impending...

after what seemed like a psychiatric one night stand, i walked out of the meds clinic with a prescription in my hand. (hey that rhymes but ignore it, i did not mean it to rhyme.)

it was a prescription for a new kind of psychotropic drug. i started taking it this morning.

i felt so confused and almost a little angered after my appointment last week. i was hoping to see a real-live psychiatrist, but i got the NP instead. which is ok, usually it takes less time to see an NP to get the same thing done as with a doctor (such as a gyno exam, unpleasant as they are.) but this time, i wanted to see a doctor; i wanted to know if i should really be on meds at all?

how do i know the difference between normal and needing medication?

being off-meds, i noticed a few things:
1, that normal things such as showering and getting dressed were wearing on me; 2, that i got obsessive thoughts.

at this point my obsessive thoughts orbit around existence. i always think things all the way through to the point where i realize there is no point and come back to the beginning of the thought. i also have lots of thoughts about death - not my own death, but that of people close to me. i can sum this up in three words: death, pointlessness, and impending doom.

an example of "impending doom": boyfriend bought a new car a couple weeks ago. it was the first time he had ever bought a brand new car so i said something like, "it's an historic day." then he stated the date: february 11th, 2007. immediately a thought came into my head that he HAD to take back that pronouncement, it sounded much too ominous. i realized that of course, the thought had no divine provenance, i'm not psychic. it just sounded like those words might have been followed with, "will be a day that shall live on in INFAMY!" realizing the nature of the thought is a good sign though, i can get out of my head and point at it, looking up at boyfriend and saying, SEE?

i wonder if i could ask him, as somebody outside of my head but with me lots of the time, to observe or keep a "my crazy girlfriend is on meds again" journal. y'all know how obsessed i am about knowing how people outside percieve me. just a thought.

biohazard

miss e wonders how many times today did her dear readers wash their hands?

hand-washing has come back on me like a compulsive obsession. i did not count how many times i washed my hands, but i did count obsessively the number of pushes on the soap dispenser (three) and the number of pulls on the paper towel dispenser (three). as far as the TIME spent at each hand-washing, read the following:

happy birthday to you
you live in a zoo
you look like a monkey
and you smell like one too.

happy birthday to you,
happy birthday to you,
you look like a bear
and you run like one too.

and that is about how long it takes to wash my hands; of course, after bubbles have been distributed evenly throughout the surface area of my hands.

that's right class, can you spell epidemic? that is what's going on at our school. every day this week at least a hundred kids have been out sick, and at least twenty have left school early on account of this illness.

working up at the front desk, all manner of parents and babies and grandmas and other people stand behind the counter, suffering from all manner of flu/cold/idiocy/etc. they cough into their hands, then use the pens to sign in/out their children. children ask to use the phone to call home, sneezing into the receiver after i give them permission.

i asked a girl after school who was sick to please not stand so close to my desk (i don't want to get any germs!)

rule of thumb: strep throat has its own unique scent - you can smell it on someone's breath. and in my experience, if you have come close enough to someone to smell their breath and it smells like strep throat, you might very well get sick later on.

so that's what i do: i maintain an appropriate distance from people to avoid inhaling germs. i also spray/wipe down the counters, door knobs, tables, chairs, pens, notebooks, desks, etc. with lysol and those clorox disinfecting wipes.

so much depends on my staying healthy. i take the GRE on monday and if i'm sick or tired or ill-rested, i'll make stupid mistakes, or have to pay more money in order to get the test rescheduled.

so i am washing my hands obsessively.

i'm going to go take a vitamin C.

collections

not feeling as well as last night.

given that i slept like shit. i woke up at 4am and could not fall back to sleep. i must not have eaten enough because i was really hungry but too lazy to go downstairs. so today has been kind of depressed.

but apart from that, here's the scoop:
i felt my interview went very well yesterday. they seemed to be aware that i have virtually no teaching experience apart from tutoring and subbing. but all of the questions were philosophical and what-would-you-do-if kind of questions.

but it's not like i've been offered a job. they did ask for references. have to think of how to tell the boss that i've interviewed elsewhere...

will save such pondering for if i'm actually offered a job.

i went because i felt i had nothing to lose. i asked the boss about my type 29 certificate - now that i have it, what is the next step? get a job, she replied. so though she would be sad to lose me i'm sure she would be supportive.

another thing bouncing around my head is graduate study. what if what i really want to do is teach high school spanish/physics/math??? my alma mater has "professional certification" programs. but what if i want to do a master's degree - in spanish/french/education...? 2nd language acquisition? arrgh. at least these possibilities are confined to a general direction.

other things...
i've nearly eaten an entire bottle of acetaminophen as if it were candy. this has been headache month. and i feel like i'm getting that beginning-of-the-year cold, even though i've been taking vitamin c and washing my hands extremely well.

and my tentative list of ten: things i collect. or used to collect. or have collected over the years by default

1. small antique silver spoons from hotels (to accompany #3.)
2. tiny antique platinum rings (only have one so far but will see my mom's pt lady ASAP to see what she's got)
3. demis-tasse (aka the cute little cups + saucers from which one drinks espresso in all its forms) my favorites: the one i stole from cafe iberico; the one i bought from Havanna (kind of like a chain of cafes all over buenos aires) for nine pesos.
4. books that i've read
5. revista para ti (like cosmo meets vogue in argentina but a bit smarter than cosmo)
6. bright colorful underwear from VS
7. beanie babies (by default - got one every year at xmas and easter)
8. arizona iced tea with ginseng/green tea bottles (there are... currently fifteen on the shelf above me)
9. antique bottles (especially little ones, especialy little cobalt ones - an obsession during childhood)
10. paraphernalia - movie tickets, museum tickets, various subway maps from various cities throughout the world, subway passes (because you never know when you might have a breakdown and will need all this paraphernalia to make into some kind of art project)