Chez Cleo

[cleolinda]

Haven't really written about anything actually going on around here for a while. My medication (Lamictal, day 35) isn't doing so well at the moment. We jumped from 50 mg to 100 mg as of Saturday, as you may recall, and I've spent the entire week itching. Actually, it's not really an itch--it's like my entire scalp is crawling, which happened back when I was on Adderall in college as well. It's kind of a twinging feeling--not twinge-ing; twing-ing. It kind of feels like little atoms of carbonation randomly going off--a different spot every five minutes, arms, legs, back, but pretty constantly all over my scalp and shoulders. And it's pretty much driving me nuts.

Here's what makes it really bad: the poms have been scratching themselves a lot lately. I had Brett the Vet look at some weird patches on the cat's back, and he diagnosed them as "fleas, most likely." I tell my mother. She doesn't want to take the cat to the vet. We spend a lot of money at the vet, for one thing, but it's mostly the problem of taking a cat, any cat, to the vet. I don't think the cat has been to the vet since s/he got fixed (we got confused as to the cat's gender for a few years. It's a long story), so we don't have any procedures in place for taking the cat anywhere, pretty much. And it's not a friendly cat. Due to the gender/name confusion with the cat (okay, here's the story. We thought it was a female kitten. We had it fixed. Hoshit, turns out it's a male cat. We decided not to tell Sister Girl, because we were afraid she'd be upset that the cat wasn't female after all. Look, she was twelve and we weren't thinking very clearly. So we proceed to call the cat "she" for nearly ten years. She named it AJ, after her favorite Backstreet Boy--yes, I'm aware of the irony of her giving a female cat that isn't actually female a unisex name--but the rest of us were not so hot on that, so we started calling the cat Miss Priss, and then, through baby talk, something that I guess you would spell "Misa." Rhymes with Lisa. Then one day a few months ago, I forget exactly what brought it up--my sister may have said something about wanting a male cat--I broke down and said, "You know..." And of course she was not only mad that we didn't tell her but flabbergasted as well. I mean, something she'd taken for granted for literally half her life--"We have a female cat"--has been turned on its head. And she's very insistent now that we use the correct pronouns. But we've been used to "Misa" and "she" for ten years, so... yeah. I'd just been calling the cat Kitty ["Hey, Kitty. S'up"] and Bad Cat ["Hey, Bad AUGH NOT MY ARM BAD CAT BAD CAT"] for a few years now, so I'm just continuing to do so), this is a cat that we call, after all, Bad Cat in lieu of a real name. I still have these two livid white scars diagonally across my right wrist that make it look like I tried to off myself in some particularly inept way, and they're cat scratches, is what they are. So my mother was not too big on the idea of the cat having fleas. So she just... decided the cat didn't have them. This was not, as you might surmise, the most effective treatment plan ever devised. So now, just as I predicted, both the poms have fleas, too. And they scratch themselves all the time. And I'm over here with my constant twings, and--look, I know I don't have fleas. (I die a little inside every time I even have to say that. "I" and "have fleas" should never, ever have to be in the same sentence.) I don't have any flea bites, and I sat there and watched my arm for five minutes and waited for a twing and I'm telling you, even when I had a twing, nothing was there. The twings are completely internal twings ("The twings are coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!"). So now I'm just sitting here scratching and twitching like a meth addict who's got bugs, BUGS! under her skin.

I will not be going up to 125 mg tomorrow, is what I'm saying.

On the upside, my mother made an Italian cream cake for Sister Girl's newish boyfriend (I have got to think of a code name for him. Hee! Maybe I should call him Mister Girl), and she was in a hurry, trying to make it before she went to work, and tried to de-pan the three cake layers while they were still too warm. The layers proceeded to break and crumble in a way that you could not just paste them back together with icing (cream cheese), so my poor mother came home at lunch the same day and baked three more layers. The reason this is a good thing is that we now get to eat the other three layers for scrap. I put them in a wide, flat round Tupperware container we call "the cupcake thing," after its most common use, and we've been nibbling on them all week.

Also, next Saturday, we're going to see Dracula. Dracula the ballet. I find this hilarious in its very concept. And the nice thing was, Sister Girl decided we should go because she knows I'm a total Dracula fangirl. Awww.

Also, I went back and read a few season one recaps (no, I didn't do any of season two except the first episode. I know, I'm horrible) to remind myself of all the nicknames and such, and came across this bit from the Jack's Wedding episode:

"Sarah is a beautiful girl," skeeves Jack's dad. "Hell yeah she is," says Jack. Okay then, Captain Emphasis! "You love her?" Jack looks at him like, Asshole. "Absolutely."

Now, think about that in the context of Hulk Jack's whole AA hissyfit this week. I'm just saying.

Elusive, Iconic "Cleopatra Jones" Star Dies.

Regarding the Shooter of Amish: This breaks my heart.

nymphaea_alba: "Hey Cleo. I'm just wondering if in your next link section you might link to this petition I made? It's asking livejournal to create some more privacy features, allowing members to choose whether or not to be included in searches conducted by sponsored community maintainers and anonymous searchers using livejournal (interest search, etc.) to find users. The link is here." Normally I don't put a lot of stock in internet petitions, but Livejournal has been known to respond to user complaints (particularly if they arrive by the thousand on the news entries), so this might actually do something.

morganwolf: "Okay. I was thinking about the Russian WTF today for no reason whatsoever, and I was wondering what might have become of it. Turns out it was just a beluga whale or something. Would've been more fun if it was an UrRu or an ambulocetus, but that's nature for you."

Classic, old-school insults (Groucho Marx: "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it").

Hypoallergenic cats?

Remember that jewelry site I linked to a while back, Parrish Relics? The one that does a lot of hand-sculpted Tudor/Renaissance reproductions? Well, Jennifer Parrish made the Ugly Betty Anne Boleyn "B" pendant. I actually saw it on the site months before the show aired, and when someone sent me a picture of it, I remembered the jewelry site. She's also made a pendant and earrings to be worn in Order of the Phoenix (by whom, I don't know, although I have a baseless hunch that it might be Tonks). So, you know, order your replicas now and be fashionable in advance. (God, I wish I could afford her work, because it's gorgeous.) On Livejournal: parrish_relics.

Jolie to Play Smartest Woman Alive. "As if topping the list of interstellar babedom weren't enough, Jolie is now slated to play the smartest woman alive, railroad magnate Dagny Taggart, in the upcoming film adaptation of Ayn Rand's objectivist opus 'Atlas Shrugged.'" Sigh. I think I must be the only person whose life wasn't changed by reading The Fountainhead in school. I mean, I read it. Most of it, anyway--I just do not believe that character speeches should go on for pages at a time. I struggled with the epic Toohey speeches near the end, let me tell you, and I liked Toohey.

Sienna Miller is no match for Pittsburgh.

Portman Poses in Hepburn's Black Dress.

"Whale Rider" Kid Star Preggers. No, you read that right. "Oscar-nominated actress Keisha Castle-Hughes, 16, is reportedly expecting a child with her boyfriend of three years, Bradley Hull, 19." OF THREE YEARS?





October: Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Comments

[rorqual.livejournal.com]

You weren't the only one who wasn't enlightened by Ayn Rand....I am impressed that you got all the way through a book, actually. I got to the part early on in one of them (the one with Roark), when he looks out over the hills (or something) and thinks about how wonderful that all this is here just so we (or he, perhaps) can make use of it, and I was done. Waaaay to make the world revolve around you, dude.

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

2nded. I consider Fountainhead to be one of those novels, as Dorothy Parker so aptly put it not to be put aside lightly, but rather to be flug with great force. I don't expect three dimensional characters, but come on, can we have more than flat one dimensionality?

[rhapsodeeinblue.livejournal.com]

Hee, I absolutely love the classic insults. Shakespearean insults are nice, too.

Omgwtfpregnantwhalerider. :O

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Awws on the twinging.

Elusive, Iconic "Cleopatra Jones" Star Dies.

I've always kind of wondered at the similarity between her name and your screen name. I know you tell everyone that "Jones" just makes any name cooler -- and it is so -- but are you sure that other Jones wasn't an inspiration somewhere along the line?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

My exact train of thought was this:

1. With a whacked-out name like Cleolinda, you've got to pick a simple last name, monosyllabic if possible.

2. Jones makes everything sound better. Cleolinda Jones it is.

3. "Cleolinda Jones" sounds kind of like "Cleopatra Jones."

4. Hee hee.

[piratesorka.livejournal.com]

Yes, that news about the Amish girl just breaks my heart too, as does the entire affair. The Amish are proving themselves to be quite remarkable in face of such huge heartache.

[almostnever.livejournal.com]

I've read Atlas Shrugged three times. It's a moderately entertaining work of fantasy, but the idea that Rand makes any kind of sense philosophically or realistically just cracks my shit up. The world of her fiction is not our world or a world that bears any resemblance to our reality.

I will never stop boggling over the idea that people really think her notions might work in any scenario outside the hermetically sealed, childfree, elder-free, sickness-free world of her novels.

[suenosdejmi.livejournal.com]

I've read Fountainhead about that many times. I haven't read Atlas Shrugged, though I do own it and Anthem too. I really like Fountainhead, I think her writing is amazing...but I haven't really tried to grasp, what is it, Objectivism, outside of fiction. There's some serious followers out there though.

[greyduck.livejournal.com]

re: Medication, is there a chance you get go back down a level, or is that Not In The Plan? It sounds like you were doing fairly well there, and I take a very "if it ain't broke" approach to that sort of thing.

re: Classic Insults, in August I gave my 14-year-old son the Marx Brothers boxed set containing the five films that starred all four brothers (before Zeppo basically said "kthxbye" to the whole shindig). Let's just say that my boy's now getting a classical education in witty comebacks and slyly cutting remarks, and enjoying it immensely.

It makes a father proud to pass the torch to the next generation, donchaknow.

(Also: Did you ever get the Bowie? No hurry, no worries, just wondering.)

[greyduck.livejournal.com]

Er, duh. Tacky to reply to my own comment, but I meant "is there a chance you could get to go back down a level." I hate it when I miss entire words, even small ones... and the Preview button didn't help. Le sigh.

Is that fangirl

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

Or fang girl?

[divabat.livejournal.com]

Is it just me or is the Keisha Castle-Hughes article poorly written? Italics tag broke, "shooting will hopefully start soon", and since when was she in Star Wars? (OK, correct me on that last one)

[tabbyclaw.livejournal.com]

She was the new queen of Naboo in one dialogue-free scene at the end of Episode 3.

[honorh.livejournal.com]

I think what you're feeling is called paresthesia. It happens to me whenever I'm sick or change the dosage on my Paxil. To me, it feels like little electrical shocks going off under my skin, and I tend to feel it most in my extremities and my face. Usually, it goes away once my body adjusts.

The Amish have been amazing witnesses for themselves this past week. I'll bet I'm not the only person who finds herself envying the simplicity of their lifestyle and the strength of their faith. I've been praying for the Nickle Mines community since they must be going through so much shock and grief. I'm deeply touched by their grace.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank God there's a name for it. I was not looking forward to explaining it to my doctor. I'm just nervous because it's on my face, neck and shoulders--the same places the Death Rash would break out.


And seriously--it's been amazing to see the Amish live out their beliefs. What made me really mad, though, was that the Phelps circus--the same people who protested Matthew Shepard's death--decided to threaten to protest at the Amish funerals, until the locals interceded and got them an hour of radio air time to gas on in exchange for not protesting. God, I SEE the name Phelps and I want to slap someone.

Fun ballet times!

[fox-gloves.livejournal.com]

So you mentioned seeing "Dracula" the ballet? Well, I've got an even better one!

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS: BALLET EXTRADORNAIRE! (http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/scissorhands%20ballet%20smashes%20box%20office%20records)

[alliemolloy.livejournal.com]

I actually saw Dracula: A Chamber Musical (http://www.confederationcentre.com/dracula.asp) a few years ago in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Very creepy, and no cheese at all! And the guy who played Dracula was the actor from the Gain detergent commercial who washes his clothes instead of fixing the machine, and leaves with a sock on his back (yes, I know I watch too much TV).

Enjoy the ballet!

[vandressa.livejournal.com]

Okay: you are with someone for three years and want to bring life into the world with them, but you aren't ready to marry them? I'm so confused.

[anne-jumps.livejournal.com]

I noticed the necklace and squeed.

WTF about Keisha Castle-Hughes.

[elbeonore.livejournal.com]

I, too, am madly in love with that necklace all of the jewelery on that site, especially Lizzy I's stuff.

As for K K-C, though... does anyone else thing that this might be a publicity stunt? I mean, I think that Keisha is above that sort of thing (stupid publicity stunts, not teen pregnancy), but... she has "The Nativity Story" coming out soon. Imagine the controversy! The young woman who played the Virgin Mary is not a virgin! Once more, she's going to have a child, herself! Gasp!

I could just be too much of a cynic, though. K K-C's life has always read as if she were at least five years too young for everything that has happened to her: she was 12 or 13 when she got an Oscar nom, after all.

[mysticowl.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I'm demonizing the Amish shooter too much in thinking this (who in the bloody hell shoots the Amish?!), but... does anyone else think he was all broken up about his infant daughter's death because he hoped she'd be a ready victim living in his house?

[stefficus.livejournal.com]

it doesn't sound like what you have exactly, but i had a similar, full-blown allergic reaction when i was on wellbutrin. i'd been on it a while, so we didn't make the connection immediately until i called my sister and found she'd had the EXACT SAME REACTION, and that it also took a few weeks to build up in her system enough to trigger a reaction. from her, i learned it wasn't the wellB at all, but the purple dye on that particular dose that was causing the reaction (it's officially called "nerve burn", which is neither exaggerated nor inaccurate, but i fondly refer to it as "the apocalyptic demon of torturous, skin-rending itching").

i guess what i'm saying is 1) i empathize, a thing like that can drive a person to razing entire cities, shudder and 2) it's possible that it's not the drug itself or the dosage, but a cumulative effect of something else on or in the pills. keeping the same dose but switching to a generic, which is a different color, worked for my sister and i.

then again, if the lower dosage was working for you, it's probably moot. *grin* as someone else said, if it's not broke..

[stefficus.livejournal.com]

eeee-gah. me, it worked for my sister and me. yeesh.

this is what i get for trying to post and watch doctor who AND cook at the same time.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_stormthesea/]

My mum realized today that the Amish shooter was my third cousin's brother-in-law. He was at the wedding when my third cousin married his brother, and I'm pretty sure I met him and his three kids. My heart breaks when I think about his children and wife, as well as the Amish schoolchildren. The Amish community is just so peaceful and well-meaning, there was no reason for any of this suffering to be brought upon them.

[the-wanlorn.livejournal.com]

Man, Rand and her worshippers make me puke. It's kind of funny how most big people who are all "Rawr religion sucks be an atheist!" are worshipped as gods by people who are all "Woooo this person is wicked intelligent and insightful!" You can't be a hardcore atheist and then come to me, talking about someone like s/he's the only person on earth who is Right and Good and all that junk. Just, no.

And I think I might've called that thing being a whale? Maybe? I don't remember anymore.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula,_Pages_From_a_Virgin's_Diary)? The Royal Winnipeg Ballet created a ballet version of Stoker’s novel which local-boy-turned-art-house-fave Guy Madden further adapted into a silent film, complete with title cards.

[agatha-mandrake.livejournal.com]

I've seen that, both the ballet and the movie. They were fun. I love the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

[qwertytigger.livejournal.com]

Sister Girl's newish boyfriend (I have got to think of a code name for him. Hee! Maybe I should call him Mister Girl)...

How about Sister's Boy?

[megmatthews20.livejournal.com]

Yay! Keisha is still doing movies! She is a brilliant little actress, and I think it's kinda neat that she's having a baby. In a way she'll be able to grow with her child, and maybe they can be buddies in a way parents and children 30 years apart can't be.

A heroic, and at the same time devastating thing to hear about the little girls sacrificing themselves to save others in that terrifying ordeal. I only hope if I were in a similar situation I would have that kind of courage.

Also, KITTIES MY UNCLE WON'T BE ALLERGIC TO, YAY! I'll stick to my sneeze-inducing kitties. They were free, and homeless when we picked them up. I love them as much as my own family, and they certainly make life something special.

cheers here's to the circle of life

CLEO

[fxchip.livejournal.com]

Erm, can you, like, e-mail me at FxChiP@Gmail.com? It's kind of important, and... I'd really rather tell you in private.

(It's not a declaration of love, I swear.)

[leila82.livejournal.com]

*shudders*

Your flea story reminds me of my flea story. Nightmare, more like. When I was...13? My parents bought this house, from this nice old grandmother lady, who had a house full o' pets. And the pets had fleas. And of course, she moved out along with her pets, and I'm sure some of the fleas left with them, but some of them did not; they remained with the house. And we moved in with no pets. Did you know that if there are no pets around, the fleas go after humans? (BTW, you don't have to worry about fleas, as long as they have animals, they don't bite humans almost ever, they don't like people much. We're like a last resort.) Anyway, the fleas came after us. It took us three or four professional bug-bomb-thingies to get rid of them completely, because they kept laying eggs in the carpets, which would manage to outlive the extermination. I think I wandered around with bite marks all over my lower legs (and scars from the scratching) for months. Absolute misery.

[celticwisdom.livejournal.com]

Correction, they don't come after humans unless you're allergic to them. Then you're like an open buffet with tons more surface area than a cat.

[conejita-diabla.livejournal.com]

Interesting to see the article on Tamara Dobson (well, other than that she had to die for it to get written). I consider Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold to be the highlight of my video collection...

[sfmarty.livejournal.com]

I just returned my Netflix copy of Dracula, the ballet. It was a hoot. Enjoy and tell us what the live show was like!

[phantomsgrl210.livejournal.com]

Those cats have been around for a while, but they're not specially bred by that company. They're just bengal cats, basically bred-down wild cats. Its true that their fur doesn't bother people with allergies. My dad has four and he's Super-allergic to most cats. They come in a bunch of different types, I think my favorites are the snow-leopard. We have two.