Shame (with apologies to Edwin Starr)

Well, the old song goes "War...what is it good for (absolutely nothing)" to wit I have substituted the word Shame (Good God!).

I am not a librarian (but I play one on TV).  I have apparently over stepped my clerical bounds (and I admit some of my recent behavior was over the top) but the response from the Powers That Be (PTB) has been to shame me for my pretenses.  I still am uncertain whether I received a written reprimand last week or if it was the step before.  I was complaining about the level of cologne in the immediate area about me and I was over the top in terms of sarcasm and my behavior deemed unprofessional.  Well, if the PTB were anything but academic wusses they would have taken the initiative, as they apparently have now, to mandate a cologne free work space.  It's coming ladies and gents.  But the shame that was heaped upon me was uncalled for.  Not even the squeaky wheel gets greased around here as everyone should be one big happy family.  I complained about cologne, as I know others did, but I became the bad guy, the face of the problem.  And of course there was my insubordinate behavior about an authority records (that would have been deemed good and proper use of a librarian--being thorough and exacting).  I am unclear as how I can be both insubordinate and at the same time unprofessional but I think if I had THE DEGREE my outward behavior would have been acceptable.  Oh, I have a advanced degree, a Masters of Arts in history, a degree program that required learning a language and the writing of a thesis, neither of which is a requirement of the MLS degree program.  Okay, sometimes I get full of myself, the grandiosity that is part and parcel of being bipolar (Happy Birthday Vincent!), and I admit I overstep my nonprofessional role.  But as Jack used to say "I know things..."  The unofficial reprimand was full of shaming language and I felt a good deal of anger and upset.

Well, I spoke with Aunt Marilyn last night and she told me to tell it to someone in charge.  That I would feel better taking the bull by the horns.  As I am very upset about what has transpired over the last few days regards my role on the Ergonomics Committee and a visit from a cousin who has developed some ergonomic tools that he assumed I could do a trial for him, I became shamed once more.  I am too upset to speak to the Director but, as I often do, my writing is my strong suit, so I wrote the Director a long letter about the most recent incident regarding the ergonomic equipment I am testing.  I never represented myself as an agent of the University nor as someone whose opinion matters, as I assume mine doesn't, but at 10:30 last night I composed a long letter indicating that the who situation was unfair and that my years of service should merit me some degree of not only latitude but also some kindness.  I wrote: "I am being held to a standard I don't deserve.  My intent was only to serve the library and maybe save some money along the way...I never represented myself as anything I wasn't.  I'd say the situation is not fair, but then we know life isn't about fairness.  But it is about treating a person with some degree of respect and I believe I merit some degree of respect."

So that is my story and I am sticking to it.  I will see how the Director handles the letter, if at all.

And now children it is time to put away such childish things like a blog and get to my professional/clerical work.

Ta-ta

From BP Magazine

"The third annual World Bipolar Day will be observed this coming Wednesday, March 30, with educational outreach efforts around the globe and online.

Bipolar Care Indonesia is screening a film titled At the Very Bottom of Everything, which illuminates the life of a young woman living with bipolar. Individuals are invited to share first-person stories, poems, photos and artwork at #‎WorldBipolarDay.

This awareness effort comes from the Asian Network of Bipolar Disorder (ANBD),the International Bipolar Foundation (IBPF), and the International Society for Bipolar Disorders (ISBD).

According to Muffy Walker, co-founder and president of IBPF, the event is a platform for “dispelling myths, teaching the signs and symptoms, sharing resources, and pointing out healthy living techniques.”

March 30 was chosen because it’s the birthday of Vincent Van Gogh (born 1853) who was posthumously diagnosed as probably having bipolar disorder.    Van Gogh died by suicide at the age of 37 after suffering from psychotic episodes during the last two years of his extraordinary life. A strong reminder of the importance of raising awareness and breaking the stigma that holds people back from seeking a diagnosis and receiving effective treatment".

A PSA

It being National Mental Health Awareness Week, as a public service I am sharing with you some Bipolar moments and how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) may be your friend.  I bring this up because some of my recent insubordinate and unprofessional behaviors are a direct result of being bipolar, e.g., inflated self-esteem and a sense of grandiosity and also excessive involvement in activities that are high risk with a high level for painful consequences. That kind of mindset can lead to some of my recent misdeeds.  Not that it is an excuse for my behavior, but it goes a long way in explicating the obvious.  On the other hand, one positive outcome of mania is an  increase in goal directed activity.  I have been a little on the manic side of late and usually am at work.  Some of the depressed symptoms include feelings of worthlessness and guilt.  Lordy, I feel that some of the time even when I am not depressed.

Here comes the PSA (yes, a public service announcement)...while the ADA does not contain a list of health problems that constitutes a disability, the general definition of a disability is that a person has a disability if she/he has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.  I have worked through it all, not thinking that some accommodations could have been made to make my work life less filled with uncertainty...given the inherent nature of bipolar disorder will almost always be found to substantially limit the major life activity of brain function (EEOC regulations 2011).

Now knowing this I sent an article ahead to our HR maven and she missed my point.  I was not asking for accommodations, but rather a degree of understanding for my psychiatric condition.  But since she brought it up...I think I will go to the University's Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities (RCPD) and see if I can be designated as having a covered state under the ADA.  If they can make that determination, and I think they can and will, I should be entitled to some considerations and and accommodations. e.g., allowing longer or more frequent breaks and provide for a self paced work flow.  Also, a reduction in distractions in the work area (And I didn't have to be the one that moved...2.0 was shuffled off to Buffalo yesterday so that is one accommodation that has been made).  In terms of supervisors there needs to be developed written work agreements including the agreed upon accommodations, clear expectations of responsibilities and also allowing for open communication with managers and supervisors and finally to allow for telephone calls to be made to health providers during working hours for support.  Why, hell yes!!!  I am going to RCPD and get me some accommodations; I loves me some good accommodations.

With 2.0 the situation was coming to a head.  I was thought a bully...but some of that is from the bipolar or the Silver Linings Playbook.   Management has know since 1990 that I am bipolar.  There are things in my personnel file that speak to this.  And while I didn't get what I took to be a written reprimand for my behavior of the last few weeks, especially over the cologne issue, I don't know for certain that the written summary of a meeting with my supervisor didn't make it into my personnel file.  I will need to check that.  But there should be enough of a record of my psychiatric state already in my HR file.  RCPD here I come.  I admit I was out of line, but the situation with 2.0 was deteriorating quickly.  Maybe I was possessed of a sense of self importance when I wrote a less than professional letter to the three people who sit near me regards the cologne issue.  It was over the top.  Still, with an understanding of what it means to be bipolar the chips may still have fallen but so too would the scales from their eyes regards what it means to have a mental disability.  I am not trying to excuse my behavior but rather trying to explicate it.  I am a ticking clock waiting for the alarm to go off.   I do act out, I do shoot from the lip.  And that, my friends, is what it means to be bipolar.  It also means I have long periods when I am depressed or anxious (Aren't we all, you say) that I can't function at my usual high level and just withdraw into myself.  I may not talk for weeks, and yet when the mania hits I prattle on like a child on speed.  All this is my gestalt.

So, back to 2.0...she has been moved.  If I was the bad one in the situation so be it.  But between the cologne, the shoddy work (I have very high and explicit standards when it comes to work (more mania), the food at the desk, the phone calls to her "wovey, dovey..." were all serving to make me less focused on my work and more focused on her distractions.  Management tried their best to make her understand the nature of our workplace and how we are packed like sardines in our cubes and we must be considerate of others, but all that fell on the deaf ears of 2.0.

So it is a new day and the seating chart has changed.  I am a bully...oh. well.

Here for your edification is the link I sent to my manager and the head of HR for the library:

Bipolar and the ADA

Candy (definitely not dandy)

About eighteen months ago there was a robbery and shooting at a local Rite Aid.  The person who was shot died at the scene in the arms of Candy.  So, cut away to my therapist's office and a meek voice asked me if I lived nearby.  When I heard her voice I knew I knew her.  It was Candy.  We talked for a while, waiting for our respective therapists.  She was on disability and had not been able to return to either Rite Aid or any type of work.  She told me how she held the dying pharmacist in her arms.  She returned to the building, she said, as no one should die alone.  Here is a life that was literally shattered by violence.  We talked about robberies in general and I told her about the time I was held up at gun point when I was working at the Bay Gas Station,  I almost quit on the spot.  What I did was refuse to work alone at night.  Anyway, Candy was called back to her therapist and she stood up and gave me a big hug.  I felt her fear, her trembling, her PTSD that instant.  I felt a connection I hoped she felt as well.  It was the type of situation where I wished I could kiss the hurt and make it all better,   No one should die alone.  No one should have to live with that kind of fear and hurt.

Once upon a time

... and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo”

― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

So I begin.  Baby Tuckoo, also know as the mad woman upstairs, has had a difficult week.  Seems I am both unprofessional (alright, I know I should be, after all the union I am work so hard for middle name is Professional) and at the same time insubordinate.  I pick unmercifully on folks (some of whom actually are deserving of it).  More to the point, being bipolar (no this isn't an excuse or a rationalization) makes me more impulsive than what is good for me.  I tend to shoot from the lip.  For this I am sorry, but I keep doing it nonetheless.  (I love typing the word nonetheless (nonetheless)).  Sophie had an idea...I should write these thoughts out long hand (in cursive...I love cursive) and ponder them and then destroy the cursive copy.  Might get it out of my system and lead to less stupidity on my part.  Still, the mere fact that one of my co-workers insists on wearing cologne, in spite of being told repeatedly not to, makes me mad.  I don't know if she is stupid, thoughtless or stubborn but she keeps wearing cologne to work, which necessitated me leaving two hours early yesterday.  Alright, sarcasm aside, I was out of line to say to three people that they were trying to femme the place up with perfume.  There is no written workplace policy about this and I am hoping the Support Staff group (SSAG) can get a policy put in place.  Years ago Sophie was working in a department and someone was reeking of cologne.  Sophie went to the head of her department and said she was getting a migraine from the perfume.  The supervisor, with a degree of testicularity, told the offender not to wear cologne in the future.  The woman who sits nearby has been told at least three times to cease and desist in terms of cologne and still persists in wearing it, so, yes, stubborn, stupid and thoughtless all in one.  We'll see what SSAG can come up with.  

Today I have come in with raging allergies and I am of the hope that today will be a better day at work than was yesterday.  Getting home early I was able to take two walks, cleared off the front porch, rip up the rug and lay a new rug down.  In between walks I sat on the porch sipping a Bai and talking on the phone.  I opened the windows for the cats and turned the furnace down for the day.  It was a glorious sunny day.  I walked to Kroger's and back home with the intent of making dinner last night but I ordered in a pizza instead.  At 8:30 it was too late to cook so I had someone else do it for me.  All in all I walked in excess of eight miles yesterday.  I probably should have done some weeding but the rose bed is a little on the muddy side.  Still I cut back the roses and did some weeding with my special garden knife that a samurai would be impressed by.  So now the front porch looks great and I feel I was accomplished yesterday.  

Today I look forward to a no smell day.  Today, if I get upset because of perfume I will write a note to me in cursive and write an email to Baby Tuckoo's auntie that she might have to leave due to clouds in the vicinity of my desk.  I will endeavor to be  professional, keep my tongue in check, and, in general, behave myself.  Yeah, good luck with that...

The Mad Woman Upstairs or I only forget to drink

Let's be perfectly clear here, when I lived in the condo I was the mad woman upstairs, as differentiated from the mad woman below the stairs (Just ask Jack (or Aaron)).  And while I used to drink to forget, and forget I did, now I forget to drink.  Or, really, I don't forget I just don't drink any more, booze that is.  Oh, once I was prolific at the practice.  I came from good stock, i.e., my alcoholic mother who suggested to me, among other things, that I take up smoking to relax, which I did, smoking, but I didn't, relax.  Only a drunken mother would impart that sort of advice and only a potentially drunken daughter would follow it.  I recall my 18th birthday.  The drinking age way back then was 18.  My father, enabler that he was (and damn good at it) gave me a can of Stroh's beer (the breakfast of champions) in a mug that said BULLSHIT on it. He also gave me a pound of sweet cherries and a pound of Germack's natural pistachios in the shell (of which he ate most).  Thus started the drinking.  This also disputes the notion that there  is no such beast as an alcoholic Jew.

I recall, or maybe not, my End of the World Party at the Honors House, University of Detroit.  My first taste of tequila.  I must say I got shitfaced, missed my afternoon class, sobered up enough to get home by 5:00 and recused myself to an early bedtime due to a touch of the flu (brown bottle type).  Weekends in the winter at UofD we went to the basketball games and then down to Greek Town for dinner.  I was either high (which made watching basketball all the more engaging) or soon to be drunk on wine at the restaurant.  Oh, I was a good drunk, never feisty or mean (not like now, eh, Jack?).  Back as an undergraduate (and in spite of getting high most days I graduated in three years Summa Cum Laude) I smoked more marijuana than I had potent potables.  Graduate school was another story.  Friday afternoons a group of young professors would take the graduate students out drinking at the Olde World where we would consume massive quantities of beer and bread.  Falling down drunk and walking back to the dorm was an adventure.  But everywhere I went as a graduate student there was alcohol.  So I smoked and drank my way out of the Ph.D. program in four years.  Not quite record time but close to it.

Out of school I worked odd jobs for a few years, afraid that I would never be able to get a decent job without a Ph.D.  I worked at a local book bindery.  We worked four ten hour days and got paid every Thursday afternoon.  We then went to the Green Door with other dropouts from various MSU graduate progams for ten cent hot dog night.  By then I had switched from beer to the more robust drink of choice of my father, Jack Daniels, straight-up.  Fewer calories and more delicious.  From there I went to become Molly Malone, the song stylist at Moriarty's Pub in Lansing.  $25 bucks a night and all the beer I could drink (they lost money on me).  Next stop in my storied career was pumping gas for three years, all the while thinking I could never get a better job given my drinking proclivities.

But, sound the trumpets, I did, through a friend, get a job at the library that I never though I would get.  In spite of the new job and the thrill of not pumping gas any longer or being robbed at gun point on a regular basis, I was officially depressed most of the time and drinking to forget.  In fact I was self-medicating for being bipolar.  By 1989, five years into my tenure at the library, I was made the authority czarina.  And by then the serious drinking had started and I was on some antidepressants that enhanced the effect of the alcohol.  Some days I did not merely come in hung over, I would come in still a tad drunk from the night before, sucking on cans of Coke to get rid of the headache and cotton mouth.  You know, the kind of drunk the night before where you have to keep one foot on the floor to keep the bed from spinning.   More and more depressed and usually unable to sleep without help I would come home from authority czarina-ing and grab my bottle of Stoly from the freezer and have two or three mighty slugs.  Then go lay down and catch a buzz with the cats.

Once I received the bipolar roller diagnosis I did stop drinking for a time.  Fast forward to the move to the condo, hastened by my last tenure in the Owosso Stress Unit and trouble at home.  Seems PJ, and you know who you are, wanted me out of the house or for me to take over the house but that never was a real option.  Saddened by the ending of a relationship and sadden by their serial monogamy with everyone but me I left what had been my home for fifteen years. Granted I may not have been the catch of the year but they drank with me and as often but they didn't have the alcoholic gene marinating their brain and soul. By then my mother had been dead two years, a victim of her alcoholism.  My pal Jerry mentioned he needed a neighbor and the rest, as they say, was hysterical.  Once I got the condo, for some unfathomable reason, I started drinking again with my buddies Sam Adams and Gentleman Jack.  I would turn on the stereo, crank up the volume and listen to Mozart's Requiem and cry like a baby.  Then one night, drunk on my ass, I took an overdose of Lithium.  That was January 6, 1997.  That was my last drink.  I ended up in the hospital and in a psych ward.

My dad came up to see me shortly after I was released.  I owned my alcoholism and while he drank around me it was never to excess.  He could never understand the reason for the suicide attempt and frankly neither could I.  He kept laying on me how it was a sin to commit suicide and I really didn't care.  I was sober, angry that others could drink in moderation and that I never learned moderation.  An addictive personality.  Well, at least I had a personality.

Sober now for almost twenty years (and a non-smoker for thirty years) (and happily rid of PJ as well as a few other "well-meaning friends") I am still envious of people's ability to drink in moderation.  Now, with all the craft beers and craft whiskeys, all this good stuff and I can't touch it.  I can't start sobriety all over again from square one just to have a taste of Sleepwalker Imperial Stout that smells so delicious.

Lesson learned.  Moving on.  Staying sober, in spite of myself.  Forgetting to drink.  No longer the mad woman upstairs.  And the mad woman under the stairs?  She lives on in memory, like PJ, like the others, everyone who thought they knew me but didn't.  No, they are not dead, just relegated to memory, now that I can have one, a memory that is, and move on.

Chomping at the bit

The last few days the weather has been very favorable to snow melting.  The snow drops are back and tulips are pushing up.  My trellises came today and I am plotting how to frame my rose garden.  I have four hummingbird vines coming, as well as some perennials--six Jewels of the Desert.  Also, a butterfly bush, a clematis with very dramatic flowers and a lovely rose hybrid tea rose with very dramatic blooms that I am thinking will take care of the side yard.  I want to add soil to the raised bed for tomato plants and herbs.  The trellis should "hide' the vegetable garden.  Th sided yard needs some edging and I am thinking of planting bamboo to act as a privacy fence to next door as it seems like whatever the season is the bamboo is always green.

I am just so excited about the yard that seems all I think about.  A healthy obsession.  But, also, seems of late, Tommy Tummy has an ulcer and I am hurting a lot of time.  And the arthritis in my hands, especially the thumbs, is getting worse.  Still I can't wait to get outside and play in the mud. My roses all seem to have survived the winter. I did have some Jewels of the Desert, which also survived, to which I will add six more.  Great border flowers, looking not unlike moss roses. But are very hardy and love full sun.  Oh, I am just so excited to have my little house and be able to work in the yard, have my opening day party and hope for weather like today and maybe we can sit outside and enjoy the yard.  I am so happy here I could plotz.

So that is all for tonight.  Got out the spring jacket and am hopeful it is truly the right and rite of spring.

Spring redux and the Renaissance Man

After two major snow storms in two weeks, the snow is gone, for good I hope.  The Red Cedar River is up overs its banks and flowing fast downstream.   Snow drops and tulips are making their way to the sun.  As for the amateur renaissance man he is at it again and convinced someone to give him a show and, as one person put it, you can hear the gallery scraping the bottom of the barrel.  Computer distorted and generated images without any skill other than knowing how to matte and frame.  But this is the Era of the Amateur.  How else can you explain Donald Trump.  Yes we want an outsider with no political experience, a hair trigger temper and a racist following that the Klan is very proud of.  Don't tell me racism isn't alive and well in this republic.  It is rearing its ugly head the the form of Mr. Amateur, the Donald.  Makes the thought of moving to Canada all the more appealing.  Not truly feasible for by that time Canada will have built a wall of their own...

Trump scares me...he is the worse America has to offer.  But Cruz isn't much better.  As I watch election returns pour in on MSNBC the more frightened I get.

God help us all.

Spring

As the snow plows go by for the second time down my street I am recanting my ode to spring.  My snow drops are no drops right now.  March has indeed come in like the proverbial lion, which the owner of Jimmy John's shot and is standing over while someone left the cake out in the rain and I may never have that recipe again.

All I might say is merde, a lovely French word that sums up my sense of injustice this cruel winter has played upon us twice in less than a week.  The Old Duffer couldn't come over last night to play guitar with me.  I also hasten to add that in spite of several offers of a ride home last night I felt more comfortable on my own two feet.  Yes, the pedal extremities got me home.  A snowy mixture of sleet like proportions covered my dome and necessitated a quick shower when I did arrive home, in less than a half hour I hasten to add, as my hair was soaked.  Joe, my yard and snow guy, will earn his fee today.  I just hope he can come out before I return home this afternoon.  Old Duffer is planning to come this evening, which is actually when he wanted to come this week.  I should  write to him first next week to see if he wants to play just to show that I am interested in keeping this relationship.

All this snow and baseball's spring training has begun in earnest.  I watched a few games yesterday  as the snow was pelting down.  Talk about contrasts.

So it seems that this blog has returned to its roots.  Less a plundering of personalities out to get this paranoid self and more of nonsensical ponderings.  For this I apologize.  I did so enjoy Jack and sorely miss the presence of a conscience at play.  No, less at play and more of being indignant.  I love me a good indignant.