Achy-flaky Morning

My spots are getting out of control. I found an OTC topically coal tar that seemed to be helping quite a bit, but I have a bunch of new spots and every part of my epidermis is incredibly itchy. The spot on my nose is getting bigger.

Thomas stayed home sick today; I gave him my cold. I want to go get him the box of amazing organic herbal tea I drank while I was sick, but my knees are malfunctioning. They won't bend, and they won't straighten.

So I am sitting here on my memory-foam mattress thinking about psoriatic arthritis. Because this is my blog, and my space to freely voice my opinion, I am going to honestly tell you all how I feel, even if it makes someone feel like an asshole.

Not a lot of people know much about the disease I have. It doesn't really kill people, so who cares? I want to tell you what it does, because I shouldn't have to feel like a lazy, spotted, itchy, gimpy, complainy person.

Psoriasis creates itchy, often painful raised flaky spots all over my body, including one spot covering about 70% of my scalp right now. Everywhere I go I leave a trail of flakes, and there isn't anything I can do about it. People tell me to "stop it", tell me it's "gross" and stare. If I don't take care of it, it becomes severe very quickly. To take proper care of my skin I should spend a few hours every day applying lotion or medication to every spot, avoid chemicals in shampoos, soaps, lotions, etc., and go tanning 3 times a week.

Psoriasis can be very time consuming and expensive to manage and can be very socially isolating. No matter what you do, you will get "looks" from people everyday, so it's best to get over that real quick.

Psoriatic arthritis sucks the life energy away from my body, then blesses me with unpredictable pain. It is always somewhere, but moves around my body with different intensities. When mild I'll have a dull aching or just bones that feel pushed together. On average, I usually have one or two major joints at a time that have severely limited mobility. I won't be able to lift my arm, or bend a knee, or move my leg for instance. And when a flare becomes severe my brain becomes fuzzy, all I can see is red and my entire body will spasm with the most unimaginable pain that makes it difficult to breathe.  

There are a lot of things that I want to do but just can't. I often have to cancel plans I make. This is why now, I practically refuse to make plans. I don't want to have to call and tell anyone how terrible I feel, I just want to have the freedom to hide away when I am hurting too much. I really don't have to ability to commit to anything that involves being clear headed or physically present.

I haven't figured out how to convey this to people. they get frustrated when I can't commit one way or the other, they make me feel like they think I'm just lazy. I know I have people out there that care about me and have been good friends to me, but I don't have anyone in my life right now, other than my mom and my boyfriend, that calls to talk or wants to hang out with me. I quit seeing the majority of my friends when I quit being about to drink. Now, I choose not to drink much ever because my body will just hurt too much later.

I have come a long way in learning to live with this condition. When my skin first broke out I covered every spot with clothing. By the time swim season came around I was forced to get over that. I had a friend in college who told me once how much he admired my being comfortable with people talking to me about my skin and not trying to hide it. I wasn't as strong as I seemed to be then, but his complement brought out the strength I had been feigning. In fact, he is still the person I call when I need a good friend.  

It's a good thing I learned to live with the psoriasis, because the arthritis came on quickly. I was officially diagnosed when I was 21. It has been three years, of which quite a bit is fuzzy, but that's okay. I feel like all the pain has made me appreciate all the little things in life so much more. I used to get caught up in drama, or work too much, but I can't really do that now. I spend all the time I can doing what I enjoy; reading, writing, going to the beach, hanging out with my animals.

Thomas is quitting his job and we are working together on two businesses right now. Hopefully someday soon we can move somewhere warm, preferably within close proximity to a beach and some hot springs. For now, my knees feel slightly better so I am going to go get what I need to take care of this sick boy!

Happy hump day ya'll.

My Reply to Your Negative Commentary

The biggest problem I see out there is how much people prefer to identify with their particular opinion and spend their energy attacking others. What, besides our egos, keeps us from having meaningful, constructive, problem solving conversations? Believe it or not, our government prefers us to be at each others throats, rather than unified.

Sure there are issues we won't all agree on, but why not talk about something we can. Hunger? Homelessness? Our system being designed to create both while others, more specifically .001% of our population collects all the material wealth left in our country? Our money being worth nothing yet we are told we need to get a job and work for it? Maybe we can agree our education system is completely broken, which I believe is to blame for most of the terribly uneducated, poorly written commentaries out there. Or maybe we can find common ground talking about our medical system and how it kills more people every year than anything other than heart disease and cancer, and preventative medicine is totally unavailable to anyone below upper middle class. Of course maybe this wouldn't be the case if our food supply wasn't packed full of hormones, antibiotics, toxins, GMOs, and filler chemicals. And again, to afford quality food, you have to live in the right place and not be poor.

Let's quit bringing each other down and start helping each other up, eh?

Business Launch!

Sorry it has been a while since my last post. I decided to take a vacation and spent this last week up in Seattle. This weekend Thomas and I really put in some time on Graphite Penguin and are ready to announce our new business.

Click the link, check out the website. Feedback is always great. Share with anyone you think may be interested.

Thomas is still working on the portfolio page, he has a few more great designs that aren't up on the site yet. I will be spending this week learning about SEO and how copy-writing ties into page optimization. I am also at the point where I an comfortable working in HTML so I am moving on to CSS! 

We will be ironing out our fees for all of the different services we will offer. So if any of you have input on what these service would be worth to you, please share. We will be offering graphic design, web design, sales and marketing copy-writing, business card and brochure designs so far.

We have great energy going into this are are very excited about what is to come! 

Project: Lincoln City Guide

I am working on creating a simple map of Lincoln City. I think there are only a few more roads I want to add. Then I think I will mark beach access, tide pools, easy beach access, and all the best businesses in town. I am not sure what my plan is with this, but maybe I will try and make it interactive.

The roads I included are what I think are the best roads to get through town, and HWY 101. If you have ever been to Lincoln City in the summer you understand how bad traffic can get. Since I know my way around so well, I thought maybe I could help other people skip the traffic where possible.

For the beach accesses, I thought I would write a brief review of each one including whether there is parking, stairs, drive on, tide pools, and where it is important to check the tide first. Also, where to go for the best bonfires.

As far as businesses go, I would include the Cultural Center, Culinary Center, the library, the casino, the mall, and all my favorite stores. I also want to include all the information I can on outdoor activities. It seems to me many people don't even notice the lake in the middle of town, which has many great spots. I will probably include locally owned boutique motels.

If you can think of any information you would want about visiting a little beach town, I want to hear your ideas! My main focus is going to be free things to do and locally owned businesses. I may even end up making a dedicated site for my interactive guide.

Happy Tuesday! Hope you are smiling :)        

New Look and a Shout-out for Thomas' Blog & Graphic Designs

I have a new custom favicon, have you noticed? In case you don't know, a favicon is the little tiny picture that goes next to the title of a webpage on the tab at the top of your browser. Mine is probably a little too detailed, so it didn't come out great. It's only a 32 x 32 px image.

You probably also noticed my new header image, I am considering re-sizing it, but I might not because I kinda like that it is almost too big. This picture is of my happy place, and yes, those are my sexy-psoriassy legs!

I have Inkscape on my little notebook now and am learning how to use it, so far it is pretty fun. I am also going to be learning CSS this week through web tutorials. These two tasks seemed like they would go well together; graphic design with cascading style sheets!

Oh, also check out my blog roll at the bottom of my page. Thomas has a new blog going and is connecting it with his graphic design company. He is going to be giving away 10 free logo designs to improve upon his portfolio, so if you could use a new logo, check out his work at The Graphite Penguin.

I Dig Infographics

Wealth Inequality in America

What has been going on since 1976 that has allowed this to happen? I just can't wait to see the whole economy crash, it seems like a joke to me anyway.  Seems like it may actually benefit the majority.

I played with a little bit of the layout of the blog today. Let me know what you think or if there are any features I should add. I found a poll gadget I may use if I think of a great question to ask you all.

Goodnight world. 

Test

The weasel abides.