Fear & Loathing

I spent much of yesterday dealing with a massive anxiety attack and then a crash into a brief depression - something I haven't done in a long time and don't miss at all. Considering that it used to be my normal state of being (get anxiety, panic, crash out, be depressed, roused from depressive state by something else fearful and anxious, repeat) I'm not entirely sure how I managed to even survive. It of course mainly has to do with medical issues. I stupidly started testing my blood glucose again, and of course, it's "high" all the time, and I very quickly spiraled into being convinced I was going to have both feet amputated and wind up dying alone in my gangrene-bloated prison of a rotting body. Today my attitude is more like they can put me on a continuous glucose monitor if they want to and see that while I "ride high" I don't spike or crash. My readings are higher than what a medical textbook would say is appropriate for a human being, but they always fall within about a 30 or 40 point range. For example, I ate a bowl of stir fry with white rice, and when I took a two-hour post-food reading, it was up a whole 15 points. I just dread having to be put on insulin, and I'm not sure what else I could possibly do to improve my diet. I certainly can't lose any more weight. Yes, I could probably stop having gels and energy bars on long runs, but they are literally designed to provide quick-access sugars to endurance athletes. I am going to stop my weekly donut when I go out, and I guess this means no more cinnamon rolls or cupcakes at Disney.

But I also should probably stand up for myself a little more. I don't know - all I really want is to get appointments over with and get out. I feel good. Up until yesterday, I felt healthier and happier than I have in a long time, and the notion that I'm actually not healthy at all is rather devastating. I have put so much effort and energy into getting "healthy," and now it feels like I've done everything wrong. Maybe when I get that blood draw it won't show anything abnormal. Looking over lab results for the past three years, each year has seen improvements across the board. I don't know - I just want to be prepared for a fight. When was the last time one of these little twits ran 26 miles? I train like an athlete, fuel like one, and I'd like to be treated like one, even if it's not what I do "for a living."

Anyway, pretty sure no one came here to read about my agony over something that hasn't even happened yet, and potentially might not ever happen. Sorry 'bout that, y'all.

Fox has more or less offered to build me a chin-up bar, and has suggested mounting a climbing rope in the garage. We can run one over the central rafter and I'll just need to find a landing pad to put under it. I never did the rope climb in gym class in school, mostly because our gym classes were garbage and they always wanted us to play team sports. Mostly volleyball, which I've come to despise.

I've got two of the cats sleeping on me right now. It's cool again - 41 when I got up - and we have a little fire burning. They're all freezing to death, of course, so they need to pile up on me. Which would be fine if my foot weren't asleep and I had a fresh cup of coffee. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to disturb some kitties.

Finally, Some Books

Recently at the library, I checked out a copy of Born to be Posthumous: The Eccentric Genius and Mysterious Life of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery. So far it is absolutely living up to expectations and, if you're a Goreyphile, I would definitely recommend it. I developed a fascination with Gorey's drawings when I found a copy of a collection of ghost stories he'd illustrated (not The Haunted Looking Glass) and of course a collection of his own books. I also had a diet of pen-and-ink illustrators and engravers that I consumed as a kid, so Sir John Tenniel, James Montgomery Flagg, and Thomas Nast also contributed to my tendency to scritchy-scratchy hatched and crosshatched styles. Having a digital tablet has only provided a minor correction to that habit, but it allows me to draw scritchy-scratchy crosshatched things in a vast range of colors.

Anyway, reading that led me to pick up a copy of Aesthetes and Decadents of 1890: An Anthology of British Poetry and Prose edited by Karl Beckson. I used to have a copy of this but have had to replace due to Ex Husband keeping it. He also kept my Norton Shakespeare, not that I am at all bitter or still ruminating over how he kept my Shakespeare, that fucking jackass. (Ex Husband, I mean, not Will.) So my copy is an updated 1990s edition that, unfortunately, has been annotated and scribbled in by someone else. Their observations seem decent so I'm not as bothered by them, but it was the least written-in and least damaged copy they had. Many of the others all seemed to have a break in the spine, all in the same spot. I typically manage to read without cracking the spines, but it requires a certain amount of care in opening and flexing the book and I know not everyone is as ridiculously obsessive about it as I am. ANYWAY. It also includes some of the poets who're considered "Uranians," and the obligatory Aubrey Beardsley drawings, so on the whole a worthwhile purchase if you're so inclined.

Relentless Forward Progress by Bryon Powell and Finding Ultra by Rich Roll also made it home with me, since there's no better way to spend your non-running time than by reading books about running. I will never be that fast, and I will never likely be considering even remotely "elite," but unless something catastrophic happens to me, I intend to continue running until something forces me to stop. I'm not in this to merely lose weight or be healthy. Running has been one of the best things I have ever done for the my horrendous mental health and my almost non-existent self esteem. I like finisher medals, I like racing, and I like the excitement leading up to an event, but even if all that stopped I'd still keep running just for the sheer physical, animal pleasure of it. As I said, I'm not that fast, and my form probably looks less like a sprinting cheetah gracefully bounding over the grasslands and more like a housecat having a seizure, but I am having fun.

Then there is Sangharakshita's commentary of the Noble Eightfold Path, Vision and Transformation - he's normally a very scholarly and somewhat dense to wade through. And finally, a Barnes & Noble edition of the complete Sherlock Holmes short stories and novels, in their standard order, starting with A Study in Scarlet, and breaking between volumes one and two with the story where Doyle tries to kill off Holmes, but then has to bring him back because Sherlock fans are always going to be Like That.

The main thing I can see with Aesthetes and Decadents is that they switched the cover drawing from "The Stomach Dance" to "The Peacock Skirt," so it no longer has Salome with her tits out on it. Actually, I'm fairly biased on this, since "The Peacock Skirt" is one of my favorite Beardsley drawings, along with another from the same play, "J'ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan" both of which can be seen in insanely high resolution Here.