Smoke and Crook

That phantom cigarette smoke smell.  It's been gone for forever, since I've been on the same dose of Topamax for several weeks - but yesterday it came back and I can smell it again today.  I'm unimpressed.

But I really came here to show you this:

Before Hammersmark goes, "Who the hell is Mackenzie Crook?"  I'm going to preemptively grumble, "God!  He's Gareth, from the original British version of The Office.  Fuck, Hammersmark.  Google."

Though I can't adequately explain what's happening here, who cares - he's wearing your grandmother's glasses and glittery eyeshadow with pirattitude.  This doesn't happen every day, enjoy it without question.

Yarr.

Halloween and Hunger

I've lived in the state I now reside since I moved here - for a handful of years (clear enough?).  I never really cared about handing out candy to the children of people I don't know.  But we've recently moved into apartments with nice people above and beside us.  I don't actually know them, but what I've observed of them from my hermit-like existence indicates niceness.  So I bought a bag of candy, just in case their kids came by, so I wouldn't have to hand them wads of disappointment.  As it turned out, no one came by.

For Halloween my husband put on my Facebook account (he doesn't have one of his own) for one status update.  It was actually kind of a dual costume, because I was wearing his words.  I was him, he was me.  Oh, how deliciously quirky we are!  When I gave him his assignment, I said to make sure that nothing he said sounded anything like something I would ever say ... and he succeeded in a manner that led me to believe that he'd consulted with students at MIT who helped him come up with some sort of mathematical formula that served as a  framework for the status update.  It was something special.  He used the word "Boosh!"  That must have taken at least a half page of math right there.

In other news no one really cares about: Topamax side effects. (Imagine this said in a booming voice with an echo.  I know I did.)

I'm not smelling much phantom cigarette smoke anymore, but my husband is thoroughly convinced it never was in my imagination in the first place.  Like Bunny Walker, he thinks I just have superhuman sense of smell.  I love him, but if that were true, there is no way he would be the only one complaining about the smell of his feet.  I'm just saying.

My husband has resigned himself to the fact that I'm going to have trouble remembering the names for things we all talk about every day.  He's learned to fill in the blanks when I have to go the long way around the word: "it's the stuff around the middle of the bread", or he just takes a guess when I pause for too long and start banging on my head with my fist.  Our life has become like a game show that sometimes ends up like Mad Libs.  Jealous?

Which brings us to the most recent development in side effects - appetite changes.  You know how there are degrees of hunger ranging from "dainty snack" to "goodly feast" or "I could eat" to "bring me Arby's or I'll eat you" and everything in-between?  My first clue that my appetite was changing was when these nuances disappeared and were replaced by a strict Boolean property* situation.  There are only two possible answers to the question 'Hungry?': true or false.  I either had no interest in food, or there were demons in the depths of my gut demanding to be fed - and there was no leading up to it.  One minute I was not hungry, the next I was crippled by hunger and chewing on my sleeve until I could reach food.

Now that has been overshadowed by a complete lack of interest in food at all, usually until the very end of the day, where I can muster up enough interest for dinner.  I still have demons rattling around in my depths, but it feels as though the only options I have to feed them are bowls of white rice or matzo farfel & milk, and I just can't be bothered to chew those things.  Trust me, I don't actually have matzo farfel in my house, and what I do have is way better - it's just that when you have no appetite, even a package of fudge stripe cookies will make you sigh. 

That's right, I have a package of fudge stripe cookies in my house that survived from Saturday through Tuesday.  It's unprecedented.

Don't worry, it'll probably go away and I'll eat all my fudge stripe cookies and then show up at your door to see what kind of cookie situation you've got going on at your house.


*Unless you're brainy and mathy, or familiar with Sims 2 cheats, you will have to use Google.     

It's Possible I've Solved the Mystery

But probably not the one you were hoping.  Although I don't know much about your hopes and fears, so hey - maybe you have been up at night chewing your fingers to nubs over what the hell was going on with my damned rye bread.  If that's the case, you're in luck.

(As a quick side note, to the 2.5 of you who want a Sims 3 update, I'm working on it.  I'm just not willing to throw up any old crap for the sake of crapping.  I have standards, even if I only have 8 followers and two of them are the same person.  Also, more people should be reading my blog.  It's fucking funny and you know it.  Do you hear that, people who aren't reading my blog?  Do you?  Good.)

Meanwhile, back to my bread.  When I was explaining it the first time, I didn't give each and every (what I thought at the time) irrelevant detail.  Also, new information came to light.  New, and possibly terrifying information. 

So let's go into excrutiating, almost forensic detail with this: 

Before detecting the strange odor, I had a loaf of approximately 8-day-old rye bread, opened (but still in it's original wrapper) sitting inside yet another bag, which was a ziplock freezer bag.

The full loaf of bread spent about 5 days on top of my fridge (in a shallow basket which was part of the packaging of a gift my sister gave me as a wedding present) before it was transfered to the inside of my fridge.

Along with this loaf of bread were a few pieces of older rye bread, also in original packaging, waiting for me to either get a craving for stale bread & butter and coffee, or to stop feeling guilty enough to finally throw it away.  I kept it on top of the new bread, so I could be fully reminded of my wastefulness as I reached past it.

When I'd first opened the newly purchased loaf of rye bread, I put it inside the ziplock freezer bag which had been holding the stale, leftover pieces from the old loaf.  This made the bag almost full to the brim, and when I tried to zip the used freezer bag closed, its sides split open instead of closing, as expected.  Because I can not handle this sort of shit, I angrily threw the unzipped bag on top of the fridge to give it a chance to think about what it had done.  It took me about a day transfer all of the bread into a new freezer bag.

Here's where the horrifying possibility comes in:  About a month ago, we had maintenance come by to fix a few things, and while they were here, asked them to change the a/c vent in the kitchen ceiling - despite the fact the dude couldn't understand why we didn't want all the air conditioning blowing directly into the laundry alcove, cooling only the washer and dryer, instead of the kitchen.  We're ass over elbow crazy, okay?

So in the course of changing the vent, he gets vent dust sheetrock crumbles, popcorn ceiling crackles and god knows what else all over the kitchen floor.  He did a decent job of cleaning it up, but what I didn't find until much later is that this stuff was also all over the top of my fridge.  Where I keep my bread.  Where I'd angrily thrown an opened bag of rye bread and left it for at least a day. 

I don't know if any of that stuff really got into my bread.  Who can say for sure?
 
All I know is that my stomach wasn't right for three days, and even with all my various ailments, having a stomachache for three days in a row, which required me to repeatedly gag down those foamy-diet-strawberry-shake-tasting Gaviscons is not even close to normal for me.

And I still have my eyes on those kids of mine.   

Something's Rotten in Denmark?

Maybe if my kitchen's in Denmark.  I haven't seen any Vikings or Lutheran churches attempting to form ... it's a really small kitchen but I suppose just about anything is possible.

I'll explain.

Yesterday, I decided to have a cheese and pickle sandwich on rye bread for lunch.  I got a plate and everything I needed from the fridge, then set it all on the counter.  I opened the rye bread first, because that's logical and I really try to be logical when assembling sandwiches - to avoid pickle mishaps, mostly.  The rye bread was being stored in a big ziplock bag and had been in our kitchen for at most eight days, three of which had been inside the fridge. 

I pulled out two slices.  They didn't smell quite right.  But I don't trust my nose, for obvious reasons so I went ahead and made the sandwich.  Still ... the bread just smelled wrong.  I looked at the rest of the loaf.  It looked okay - not moldy or anything.  I've had rye bread sitting around for longer in my kitchen - at worst it gets too dried out to be palatable.  I sniffed again.  It wasn't even that typical breadly smell - kinda yeasty, like wine.  What the hell. 

Whatever.  I can't be sure something is really wrong until my husband comes home and I make him smell it, so I decided to go ahead and eat it.  I got to the second bite, and just ... couldn't.  The smell was way too strong, and too strange, even if it was a side effect of my medication.  I threw it away, and ate nachos and broccoli instead.  Not together - the broccoli legitimized melted cheddar on tortilla chips as a meal.

When my husband came home, he opened the bag and got smacked in the face by the smell.  It was open for mere seconds and I smelled it from four feet away.  The realization hit me that I had eaten two bites of that bread.  What also hit me is that the smell reminded me of that time a friend and I mixed every liquid we could find in her parents house into a dixie cup.  We were lucky we didn't choke on the fumes, it was pretty disgusting.

So I guess now all I have to do is figure out which one of my children is trying to poison me, and where they're hiding the dixie cup.  Why don't I think it's my husband?  If he was going to do it, he would have done it a long time ago.  The kids have long since sapped his energy to plot.

I don't know how to tell you this...

...but I can't drink soda anymore ... at least not while I'm taking Topamax.  It's not that I drink a lot of soda - I usually just have one of those mini cans once a week on Fridays, when we eat our frozen rising crust (that tastes as good as delivery) pizza for dinner.  Sometimes, rarely, I'll have one of those mini cans during the week when I'm not eating pizza, but I don't make a habit out of it. 

What I'm laboring to say here is that soda is an occasional treat for me.  So by the time I'd had it again since I started Topamax, the medicine had a chance to really build up in my system.  

I was warned through my research that anything with carbonation just wouldn't agree with me - but did I heed said warning before I poured my adorable mini can of Coke into my glass with just the right amount of cherry juice & two ice cubes, and sat down with my perfectly baked pizza?

No.  I didn't.  And I paid a price, my friends.  When I sipped that soda it was as though a thousand tiny pennies pounced on my tongue and started biting.  Didn't agree with me?  That soda had a vendetta.  I'd call it a carbonation mafia, but I don't want to beat a dead horse.

...and before you suggest I let the soda go flat, allow me to suggest you go drink a warm, flat Old Milwaukee.

In other news, I've started taking the 2nd dose.  I'm not smelling cigarette smoke constantly, just on occasion.  Word finding hasn't been as impossible as it could be, but like I said - I've just started the new dose.  I have one more step up in a week, and that should be it. 

Other side effects that I've heard can happen, and almost want to happen because they could make my kinda boring life a little bit more interesting: deja vu (I know I've seen this shit before) and jamais vu (who moved my shit? ~or~ this isn't my shit!) 

Honestly, the potential for hilarity staggers. 

I've done some more reading, and ...

What was I saying?  Right, anyway.  After further research into Topamax side effects, I've found a smattering of people online who describe things smelling strangely, or a burning smell.  So it's entirely likely I wasted the shit out of the county's resources because my temporal lobes are confused and knocking into ... uh, the uh - where you smell in your brain.  I have been smelling cigarette smoke all day again.  Guhmuggy.

Okay, so in my research, I've learned that Topamax works on temporal lobe dysfunction.  Basically, it slows down abnormal activity.  Or, all activity, if you've been watching me in action.  I've also learned that the temporal lobe (I keep typing "temporal love", ffs) is responsible for "comprehension, naming, verbal memory and other language functions".

The first could (I mean couple) of days of taking this medication, I was like "side effects, what side effects?"  But now, I'm swimming through ... a bunch of words that aren't the right ones.  It's 50% scary, 50% amusing.  I feel like my frontal lobe has a hot water bottle on it, there's a burning cigarette in front of my nose, and all I want to do is curl up under a blanket, stare at something mindless and pretend I'm not having trouble stringing thoughts together.  It's taking me a ridiculous amount of time to make sense - that is, if I actually am.

I want pizza.  No I don't.

All I gotta say is, this shit better work.  I will give it time to settle in - I'm not unrealistic, I realize this type of medication requires twiddling.  Or tweaking.  I better stop before it starts to sound sexual.  Oh my god I'm not funny.  Goodbye.

Wanna hear something potentially embarrassing?

Of course you do, you evil little monkeys.

Yesterday I was pissed enough to jerk knots in a few asses.  Someone was chain-smoking outside, and it was getting into my apartment.  At first I told myself I was just smelling things, but then I also started feeling that scraped-out skull headache feeling I get when I smell cigarette smoke.  I pop my head outside, and get smacked in the face by the smell.  Okay, so it's probably not coming from an adjacent apartment. 

After hours of the stink of cigarettes ebbing and flowing, I finally called the courtesy officer, who informed me that I wasn't the first person to complain about someone smoking outside, since there were cigarette butts everywhere.  She said she'd come by and see if she could find the person, and ask them to take it elsewhere.

The stink continued.  My rage grew.  I have two small children here, and the idea of some shithead funneling toxic chemicals into the air they breathe was making me downright murderous.  Not to mention my all-day headache, and now sore throat.

So I called the sheriff's department, assuming that I was in for a long fight, and the best first step was getting a record of my complaint.

The stink continued.

My husband comes home, and I'm all "stinks, doesn't it?", and he's all, "what?"  Assuming the issue is that he's pretty much hard of smelling, I dismiss the fact that it's impossible to have walked directly through what had to have been a thick cloud of cigarette smoke to be capable of filling nearly every room of our apartment with stinkiness, and not have noticed it at all.

But then I start to doubt.  Husband's claiming to not have bad allergies that day, and if I'm being completely realistic about the situation, I did just start a medication that is well known for having some wacky side effects.  So I get on Facebook and ask my friends if any of them have ever heard of weird smells as a side effect of Topamax.

I'm just kidding, I'm not an asshole.  I Googled it.  Couldn't find anything, by the way.  But it's not impossible, considering that Topamax is primarily an anti-seizure medication - God only knows what sort of neurological mayhem it plays on a person who's had it prescribed for migraines.

Right now, the front of my brain feels warm.  Every now and then, I'll decide to get something, walk to absolutely the wrong place to get said item, stand there like some sort of path-blocked Sim with a half-dopey grin on my face and then say, "Right.  I wanted the milk.  That's in the fridge, not in the dryer."  And I haven't even started titrating up to my actual dosage yet.  This could get potentially very fun.  For other people.

Anyway, I continued smelling cigarette smoke, even after I went to bed.  It was as if some gravelly-voiced old lady was sitting in a chair next to my bed, blowing smoke directly into my face.  This morning - nothing.

Stay tuned for morbid stupidity.

ETA: It just occured to me that Bunny Walker is going to be sure that my medication is turning me into a superhero.  I'm fairly certain she thinks this is happening to everyone, all the time.