Kinda feelin end of the month assessy, so I'm prowling around seeing new referrers and other quantum entanglements that now include dlvr.it and jobxd.com (yeah, no idea what bad craziness that pointer is- a hijack? a very confused entrepreneur?). Just discovered webac.co.
lol, yeah, not really, probably means what my blogger host is worth
My fave keyword search for the month is "real unicorns found alive with wings". Well you found Pinky blog and actually clicked, which I hope was awesome because I link through to sources. I don't just tease, I fulfill. Next fave keyword search is "Bestpix.blogspot.com wallpaper" and you can see Pinky ranks right up there on the first page with all my best pix are taken in bathrooms. The rest of the keyword searches I can see are for Rick and Marty Lagina, and you can get to my Curse of Oak Island posts here. There were 5 pages of "keyword unavailable", meaning nearly all of you finding Pinky blog in search during November were logged into google and therefore proxied beyond my ken. Congratulations on surfing anonymously and leveling up into creepy, lol. I love lurkers. Your business is your business, amIright?
I also discovered that my Pinky's Sox blog is getting popular behind my back. At least 2 referrers have already been shut down. Can't help wondering how pinkypinkyficion (not just removed but blog link forever banned) and glenncrest (still legit) wind up sending people to see my sox, but hey, we all have our thing. Mine is sox. If I were truly inspired to go big, I could probably have turned Pinky's Sox into an all-time porn parody blog by now. Either way, I'm wasted as a cabbie, as Sherlock would say.
Every time I mention Mantrid here on Pinky, my Lexxperience blog jumps. Mantrid, Mantrid, Mantrid. Ok, it's not done yet, but look, the DVDs are out and yes, I'm actually working on it.
I linked this pic to a complete series DVD search if you wanna buy Lexx. You're welcome.
Yes, click the pic.
I keep saying I'm going to stop talking about stats, but I get so many views coming through on posts tagged stats, just wanna hug you guys, whoever you are. You know, virtual hugs. In a Pinky's Sox kind of way. Ok, forget I said that. Don't DM me.
Moving on.
Oh, someone is asking where I got that chicken mug. I found it in Lilly's Floral inside a Pricecutter store, and the bottom of the mug says Maureen Murphy, licensed by Burton & Burton, "Cucina Rooster", and it's copyrighted by Maureen Murphy through Artworks Licensing. Ah-HA! Ok, I found it. I searched "burton and burton mugs cucina rooster", and you can see it's unavailable and out of stock everywhere. Sorry about that. MerryChristmas.
I need to get out my door in a couple hours, time to pull my head outa here and DO STUFF.
Six months ago I wrote faith in humanity. I very seriously meant every word I wrote in that post. I won't bore you with redundancy.
Facebook allows me to unfollow without unfriending so that things don't pop up and surprise me in feeds. Bless them for that. I'm not going to tell anyone what they can or can't do on their own timelines and blogs and whatevs, but I've said over and over I suck as a friend. Y'all can share all the spiders and mutilated pets and ground up baby burgers and freaked out vehement hate you want, but I can't wade through that to get to the one or two little updates about actual stuff in your real life. I'm sorry I'm not that strong, but I'm just not, so if I seem distant, it's probably because I can't see what's happening.
Twitter doesn't have a stay friends but unfollow option because the core of twitter relies on a tagging system, which makes muting someone a joke. I want to see some of the things I'm tagged in, but I also want to avoid some of the things I'm group tagged in coming in on the same stream. Alas, muting doesn't take care of this problem at all.
It would seem my only choice in this kind of situation is to block someone, because simply unfriending them doesn't stop the tag from getting through into my notifications. However, blocking doesn't work, either, if someone uses multiple accounts or the rest of the group keeps tagging me. I've tried everything on twitter, including spending hours of time over two years fine tuning list feeds and learning every trick out there, and I don't know what else to do.
What I'd really love to see happen on twitter is a priority notification feed, where I could filter notifications from people I don't want to miss out from the whole splat of incoming tag notifications. (The fave people option they tested last year also doesn't take care of the notification problem.) I've got hootsuite set up for a couple of things, but I'm not seeing a way to prioritize tags there, either. I could set hootsuite to stream fave people so I'd catch all their notifications there, but then I'd have to wade through every single thing at least 50 people tweet just to see what I'm tagged in, again, doesn't solve the problem. With facebook, I can elect to stop receiving notifications when I'm tired of a convo thread, but with twitter I'm stuck with continual notifications as long as the convo keeps going, even if I never respond, just because I am tagged in it.
What would Wil Wheaton do? Simply ignore and not respond, I guess, which is the original advice I got years ago anyway. Arg, this is hard. You wouldn't believe some of the junk I hafta wade through just to see tags from a handful of people I actually do want to see. I've had days where I get tagged nearly a thousand times, a few days more than that, one really oddball crazy day was nearly 3000. Been awhile since that one.
This is how aspienado agonizes. I use to inflict miles of thought process on innocent souls until they couldn't take it any more, then it was private blogs, now Pinky blog is letting aspienado whine 1- if it's brief, and 2- if it amuses Pinky.
It bothers me to reach a point where I consider actually cutting people off over a matter of inconvenience, because they are people and they are my friends. I'm trying really really hard, but I sure do wanna pop out a few eyeballs and toy with some brains, string brain coils out like yarn through eye sockets and stuff, but then I'd be an anti-friend and it would've been better to unfollow and block. So I'm arg-ing on a blog post.
this clicks to the most incredible etsy gift selection I've ever seen
In the meantime, I need to keep up with my own growth and get back on track. I keep saying that, don't I? Yes, I called my staff in to a planning meeting today, I'm already cracking the whip over them, and they're whining like a buncha babies that we're still on holiday time.
The new google+ is rolling out, so you know I'm crawling all over it looking for holes and flaws. One of the loudest outcries I've seen so far is losing the view count that classic G+ allows.
This is like one of those spot what's drawn wrong games. Here is how classic G+ looks promoting the new G+. Looks pretty impressive, until you switch to new G+.
This is the exact same post on new G+.
I've mocked G+ views in the past. They're like 'impressions' and actual views all smooshed together, which badly skews what's actually going on with eyeballs on your content. All the same, it's fun watching the numbers, and 190,000 (mine right now) is a fun number (as long as we're understanding that's not actual eyeballs on actual posts). Anyway, the new G+ will have more accurate response stats for likes and shares going forward, but you still won't see how many possibly could have read it, meaning you'll no longer get 'reach'. Basically, it'll stop showing us how many times other people pop their feeds open on their devices if they happen to contain something of ours in there, whether they see our stuff or not. I agree that really is a misleading thing to throw into a view total. I've been mocking 'reach' since I beta tested SumAll a couple of years ago, and twitter's been real big on reach lately. Reach helps sell ad space. That's all. Reach is only valuable if you understand projections in business meetings. I like youtube stats, they give you literal minute counts on how long an upload or playlist was watched, which helps sift out fly by nights bumbling through.
Got an outstanding nap yesterday evening and made it to #latenightmovie chat last night. If you feel a pressing need to see the chat, this clicks out to my tweet, and from there you can click it bigger.
Meanwhile, Lexx fans are wondering why I can't seem to find the time to rewatch Lexx for my review blog, lol. I know, I suck, I have a fantastic opening for the Mantrid post and it's just sitting there unfinished. I'll see what I can do on that this week, ok?
This holiday weekend is extra super busy, moving boxes and furniture from an apartment because Bunny is in a house now. It was an awesome plan because 4-day weekend, right, but it's been raining the entire time. Kinda slowing things down a bit.
Bunny helped me make a little cake yesterday. Duncan Hines has a line of Perfect Size mixes out, kinda like easy bake for adults, I get them for @bonenado. It was Bunny's first time being pastry chef at my house (she's not quite 2 1/2) and she liked it. Got a little impatient with the frosting mix, so the softened butter part was still lumpy. Grampa says it's still good. Made with Bunny love.
Bunny really liked this video in the car yesterday.
And Plato is a bartender... Hang on a sec, we need a piano man. Or something.
I had a eureka moment this morning after that last post. I've been struggling for at least two months with how to handle letting someone with severe depression know I'd like to stop being tagged in certain convos without triggering problems and without encouraging private messaging to do it. I really need to be done with private messaging. It all suddenly came to me in one sentence- "I'm not on twitter to promote religion." Once that gets said, I may ask to be untagged from those convos. I believe in tolerance, but I'm to the point of extreme impatience after several polite hints and finally just flat saying in private that I'm not going to retweet certain things and then being very publicly poked with tags afterward, as if there were a leveling up kind of game.
I have a big variety of followers, many different religious and political beliefs, many different agendas, all ages and sexual orientations. I believe in people first, ideas second. I learned growing up watching other people that it's kinda stupid to condemn other people for not agreeing with one's own point of view, especially when that point of view is first and foremost based on the concept of forgiveness. Several religions promote forgiveness and tolerance, and this can be practiced by anyone, even without religion. All the same, one person's obsession with what I can only think must be an attempt at something humorous can get a little tiresome, and I can tell a few friends have been keeping an eye on my tag feed and are probably wondering how much longer I'm going to put up with this. Some people enjoy poking other people to respond, and I tend to let it go on way longer than I should because I can't tell if it's deliberate obnoxiousness or sarcasm or friendly and possibly even innocent annoyance by someone who genuinely likes me as a person and doesn't know how else to interact. I compare it to feeling like a tiger in a cage being poked by a little kid, which I've actually seen happen, and the parent didn't stop it, and none of the onlookers said anything, while the tiger on display actually took it really well until it abruptly turned and sprayed pee all over the kid. I'd rather not sink to that level, but basically that's what I do, isn't it, in the form of nice words molded around me grappling with a problem. Imagine if the tiger could tweet how it was feeling to the world or blog about its life.
I have an agenda, which I don't bring up very often. My challenge is sales without alienation. If what I intend to sell heavily depends on my personal honesty, and my targets are emotional crises subjects with interpersonal relationship challenges (or the families of such) (delicate wording is like a game to me, I can't help but love this sort of mental wrestling), how do I be myself without harming my own agenda? Because I'm really super good at rocking boats until they flip everyone right into the water. (And don't protest just because you've never seen me do it.)
Everything I'm practicing now with Pinky is about not rocking boats. I'm practicing and getting good at handling not only staying public, but balancing interacting with a variety of personality types on social media. I know crossing the streams can be bad and that one set of friends might not mix well with another set, and I do everything in my power to keep it fairly cool and non confrontational.
One of my biggest problems both online and in real life is being a sucker. According to my psychologist, I am easily led. My aspergers diagnosis has legal connotations, and a panel of judges appointed a payee to oversee my finances. If I hadn't been married, a legal guardian might have been appointed over me. "People with an ASD respond and perform neurologically inconsistently depending on emotional state, familiarity with the people and situation and various sensory experiences. For example, they may be very talkative in one setting at a particular time and later be UNABLE to speak well in the same setting."
That document should probably be required reading for anyone who wants to remain public with me. If I really do wind up 'out there' in interviews or whatever (notice I'm not rushing this, egads), I may actually lose a few friends if they are that clueless how I might be in real life, even after knowing me so long on the internet. It's not that I'm a regular jerk about stuff (anymore), but if I'm going down a rabbit hole right in front of you and you do all the wrong things trying to pull me out, you will find out exactly how much chaff is being burned down to the gold in your heart in the ugly fire I set on you. I've been told I'm scary by people in my own family, and it's because I'm unpredictable when I hit meltdown. I'm so afraid of meltdown myself that I have contingency plans in place for any given moment and every conceivable scenario. I can look intensely hateful and draw blood with little flicks of words without even trying, and you will think the rest of your life that I must really have hated you all along underneath everything. Very few people survive being friends with me if I'm caught not able to hole up in a corner for a quick braincation. The only way I survived as a child was my mom beating me until I learned to turn into a rock. If I turn into a rock, you best be scattering. If I turn to stone and stop responding, that's your signal to step back. Fortunately, I'm usually over it pretty quickly, and I can be bribed with food. Well, unless you haven't been paying attention and stick something in my face that I'm allergic to, then whatever god you believe in have mercy on your soul (and I'm pretty sure Baphomet won't.)
That's a significant paragraph up there because I keep trying to positive image myself getting through a book signing. I will be pretty incoherent in a matter of minutes (an hour, tops), might be able to fake my way through another hour, but after that I'll need complete guidance to keep me focused and moving. By the end of whatever public session I'm dealing with, I'll need trusted people to lead me away. Yes, my aspergers is that bad. I become nonfunctional. Whatever brilliance I might occasionally display in print will be lost in the idiocy I descend into as I fall into shutdown. Staying on social alert is very different from spazzing out through college classes or automatically cycling through another day on a redundant job.
If I want to succeed, it's important that I communicate well to people on social media. My friends generously allow me to practice on them in public. New people that come along don't realize that my social media intentions are exactly that- practice with my social deficiencies. They bumble right into me and usually never have a clue how I feel about it. I can't even imagine what it's like for some of my better friends to watch it happening again. It's either hilarious or scary, but either way, there are a handful of you that I notice showing up, and I thank you guys immensely for your instincts and watching out for me. Just me noticing you noticing I'm walking into another awkward pickle is usually enough to help me focus nowadays on self monitoring and backing off again before I go into a crouch and launch.
Life experience helps, getting a sociology degree has helped, and a past rife with fandom squabbles has helped. My psychologist has helped immensely, and what really turned it around for me personally was Chris Hardwick's The Nerdist Way. I'm becoming very experienced at monitoring and managing myself nowadays. That doesn't mean I've overcome the autism spectrum. That just means people more and more rarely see me reacting like the very real aspienado I am in my own home, where I cycle through mini-shutdowns repeatedly, and often disappear into another room on weekends for a few minutes of alone time. If I'm sitting in a room alone with you and not saying a word and not looking at you, you might have no idea I'm still picking up on your every breath and eye roll, even if I don't understand a single nuance hinting at how awkward it might be for you if I'm not holding up my end of the convo, or worse, taking over completely in a nonstop gush of exuberance. I really don't know how @bonenado has lasted this long with me.
Ok, focus. I've been up and down doing breakfast and getting my day going and keep coming back and piddling here. I'm needing to start concentrating on actual work again, and maybe that will be a good way to ignore social media a little more again. October hit with all that finally dealing with the emotionally repressed stuff and I've been way off track ever since, BUT I have to admit this has been my best autumn in many years for dealing with stress and depression and staying pretty oriented and focused. Maybe going off track for a little while was a good thing. I seem to be in a good place in my head.
So I haven't disappeared, but I'm going to try to get back into a work schedule and stay off the twitters and FB a bit more this next month. Not ignoring anyone if you don't see me around faving or liking, just not there, letting it all slide by me while I'm busy like a little elf. I still feel driven, just in a new way I've not felt before, and I need to explore it. It's like a new point of view from a new angle, no longer feeling lost in it.
~later~ I let this sit all day because my head was such a scattered mess after Turkey Day, and I couldn't properly read back through this well enough to see if it made sense. I really don't have a clue how I'm able to write sometimes.
Again, thank you to my very tolerant friends on the webs. I have felt most extremely grateful for you guys, and aside from the usual Thanksgiving list of being thankful for health and family and a nice new roof over our heads, I really am sincerely grateful for #Snarkalecs, SyfyDesigns, #latenightmovie chat gang, my pals from Merlin and other fandoms, and the friends I still have in the Lexx fandom. I really do love you guys.
Because being left alone to our own devices is a very rare thing around here.
I'M GETTING THE HANG OF THIS
click to see
I suggested @bonenado download a kid screen lock app like mine, but did he look for the happy alligator? NO. He downloaded something different without checking it out first and promptly got stuck inside his new locked screen for over 20 minutes. We couldn't tell if the writing was Chinese or what, but finally got a popup that asked if he'd like to be kind and share the app, at which point we kinda picked up it's probably someone's homemade app, and if he gets charged for it I'm going to lightly mock all over again. I say lightly... By the way, my Samsung Galaxy S6 trumps his Turbo for navigation options when you get stuck in a locked screen app in another language. Don't know this from experience, just couldn't believe how much more difficult his phone was to work with than mine.
This is probably what he's like at parties
click for gif
You have 29 days left from right now to stream the official rerun via BBC. Just click this snip. GO!
Couple pieces of pie sitting around and ice cream in the freezer and @bonenado and I fought over the broccoli and cheese, because it was THAT GOOD. Yes, we fought over a leftover vegetable dish. I claimed and then found out later mr sneaky pants got into it behind my back.
Yes, #BennyDepp. It was awesome. There's no telling how long this vid will manage to stay up, others were actually being shut down again within the same hour of upload. That's right, you're looking at a #BennyDepp sammy right now. CLICK IT. :edit: I am now replacing it with the official Graham Norton vid.
Yes, I went there. What gets thrown into the Pond, stays in the Pond. No, it won't click. If you don't know what the Pond of Death is by now, your loss.
Aspienado wants to live there. Pinky says no. If anyone has a problem with that, well...
I keep walking. No one hasta tag along to keep up, just stop jumping in my way like a pet for me to trip over. All my actual real pets learned real fast not to do that because I step on them. On purpose. Except for my chickens. I will totally stop for chickens and spend half my day hanging out, but that's beside the point. Anyway, I'm not fond of setting fires, and this is a really bad time of year to do it, so it's more like I'm trying to decide whether to smoke or pickle my tongue before I thinly slice it into a savory bechamel and pour it over some kind of fancy curly pasta with a grate of aged gouda.
I may hafta cave and super stream my hootsuite. I dunno. I wanna keep things simple, and maybe the simplest thing right now is put the phone down and stay off social media for awhile, but I'm trying really hard not to disappear like I did last year.
People keep telling me I'm nice. I'm not nice, I'm kind. Big difference. The reason I am kind is because I don't know if someone talking to me (or trying to talk to me) might be dealing with a giant hole in their life after someone died, or if they're in shock after finding out they have cancer, or maybe lost a child or has a child in a hospital.
I hid all my real stuff for years. No one ever knew, and I was treated pretty badly on the internet sometimes just because someone else was having a dumb day and dumped on me. I don't believe in dumping on people.
The most famous incident, if you can call it that, was MegaCon. No one ever knew how sick I was that weekend, and that over the next couple of years I really did think I might die, and I disappeared off the internet. People in the older fandoms never saw me cry over a child being lost in my family, never saw me cry why me to the heavens when I was too sick to dress myself for several months, never knew the anguish I was in watching my mom fail in super slo-mo. During all this, I built fansites, and I know from this level of dedication that most of the beautiful and wonderful things on the internet come from people dealing with anguish. We write, we create, we design, we build, we entertain because we need something to hang onto, something to help us live through unimaginable pain. Because of this, I am kind.
That does not mean I am a rug to walk on, a stuffed toy to bounce on, a kindred spirit to be pals with. Yes, I do have friends. They know me. Some of them have been getting to know me for several years, some of the deeper lurkers have known me for a decade or two. If you wanna be my friend, too, get in step. Learn where your place is with me, because it's not front and center in front of my face. I run with a solid pack, I love them very dearly, and I will love you dearly too if you take a little time.
p.s. if you dig conspiracy theories,here you go, in case you're bored or something.
Me and facebook/twitter irl. This is me not disappearing after Thanksgiving, yo.
I told @bonenado yesterday morning if I ever get rich I'm buying him a prostitute. That man is living art with a vacuum cleaner. He's so loving all over the walls and corners and baseboards and furniture. Not just for floors, people. Behind doors, along the tops of curtains...
Yesterday's delightful little train wreck.
Some of you might be aware by now that we Americans are NOT going to get to see Johnny Depp and Benedict Cumberbatch on the Graham Norton Show tonight because of stupid BBCA holiday programming, thank you so much #Thanksgiving and #BlackFriday.
BUT we're in luck because someone is going to stream it on youtube. Or something. Click this for the countdown.
And if that turns out to be a dud (yes, new 3-day old account with a punny name and only one sub but we really don't know what that means, do we?) just put "live stream Graham Norton Show" in your search bar before 4:30 central time today. Good luck. Oh, remember that London time is currently 6 hours ahead of Chicago time. I have no idea where Graham Norton is really filmed or whether it's actually truly live. but 15 1/2 hours from right now puts the youtube stream at 7:30 p.m. central, and by then the actual live stream could be long over. And if all else fails, haunt the Graham Norton Show channel on youtube for highlights from the show. I'm always over there snooping through his stuff, he has the best late night show ever, in my opinion. I'm sure he'll be sweet and put #BennyDepp clips up for us fairly quickly.
This article on Ben wanting more kids- is he even ever home? (Browsing today's Ben feeds on the twitters, Ben is taking over the #behindthescenes hashtag today, in case you're bored and not out shopping.) Also-
Yes, some of us actually stay home on #BlackFriday and save lives. Check out this Black Mass featurette. You're welcome.
Turkey Day unlocked, and now on to the terrifying steepest part of the freefall that is the Holiday Slide before the big fling into the New Year. I have changed my laptop wallpaper accordingly.
Loveliest. Turkey Day. Ever. I got a whole hour of alone time and then probably not even two hours of visitors. I actually saw most of the parade and barely ate a thing. I got the best part of the turkey, after the big bits are cut away and the tenderest juiciest parts are left on the bones. After that I got a real nap and woke up to an empty house. It was an aspienado dream come true.
I feel kinda dichotomized. Part of me is still doing pretty ok, which is fantastic and really unusual for this time of year. The other part of me is ready to go back in time and rip apart the parts of history that inspired the creation of Thanksgiving in the first place. Oh, nothing, just feeling hateful for no reason that I can think of, unless my entire past history of Thanksgivings crowding into my head all at once alla sudden without warning caught me by surprise and being hateful is just a self defense maneuver keeping me from swan diving into the infinite depths of paralyzing depression. Yeah, I like it when I say it like that, that's it. I'm hateful because I'm saving myself from the paralyzing depths of depression. Someone high five your monitor with me. Everyone else #bumpit.
I've got that wallpaper rotating with this one.
Many years ago this was a greeting card someone created.
The original designer is gone now.
Alas.
Festivus was a fun cult thing, now it's becoming mainstream. Raise your hand if you've read, purchased, and given as giftsthe original book before it became a cool thing. (That's right, I'm raising my hand.)
I usually put surveys on Surveypalooza. Well, this is a really old one that was never public. I'm putting it here in public for the first time ever. Surveys have been a really fantastic way for me to focus through all those crazy feelings crashing around through the years.
March 30, 2008
My Parents Little Secrets!
Lets Start With Me...
My Name Is::I loathe my real name. It's so common that I regularly get my prescriptions, dry cleaning, doctor scheduling, and even my voter registration mixed up with at least 5 other "me's" in the area, and I could never publish under my real name because there are already 3 other people doing that. On top of that, I spent my childhood having the same name as my cousin, who was a couple of years older than me. Now, who in their right mind gives their child the same name as their sibling's child??? Good grief. So, I have made up my own name for myself. And guess what, it's so unique that
You can try this out atHow Many of Me. And no, I'm not going to tell you what that name is because I don't want there to be two of me. Guess I'm a little paranoid about that now.
(Yes, we all know now there is only one Janika Banks because I have this posted in widgets on several blogs. Here on Pinky blog it's in the footer.)
Were You Planned or an Accident?:I was told, after I had my own child, that I was a surprise that cannon balled into existence right after my mom miscarried another child. That really gave me the willies, thinking that another child had died so I could live.
How old are you now?:Too old to run through a sprinkler shrieking with joy. That makes me sorta sad.
Were your parents married when you were conceived/born?:They have always been the most married people I have ever known. I can't even begin to explain how loaded that sentence is. Imagine a rebel Mennonite pseudo-science weirdo farmer and a scattered psycho-nut joining in holy matrimony. Nothing against my parents *ahem*, but that was one strange childhood.
Where do you live?:Next door to a really nice chicken.
Do you hate your parents right now?: I am appalled that you would even ask. Just kidding. No, it's kinda hard to hate old geezer people who honestly believe they are absolutely right about everything, no matter how ludicrous they sound in the face of modern science and the information age. It's funny how me getting older changes all that. I just hope I don't ever look like that to my own kids.
Do u get along with your parents right now?:I let Dad talk to me by the hour about the tribulation starting in the next 3 years. I kinda hope he gets to 'go' before then because he will be so extremely disappointed if it doesn't happen. He's been looking forward to the end of the world all his life. He's 78.
Are you expected to get good grades in school?:Dad was upset when I went to college, said I would be brainwashed. He could have cared less about my grades. My mom rarely even brought it up. I have no idea if she ever had any idea what I even studied.
What happens if you do/dont?:The higher the grades, the more I was being brainwashed.
Do you go to public places with your parents?:Not any more. I still don't know if I'd be able to hang out with Dad very long in Walmart without being embarrassed half to death to find us having a deep discussion about something politically incorrect that he might completely misconstrue and know terribly little about but of course he'd be absolutely right, and passers by would shoot looks at me. Last time I was with Mom in Walmart (after she started having the smaller strokes, before the big ones put her in the nursing home), she threw this weird little fit in the aisle with Nair removal stuff and scared a guy walking through, he practically scuttled away. It's kinda funny to think back on it now, but at the time it was a little unnerving. Kinda iced the ol' psycho mom through my childhood cake, only it turned into psycho gramma in Walmart. All the same, I always enjoyed going out to eat with them. Dad once picked his teeth with one of those long skewers from a sticker pot at a really nice Chinese restaurant. That was probably the closest those waiters had ever come to a genuine cowboy. I could tell we were being watched.
Have they ever embarassed you?:You mean before that when they were sorta saner and younger? Con-stant-ly. I did my best to embarrass my mom right back with subtle but odd mannerisms in public places.
Have you ever lied to your parents? If so.. About what?:It's an interesting bit of trivia that even though aspies are born feeling compelled to be truthful, I learned to lie to my own parents to survive, especially my mom. I'm a pretty good liar. It doesn't come naturally, and I don't like it, but I'm serious about the psycho-nut thing. As for Dad, sometimes you just have to get the guy to stop talking or change the subject. You can't imagine how exhausting it is to talk to someone who really truly believes that the overweight epidemic in this country is because people use too much lotion.
How often do you talk to your parents?:I cringe when Dad calls up and says "Here, talk to Mom" and then hands the phone to her. I challenge anyone on this earth to keep up a running dialogue for ten minutes straight with a parent who never before let you actually do the talking, when you know they are on the other end staring at a wall and don't remember who you are. Between that and Dad's latest obsession with public television channels being a complete and unchallenged source of world information that is severely lacking in UFO research nowadays, maybe about once a week.
Are your parents cool, or do they suck?:I've got everyone else's weirdo parents beat hands down. Give me some sunglasses and call me cool.
Do you ever start a fight between your parents?:If my parents were somewhat more normal, maybe we'd have had fights. Mostly it was just this mental thumb wrestling with aliens from other planets.
How many brothers/sisters do you have?:I was the oldest and totally displaced by each successive progeny (which other aspies also seem to take personally), so I refuse to count. It's ok, I'm over it now. *walking off without numbering them...*
Do they get more stuff than you?:The more I was displaced, the more attention and goodies the others got. But nowadays it's completely reversed, because I should be showing more support as the oldest child, but I live the furthest away and feel too yucky to get over there. So the others GIVE more of themselves than me. That feels strange.
Let’s get to know MOM & DAD a little better...
How old is MOM?:67, far too young to be completely disabled and vegetablized in a nursing home.
How old is DAD?:He'll be 80 in a year and a half. No medications, doesn't believe in doctors. Has some pretty weird ideas. He thinks the reason he's NOT diabetic is because he lived with Mom so long and became immune. Yes, he believes diabetes is contagious, that's why so many people have it. He's the last of a dying breed...
Do your parents work? What do they do for a living?:Dad drives in to 'work' every day to eat lunch with Mom at the nursing home. All the employees there greet him like one of them. He has a shining reputation for being the only man who has come in every day to see his wife for the last 3 years, practically unheard of. The staff treat him like royalty.
Do they fight about money or anything else?: OH, man, they used to fight. The arguments over every jot and tittle of the bible were ~end~less~, even though they both agreed on 95% of it.
Does MOM hang out with friends?:Dad cruises her around in her geri chair and they 'do lunch'.
Does DAD hang out with friends?:After Mom goes back to bed, Dad chases down the visiting preacher to argue the finer points of Revelations.
Do either of your parents go to church?:I grew up with major debates over what the definition of church was, and whether 'going' to one was actually wrong since God's people are the church. Mom went, Dad didn't. That made Dad bad, and Mom made sure that got hammered into our heads. I think she was evil in a tormented soul kind of way, innocent in her mental illness, although I was the first to break the ice and suggest such once I hit my 30's. In the end, I decided that if the 'good' Christian tortured the 'bad' Christian with anger and accusations for not performing a faith correctly, the 'good' Christian was worse than the 'bad' one. Aspie logic. Whether either one sits on a pew with any regularity is rather irrelevant in that light.
Have either of your parents ever been to jail?:Been TO, or been IN? There is a big difference. They were never arrested for anything as far as I know.
Have you ever drank alcohol with your parents?:I used to drink narcotic cough syrup behind their backs. That's about as wild as it got with my parents.
Would you like to follow in either of your parents footsteps?:Let's see, psycho nut or rebel psuedo-science Mennonite. Tough one.
Have your parents ever taken drugs?:Mom lived on darvocet for awhile and nearly destroyed her nose with dristan. Dad accidentally drank gasoline once. Do those count?
Do they have other children?:Yes, I believe I confessed the problem I had with other siblings showing up in my life. Or this could quite possibly be referring to kids from other marriages...? I couldn't have been so lucky.
Have they ever lost you in the store? Or misplaced you?:This is TRUE. They deliberately walked away from me in grocery stores to see what I'd do, at several different ages. I can't tell you how devastating this is to a child with autism spectrum disorder. Dad wanted to 'experiment'. He wanted to train me to think. I eventually got the point, and I've been very careful to teach it directly to not only my own children, but others as well-- if you are lost, STAY PUT. The more you walk around, the harder it is for someone to find you. Now, how hard was it to just SAY it???
Have either of your parents been divorced or married before?:Nope, there was complete and utter lack of experience on both sides.
Do they complain and nag at you alot?:Not any more. Not sure if Dad's 'advice' should be listed here, though.
Do they support things that you are interested in?:Dad thinks making a chicken blog is crazy. Why in the world would I want to do ~that~??
Do they encourage you to follow your dreams?:See above...
Do you sometimes wish that they would divorce?:I used to *pray* for them to get divorced. Don't get the wrong idea, it never got violent or abusive between them, unless you count Mom throwing something once in awhile. I was just sick to death of the constant seesaw of Dad's really skewed 'logic' vs. Mom's emotional roller coaster.
Anything else you think your friends should know about your parents?:"They were humans once." HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! I got that from the last survey taker, but you don't know the story. Anyway, I guess after all that I should insert that I had a lot of fun around holidays growing up because Mom kept us busy stringing popcorn or decorating cookies or eggs. I wish it could have been like that all the time, although it was still just busy work, not really interaction on a personal level. And I think you should know that I am so surprised that Dad actually buys and eats pizza now, after all those years he spent growing his own fruits, veggies, and animals, and worked us half to death processing it all to eat on all year. That just cracks me up. It's so weird to even think about, a 78 year old Mennonite farmer eating pizza.
Mom’s weakness?:She really sucked at being a drama queen.
Dad’s weakness?:It never dawned on him that Mom was trying to be a drama queen.
Hmm, nice place to end... No strengths? Oh, well.
I've had this song stuck in my head all day. I am super pro-world sharing because of stuff like this. Too bad my parents couldn't grow up with more.
Just got result back on the ANA, total negative, very relieved. Doesn't mean I can be stupid, just means I'm not crashing into disaster, just a very normal worn out. Kinda noticing that the more I keep my diabetes controlled the last couple years, the less apt I am to spike into an autoimmune flare up. I'm sure aggravating one sets off the other, so sticking to my paleo through Thanksgiving and keeping my meals very small.
Macy's Parade on EarthCam I'm seeing live traffic at dusk right now. Can actually hear sirens in the distance. Good quality. They'll be live on the parade tomorrow if anyone wants to check it out. Yep, just saw ambulance go by on there. Like really being there, I'll probably have that page up tomorrow.
I'm trying to find webcams that show overnight prep. Sometimes I get lucky and find a live broadcast or stream from a warehouse or on the street.
If you go to the official parade page you can download an app and check for breaking news. They've also got games and a shop.
I've been moseying through my day getting stuff done here and there, need to get back into it before I stall out. Pretty happy with what I've gotten done so far, the rest doesn't look that hard. It'll look like more work later if I keep sitting there, though. I'd rather do my sitting tomorrow. Don't wanna miss the parade again.
Thanx to Shirley for getting me all over this one the other day on facebook. I'm on holiday time now, my staff is dancing around being silly while I get some laundry folded. Hope all y'alls are traveling safe and being nice to sales associates and most of all taking good care of yourselves on this hectic holiday weekend. Hugs and kisses, guys, I'm feeling lovey dovey and fandom huggy. Happy Turkey Bird.
This is a typical spoonie fret day. You guys rarely see me go through this in public. I used it as a writing prompt to help me stay focused through my chore list.
8 a.m.
My head is an absolute whirl. I'm not sure how I'm even doing things this morning. Thank goodness for very elaborately detailed lists.
Sent this message to my doctor yesterday.
As per last visit discussion about PT for fibromyalgia possibly aggravating autoimmune flareup, I'd like to check in with lab for blood tests on SED & ANA & anything related. So far very mild symptoms- occasional slight fever, mild nausea, hardening of muscles all over body (noted in PT notes), joint pain in knees (unrelated to PT, clicking hard in right knee), pain levels in general spiking when PT usually relieves it, fatigue & forgetfulness increasing. Don't think it's a virus, but trending over last 2 weeks into running down & feel less functional around the house, goofier in traffic. Have been resting a lot, extra protein, hydrating, don't feel like I'm catching back up. Would like to see if I'm in a mild auto flare. I get voice mail and have mymercy, if lab is ordered I can run in any time this week. This is not an emergency and I'm not falling on my face, but would like to plan my holiday differently if I am presenting in mild auto flare.
Also meeting a couple other people at the same clinic for a thing (holidays suck so bad for spoonies, and this one is so young), so been busting out some of today's list before I go. The #TWDLiveTweetReview snips are done, and thank goodness I have that down to a prep science as well, because I was so 'dizzy' doing it that I could barely make sense of timestamps, much less content. Not actually dizzy, just brain-dazed. All vitals are on point, I'm rockin' the good health stuff, but going down like a swallow hit with a BB gun. I've been sleeping well, but kinda worried if I fold up I'll start sleeping too much. This doesn't feel like a manic dip at all, feels like brain fail. I haven't been able to keep up my workouts this month, either, so all things considered, I'm crossing my fingers it's 'just' a depression shutdown and not a flare up. I generally swing and dodge through stuff, but I feel like I've reached the point where I'm fighting to stay coherent, oriented. Given my history, I'm probably really lucky I can actually feel the warning signs coming on. I usually just stumble into it and go through a massive shut down over holidays and sometimes find out in January or February that I've been in mild to moderate flare up the whole time.
Mild flare up for me is 1:16. I feel pretty ill by 1:32. I've been at 1:64, but it's been a few years, haven't hit that since I found out I'm diabetic and turned my life around.
Totally ignoring everything else in both families, just too overwhelmed. Been going back and fixing so many typos in this week's posts, can tell I'm having a hard time if it's taking me so long to catch them.
Focusing on the moments. Going down my lists. Keeping the headphones on.
5 p.m.
So far the SED result is coming back on the high end of normal at 18. This is why I keep an eye on that. In the old days in another health care system, it regularly stayed above 40 for years before it would come down. In the beginning (early 1990s), hovering in the 80s and 90s wasn't uncommon, saw it get up to 120 once.
By itself, SED really doesn't mean much, just that my body is stressed out. Really glad to see it this low!!! Hopefully that means I'm still doing something right. You guys nowadays haven't really seen me get very sick. Well, the guys in the old days didn't, either, because I never told anyone. (Yes, this whole time.) (No one had any idea how sick I was at MegaCon that year.)
Indicators aside (ANA could take awhile), I know I'm worn out and I'd be dumb to keep pushing it too hard, so I sent my staff home early today and took a nap after I got back from town. I'm good at revamping plans. Some of today gets piled onto tomorrow, but the big stuff is DONE and OUTA THE WAY, huzzah! The only thing left to actually clean now is the kitchen, and that'll get done as the food starts coming together. Food is easy, I was ~born~ fooding.
I can tell I'd better stop now and call it a night. I'm sharing this so a few people who know what I really go through won't worry. Still here, just wiped out and probably going to bed pretty quick. Also, to spoonie lurkers having it way rougher and here it is holidays- {{{hugs}}}
This has been my push song all day, well, basically most of this week already.
I'm gonna really super push it and psyche up with my old push before I go to bed so I'll be ready to leap out in the morning. You'd be amazed how well this works, it's like a mini meditation focus. When things get hard it's vital to visualize being strong and winning. Escapism is my secret weapon.
Anyone else working off 4 different lists in an effort to work as little as possible on Turkey Day? Elaborate preparedness is the goal. I've got 1-menu, 2- shopping list, 3- chores, and 4- a timeline of all that to keep me on track.
In a little jaunt off into randomness, I think my perfect aroma candle or wax scent combo would be white cedar and clove. Both are hard to find, and as far as I know, no one's ever put the two together. Someone create that for me forthwith.
THAT'S RIGHT
Celebrate with me!
I keep running into debates on whether Sherlock misdiagnosed himself because sociopathy and autism spectrum (John mentions aspergers in Hound) are kinda sorta supposed to be mutually exclusive. Basically, sociopaths are really good at social manipulation, aspies suck at it.
Mary can tell right away that Sherlock doesn't 'get' human nature, and Sherlock readily admits to it. However, that doesn't mean Sherlock can't study it and use it. He misjudges John, but he doesn't misjudge criminals. He devotes his human studies to criminals and psychopaths.
I grew up not caring about other people's feelings, and my psychologist has interrogated me a few times on narcissistic attitudes and exhibitionist behaviors I've had all my life (and he barely knows the half, even after nearly 8 years). I don't believe that both being on the autism spectrum and being a sociopath are mutually exclusive at all, and I'd go further and suggest that aspergers can enhance sociopathic tendencies. Sociopathy, for all intents and purposes, seems to be a personality adaptation to something, autism spectrum is basically just there to begin with.
The real question is How to Tell a Sociopath from a Psychopath, both of which fall under personality disorders. Autism is not a personality disorder, even though it's clearly a social deficit. A personality disorder is considered a mental illness (a mental illness develops over time), aspergers and autism spectrum are not (they are like a hard drive anomaly). I am aspie and I share some things in common with sociopathy, such as "A failure to feel remorse or guilt", but not every aspie is like that. Some aspies have very deep feelings. Mine were trained out of me, and I became hard. This is something that comes up with my psychologist quite a lot. I feel that if my path in life had been different, I could have kept going right into sociopathy, and that is what I struggle with now, that I didn't. A person doesn't just choose not to be a sociopath, but a person can recognize it in themselves and work around it. I see Sherlock doing that.
Sociopaths tend to be nervous and easily agitated. They are volatile and prone to emotional outbursts, including fits of rage. They are likely to be uneducated and live on the fringes of society, unable to hold down a steady job or stay in one place for very long. It is difficult but not impossible for sociopaths to form attachments with others. Many sociopaths are able to form an attachment to a particular individual or group, although they have no regard for society in general or its rules. In the eyes of others, sociopaths will appear to be very disturbed. Any crimes committed by a sociopath, including murder, will tend to be haphazard, disorganized and spontaneous rather than planned.
Psychopaths, on the other hand, are unable to form emotional attachments or feel real empathy with others, although they often have disarming or even charming personalities. Psychopaths are very manipulative and can easily gain people’s trust. They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, and will appear normal to unsuspecting people. Psychopaths are often well educated and hold steady jobs. Some are so good at manipulation and mimicry that they have families and other long-term relationships without those around them ever suspecting their true nature.
The only thing I see at first glance keeping me out of the psychopath diagnosis is that I fail in the charming personality department, I suck at manipulating people because I fail to notice them most of the time, and I can feel emotions, although for a long time I cut them off and have had to learn how to process through them in a sort of time lag. I rarely react immediately to something with how I really feel because I don't realize I'm feeling it until sometimes several days later. It took me years to learn empathy. I do have an agenda, though, and I am almost frighteningly patient, but since I run several tracks at once, I think very few people even suspect it.
I see a bit of debate over whether Sherlock is a true sociopath, and I say sure, why not. I'm on the spectrum, and I know that one diagnosis is not necessarily mutually exclusive of another. A person can show signs of several disorders. Autism used to be diagnosed as schizophrenia quite a bit in the past, and they are two very different things, although, again, not mutually exclusive if an autistic develops schizophrenia. That would be like glitchy hardware trying to use glitchy software. A teacher I had during one of my masters programs spent 30 years assessing children, and he told me if he hadn't met me in person and had only seen the practice assessments we were doing on each other, he'd have pegged me for schizophrenic, but I'm not at all. Even professionals can't tell at a glance sometimes what is really going on with a person.
I can debate the whole nature vs nurture thing till we're all blue. I have a sociology degree and I'm quite fond of pointing out flaws in standard constructs trying to pin down exactly what's wrong with everybody, because anyone can be tagged as mental if you change the angle you're seeing them from. Freud had an unusual obsession with sexuality, does anyone ever question that? I am asexual and I am considered the aberrant one in society. I'm surrounded by people obsessed with all kinds of sex, and I'm the one who's weird. I love seeing things through social psychological lenses. If a sane person grows up in a crazy family, the sane person is the one seen as crazy by the group, and might even feel crazy for not being able to fit in.
Sherlock chooses to stop heinous crimes because it's challenging. He's on the edge all the time, even elaborately planned Magnussen's murder (and called it 'Christmas'), and yet he's on the side of the angels, isn't he? And still someone pops up on the webs and says Oh, he's not a sociopath because typical behaviors are thisthisthis because a textbook says so.
I used to argue with other parents in meetings that kids with ADHD are beneficial to society, since 10% or more of a genetic population is considered a survival trait in anthropology and other studies, and they'd get all upset because they wanted disability money to make up for their exasperations over having children that aren't easy to raise. They didn't like me for sticking up for their kids being normal human beings in general, all things considered. My first grade teacher begged my parents to get me to a psychiatrist (they never did), so I must have obviously stood out, and yet here I am, pretty normal by most standards. And I'm really glad my parents never took me, because back then aspie kids were getting misdiagnosed like crazy. That was before the spectrum thing became fashionable. I read a story of one autie boy being institutionalized and medically tortured after a misdiagnosis and felt horrified. Here are my thoughts on that one. the stupid vs. the catatonic Let's see how big of a mistake that one was. New Study Confirms Electroshock (ECT) Causes Brain Damage
We all fit somewhere on that bell curve, but we have our own subsets of bell curves inside the big one, our own variations on 'normal' within our atypical parameters. It's silly, I think, to debate the finer details over someone's diagnosis as presented if we don't know the whole person. I've seen two different self proclaimed psychiatrists argue online that Sherlock isn't a sociopath. Well, people have told me to my face I'm not autism spectrum, either, based on very tiny bits of observation that don't click into nice little categories. A sociopath can love a friend. Also, I'd love to see further analysis on hints of how the boys were raised, because Mama Holmes isn't exactly the typical housewife herself. I'm a big believer in genetic blueprints.
And, I daresay, everyone fails to diagnose John. They blow him off with PTSD and that's about it. He's more messed up than Sherlock and doing his best to cover it up with rules. He comes across as 'ok' but we all know he's not because he snaps so fast and is just as ready to rumble as anyone, even though he knows better. He's less attached to family than Sherlock is, can't keep a girlfriend until he meets Mary, and is just as brilliant and bossy as Sherlock. Would Sherlock have asked him along if he didn't see those qualities in John? I really doubt it.
The one I wanna know more about is Mike Stamford... He's good, and Sherlock totally trusted him with this huge change in his life.
Ok, back to Turkey Day countdown. Tomorrow I start the food pre-prep. I need to run in for one last grocery trip today because we ran out of milk.
I am appalled that you would even ask. Just kidding. No, it's kinda hard to hate old geezer people who honestly believe they are absolutely right about everything, no matter how ludicrous they sound in the face of modern science and the information age. It's funny how me getting older changes all that. I just hope I don't ever look like that to my own kids. 
It's ok, I'm over it now. *walking off without numbering them...*
