i'm back in Sahuarita.  After taking care of my friend's dogs and house in Pinetop, I flew to a little town in northwest Tennessee.  Think I was there for 6 days or so.  Found a house built in 1920 that seemed ideal for me at $84,000.  But I don't have the cash or prospects enough to warrant a bank loan, so I've pretty much given up on making an offer on the place.  I now have no health insurance (no longer qualified for the State program because my company didn't make enough money last year).  I've applied for SSI Disability, but that is going nowhere fast.  They say I might hear something in 120 days.  They deny 75% of applicants, so I'll likely have to dispute their finding.  Am hopeful that my private disability policy that I've had since 1985 will finally come through with $1,000/mo until I reach 65.  I've not painted since March.  I just can't do it any more.  The prices on all my remaining unsold shamans has been raised accordingly.  There will be no more.

Meanwhile, ALL my medications have stopped working.  Effexor XR and Mirtazapine failed fairly gradually, but certainly, so I am again severely depressed and sleep-deprived; I awaken fully every hour or two throughout the night.  So I find it difficult to concentrate or engage with most anything during the day.  And again with the cold sweats.  Not fun.  I had to get a waterproof mattress pad.  I theorized that I might be having some kind of epileptic activity in my brain at night which manifested itself by stirring me to complete wakefulness, so my psychiatrist prescribed Depakote.  Took it for a couple of weeks with no change, so gave up, though I'm certain that some kind of brain activity is causing these damnably consistent episodes.  The good news is that because they are no longer effective for me, I won't be out the $500 or so they were costing me each month.  That's a steep price when it is all from a quickly drying pool of savings.

So that takes me back to ECT as the only available treatment that may work again, but it is s expensive that I'm reluctant....  Tried to get into a 
Vagus Nerve Stimulation (implant) study at the UofA, but they've expressed no interest in having me be a subject.

So I'm generally miserable all the time now.  The rich, I hear, just got richer, and I've gotten poorer.  I had thought that a move to a small town to which I'd never been before would give me a chance at a new life.  In fact, I had convinced myself of that.  Now the dream of starting something new is just a tattered mist.

Oh, well.  My life and welcome to it.  I'll have two shaman paintings in the MO show this year.  They are 40x30 and priced at $10K each, and I've told them that this will be my last year participating.  You can stick a fork in me, 'cuz I'm done.

Mornings: