8 March 2004. I don't want these entries to become medical bulletins from an old fogy, but right now I'm feeling ridiculous self-satisfied. To explain this, the following medical data may be helpful. about a year ago, I had a battery of blood tests done to me because, done all at once, they were cheap, and I was curious about my cholesterol and other things (and also needed to find out how my prostate was doing, for I'm a prostate cancer survivor); I had no idea that the level of my thyroid-stimulating hormone would be checked, but it was, and it said I was hypothyroidal, which means my thyroid was under-active, which in turn indicated I should be unenergetic, among other things. Well, I was, but not all the time, and not enough to make me think I had a thyroid problem.

When I looked up all the associated symptoms, and realized I had a few, including swollen ankles, I decided to see an endocrinologist. He prescribed synthroid, which is the main thyroid hormone, or something that acts exactly like it, I'm not sure which. He also had another blood sample taken. Insanely, this one indicated I was hyperthyroidal. So he lowered the dose of synthyroid. My readings have bounced around since then but in the normal range--until three days ago, when the reading indicated I was hyperthyroidal again--although my reading two months ago indicated I was very close the to hype end of the normal range, which is why my doctor had suggested I have my blood taken again, thinking he might up my dose a bit. Instead, he has lowered it.

Meanwhile, and here I finally get to the connection of all this to this blog, I've recently been up and down emotionally--the megalomania/modesty swings or borderline bipolar phases I believe I go in and out of much of the time. I did feel good when I had my blood taken Friday, but later in the day felt rotten. I thought the mathemaku I post was terrific when I posted, but in less than an hour, didn't. The up&down continued through the weekend. At one point, I went through all the mathemaku I've so far posted at this blog and found six that I thought finished works--good to excellent ones! Four more looked close to finished. Ergo, I'd made ten mathemaku in just four weeks, all of them from scratch. (I had a creative burst at the Atlantic Center for the Arts three years ago that results in slightly more new works, but half or more of them were "just" completions of drafts of mathemaku I'd made months or years before, some nearly finished, so not made from scratch.)

I created a subsite (or Gallery) here in my blog for the six finished pieces (and a seventh I made all at once yesterday), and all other pieces I get finished while doing my Paint Shop sessions--but once I got the finished pieces in it, my mood plummeted: they were crap!

That was yesterday. Today looked to be worse. I had an easy day as a sub, but it tired me out, and I had a lot of quotidian chores to take care of before I could come home and relax. In fact, I'm trying to jog every other day, so couldn't relax even once home, but had to do that. I didn't think I would have much to say in this entry. I had tried to type up something to say while at school (now always bringing a disk along for the purpose), but got so tired just looking at the screen that I gave it up.

When I'd finished jogging (very slowly, even for me), and did a few Internet things like reply to Gregory St. Thomasino, and correct my spelling of his name in my blog entry of two days ago, I went to my entry for 11 February, for it had the first of the mathemaku I felt I could finish without much effort--had, in fact, clear ideas as to how to finish them. Actually, the entry had two such mathemaku. I remembered what I needed to do to the first, but at first had no idea what I thought I needed to do for the second. Then, it hit me: remove the date. But by then, I'd guessed I hadn't liked the remainder. So I changed that, and as I fixed it, my mood went to where it still is: into the highest parts of my yes zone. Oh, by this time, too, I'd figured out how to html a background color into my Gallery, which helped the pieces quite a bit, I thought. I had also had a glass of Mountain Dew (which has caffiene in it), and would have a second glass--to keep the medical bulletin portion of this entry fully accurate.

I decided to make my new remainder "petal," the same as my quotient/divisor product. A brilliant move, I thought: mathematically, "petal" had to equal "petal," so couldn't be a remainder, but mathemakuically the smaller "petal" was wholly unequal to the larger one. And I was making profound statements about the differences between the apparently equal, one of my standard habits in my mathemaku. But I also very much liked the idea of a petal adding to another petal. . . .

Since the word, "poetry," had three of the letters of the word, "petal," I decided to use those three letters to form my remainder. As I was about to erase the "o," however, I lucked into the idea of keeping "poetry" partly in my poem by changing the "o" to an "a." Yow! "Ae" would be pronounced the same, but suggest (I hoped) "aesthetics"--and let "paet" come close to "poet." I was going to finish the new word with "al," but realized I could keep it the same size as "petal" by finishing it with "l" alone. The result: a quite new sort of petal with all kinds of interesting connotations.

Meanwhile, thanks (I suppose) mainly to my mood, I was enthralled the way "paetl" delicately eased out of the light blue covering its first three letters, and the bridge from "trapdoor" to "paetl" that the lavender "a" of "petal" made. Both of these were by-products of my "experimental" manner that I don't feel I know exactly what to do with yet. I'll probably leave them as they are in this poem, but hope I can use them more methodically later. The "a" in "petal," by the way, came from my original remainder. I re-colored it as I was working on "paetl" (and on the link from my blog home-page to my new gallery)--which I mention to indicate how disorganizedly I was going about things. I thought the one-letter-differently-colored idea worked better in the . . . "sub-dividend," I think I'll call it. (I once queried a math answerman on the Internet for the name of these kinds of things, but got no answer.)

I think I've finished this entry. Below are the third version of my as-yet-untitled mathemaku and the fourth and final version so my moves can be followed without much effort.

I still feel very up. I can't understand how anyone who throws money at artists could look at this one piece alone and not feel I was worth subsidizing for the rest of my life. But I'm in such a good mood, I doesn't care. Question: should I start taking less synthroid, as my doctor wants me to? Or DOUBLE THE DOSAGE I'VE BEEN TAKING!!!!!!!