Friday, April 25, 2008

Justa planning ahead.

image Picture courtesy of saving advice.com via Google images

 

Those of you that have been with us here at Justakrusen

for a while, know that I was posting what Cindy and I were paying for groceries every time we went shopping at Save A Lot, or where ever else we may have gone to pick up things we couldn't get there.Well I stopped doing that because it just seemed redundant. I'm not thinking of doing it again unless someone really lets me know that they want me to in the comments.

What I do want to talk about today

are some of the things that Cindy and I are doing to save money on our grocery shopping at the same time stocking up for a price hike on certain items. We have seen the price of some foods go up quite a bit in the last few months. I'm not going to go through the items that have increased you can tell when you look at your grocery bill. One of the things Cindy did the other day was go to the store and stock up on Bread making things as I mentioned the other day. She bought enough for us to go quite a while without buying bread at the store if we had to.

Something I did yesterday, which on the surface

sounds expensive but in the long run will save us money at the same time providing high quality meats with menu planning ability right at our fingertips. It happened like this. I got a knock at the door yesterday and it was a young guy standing there. He went right into his pitch about saving money on meat, they were in the neighbor hood and blah, blah, blah, I usally just tell these kind of salesmen "no thanks" and shut the door. For some reason I put my shirt on and waddled out to his pickup with him. On the back of the pickup was his partner and a freezer. They proceeded to bring out a case of meat. I'm going to make another long story really short. I bought a case of top line meat with about 13 weeks of meals in them for $199.00. These are top of the line meats. Momma and I had a Filet Mignon wrapped in bacon that was to die for. Just ask momma if you don't believe me.

My Bi-Polar disorder is cycling pretty fast right

now. I'm going into the depressive mode as I type this. During the day and early evening I seem to be up. Night time and early morning down. Time to adjust the meds Len. I'll talk to him in the next day or so as he always calls to check on me. I'm very lucky to have a counselor and a wife on board to help me through this. A lot of you going through similar experiences have no one, or you feel like you have no one. I know the feeling. How is your day going let us know in the comments.  I'm cutting it short here this morning. And as always. I'm justa saying!

8 comments:

A said...

Dearest Mark:

I was afraid you would start hording {laughing}. Those down turns are seldom a pleasure ride through the park. I do hope a medication adjustment will get you perked up soon, and your feeling that bounce in your step once again. I thought I would share an article I wrote sometime back when about what it's like to be Bipolar to those that really don't understand what it's like living with this disorder everyday.

See this is what happens when your up at the wee hours of the morning with nothing to do {smirk}

Bipolar—a personal perspective


People have often asked me "what is Bipolar?" Of course there is constantly the standard diagnostic banter of what we are. But I somehow feel that always tends to fall short of expressing our genuine humanity.
I know I often just want to say: if I truly tried to Explain, you of this norm could never comprehend the depths of my being. For how can you understand with any meaningful Comprehension what it might be like to stand within the fires of the most heated emotional contradiction in extremes?
How can I express in layman's dialog how it might be to feel the world as streams of blinding light permeating your mind, with thoughts at such accelerated speed and clarity that within yourself it can overwhelm your ability to relate to a world of permissive indoctrination of futile norms and the overbearing weight of the regulated mundane?
To go upon a journey from the very mountain peaks of glorious monstrosity, of infinite kaleidoscope possibilities, surreal euphoric bereavement; and then crash head on into a world of darkest despair, a lonely place where you alone can dwell.
A hell contained within the limitless confines of your imprisoned mind. Yet, limited to nothing more than hopeless mashing & grinding of teeth. A lethargic state of such void that its burden is only bearable for the grace of our faded scared memorial of memories which were once stars glistening across the moonless night sky with wonder and unbridled enthusiasm.
We survive not by the simple act of hardened will, but by the grace of our passionate spirit, yet slumbered away in this weathered time of morose seclusion.
How can those who cannot walk this lonely journey that faces us with the countless forks upon its road; fathom the complexity of these thoughts, judge the actions of our behavior, or sit in jury of our healing?
What can I tell them? That yes I am very much a part of your world, sometimes more a part of it than you can allow your imaginations to even ponder! Yet so often I'm so completely and totally isolated that I'm torn away from your world, and stand starkly alone in my very own!
Sure I can mutter on and on about this journey I've experienced, or that one too, and so forth babbling forever! But if you have not been to these exotic and foreign shores of emotional travel; if you have not shroud yourself in my moments of madness, the days of euphoric grandeur where all things are possible and the line between dreams and reality can for a brief time be breached; or parked upon a bare wooden floor crouched for days on end weeping to the point where the weeping is but breath unto itself; leading steadily spiraling toward this unparalleled place where the dry tears are but the purest void of feeling entirely. This faded statuesque portrait brushed in a silent grim testimonial and laden upon a living corpse of this sacred tormented being.
How do I explain this Juxtaposition in living duplicity? How do I face this quagmire of inquisitive souls wanting information, curious to our fates, delving at us for an explanation to our existence? Do we continue just to spout out to them some doctor's reference book terms? Do we futilely go on and on about what we are, somehow trying to justify why we are, who we are?
I'm really not sure if there is one pat answer I can pull from my bag of tricks that will cover their hunger or quench that thirst. Not a single idiotic, wise, sarcastic sentence or verse that will cover every base and not offend their fragile sense of moronic superiority.
I guess sometimes I just want to say nothing at all, or continue to try in vain Explaining to them this simple truth. Yes I'm of this world in which you inquire of me! And yes, it is a world sometimes we share! But make no mistake; many a time I am not of your world. My Mind has much more or much less color than yours, my mind has no walls that can socially bide me, my world is the endless rainbow of all the emotional realms you have yet to open your eyes and see.
You feel but seldom those rare heightened moments of Joy and tragedy only when fate throws them in your face by great loss, gain, and circumstance! I feel them like its breathing air or drinking water for subsistence.
So I answer you concerned citizen of this dismal world within you dwell. I have no answer that could fill your gluttony, no wisdom to cure your ignorance. I am just me! We are what man dreams to be in all his/her greatest imagination; but we are also what you fear in the deepest caverns of your souls, the hopeless grief of un-soothed suffering and isolate torment.
We are what you choose to call us, we are bipolar! But, we are more than your label tattooed to our foreheads & medical charts, or heated burning brand upon our humbled thought.
We are just who we are. We work right next to you each day. Sit right next you in your classrooms each morning. And believe this or not? You may even be in a close relationship with us and not know it for the ticking time bomb of our shrouded clock. Or even glimpse the shimmering reflection of this journey's juggernaut of battles we struggle against and conquer each day of our lives.
Yes we are Bipolar, flawed in the most bizarre and mysterious of artistic ways. But we are also just like you! Flesh, blood, and bone through and through.
We cry, we laugh, we grieve, we rejoice, and as life's curtain rises over earth's unstilted theatrical stage, we live! Oh yes!
We gloriously live!
And like you, we ultimately die.
(c) 2005

I thought this is something you can share with others that have questions about bipolar without all the same old medical jargon and stuff regurgitated time and time again.

Your blog Buddy:
Stan

PS sorry, no ranting political babble this time around.

Mark Krusen said...

Stan.
This is a way to describe the disorder. But have you found that most people will sit through such a lengthy diatribe.I for one skimmed through the words knowing full well the outcome but a lay person wouldn't or couldn't sustain concentration long enough to absorb every word. What do you think about that?

A said...

Dearest Mark:

I would have to say that a lay person might have to be somewhat motivated to read any of my banter to be quite honest.

But I think the message is there if they take the time, or can understand the vocabulary and the small poetic twist I placed on this disorder.

Now are we actually talking layman or developmentally disabled? {Laughing}

In that case vote Obama {laughing} and stock on basic commodities for the coming apocalypse {laughing}.

Yours truly
Stan

PS I try to go under the assumption that everyone is as much of an idiot and inarticulate as I am {smirk}

soulful sepulcher said...

Just stopping by to say thanks for leaving me a comment on my blog, you'll find me at Furious Seasons comment section quite a lot. Good luck!

Mark Krusen said...

Stephany,

And thank you for coming by here and leaving a comment. I will be checking your blog out regularly now. Very interesting indeed.

Chief Family Officer said...

I do hope the med adjustment does the trick for you!

And how is the breadmaking going? I feel like I *should* bake my own bread, but somehow it never tastes quite as good. Not to mention timing my day so that I can be home to knead and bake at the appropriate times is tricky.

But if Cindy has any recipes to share, I'd sure love to try them!

Mark Krusen said...

Chief Family Officer.

Thanks for commenting. The med adjustment is going really slow. I think I'm going to have to try something else. It is frustrating sometimes.But I have a great support team. My wife is awesome. She has been there the whole way and then some.

I'll have to let her be the one to tell about the bread making. She has a machine that her Mother had when she was alive that does an excellent job. The Bread always taste so good.

Cheryl said...

Hi Mark,
just checking on you!
Cheryl from 43t