Trying Not To Fall Asleep At 11:07 P.M.

I haven't drawn a single thing since my birthday, when I saw my psychiatrist (i have the best birthdays), and was heading into a big crash because I wasn't tapering off my ADHD medication but instead free-falling. Today I did some warm up drawing on a Fun Strip for the site, but it was more like fuck up drawing. It's hard to pin down exactly what's wrong with my hand right now, because it's not the usual thing. It's not exactly pain, there's side effects of withdrawals in both hands, and a very bad ached I got from some ill-advised yard work, compounded by cleaning all the sinks and trying to deal with a plugged drain this past Tuesday. Starting in on that at 3 a.m was probably not a good idea, either. My wrists feel like they're failing these past two weeks, and my fingers are numb and tingly. Can fingers have strokes? 

Yesterday's extended post wasn't good for der digits, either, not a statement desperately seeking sympathy (Zod knows folks have been good to me while we're dealing with everything) but a statement of fact. And I've sent out a good amount of e-mails and DMs to folks I owed e-mails and DMs, and I have a lot more to get through so I hope everyone forgets to get back to me or realizes they can just shrug and delete. I know someone who has serious, long-standing hand issues and uses voice messaging on IG, I haven't gotten to that stage yet because sending eighteen thousand one-minute texts I will lose me friends. Since my hands hurt anyway, at least now they're hurting after getting things done rather than just sitting there hurting. Which is a better feeling, overall. Seeing the e-mails go below 40 was a cause for dancing, but my legs hurt. Ha ha, I'm kidding. I just don't want to dance. Don't ask me, merci beaucoup.

Excuse me, but I am off to be sick. The time is 11:17 P.M.

(insert elevator muzak here)

11:33 P.M. It wasn't as bad as all that, the stomach stuff. But I took out the garbage afterward, and, not trying to push it with you folks, honestly, but I had some frustration in getting the stupid new trash bag onto the trash container. It's a snug fit and does unpleasant things to the web of my hand when it doesn't cooperate. I also had to throw the stuff in the wash into the dryer. Cartoonists lead exciting lives. 

I've been having trouble opening up a lot of things lately, not just the standard things like soda bottles or pickle jars and the like. I've been using the adjustable bottle-opener thingamajig that helps open those things up for years now to save wear and tear on my drawing hand, but now I can't get them open easily with my left hand, either, I just have less strength in my hands these days. Tuna cans lids have become nigh-impossible to lift for a while, now, I have to dig a fork or spoon beneath as a lever to do the job. But nowadays I'm having issues with tear-away packaging, pulling off the seal on the wet cat food packets, for example. I have to use scissors or knives on things that are intended to be torn by hand, and which I didn't have any worrying over until recently. I just can't grip things like that easily, it's very frustrating.  I expect these reminders of aging will crop up more and more often as it things regress, I mean, that's the way it goes without a super solider serum or whatever. I see myself just biting and knifing bags and and hurling bottles and jars against walls to open them in my waning years. Eating off the floor, huddled against the lower kitchen door jamb. Hopefully Winky is with me (please don't chew on my corpse, Winky!).

Still, at least I have most of my hair. Although I'd trade some of the thinning herd for some viable eyebrows. I miss having eyebrows, it really bums me out to basically have blank ad space up there. I have sparse, near-invisible and intermittently placed tweedle bug antennae up there, that's about it. Eyeglasses act as fake eyebrows or eyebrow shields in public but they're just not the real thing. You can't arch eyeglasses. I've tried. And let me tell you arched eyeglasses run into money after you replace a few pairs.  

Anyway, the purpose of this post was to force me to stay awake, and it seems to have worked. It probably helped that it's pouring outside and dragging the garbage can down the concrete steps in the rain was a bit o a refreshing experience. A lazy Nestea plunge.  I got a lot of things done today, mostly uninteresting things, but necessary things, e-mails, research, re-establishing my ability to sell stuff on eBay (and talking to a customer rep on the phone, something I try to avoid because it makes me very anxious and stressed out), ordering art supplies, ordering house stuff and a few gifts and organizing the studio and donating to someone's medical bill fund (I used to never donate to GoFundMe pages because just setting up the payment system made me nervous that I'd fuck something up and I'd start to panic) and some other everyday, mundane stuff which, all gathered, is a list of things I haven't handled in anything close to a single day in years due to various issues I'm dealing with. I even went out to pick up food for myself, something I never do. I don't go anywhere unless it's planned in advance, or it's an emergency, like picking up prescriptions for Sarah. 

Maybe the new meds are working. Maybe I'm uptight about them not working and I'm overcompensating. Maybe I'm getting past the Fluvox nightmare and bouncing back like a balloon and I'll deflate in a few days and forget to buy undershirts for few more months. Whichever, I'll take it. Hopefully the weakness and dizziness issues will get balanced out. I check in with the prescription pill pusher in another week to discuss how I'm doing. 

How am I doing? I don't know yet.

But my e-mails are under 40. And tomorrow I'll be packing up art, drawing other art, and maybe looking into buying undershirts. 

Image above: See? No eyebrows! No eyebrows! No one's fooled by the glasses, pal -- you ain't got no fucking eyebrows!!! (photo from many, many moons ago, taken during a night out in Manhattan for my friend Brian David-Marshall's birthday. Photographer unknown. Photographer can stay unknown. Photographer is a goddamned rat bastard for taking my picture in the first place.