The article is about an Ambien user who crashed her car, she says while sleep driving on Ambien. It’s not a difficult defence for some of us who have encountered Ambien’s little side effect to accept. The comments on this article wherever it is shared, by folks who have had the experience of sleep walking under it, are very very creepy, even if nothing serious came of it. Or maybe especially so.
There are so many stories about this drug’s sleep walking side effect I think it really needs to be taken off the market until that’s understood better. Not everyone sleep walks under it. But the stories of people who have are so widespread it’s disturbing that the drug is still being widely prescribed for sleep problems. I have my own story, and it’s the only time in my life I’ve been petrified scared.
I was having really bad trouble sleeping…it later turned out to be diet related…and I was prescribed Ambien. The doctor I was seeing at the time assured me it wasn’t addictive. Well it was addictive as all hell but that’s another matter. What scared me was the time I walked into the kitchen to get a glass of ice tea.
I’ve made my own sweet ice tea the same way ever since I was a young teenager. The process starts with boiling water in the kettle and then pouring the boiling water into a container that already has a measured amount of sweetener in it. The sweetener is dissolved immediately. Then several tea bags are dipped into the water to steep. The trick is to let the tea cool down at room temperature, to room temperature, before putting it into the fridge to chill. If you put it in too soon it turns bitter.
So one day I’m walking into the kitchen to get a glass of ice tea. I’m still having trouble sleeping well despite the Ambien, and what is more my head is staying a bit fuzzy all day long which is worrying me. I’m getting forgetful (more than usual) and I’m starting to seriously worry if there is something wrong with my head. So this is my state of mind when I open the fridge to get some ice tea…and I see the kettle in there.
I freaked. I thought, oh god I’m losing my mind, had to take the kettle out, set it down in the stove where it usually sits, walk into the living room and sit down on the sofa and wait until I stopped shaking.
For the next several weeks I watched my behavior closely to see if anything like it happened again. But I also did this: I started weaning myself off Ambien. It took about a month of my shaving the pills smaller and smaller until I could finally sleep without dropping one. Later…when I reconnected with a certain someone from my past, I started paying more attention to my weight and what I was eating and that solved the sleep problems. And shortly after that I started hearing stories about people on Ambien sleepwalking and made the connection to the kettle in the fridge.
I will Never touch sleeping pills again. Ever. No matter how bad the insomnia gets.
How To Draw Pictures Of Sexy Guys Wearing Glasses In 3 Easy Steps – Lesson 2
Continuing in our learning path, here’s another of our handy guides to drawing sexy guys. As Bach famously said, Playing the organ is simple…you just hit the keys at the right time and the instrument practically plays itself! Be assured that drawing is just as easy. Simply drag your pencil over the paper in the right places and you never go wrong!
Step 1: Start with a couple of circles for the glasses. In this lesson we will draw simple round frame glasses…
Step 2: Connect the circles together to form a frame. Add some lines for the temple pieces…
Step 3: Now add the rest of him…
Next: Drawing a distinction between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz!
Of all the commercial tributes to Prince, this IMO is the best…
Note that they didn’t put one of their current models in it, as if it were nothing more than cheap advertising. Look closely at that back window. Only one year had that split rear window and it was the first year of the new Stingray body style. That 1963 Corvette is legendary and highly prized by collectors. Check the prices they fetch when in good condition.
A neighbor in an apartment complex mom and I lived in bought a ’63 Vette…but not the coupe. His was a yellow convertible with chrome side exhaust (“lake”) pipes and mag wheels and I lusted after that car, as only a tween-age boy whose bedroom was full of model cars and hot rod magazines could. I knew the sound of it, and every time I heard that engine come to life I was out on the balcony like a shot, just to stand and watch it pull away, and arrogantly take charge of the the road.
The pleasures of adulthood are richer, but in their complexity not as pure. Little Red Corvette expresses it perfectly. I guess I should’ve closed my eyes, when you drove me to the place where your horses run free, ’cause I felt a little ill when I saw all the pictures of the jockeys that were there before me… I was much too young to have understood what Prince was singing about back in those days. But every time I hear that song it takes me back to that first early boyhood thrill at the sight of power and beauty combined.
My sleep/waking pattern is all hosed up. I’m getting up way, Way too early these days, taking brief brutal naps when I come home from work…brutal in the sense that they don’t bring any rest at all…then doing nothing around the house for a bit or taking a walk maybe and then back to bed way, Way too early. I think I see the problem. It’s interesting how a pall of existential gloom can settle in and rust your innards away all the while telling you that its not even there.
It’s not like I have a clinical depression…it’s never been nearly that bad. I follow people, some famous, who are open about enduring that and from everything I’ve learned from them I’m not even close to being in that category. But the stresses of life can still take their toll all the same. It’s worse I think, on creative minds like mine, because our thoughts get so distracted by that creative need, the insistent muse, that we forget to look elsewhere in our lives, and see how miserable we’ve allowed ourselves to become, strangely enough without even being aware of it. But the physical body still pays the price.
I have an amazingly good life all things considering. I did Not expect to have the life I do now when I was younger. And when an important piece of spirit gets yanked out from under me intellectually I just shrug it off. I’m not even trying to be brave about it, I really believe in all logic and reason that by now it doesn’t matter. But it does. It always does. My mind ignores it. It really does. My body feels it nonetheless.
So I’m down here in the art room of Casa del Garrett working on the next episode of A Coming Out Story, so early in the morning because that’s when my out of whack sleep patterns are now insisting I get up, and I know that if I don’t get Something done in the art room now when I have reserves of concentration for sure I won’t when I get home from work, because by then my concentration reserves for the day will be completely exhausted. I’ve done some sketching I needed to do. Fine. Something’s been accomplished. The process moves forward a tad. That’ll do for now. I’ll go back upstairs in a bit and make some sandwiches for work and then take a serene early morning stroll into the office. I love these early morning walks. It’s a pure pleasure of city life I can walk from home to my job. I have some tasks waiting for me that I am already anticipating the pleasure of working on. I love my job. That’s a rare and extremely lucky thing to be able to say in this or any age. I’ll get things done at the office, play my part in moving JWST forward a tad, and take an early lovely walk home. I have a Good life. Then I’ll get home and all my energy will simply evaporate. That isn’t normal. Logically I know this. But I know also that I will just spin my wheels thinking about it. So I don’t.
Something is terribly wrong deep down inside. I know what it is. I’ve known for decades now. I just have no idea how to fix it. I tell myself I’ve finally become use to the idea that this is how it will always be. It’s a new mantra. But there is no stable point in the spiral into the night. You just keep going. Not even being aware most of the time, where it is that you’re going.
Sketching in preparation for work on A Coming Out Story, episode 20. It begins another short story arc with me having been tasked by the student newspaper to cover one of our home games…and then I stumble into the object of my thoroughly confused affections and try to strike up a conversation. Little teenage geeks don’t do conversation well however, and especially while the butterflies in their stomach are fluttering up a storm…
I’ve been posing myself a bunch lately to get the posture of my figures right. I do that with the digital SLR on a tripod, and a remote shutter release with a long extension cable. Then I scroll through the images on the camera’s lcd display to find a good pose and work from there. It doesn’t matter that I’m no longer that lithe (scrawny) teenage boy I once was, all I need is to see how the anatomy works, how the hands and arms reach around to the camera, how the body stands while I’m busy with the camera, legs, torso, head, how the camera bag hangs off the shoulder. Once I can see it I can draw something that gets the look right.
I still have the camera I did most of my student newspaper and yearbook stuff with, but as it turns out I also still have that camera bag from back in the day. I’d almost forgotten how it was to have both the camera and that “gadget bag” with spare film, filters, flash, batteries, light meter, and several lenses, hoods and lens cleaner in it slung around me. It was Heavy! Nowadays when I’m a working photographer I have a smaller, lighter bag that just holds a few essential things because with the new DSLRs and modern zoom lenses you don’t really need much extra.
This next story arc is a lot funner than the last one…
A Coming Out Story: Intermission – The Business of Tacos
Finished (finally!) another installment of A Coming Out Story. This is an Intermission to separate the first part of the story, which I finished with Episode 19, and what’s to come.Some of you may have already seen this one when I posted a link to the finished inks last Thanksgiving. I’ve since added the texturing and shading, and tweaked the dialogue balloons a tad. The shading really makes the artwork pop out I think.
The next part coming up is where the object of my affections and I actually begin talking to each other, and circling around each other in an age when gay kids were getting fed horrible lies about themselves from every direction. First crushes are hard enough for kids to deal with. For gay kids back when me and “T.K.” (not his real name) it was especially difficult. The worst of it was in 1971-72 there was no way you could talk about it with anyone. So you pretty much had to stumble your way around, trying to figure out what was going on inside of you, and then what to you do about this crush you’re having. How can you tell if the object of your affections is feeling the same way. One false move could be a disaster…for both of you.
That said, it’s not like it was a complete and total nightmare for me either. Mostly it was a lot of confusion. I can look back on most of it now with a sense of humor. Hopefully I can put some of that into the story going forward. What’s coming next is a short story arc wherein I finally break the ice with the object of my affections, after being tagged by the student newspaper to cover one of our football games.
But first, I figured I’d toss out here a little intermission of sorts…just to give anyone who’s still hanging on to this tale a wee taste of what’s to come in the second part. Enjoy. And thanks so much for staying tuned!
“When Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts teamed up with a convicted child sexual predator to pass a radical bathroom policy allowing men to use girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms, the Governor warned her the legislature would take immediate action to protect North Carolina families. If Jennifer Roberts, [Attorney General] Roy Cooper and the far-left Political Correctness Mob she’s unleashed really care about the economic future of her city, they’ll stop the misinformation campaign immediately and start telling the truth about this commonsense bathroom safety law before more damage is done to the city she was elected to lead and the state Cooper was elected to protect.”
The transparent subterfuge here is the bill was about bathroom safety. “Bathroom Safety” was the window dressing. Hate mongering toward transgendered people was the grease by which they deftly erased every civil rights law protecting women and minorities in North Carolina, and for extra added effect, also nullified local minimum wage laws. You find yourself wondering if the African American members of the legislature who voted for HB2 understood they were voting to erase their own civil rights protections in state law. But there are people who will cut off their own noses to spite their neighbor’s face.
By now anybody who can read knows it went much Much further than bathrooms, and never mind that the bathroom issue was bogus as well. But here they are, still spinning a tale that it was just a bill to protect children from bathroom predators. You may conclude that they’ve managed to delude even themselves as to what they were up to. But no…this is how the culture war game is played. And more to the point, this is how hate corrupts the human spirit. If they’ve deluded themselves about anything in North Carolina it’s this: the ends do not justify the means. The means rather, foretell the ends. There is no path to the greater good that is paved with lies. That path leads elsewhere.
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