spacing on repeat

Here we go, finally triggered into a euphoric episode yesterday. Totes controlling, so I'm still eating and actually sleeping, but if I were released of those bonds, I can tell I'd be floating miles above the earth without a care. So this is my head while I'm patiently waiting to float to sleep tonight.

living in the Dark Zone

clicks to an uber cool pinterest collection
also see Scifi-Meshes.com

I really loathe how creepers jump on Lexx hoping it'll be a great way to spam. Today I declined a child sex slave account from joining my group. I think most of my disgust lies in they didn't even try to pretend to be fans. Stick that little girl in a Lexx tee and maybe I'll reconsider. Sorry, that sounds terrible. Lexx in no way EVER brought child sex connotations to screen, and I still spit a bit on any reviewer who reduces it down to a 'sex in space' show.

I've seen people walk around with these kids in real life. They are young and fixed up to look normal, but more like dolls than people. They are experts with makeup and clothes, and they don't just walk around like we do with all the busy or emo stuff in our heads, but like self aware dolls always 'on' to how they come across to the public. One guy I watched take his 'daughter' shopping (in a very nice big retailer) had to stop her from fawning in public and got a bit agitated when she didn't (a little over programmed?), and when he caught my eye, even though he was next in line, he dropped his merch immediately and hustled right out of the mall. You wanna buy a living doll and parade around in public as part of your parent fetish, screw you. Poor kid probably got a bit more mistreated to ease his agitation.

And it's not just young people. When I was growing up, it was fairly common for army vets to bring Asian women home. They made perfect wives because they shut up when they were told, so you could treat them any way you wanted at home. What a horrible stereotype, and I hope that isn't true any more, but I still run into an aging veteran-Asian couple once in awhile, and I have yet to see the vet (bless him for saving our country) exhibit kindness to his wife in public. It got so bad in a Walmart check out line the last time I saw them that she nearly started crying because he was such a jerk.

Lotta streams cross my eyes when I work on my medias, and I generally don't share the junky part that drags me down, mostly because I don't shine a light at dark places I'd rather other people not innocently go. Those of us who've been touched by the dark recognize the intent behind what others gloss over for 'cute' or fail to notice is a stumbling block into a deeply entrenched black market or, at best, society fail.

I am 'pre-screening' (lol, that's fun to say) a playlist for a write-up later, and it's setting the perfect mood for this kind of work. It's a tad explicit, sounds of a woman possibly being choked to death, hints of underlying secrets and possibly crime, a slight dash of nudity, so NSFW, ok? But it's cool music in my opinion, and I really hope it gets picked up for a movie or TV show soundtrack.



Disclaimer- this is a personal blog where I frequently ramble. No connection is being intended between Lexx and Pagan. I happen to be fans of both. For those who aren't Lexx fans, the premise is that we live in a universe of depravity and evil, called the Dark Zone. It seemed apt for a lead-in, but again, my content in this post has absolutely nothing to do with the Lexx TV series.

moments

Working on recoding from my phone while I take a break. Can't tell if it's working.

Auto editing popping up in my way like crazy aside, I'm thinking about how easy it is to touch each others' minds even when time and distance create huge gaps between us. I think we often have no idea how much we truly affect each other, even in tiny moments. And then those moments get locked into eternal timestamps in our heads like precious gems.

I don't think she has any idea what I see in those moments. 💖

my poor nails, srsly

Autism Awareness month is coming up. Some of us are a little burned out, so here is a diversion post to soothe the intensity a bit. Disclaimer- I am #actuallyautistic, see dx.

I'ma power point since I've already submitted an article and did a bit of research. Don't know about y'all, but I go straight to work before coffee and then I play while my brain winds down, and I'm perilously close to the winding down part. Here are some things in my field of interest this week.

• My physical therapist has DPT after her name. I >looked that up<. "By 2020, physical therapy will be provided by physical therapists who are doctors of physical therapy, recognized by consumers and other health care professionals as the practitioners of choice to whom consumers have direct access for the diagnosis of, interventions for, and prevention of impairments, functional limitations, and disabilities related to movement, function, and health." I'm very much looking forward to this. Also, I'm seeing some fabulous results this month, and will hopefully soon graduate out of physical therapy into monthly maintenance at a massage place she recommended.
• My nails are shredded. Oh, it was a good plan, and it lasted about 2 weeks, and after that I went to town picking my nails. The damage is now about half grown out.
• This is my fave Ben interview and I need nothing else. I love how forthfully he spewed his real feels. Don't worry, I still love the fandom. Fans save me in the long, dark nights. Well, except I'm sleeping now...
• Nice CPAP lead-in, lol. In the last 2 weeks I've scored above 80% on my sleep score 8 times, above 90 five of those times, and even hit 100 once. This is the most I've slept in 2 decades. My brain is coming super on, and I'm loving it.
• 
• I'm raking in the punkins now on Mo Creatures. Pumpkins = currency, they're a cash crop. Some of us are building absolutely huge farms with thousands of punkins that we can collect for a penny apiece, and one player boasted $22 per haul. Minecraft stats say I've chopped over 48K punkins, which relates to $480 so far. I've also been making a little bit of a mockery of the system... slain by brian

I gently mock to remind us all that 1- we are real people under all our diagnoses (or whatever we're hiding), 2- it's ok to take breaks from intensity, and 3- we all need to allow ourselves and each other to have a good day, week, month, year. I understand needing to dig out and unload because I've been there, the need to share and heal because I've done it and it works, and the need to connect vs the dread of over connecting, because it's a bit draining, and not just on auties. We do need to give NTs credit for putting up with us. I normally don't like labeling anyone as neurotypical because I feel that has become demeaning in its own way (auties mocking NTs isn't pretty, guys), so let's just all be humans together and go play some minecraft, or whatever you like doing.

There are things I can say to her that I can't seem to share with anyone else. Yesterday was a really good day.

goin to The Pizz

clicks to giphy

Some days there is just nothing I can do and it just can't be helped, forced to abandon all intention otherwise and just cave. Pain management can reach extremes where all I can do is just go lay very still for awhile so one area will calm down and hope that is enough before another area drives me back into motion. When all else fails, thank goodness for youtube on my phone.

Since I don't share this part of coping, I thought it might be fun to share today's trail through some new vids popping up in my radar. I love seeing what other people are doing and creating, and this helps me focus outward so I don't wallow in depression and self inflicted passive aggressive displacing when it's simply just physically sucking and I need to take a break. The whole 'poor me' thing isn't my style, and it really does help to get lost in absorbing different things. So here we go.

Ok, so I probably shouldn't have clicked this one first, but I did. It hit a little close to home, but it's really well done.



This one is a little long but I really enjoyed it. I'm a Bunny Bennett fan.



Little bit dark for my current needs, but again, just really well done.



The whole time I watched this I kept wondering how long it took to make. The logistics kinda overtake the experience.



Finally sucked into this next one enough to forget the pain. Love these guys. I wanted that Pizz t-shirt so bad, and they stopped selling those. *wo* The store is back open... click --> All Types of Crazy Crap! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. Here's that shirt!!! O_O A Trogdor mug *gasp* Now see, my bad day is all our gains. I'm so happy I'm floating. 😍



Lmao, this is too funny.



I wish Lexx fans would get this obsessed.



Oopsie, slipped off into melancholy. Better watch that. Really love this vid, tho.



THIS. Very well done, brava.



And this is the point where I was about to be driven back into motion, the hard grind, as I fondly call it. Now I'm grinding through doing busy work sharing this to help the day pass, but this is the coolest thing ever. #transparency I've shared about my synesthesia lending to deep thought through my childhood into things revealed years later by chaos science, like fractals and many other kinds of patterns that rise out of chaos. Among my deeper thoughts were obsessions with sounds, and the idea that vibrations could be 'captured', harnessed, created. I was elated when electronic and digital musics were born, but this guy goes back to my very young age obsession with finding a way via thought experiment for one person to trap and guide all the creation into one object. Except this person really does it. I truly admire this level of obsessive passion.



I haven't said this yet about why I went silent during and after the 4th Sherlock season when you all know how obsessed I've been with the show. There are moments when I am this close to Eurus, where I can step out, disconnect, and not feel. I did it a lot growing up. I killed not just my own pets, but my siblings'. I chased my sister around with body parts and bits of skull. I played with dismembered limbs, disemboweled tissues and organs. I watched my dad kill puppies and cats and other animals of all kinds without any tears at all or thought for other people's feelings. When I see Eurus, I see that part of me that I was able to grow past growing up, and it wasn't easy. When I say I dissociated and developed other mes to be able to interact, I'm not joking around. When I reveal that it has taken me most of my life to learn compassion and kindness and how to care about other people's feelings, I'm not lying. I was telling the truth when I said the reason I reached out to learn all this is because I don't want to die alone.

"Alone is what I have, alone protects me." That was true growing up. It's not true grown up. That is what I see Sherlock learning at the end when he plays violins with Eurus. He makes sure she is not alone even after she has dissociated beyond any other interaction.

K, today is tough and I've gotta keep moving. See ya.

boops

Bunny's new rain boops
This is from the Marco Polo walkie talkie app
Not sure yet if we'll keep it, but I'm having fun.

One of those mornings where I warm up a couple of leftover sausage patties and completely forget about them for a couple of hours, then when I look around for something to eat I 'remember' that I had the sausage patties, but since I still feel a bit peckish, I start to make my whey protein powder hot chocolate and discover the sausages are still in the microwave...

Progress is going slow in physical therapy, so we're adding on two more weeks. I super fibro flared myself last week trying to beat incoming big boom lightning and sheet rain with several double load grocery trips from the car. I did beat the downpour in the nick of time, but I've been paying ever since. My neck finally calmed back down over the weekend, but this morning is a cute wrestling match with a charley horse wrapping around my rib cage under a shoulder blade, so I'm moving around a lot, trying not to hurt myself even more contorting like a pretzel to get that to relax back out. I triggered all this last Tuesday. Fibro spoonies reading this are nodding. Back to the ol' drawing board on self-sabotage and dropping the whole superhuman thing. This amount of pain level and duration is NOT worth saving a frozen pizza over. It would have been much smarter to throw the freezer/fridge stuff into one or two sacks and just leave the rest out there for Scott to bring in. That's the stupid thing about fibro, you reach a good place and it takes so little to set it all off again.

Scott and I were driving around the other day and I got this video. We've been watching this big new house go up. It's a 6 minute vid, apologies, but this is in Springfield in an area near MSU. We had driven by and I asked Scott to double back so I could vid it.

Autisable profile

This is my personal intro on my activity wall at Autisable.com. For newer autie bloggers coming out now, I go back to 2008 as Bluejacky and have been autie, spoonie, and depression blogging for nearly ten years. And scifi and other entertainment commentating. Lots of that, going back to 2004, actually. I go back to 1994 in internet fandoms. Anyway, if you are interested in autie blogging, whether on spectrum yourself or someone you know or whatevs, Autisable is pretty awesome and we'd love for you to join.

Hello =)

For ppl who don't yet follow me anywhere, I'm a huge scifi & Sherlock fan, and I keep up fairly well with the real time breaking news from the Sherlock/DoctorStrange/Benedict fandom in real time on twitter, plus live tweet Syfy, TWD, and other shows with the #Snarkalecs, and I've got Lexx groups and pages and a fan blog that's been translated into several languages by other fans. I lightly stay in touch with a lot of people who are really spread out, which is ideal for me since I don't do deeper friendship groups well. My friends on twitter who survived the Pond of Death era are really solid, even though I never got back on social media to make friends. Took awhile, but I think I've about found my balance on the webs.

I've made it pretty clear in several places that I don't respond to "hi" or "how's it going" prompts, nothing personal. Hard experience has taught me that vague chatter usually comes with some kind of agenda that diverts my focus, and that usually winds up in what I call exploding bridges. No more blowing up bridges, which means I don't respond to chain yanking. Aspienado is not a doll with a string for personal entertainment, although I still fall for it all the time because Pinky Robot has an automatic response and comply program. I'm far too congenial until I realize I'm a pet on a leash, and then I bite. Nine years with a psychologist is helping me understand why I repeat this pattern over and over. It's called being 'easily led'. I have a court appointed payee based on glitchy cognitive documentation. I'm high IQ and unreliable for time orientation and following directions. If I were Star Fleet mapping planets, I'd be the one who'd stay in the same uniform for 48 hours straight and show up in the wrong conference room, but my report would be immaculately detailed.

While others carefully walk the line of self discovery either with the #actuallyautistic tag or vicariously through their kids, I'm full blown diagnosed aspienado and don't apologize for who I am. I am the bull in the china shop in an eyeblink even when I'm trying my best to behave, and the most challenging thing I've learned on the webs from PR is 'don't respond'. I don't realize I accidentally shred people mowing them over, and I very obviously cannot shut up when I get started, even though I am very quiet in real life and read, research, and study prodigiously. I am driven like an addict toward information input and processing (I'm a compulsive reader, and yes, that is a real thing), and a friend of mine nailed it asking me if I'm a robot. Yes, I am Pinky Robot, learning to integrate all my split web personalities into a psychologically healthy whole.

I'm also YabloVH on the Mo Creatures minecraft multiplayer server, so if you love minecraft, I do, too. =)

I'm not into negativity or any kind of side taking. I used to eat people for sport or think it a challenge to asplain stuffs, now I think there are better things in life I can be doing. I'm very thankful for Joel and Autisable being there for my first step into public sharing the real stuff in my head, and I've been practicing being public on Pinky blog so I don't blow the internet up and then hide in my cave. I'm not into comments, commentary, praise, stick poking, or general "Happy whatever-day-of-the-week-this-is", but I've found my niche in fandoms and memes, and no one will ever be able to pry my brain tentacles out of that crazy abyss.

My goals are simple: Stay public no matter what, and keep sharing my journey integrating into a more socially functional and psychologically healthy person so that I can be good for other people, and especially help despairing parents from the other end- I am your child all grown up now, and I've even had my own kids. It took me a long time to connect all my dots so I could see the bigger picture, but I understand now my mom didn't get what she needed from me, and even though it's too late for her to see me now, I can still encourage other parents who are still getting through the hard stuff with their kids. I was a screamer who got motion sick every single time I was in a car and screwed up every holiday visit with relatives and argued about jots and tittles and shut down everyone trying their hardest to give me a hug. Hi, I am aspienado, and I know now that I love my mother very very VERY much. Please know your kids will get there, many of them probably a lot faster than I did.

And now I'm going to run off and forget to come back here for awhile, because that's what I do.

<3 <3 <3

generations of oddizm

In case some of you think I go straight to minecraft nowadays when I wake up, this morning my first laptop venture was looking up Dezi Arnaz, Jr, jumping over to Dean Paul Martin, and then on to Olivia Hussey. The whole Lucy thing happened before I was born, and for some reason, very first thing this morning I wondered whether Little Ricky (from the reruns I saw) was really their real life kid or a gimmick for the show. I knew he was Desi's kid. And I've been noticing 'old' music in Walmart this year, like The Four Seasons, which pretty much also goes back past my babyhood, so I grew up with their music. I'm near the tail end of the baby boomers. "Baby boomers are associated with a rejection or redefinition of traditional values." Some of my more recent discussions with my psychologist have been about being part of the sandwiched gen that bridges over from the older gens to the younger gens. Those of us caught in the middle pretty much flipped everything, and our society here in mainstream American has evolved from robotic patriotism (and all its accoutrements) to a big colorful mishmash of people and ideas and the hope that one day we'll all love and accept one another. I still don't see that happening without global enforcement of some kind, sadly.

So yeah, mind still blazing around, but I just don't take the time to write it out much any more.

Today is my kiddo's birthday. This is her at the same age her little boy is now.

I am diagnosed autism spectrum, pretty sure my dad is super autie, pretty sure my daughter is on spectrum, and her son definitely is. He qualifies for social integration and speech therapies (he goes to pre-pre-K) and is part of ongoing research with a doctor documenting nutritional impact on autism spectrum in babies, toddlers, and kids. I think the big idea is omega-3 boosting being a good synaptic catalyst in brain development. So far, so very good. I think she's a way better mommy than I was, although she insists I was a good mommy, too. I never bonded with my mom, and the epic fail she felt was very sad, especially without any moral support from society and family at large. My daughter super bonded with me, in spite of me seeming to lack emotional instinct (I know what is *right* and stick to it, but the feels just weren't that prevelent), and she is like super mom with her kiddo in my eyes. She has so many cool ideas and ways of doing things that didn't even dawn on me. I can see now my mom tried and even went extra lengths, so she was on the right track, just in the wrong time period for acceptance and support as a parent of autism spectrum. I see a lot of parents on medias bemoaning their bad fortune having autie kids, and I just wanna say at least you have a much more positive support system around you now. My kiddo loves her kiddo just the way he is, I loved her just the way she was, and I personally think that is the key to everything in the whole world. Look around you at all the things. When you see sadness, it all goes back to not being loved and accepted for who we are, in every country, every religion, every skin color, every body type, every brain. If we want the sadness in the world to change, it starts with us allowing and embracing differences around us, not compelling others to conform to ideas in our heads, and standing up for each others' dignity and right to be here on this planet.

part of some geneticist's plan

In case anyone thinks disability is an easy road to a free ride, I'd like for you to know that in the last ten-ish years I've been through bankruptcy, a disability hearing that emotionally shredded me after years of trying to be strong and hiding my problems, lawsuit from an insurance company that lasted for months, continual threat of lawsuit from a series of collection agencies that refuse to recognize correctly followed protocols for debt relief, illegal garnishment without recompense, and continuing multiple daily phone calls meant to harass me into a payment plan on interest I don't legally owe (the payment plan wouldn't even touch principal before I die, so this is lifelong debt entrapment).

I have lived with this daily for the entire time you guys have seen me public. I am so used to it that I barely even mention it once or twice a year, and almost never complain about it. My lawyer says no one can do anything unless I answer a phone and allow them to bully me, so I don't answer the phone. I have missed important calls because of this. So many different numbers call me for collections now that I can't trust anything even within my area code. Thanks to internet, I've been able to trace these numbers to real addresses. If you have an empty house or apartment in your neighborhood that never seems to have anyone coming and going, it's probably a property used to legitimize a landline so it will come up as a real person. I know a lot about how badly Americans are legally harassed because I've lived it for a long time. This is the modern answer to illegal search and seize, taxation without representation, and locking people up in the poorhouse until debts are paid, except now it's done covertly so it looks 'nice'. You get to keep living in your home, but that's about it.

The reason this is coming up is because I am finally digging out. For so long we lived under threat of audits from so many directions that I just kept shoving everything into sacks. Today I shredded sackloads of EOBs, formal letters and notices, and bank statements going back at least 7 years. I'll keep last year, but after everything I've been through, I'm pretty sure every bit of that is recoverable since my life has been dredged up very thoroughly at least 4 times.

I glance at them as I shred. I think things like wow, that was 2 years before Bunny, or wow, that was the year Bunny was born. Everything that has gone through my hands today has this new point of view.

Bunny might be seeing me more. My house has been upside down for many years. It was upside down before she was born 3 1/2 years ago, and over the last 3 years has been flipped like a pancake, mixed around like little hurricanes, and frapped into forgotten corners. Everything in my house is very mobile, even if it's in stasis in a sack. And there are many sacks.

You can't keep moving sacks around in a house with a very energetic 3 year old. She's old enough now to get into closets and drawers, and I'm old enough now that 1- I can't keep up and stop her, 2- I'm actually too tired to care, 3- and we'll never recover if I don't do this NOW.

So I am purging my house. Lotta memories in these sacks. That was the year I came under lawsuit right on top of my first big anaphylactic reaction (cashews) (within an hour of med rescue I was getting phone calls). That was the year I was on daily steroid just to breathe for 9 months. That was the year a baby came early 5 days after my surgery and then I had a baby at my house. That was the year before her pregnancy and I had to be crashed off 2 hormones and wore heart monitors off and on for weeks, and I felt like such a mess that I was terrified I would really die this time without knowing what happened to everyone out there.

Since I came back out public, I have quietly super stalked people I knew from elementary and high school, jobs, fandoms, and even random people that stuck in my mind for some reason. I have very thoroughly tracked a number of people down to make sure they're ok. I didn't really talk to any of them, but I can see they're ok.

I am such a broken person. But I'm ok, too. I wanted to be ok, and I've worked very hard to be ok. Today I am letting go of the past. I'm done with that part of my puzzle. I've worked through a lot of stuff and I've reached a place where I feel like I've said out loud what I needed to say.

I've been blaming the January medication dose fail for what I've been feeling as this spring comes on. My psychiatrist thought maybe a neuropsych eval would be in order. Today my psychologist said it's not a good time. Scores are permanent and I'm currently transitory. He reminded me I have a history of disappearing after big blitzes. He talked to me about pacing myself. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around what that means. But he's right, I'm right at that edge, aren't I? Not really disappearing, but gone nonetheless.

My pace has been fight or flight for so long that learning how to slow down has been arduous. I grew up working very hard, survived a really bad accident without medical aid or even a single pain pill, faked being well enough to get a degree, hold jobs, and raise a family, and then I hit that wall so hard. And I couldn't get up for awhile. I disappeared. Stuff happened, I made a decision to make a solid commitment to be 'out' for people who love me (I've been known to not answer a phone or see anyone for 3 months straight), and along the way I also made the decision to enjoy being who I am, who other people are, and if I can't be in the thick of it, at least stay on the edges and watch. But somewhere along that way, I lost myself again, Pinky had to save me, and now I'm in a new place not sure what to do with myself. Funny that my physical therapy team has also been on my case to pace myself, slow down, stop powering through.

I've mentioned I'm a high risk person in every conceivable way. I've been able to share things in blog posts I couldn't share with my own family or even my psychologist, who has known me for a very long time. My new year's resolution was for more #transparency, but then stuff blew apart again and now I'm wondering, Ok, just how transparent do I get? Just as when I first started blogging publicly and had to make decisions about content, audience, and direction, I'm seeing all new decisions I need to make about what kind of forward progress I will be sharing. I definitely don't want to be a drag, but I also hate sugarcoating. I loathe being a whiner, but I feel dumb trying to laugh stuff off sometimes. My anger can be too consuming, my sarcasm offends even me, and when all else fails I dissolve into dirty limericks. You guys have no idea what I am truly capable of. You know what one of my fave things to do is? Twist porn up into vaudeville. But that gets old really super fast, draws the wrong crowd, and then I'm peeling the rowdies off. And besides, no one ever really gets why I mock. The whole point is that I mock and the art itself gets bypassed for snark.

I'm not sure how often I'll be checking in, but the daily discipline thing has stopped. I have the discipline, obviously. But like my psychologist said, I wasn't pacing myself. I ran hard and fast against a clock, driven by a past that nearly took me down, and that part is over. The worst really is finally over, hopefully for awhile. I'd like to enjoy a few things.

Like my house! It's about time I made this MY house. I still have no idea if we'll wind up having to sell it if Scott's work sells, but for now, I'm the one who lives here the most, and I need to make it more user friendly to bouncy Bunny. Time to dredge the past up and put it into the shredder. I want my bedroom back.

IF my plan works, I'll be paying everything off, but I'm taking myself off the racetrack. It has been so long since I've been able to sit and *enjoy* something because of all the neverending pain, I am really enjoying minecraft. I am finally able to sit longer than 20 minutes at a time. I still have to rotate my activities and I still have a hard time, but a year ago I was excusing myself from shared play constantly, and this year I'm not. I can't even tell ya how wonderful it is to be able to sit at a table and hang out with someone for awhile. And guys, that is NOT an invitation to everyone to jump on, ok? I can handle one thing at a time. I'll get to projects when I can, and I do have a line of people asking me to do stuff. I love all of you and I wish I could be more than one of me to do it all. I feel very blessed and loved that people actually still ask me to check stuff out and do stuff, and I apologize that I can't jump on some of it.

But I am still here. 💗

bubblehead

click for a fun pinterest board

I took a big bad break from thinking this month. It's been marvelous.

Well, I actually did some big deep thinking about structure. One of the real challenges on multiplayer server is other people getting to judge your builds- taste and style, use of textures and colors, traditional vs modernism kind of stuff. It's a really big deal to build something over 100 blocks high without flying or hovering. I've seen really nice builds that took up thousands of square blocks and awesome perfection that used only a few. I want to express things in a quietly unique way, and they're sort of turning into cool 'bizarre'. I'm not sure how to get with the program, but I know what I like, and what I like is apparently really hard and challenging to do. I'm not satisfied with throwing up a build a week and then moving on. No, I'm moving a million blocks around and I will get what I want to do it even if I have to grind through farming 10,000 pumpkins to sell at market. Whatever mods and architects do, I can do, too, without super powers and years of experience.

Also, big changes. Since I'm sleeping the way I'm supposed to now, I very rarely wake up in the middle of dreams any more and have mostly stopped remembering them, but there was one this week that turned my head. It was a spider dream deluxe, just loads and loads of all kinds of spiders everywhere. They weren't exaggerated like in shows, just lots of them. In my house. They had completely taken over my house (all kinds, everything thick with spiders), and I was complaining to @bonenado that if he didn't get his pets out, I'd be bringing in some snakes. (He hates snakes.) What really struck me about that dream was I went about like normal with spiders all around me, wasn't afraid or repulsed, didn't feel sick or upset, and I didn't kill any of them.

So now I'm asking myself what spiders really mean to me psychologically. And they must mean something because I've been working on a story with spiders in it, and I really hope it's cool enough for other people to like.

But that's on the side kind of stuff. I'm on the other end of a grueling month in physical therapy, and I think I'm going to be ok. I can't even begin to share how hard living with this pain in a nearly lifelong traumatic injury has been, shoving through years with no hope of relief, and the near shock of finally arriving to a place where that was all a bad dream. Just writing those last 12 words made me tear up.

I *am* in a sort of shock and haven't felt like talking. At all. This month has been the most quiet I have been on the internet since 2012. I expected all my stuff to crash. My klout is still 60, twitter says I got 3K impressions last week (did I even make 20 tweets?), blogger says facebook is my biggest reader push and I don't have that many friends, so...

2017 flipped on me the first month in, and it's about to flip again. I can do this.

By the way, did you guys watch The Flash musical last night? I was dying. Except Barry can really dance, *wow*. But the singing- no. No mas. Yes, it was hella cute, yes it actually moved me to tears by that one scene, yes everything was spot on, but a musical... 😑 *no*.

8 things at once

My phone and I have come to an understanding. The youtube app gets to come back. Going too hard down the rabbit hole and I've got real life minecrafting to do around my house before my world flips upside down again. More later. Now- grinding gears even harder than I used to. Actually feels good racing to keep up.

#oddizm

clicks to oddizm.com

This won the internet for me this week, from Alexithymia? Let’s take another look at the facts AND the truth – Part 4.

Question 33: When helping others I prefer to assist with physical tasks rather than offering counsel about their feelings.

Fact: Yes.

Truth: OMG, can we please stop obsessing about feels? It’s distracting and it keeps us from actually solving the Real Problems Of The World. I sometimes think that neurotypical life is centered around relieving the pain they’ve caused themselves, and all they really care about is making themselves comfortable, while their lives go to hell. Rearranging the chairs on the deck of a ship that’s not being steered… as it drifts right into an iceberg field. But hey, at least they have a good angle towards the sun, so they can work on that tan that will get them laid. Right?

LOL, nailed it. I will clean your house, do your dishes and even scrub your toilets, but having to talk through the everchanging emotional slush with someone peels my eyeballs like hard boiled eggs. I personally sifted it down to I suck as a friend, which I've blogged about a few times.

My absolute fave part of this last year on social media has been watching #oddizm rise up and conquer. Finally! About time, guys. I have a couple faves, and like me, they each keep a fleet of blogs. Unlike me, they are waaaayyyyy more prolific in the whole aspie/autie asplain-all-the-things stuff, which makes my self obsession look comparatively really mild, so emotional health context gives me an A+ there. And to be fair, one of them is a real doctor with intensity I envy, the other is an exceptional writer/reveiwer, so I'm actually feeling challenged by betters now, yay!

Regular readers know I'm a neurodiversity advocate, point blank. I don't just talk about autism or compare my pov to the world at large. I'm only here to tell a story, to take readers on my journey, a path I hacked through a jungle to a better place of understanding the ultimate question for the ultimate answer of 42, regardless and inclusive of all our points of views. Regular readers also know I'm a fan of the fans, and I love seeing all the cool stuff people do in their fandoms on the webs. I believe fandoms are what build cohesive communities of acceptance across borders and languages and neurodiversities. I believe the creators of content for entertainment are leading the way to a bigger, better world.

In the meantime, we all struggle with our own stuff, and the best way I've found to survive is to concentrate on myself and not other people. It's not my place to judge, but it is my place to be smart and share what I've learned. I am no one's tool, but I am a good tool wielder. I think the most important things I've learned in this lifetime are actual real forgiveness, actual real patience, and actual real charity. Not the fake stuff. It's very important that we drop the fake stuff, because that's what's messing us up inside. Having said that, going back to question 33 up there perfectly saying how I feel in autism spectrum point of view, I'd like to add that I actually do like humans and all their funny little ways, and y'all are doing fine as long as you can keep up a little courtesy and respect among yourselves. Also, lengthy blog posts are the same as obsessing about feels, so you understand the tongue in cheek part, right? Good. Some of us 'yap' a little differently than others, and I enjoy seeing other writers expound on thoughts I've had for years.

I'm also learning I myself don't need lots of words to say these things. My personal struggle is with summarizing and condensing, which I think I'm getting the hang of. 😊 Thank you for letting me practice on you guys. Those of you who've actually read every word I've ever written (there really are a few), bless your hearts.

How else do I say this. I believe in all of us arriving together to a more beautiful place. Hang on with me.

Gratuitous #bencongruity. You're welcome.

Who picked this planet, anyway?

Pollen map pix click back to Pollen.com
I got these screen shots last night, so today is 'tomorrow' on these charts.

We're starting April early this year, huzzah! I'm already on both round the clock zyrtec and benadryl through the day.

Before I got the hang of pollen maps, counts, and forecasting, I lived on antibiotics for the aftereffects of sludging through (often mistaken for powering through) the slime that tree sex causes throughout the tissues in my entire head and sometimes goes into my chest. Now that I've got a firm grip on antihistamine dosing, I'm able to avoid the antibiotics for things like really bad ear infections, ridiculously painful salivary gland (parotid gland) infections, slimy eyeballs, and of course, our friends the sinus cavities becoming a thriving metropolitan for germ overlords.

I don't know about you guys, but tree season heavily impacts not only my health, but my depression and anxiety levels as my body reallocates prioritizing system management, and if I don't manage all of this, I wind up in walk in clinics and even ERs for some pretty big med management that goes on to super screw my diabetes, and life becomes such a joy that I hate everyone and everything and my baditude affects relationships. THAT is what trees do to me.

I live in Mirkwood. I am surrounded on all sides by rugged terrain thick with Tree People. Some of them live in state and national forests, but quite a lot of them live all around my house. They fight for dominance, and their spring mating dances, while not as raucous as frog ponds (I love hearing froggies in the spring), are violently spew worthy. Everything turns yellow for about 6 weeks (last year was longer), and humans turn into snot manufacturing plants.

I vote the trees win and we leave this planet. Don't know what committee picked this one, but I think we should be living in a dome on a forsaken rock and watching videos of trees from a safe distance. I know, I know, our ancestors could have crashed here and it's not really their fault and we're awesome for actually surviving and conquering a hostile planet, but that still doesn't change my vote.

One of the things that came up with my psychiatrist last week was my idiosyncratic reaction to gabapentin, one of the purportedly safest meds on the planet. #transparency I decided at the beginning of the year to lose some weight, as many do with resolutions, and had lost 4 pounds by the time my gabapentin dose was ramped up. I gained those 4 pounds back and added another 2 almost immediately (faster weight gain than prednisone, folks), and even after ramping the med back down kept adding until I had put on a total of 14 pounds. If we take off the 4 pounds I lost first, that's still a 10 pound increase over one dose change in a very short time frame. I'm calling it what it is, 14 pounds.

This is unacceptable, and now that I'm 1- pretty much back to my weird normal mindset and 2- ready to plunge through tree season, what better time to go back to carb counting and calorie restriction? And exercise. That was the most epic fail part of the dose change. I'm retaining fluid in my FEET and they HURT NOW when I walk around exercising, so I've been taking it kind of slow while the fluid leaks back out. Between physical therapy and antihistamines, I'm actually feeling a little dehydrated and having to remind myself to drink a glass of water once in awhile. In the meantime, staying focused on proteins, healthy fats, leafy veg, and a much better attitude.

You know where to find me.

brothers in arms

driving by Kraft

I was a good alumnus purchasing university beef via local market last week. I grew up on grass fed registered Herefords, so Pinky totally approves. Alas, the yummy results all went into the freezer as the apocalypse took @bonenado down, not quite back to pulling that out of the freezer yet. I'm apparently fine. The most I got was more spacey with a dizzy rush and stomach twinge once in awhile, but not even a hint of the nasty fever and consequences that pulled Scott into the abyss. I super slammed pearls probiotics and nearly stopped eating for about 3 days, wonder if that actually made the difference.

Between the Bunnython and Papa's Apocalypse, having @bonenado around so much the last couple weeks has been a lot like vacation on holidays, only more exciting in dreadful ways and no presents or goodies. Lots of TV, though. Well, Scott did, I played minecraft. I've kept up with Dr. Ken and The Flash, finally caught up The Walking Dead, but I'm not in a TV mood. He's been eyeball slamming everything backed up on Grimm, Elementary, Sleepy Hollow, NCIS, Lethal Weapon, pulled me in for Blindspot and The Blacklist, and the list goes on but they slip my mind right now.

Moved nearly 4M MB off Jawn, have at least that much more to move onto another stick whenever I get another one. I've made jokes in the past about fans asking me to read fanfics, but I usually don't mention the people who ask me to accept file sharing gifts. I have more storage on Jawn filled with stuff from other people than I do from my own stuff. I appreciate all of it, but my private life gets a little bogged down stopping for that level of share, and it only feeds my data hoarding problem. I'm the proverbial VHS and cassette tape hoarder that has morphed into the digital world, and somehow my only real vice is youtube hoarding, but when it spreads across several prolific fandoms, it kinda eats up the hard drive. I'm on a 16G rig, so I really don't want all that going down over hoarding laziness.

Physical therapy is very different this spring. About 3 years ago we started upper core strength, hit walls galore that flared my fibro pain quite badly, diverted to nerve and deeper tissue work the last couple years, essentially pinpointed root causes and exact movements causing flares, and *now* I'm learning to micro manage. I'm back to upper core strength, but this time it's fine tuning tinier deeper muscles with smaller movements. I lived with a neck injury (ejected from car) for so many years that freeing up the area with tissue shred (ASTYM) allowed muscles I haven't been able to use properly in years to start trying to work again, and I'm having to learn all over how to move without hurting myself while I continue to heal. It's slow going, but the improvements are so worth it. This is my fifth or sixth year in continuous (with breaks) physical therapy (PT actually goes back to 2007, so this is ultimately my tenth year). I've worked very hard to get all this back. Physical therapy is a commitment. You don't just blow it off with "It's not working" and stop. You stick with it and let these people do their jobs helping you get your function and mobility back. Some of them have pretty big degrees in this stuff. I can imagine how frustrated they might feel with noncompliant patients who quit and opt for shortcuts that wind up failing in the long run. A lot of people with pain levels like mine, and especially my age, opt for risky surgeries with 50% success rates on top of complicating conditions like diabetes, which make healing take even longer, and you can't just medicate and make all that pain stop without damaging your organs along the way. It gets pretty real when you hit your 50s that people start going down all around you, and since I've spent my entire adult life in the kind of pain that most 80 year olds don't even get unless they have severe arthritis of some kind, I'm not going down. I've *been* down. Hell if you try to push me back down again.

It's taking all my focus to handle stuff lately, so I'm creating marvelous stuff in Mo Creatures and having fun watching the chat scroll up while I work. Earlier this week one of the players went all psycho and ran around killing other people's pets and mocking in caps, and while it was kind of funny to watch, it dragged on for a bit and players were hurt by it, which really isn't cool. (I thought staff handled it really well, very professional.) You never know when someone has lost a pet or loved one (parent, sib, best friend, baby...) in real life, or a family member is getting through cancer or something, and using a game to get through some hard stuff, so it gets really personal when someone intrudes and invades and decimates your work hours and a fond little bond to an AI block that looks like a cute pet.

This is pretty much how I feel about my Mo Creatures family.

I think it's still March

I'd call this the longest week ever, but I'm time skipping around so badly that I can't tell. A couple of days ago I thought it was Friday, realized it was really Thursday, realized later in the day it was really Wednesday, and by the time Scott got home from work, had figured out it was Tuesday. Apparently that was Monday.

That and a few other minor concerns I'm having with self perception are prompting correspondence between my psychiatrist and my psychologist about possibly doing some kind of neuropsych eval, since my own self assessing seems to be incongruous with observation. I've been back on previous gabapentin dose for a month and still feel like I've got some kind of lingering mind stone going on, feeling a bit more scattered and unable to focus than I was before the gabapentin dose was ramped up in January. It's reminding me of how I felt coming back out of past illnesses that affected me cognitively. Nothing big or anything, just I don't feel like I'm braining very well. I'm obviously functioning fine.

The only other thing I can think might be affecting me like this is I have gotten more actual SLEEP in the last 2 months than in the last 2 years, so maybe there is some brain recovery going on that's going to take some time. I don't even have an anxiety level, my pain control and recovery around and after spikes is going well, my appetite is fine, nothing else about me seems amiss aside from occasionally dropping something. I'm not feeling particularly lazy since I'm getting actual WORK done, including phone calls happening. But I'm peaking on the ol' I didn't realize I haven't posted on my blog in 3 days kind of thing. Not sure if this is a real problem, but I'm trying to get a bunch of stuff taken care of way ahead of time just in case since I've been through such epic fail in past years. I ran into a missed safe deposit box rental notice the other day that was already half a month late, so it's possible. Honestly, if I weren't so used to self monitoring like this by now (and I've spent years fine tuning this), I'd probably drop off the map again and you guys wouldn't know what happened to me. I'm a space case deluxe.

I think my apps having to come off my phone has made me uber aware of this. My real time touch bases being gone kinda make the big gap they cover up more noticeable. I very seriously used phone apps to stay on track in so many ways, and I'm not saying they made me lazy or dependent, but it's possible they made it too easy to ignore why I was needing them so much. If I do go through testing, maybe there will be an area showing up I can work on with my psychologist.

Other stuff around here is the Bunny SARS migrating into Papa, so @bonenado has been home from work with the big bad norovirus now. Other people we know have missed 3 or more days of work with it, and it's so rare for him to get that sick that we know this one is really bad.

I'm still on a public minecraft server when I play, so I'm seeing real people every day and not just lost in my own deep hole. I'm also trying to stay in touch with the Lexx fans that hit facebook, so I am surfacing, just not all over the place like I was for so long. I'm hoping I can get back to that, but I don't seem to have the driving focus lately to cover all the bases. I'm still seeing notifications when I log in. 💖

ain't no stoppin

Super power point.

• Money sync done up through May because 1- awareness this year that I suck at springtime time  orientation sync and 2- this terrifies me because it sets me up for money fails (which doesn't make sense because @bonenado is around to fix when I fail). It's very weird that I'm accidentally failing to fail so far, as messed up as my head has felt for months now.
• Calendar sync tentatively done through May, with emphasis on staying home inside my house as much as possible through April while the trees pollen-bomb the world around me.
• Spring cleaning has officially begun with curtains and rugs being stripped all over the house and washed yesterday. This week promises epic deep cleaning satisfaction levels because my stress levels are spiking and stress = very clean house around here.
• My techabilities are major fail, and I'm likely not going to be getting twitter back onto my phone except for planned blitzes. I lightly experimented last night with Walking Dead, and I *think* I can pull off a Flash live tweet (I need one so bad), but the only way I can charge my phone nowadays is on a car charger or through Jawn. The car charges it up really fast, Jawn does it slowly, like an IV going drip, drip, drip, so I'd need to leave Jawn on all night just to charge my phone.
• Jawn is very full. *burp* This laptop is so full of huge files that if it crashes, I lose at least 8X more than I lost when old lappy burned out. I'm this close to locking down into emergency management until I get both my phone and Jawn cleaned off, because we absolutely cannot afford to replace either one of them right now.

Me and my phone irl...

Bunnython

Epic things happened on 11-19-08 and 11-20-08. They burned their way into my brain during an epically tough time, so I'll never forget them. Why are they coming up now? No idea. They just popped into my head.

I'm currently brain grinding through a 3-day Bunnython. That poor kid is so wacked with norovirus, uti, and pink eye (what the heck, let's throw in snotty allergies because tree season is starting early here) that there's just no other way. While I have no brain, I'm doing mundane chores like plowing out a mountain of cobblestone, stripping and tiling over bedrock, harvesting pumpkins and setting up chicken pens, and reorganizing my storage. I'm doing dishes and laundry, too, but that's just real life.

Anyway, I felt curious about what I was up to around that epic time, and of course the only thing public after those events is an old beat up survey, parts of which I'll share because I'm too brain dead to pontificate.

50) If you could go back in time, how far back would you go?
All the way.  All the dang way.

And of course, there were other fans who were utterly swept up the same way I was. They lifted me up in the dark and carried me through the abyss on their wings of imaginations, techabilities, and obsessions.

24) Have you ever had a panic attack?
It lasted about 4 1/2 years.

We still find each other in the deep dark. We follow the light into our glowing monitors and see each others' souls.

16) Did you have a dream last night?
It had me.  They wait for me in the night.  I fear them.  I try to stay awake as long as I can, but they come after me, hunt me down.  They grapple me, taunt me, abuse me against my will.  And they never, ever turn out like I wish they would.

What we find saves us in ways people around us can't even imagine.

12) What TV show could you watch over and over again?
Even I have my limits.  And I think we all know I can far outlast anyone I know in the over and over department.

And we go there. We step over the lines, leap off the cliffs, reach for stars we can barely see, and hope someone out there cares.

10) Do you believe in God?
I think it’s amusing that people feel compelled to announce a *disbelief* in God.  If you have to go out of your way to make sure someone knows you don’t believe in God, it’s quite possible his existence is bugging the crap outa you, and that alone is making him a little too real for you to handle.  If you don’t want God to exist, stop saying his name and fighting against it. I, for one, attempted atheism and failed miserably, because every time I flop on my face I find myself thinking of God and begging and making deals with the guy. If you haven’t faced imminent horrible death, don’t worry, you’ll have your chance to test this.

11) Have you ever thought about converting your religion?
“Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” James 1:27

Now that we’ve defined ‘religion’, I see no reason to change it.  Maybe the problem with people changing their religions is that they have no idea what it means in the first place.

*I* care.

6) Can you handle the truth?

People can’t handle me being truthful.  Most people don’t want the real truth.  Most people want to find out they were Egyptian or famous or a sheepdog in their past lives, I’ve never heard of anyone thinking they might have been Plato.  Personally, I think I know the guy.  Like Einstein has said, All times are now.

And isn’t it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are. (Plato)

The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge. (Plato)

Truthfulness. He will never willingly tolerate an untruth, but will hate it as much as he loves truth. … And is there anything more closely connected with wisdom than truth? (Plato)

What is at issue is the conversion of the mind from the twilight of error to the truth, that climb up into the real world which we shall call true philosophy. (Plato)

The object of knowledge is what exists and its function to know about reality. (Plato)

The underlying truth to all reality, though, as such, is represented in this one super condensed realization...

5) Last myspace message you received?

Egads, I keep forgetting about myspace.

So my brain is enjoying *trewth*. I hope your brains enjoy things this weekend.

one eleven

Apologies to the artist, I grabbed a copy of that original piece possibly up to 6 or more weeks ago and I can't seem to source it. However, there's loads of great Doctor Strange art all over the place if you want to see more. Anyhoo, that was my lock screen today.

I normally don't even notice these things, but something different happened today and I thought I'd play around with how significant this coincidence is. I wasn't home, and I'm still app-less, but I got screen shots off my phone. I think you'll be able to see where to find what I found.

Honestly, the sport I get in this is more about synchronicity than anything. You guys don't know I was holding a birthday card to someone at that moment (of the first screen shot at the top) whose user name has 111 in it, and I've always believed that person is the key that opened a very big door for me. This started before I ever learned of the user name, so I found this particular moment holding the birthday card interesting. You can see by the time stamps that I waited until later to investigate, but you have to understand the significance of 313 to a Lexx fan... I didn't realize that part even happened until I started writing this, so my day was rife with synchronicity. And I still haven't even told you what happened earlier.

Some of these overlap a little.

Part of my belief in synchronicity is that our brains talk to us, and they find unique ways to get our attention when it's vital that we remember something. For this to happen, we must be in a 'frame of mind' to 'tune in' to this happening. It's been happening to me all my life, as I've mentioned a few times in blog posts. I don't think the numerology itself is magical, or that other beings necessarily spend this much time on such vague detail around us, but since we'd scare ourselves silly realizing how truly powerful we really are, we prefer to ignore that and make things up. Which is fine. Whatever works, works, right? Call it what you will. Me, I realize that my brain cells are smarter than I am, a super computer that gives me access to multidimensional information, and this soul that I am is capable of using this computer to help make the world around me a better place. (Please note, I'm NOT saying there is no God and that we're not all part of some plan or whatever. I'm saying that sometimes we notice when it's time to pay attention and hopefully make a difference in this world.)

And there I dropped off and stopped reading.

So what happened earlier? Oh, nothing, just got a call from a marketing company that wants to know if I'd like some help selling my book. Out of the blue.


lol, ok, they didn't call because I'm awesome, but evidently my very private number has gained significance since I've enrolled in the author training center, I dunno. It was a very cool call, though, and I looked them up and I'm actually really impressed. I'm glad they called. The funny part was I was rushing through getting ready to race out my door, and I literally got caught taking notes in my bathroom half naked putting deodorant on, and I have chuckled the whole rest of the day. It's really cool being told by a professional marketing team that you've obviously got your act together and already know quite a lot of stuff, and you guys following Pinky everything know I've been working my butt off on this since 2012. The dotcoms are set up, the media pages are ready to roll, and all that's really left, besides actually publishing, is setting up author pages on actual sell sites, like Amazon. I've been kind of wondering over the last year if I should get some kind of PR, and *bing*, here we go.

So... think I can pull this together in about 2 months? I'm thankfully too exhausted to freeze up in panic. I fell asleep during the Walking Dead Sunday, didn't even get 5 minutes into it, and I still haven't caught up on it. I'm sporting a headache this week, back in some pretty intense physical therapy, barely braining (I keep saying that and things seem to keep magically getting done correctly), and hoping I don't have this virus that seems to be taking down Bunny's whole tribe, because it's a doozy. So far I'm just really tired. And the headache. It's kind of a background headache, but I feel like I can't think.

I will say one thing, though. We were catching up on The Flash last night and I missed twitter so bad I nearly teared up. There was so much great crap I know you guys were all slinging out, and I miss that so bad. I'm going to try to FOCUS! and get my phone cleaned off and hopefully get twitter back on my phone by next week.

Watching The Flash crack vids... (click that for the list). Caution for language on this one.

showing off

This week is hard, but I'm getting those shoes on.

I've apparently missed another big day here over the weekend, over 500 visits pretty much all at the same time from the same referral. Whatever is going on out there, yay! and always remember where your towel is, ok?

We had a big Bunny sleepover wherein I was up past midnight Saturday and then back up around 4 a.m. on Sunday, and good thing because she was back up before 6, and the entire visit was high gear high energy high speed ADHD. And then she went home to her mama and still zoomed circles around her. And hopefully this isn't connected, but last night she zoomed into a 102 temp and now she's got a tummy bug other people in her family had previously. So if I've been exposed, I'm hoping I get a big brain and energy boost from the viral invasion like she did before the croaking off part hits. *joking*

I actually dragged through pretty well, maybe the CPAP is helping. By the time she left here, I had all the dishes AND laundry ~caught up~. That's right, *caught* *up*. That's never happened before. Plus I was still able to hang out with her a little bit and cook and stuff, and that on 4 hours of sleep. But it was CPAP sleep. Keeping that OSAT above the 78 percents is a good thing. I still feel like I'm dragging, and here I am doing all this stuff.

By the way, @bonenado says working in clay and sand all day smelting into clay brick and glass blocks is NOT working (I keep that going in between doing stuff around the house), and I said It is if I write a post about it. So I hope to get a Mo Creatures post out later. I'll insert a cameo feature of another player that I thought was cool.

Since I've seen the Doctor Strange movie twice now, which, by the way, is a fantastically well done preamble to how he fits into the Marvel universe, I've been thinking a bit about arrogance. The focus in the story is that Stephen Strange is one of those 'beautiful brain' people with an eidetic memory, which made him the successful neurosurgeon he became. I think the audience might assume that because he's successful, he became arrogant, and that certainly seems the case as he is discussing which case to take next to keep his unblemished record going in his career. Because of this 'arrogance', he winds up wrecking his car and his life. BUT. That arrogance is what also winds up making him capable of saving the world, since he is able to look the biggest baddie right in the face without hesitation (and seemingly very little fear), and it took that kind of arrogance to be able to handle that situation.

I grew up outside of neurotypical norm, and I tend to notice the 'arrogant' people. They are my people. I love showing off when I'm right about something, or when I do something cool, and yes, I can come across myself as a very arrogant person. But I'd like to take a closer look.

When we have Bunny sleepovers, we feel a bit swooped over with tiny child activity, but one of my favorite things is when she wants to show us what she can do. Bunny is 3 1/2 and can do lots of stuff now, and she loves showing us what she learned in 'gynnasics' and how fast she can go or what she knows about drawing and TV shows and our phones... lol. She's a smart kid.

When I was a little girl, when I wanted to show visitors what I could do, I was told not to 'show off'. I was expected to be 'good' and 'behave'. I was so bad at interrupting conversations and doing things that wound up with me getting hurt that my parents had to really grind into me how important it is to be quiet and let other people do the talking while I behave quietly on the sidelines. These were not pleasant discussions.

I very quietly grew into a very smart and extremely arrogant person, quietly appointing those all around me as 'stupid' and 'slow'. Because I didn't grow up learning how to interact appropriately, I am still learning decades later how to interact appropriately. I'm about to say something really important.

Aren't kids supposed to show you what they can do? They're learning. Demonstrating and getting vital feedback are important and seem to be naturally built into little kids. Is arrogance born out of breaking this natural cycle?

If Stephen Strange was the typical neuroatypical, this likely started in early childhood. He was a little more than the people around him were able to juggle, and instead of embracing his natural skills and abilities, they fenced it off into behavioral problems. That alone stimulates atypical kids to try even harder to get positive attention somehow, and a lot of us wind up in academics. Stephen Strange is a great example (a bit exaggerated, yes) of how a different kind of mind can learn to channel itself into positive outcome.

Part of the Stephen Strange character set up is that he took an oath as a doctor, and he doesn't hesitate to try upholding that oath even if it costs him his life. I know a lot of people who are like that. They are really good at something, they step up into those roles, and they put their lives into thriving at what they do. A lot of those people, incidentally, are neuroatypical.

10 Fascinating Facts About Doctor Strange You Probably Didn’t Know

Yeah, did you notice #2? A Doctor Strange Feature Film Has Been In Development Since 1986 - Lexx fans, take hope...

Wild careen into Lexx...

bcuz CAKE

Still kind of holding my breath, but I think we actually skipped winter this year.

Ok, what's going on with Pinky? What a very long week I've had.

March is my favorite birthday month because of a couple of my fave peoples, so I caved and made cake. Before I share, you must understand that I've not had actual CAKE in a very very long time. I think the last time I had a cupcake was months ago. Even last fall on my own birthday I veered into a chocolate waffles experiment, so the cake craving has grown really strong.

These are a delightfully moist gluten free adaptation of Hershey's Chocolatetown Special Cake recipe. In place of regular flour I used half King Arthur gluten free multi-purpose flour and half Domata gluten free recipe ready flour. You need the xantham gum in Domata for it to rise, but using all Domata turns the batter into bubble gum with the mixer. I also went with a basic cream cheese frosting- one block cream cheese, one stick real butter, 4 cups powdered sugar, 6-7 tablespoons of canned milk. Imagine my first bite of yummy moist cake in forever. I baked it off in giant muffin tins.

And of course I'm diabetic, so I can eat only a bite or two at a time every hour or two, but it was still very pleasant being able to do that.

Anyway, happy birthday to my loved ones. I celebrated. 🎉😁🎈🎂

Have been back on original gabapentin dose (100mg 3xday) for what, a week and half now? My regular doctor is holding me at that dose the rest of this month while I get through physical therapy. I think he'd like me to stay on it indefinitely, and commanded me to touch base with the neurologist about monitoring my dosing. Doctors have a very hard time 'treating' me for fibro and pain the last few years because my PTSD over 'going down' on meds or illness is so bad. I've crashed so hard on handfuls of meds taking down my immune system and spending years recovering that it makes me cry to even just talk about it out loud with my psychologist (#transparency), so from here on out is like walking the line between pain control and mood control. I'm not joking around about any of this, and I'm not saying any of it lightly. I can tell that the darker harder core lurkers hitting me daily are probably in the same boat, and I'll keep saying this forever- you're not alone. I'm here, too, walking the webs in the long, dark nights looking for sparks of hope and distraction, anything to hold onto while I keep hanging on to wisps of myself falling apart.

In the meantime, I've fixed up my skin! Finally! some of you say. Yeah, I've seen some of you stop and stare at me on Mo Creatures, it's been kinda funny. One guy looked me all over real good because my last skin was so sloppy and crap, like a cracked Easter egg that a 2 year old did. Yeah, that's me running around like I just threw any old wrecked up skin on... Anyway, I'm going with this for awhile now, adapted on Nova Skin. The original is from one of the many Galaxy Girls a lot of different people have done. I might go tweak it later on, but it's kinda the colors I want. I'd prefer black hair, but then the eye accents don't work. Anyway, the overall effect is supposed to be like the galaxy hair and makeup kind of stuff people are doing nowadays.

Kinda having a headache, so I'm going to keep moving. Need to get on laundry and get food lined up to cook later, might or might not have a big Bunny day, I'm already getting all over pain control, and part of that is moving around, so here I go.