline Personality Disorder" and looked at the symptoms. All of her previous behavior fit, of course, but so did some of her current behavior. The big thing I recognized was a quote from a researcher that called BPD patients "actively passive"...when they have a problem they refuse to face it themselves, but instead actively search for a rescuer. When my sister was faced with the problem of being a divorced 23-year-old living with her parents and having to date again, she did nothing to find an apartment or stabilize her marriage...instead she found a live-in boyfriend to pull her out of the situation entirely.

The thing is, whenever I had thought about Karen and her illness I had thought more in terms of her being "cured." In fact, I had thought of her illness the same way you'd think of a freak summer storm...coming out of nowhere, no way to predict it, and gone just as suddenly and inexplicably. But from what I've read patients with BPD can have periods of "remission" where they appear competent, content, and happy for months, even years. And then they blow up again.

I know that sounds stupid, thinking that she was cured, but damn. If you had seen her you would have thought she was cured too. She seemed so happy, so eager to look into the future, so sane.

I can't imagine that my sister will be as bad as she used to be when she was a teenager. But it does make me wonder what will happen next. It also makes me wonder if I should tell my parents. When she was just doing something dumb I wasn't too eager to bring it to their attention, but if she needs help...I don't know.

I don't think I'll tell them. They'll find out soon enough, and when they do I'd rather my sister think of me as an ally than an enemy.

An eventful conversation

Today I talked on the phone with my sister. She and her soon-to-be-ex-husband are officially divorcing in April, but they've already found a buyer for their house and will be moving out by February 15th. I asked if she was moving right back in with our parents.

She said probably not. Because she found someone else to live with.

The guy she's dating.

But it's okay, because they've been dating for a few weeks now and like each other a lot.

It would be a long commute to her job and the tech school where she's earing her associate's, but that's okay too, because she's quitting her job and dropping out of school. Maybe she'll go back again once she figures out what she'll like.

Too bad our parents don't know...my mom has been telling her about how the extra bedroom is almost cleaned up for her. They think she'll be moving in with her right away. She hasn't even told them that she's dating, let alone getting ready to live with someone.

My sister asked if I thought our parents would help her move.

Um...

...no.

The only thing I could think of to say is, "For the love of God, don't let him knock you up until after your divorce is final." I can't decide if that's the most horrible attempt at advice ever, or the most practical.

Sometimes I'm surprised that we share genes.