Across the street from my house.
These are as tall as the second story on my house.
See how fluffy they are.
Fluffy, beautiful pollen deathinators.
Progressing nicely into the kind of ear pressure that triggers visions of lancing my ear drums. In the old days, on handfuls of meds, I'd vividly daydream about meticulously tearing bits of my body up, and even though I never acted on it, it seemed to help with the pain. Kinda like acknowledging or something. I know your sufferings, little cells. I feel your agony.
Hundreds of these line the hightway.
They're usually half brown and sickly.
They're having a very good year.
Lots of beautiful pollen, making more baby trees. Deadly baby death trees.
My whole body has turned into a mega sprinkler system trying to scrub the pollen out of the air I'm breathing. That would be fine except breathing is a thing, so it's a little self-defeating.
This is the most beautiful juniper year I've ever seen here.
Look at all those healthy fluffy trees.
Just look at them.
Death trees.
I really hope this isn't an early indicator of an especially nasty tree spring. I know this planet is pretty, but I'm about ready for a hazmat bunker.
This is about my level of processing tonight. I'm done.
This is wussup in between the storms here. Sunny days are actually pretty rare this year and no guarantees whatsoever. You drive up the road without an umbrella on a pretty day, joke's on you hauling groceries back home.
I love my yucca. It's grown into a twin, but this is my fave in my whole yard. It's at least 7 feet tall now.
I'm kind of allergic to Queen Anne's Lace, but it's beautiful and I love seeing it. This one is up to my chest. That's right, so is that grass. Too bad I don't have a buncha money to buy that lot across the road and stick a buffalo in it, but we're zoned against livestock anyway. *le sigh*
The butterfly bushes are popping out. There's a massive purple one in the background that hasn't bloomed yet that makes the whole yard smell like someone spilled a vat of honey.
The gladiolas normally pop out right around a week or two before the 4th of July, like nature's fireworks, just a tad early this year, like the irises being done before Mother's Day instead of just in time for it like they usually are.
Duking it out with Kaspersky, two browsers, and an update that only took one second once I figured it out, in the meantime was like pulling teeth just loading 4 pix for 30 minutes from two different devices. Not sure why that didn't slow me down earlier when I slit a vein and wrote out a full confession in blood. (That's writer talk. I didn't really slit a vein or write anything in blood. That would've screwed up my keyboard.) Whatevs. I have no regrets. *other mes slapping me behind the screen* Just hurry up and world sync the tech already, these corporate wars grinding my tech incompatibilities to a standstill are getting really stupid.
I'll be in Valhalla if anyone needs me. Unless the internet keeps browning out from all this rain.
Dear person in France using a Firefox browser in Windows- It's getting a little excessive. I hope you're ok. If you need to shoot me a private message, no one sees comments until approved, and I can leave it in pending so it will stay private. I don't know what else to say except that whatever is going on feels like some kind of weird morse code and maybe you're ready for that step out from lurking.
So, huge weekend in progress in the U.S., and my crew is all over getting food ready for a great big cookout next door. In case a few of you have missed the hints, my father-in-law (retired veteran, 15 year cancer survivor) is on hospice at home because the cancer is back with a vengeance.
@bonenado had a free evening last night, so we started plowing through a stack of The 100 that had piled up in the DVR. We're up to the part where Clarke finally cried over a very bad decision and still kept making the bad decision anyway. Wait, wot... The 100 isn't very different from The Walking Dead, all the same vehicle accidents in all the right spots kind of thing, the constant flip flopping and side taking, the facepalming and regrouping. Mostly, though, it's just a whole lotta mud. I think Octavia looks awesome in mud. She's the new face of warrior princess, and wouldn't we love to see her go up against Xena, amIright. Srsly, tho, I think 2 eps and we'll be caught up. Jasper's death scene was fantastically done, btw, very wrenching and beautiful and tragic. Loved it. Other top fave character developments include Raven and John Murphy, and I could go on for miles about supporting cast being awesome. And some of you know how I feel about 'shadow govt' kind of stuff, which was nicely handled earlier in the series. How ‘The 100’ has facilitated important conversations about free will and rape culture
Moving on, allergies are horrible here because 3 1/2 weeks of rain has turned Mirkwood and the surrounding Shire into a jungle, mowers galore mulching it all up into the thick humid air for us all to inhale, our lungs are full of green slime, our ears are stopped up, our sinuses are gunked, @bonenado is covered in poison ivy, and isn't it all beautiful out there. All y'alls living on concrete promoting planet luv need to understand this space ball is poisonous and vindictive and will take us all down in the end with a satisfied burp. We're only hurting ourselves with all our lawn care products. I keep voting for rock gardens, but noooo....
This is a prolific monster copperhead year, too. "Copperhead snakes are some of the more commonly seen North American snakes. They're also the most likely to bite, although their venom is relatively mild, and their bites are rarely fatal for humans." What they don't mention is one bite on a finger can swell your entire arm up to your shoulder and you'll be in a lot of pain and feel super gross for days, and some people even get delirious, so 'rarely fatal' doesn't mean it doesn't mess you up. People like to run around barefoot, and like so many, I've actually stepped on one barefoot (and have worn shoes outside ever since), but thankfully I jumped so high so fast and scared the snake so badly that neither one of us were harmed. I've known people who wound up on crutches for several days, and it's pretty miserable for pain. Also please note that 'rare' doesn't mean 'never' concerning fatalities, plus there's just as much risk from infection or other disease like salmonella from point of contact, so take a snake bite seriously.
How ironic that this comment just came in on my youtube chicken eats a snake, talk about live blogging.
I may not block and don't always delete, but I vigorously report abusive interaction because there's no excuse for poor behavior.
That person can't see all my notifications.
True, I can't see theirs either, and it's not a contest at any rate, but at least my twitter account is active and thriving and my websites actually work and that youtube has nearly 6000 views, so SanityGamingUK can suck it, but you're welcome for the web traffic you're about to get... that you can't see because your stuff is so shut down...
I think I've gotten up 50 times during this post to do stuff with Bunny. Maybe I should stop here and move on with my day, lotta busy stuff going on.
~later~ And this is why I normally don't engage. It was a garter snake, and someone just wants to fight. Fine, reported and blocked. You guys know chickens very naturally eat anything that moves, right? Frogs, lizards, mice... They crave nutrients just like the rest of the world does, and skeletons are full of calcium. We live on a hostile planet, get a grip with the hatefest, and bring some intelligence to the game. Live and be well.
Being public is a challenge, and not because of this kind of stuff. This is nothing. I've had much nastier things said to me and thrown at me than this. The challenge is realizing that the person on the other side is using internet to displace onto, and that either comes from a toxic environment or an emotionally sideswiped person having trubbas dealing with something irl. Hostility is a symptom, and reacting with more hostility doesn't help anything, doesn't prove anyone right, doesn't make a winner out of either side. If SanityGamingUK has dead and closed accounts all over the place, one can only wonder why, how much suckage is going on in real life, and the hugs this person might need. Been there.
The Woodpecker Wars are going full defcon this winter. Over the years @bonenado has been plugging up holes in our siding, which is problematic because most of the holes are at least 2 stories up and very difficult to get to. Tufts of insulation sometimes trail out and look really bad. If you've never experienced what a tiny bird can do to a big house and can't imagine it being a big deal, all you have to do is search 'woodpecker damage'. And since I live in Mirkwood, it's a big deal. We get at least 3 different kinds of woodpeckers drilling holes, and since we've had flying squirrels move into birdhouses, we're wondering if we've got a flying squirrel (or even a regular sized squirrel) living in the attic now, and while some of you go 'awww, how cute!', it's actually really gross if it dies inside the house and stinks for 2 weeks. We've had mice and even a snake die in the walls, so yeah, kinda need to stop the hole makers.
(Can you imagine if that were a minecraft problem? Egads.)
I've been noticing my normally expected anxiety attacks around showering seem to be calming down lately, so I guess I'm successfully dealing with my crisis. This big meltdown thing came between Bunny's mama and I while I was dealing, didn't talk for 13 days. Reconnected yesterday, I think we're ok now. Getting through the rest of the month intact will be about focusing on my own path and not using other people's distractions to jump willy nilly hither and yon, triggering and retriggering like mad and risking burninating the peasants.
So... I went down the rabbit hole.
I've been holding back from a real rabbit hole for ages. I have a history of 'disappearing', so I made sure my personal support network was solid and that my launch platform was secure, and took the plunge. After a wonderful day with Kai blowing craters into the landscape spawning everything conceivable in minecraft all at once, I did a quick assessment and made an executive decision to release my inner rabbit and see how I do.
I made a new singleplayer world called 'uffda', which I mentioned the other day, and I have been playing sans cheats nonstop. I started with absolutely nothing, and aside from using F3 coordinates to see where I am once in awhile, and using beds I make to force the night to switch to day, I haven't cheated once. I haven't switched to creative mode at all. I went hard- missed meals, ignored TV, stopped bathing. I immersed myself until I was minecrafting all night in my sleep. But every morning I made myself touch base on Pinky blog first, and I made sure that I was tearing myself away in small time batches to run laundry through machines and make food for Scott. Otherwise, excepting brief spurts checking notifications, I have logged hours and days of solid minecraft.
While I've been super absorbed, I've managed to cut my caffeine in half, lose 5 pounds, and out of the blue coordinated my launch again. I'm writing. Sweet, unintended side effects. But realistically, every bit of this has been monitored and I'm checking in with people because I just got through one of the worst meltdowns I've had in years, like super crumble and stand back lest ye be consumed with flames while this ship goes down. This aspienado has reached a place where there is *nothing* anyone can do or say to make me feel better, and my dearest risk their lives just reaching out to get me talking. I can't say enough for one brave soul who has no clue how their own world became my float device a couple of times.
If I weren't involved with Lexx groups on facebook, I'd have shut my facebook down this last week. If I weren't focused on future sales launch, all my blogs would have gone into private this last week. If I weren't determined to see this project through that I've been working on for several years, I'd have closed my twitter account this last week. Pinky made a promise not to go away again, plus real people have access to me now. I have real friends who can actually make real life contact now, and I. am. answerable.
I did the #fav7films hashtag last night and just realized this morning that Throw Momma from the Train should have been on that list. After a very long Bunny day yesterday, I'm brain crashing hard and have a knee going all strike on me, and my only hope, besides getting the laundry caught up and some real food cooked, is to settle and watch a show, because multiplayer isn't loading for me today. Since I've been watching Soap, all things Billy Crystal keep popping up in my mind, and today, as I reflect on how I'd like to start off a story on a private blog I've set up until I'm ready to share to print, "The night was..." keeps elbowing past all the rest and hogging the front row of my thoughts, so what else can I do but dig out the old VHS and watch that movie again.
I love playing around with writing prompts, and I've been doing "The night was..." for years on private blogs. I never run out of stuff to put with it. These popped into mind today.
The night was a complete waste of time...
The night was rowdy, the streets were nuts, but the people were happy for once...
I could almost make a book of story starters. I can do opening paragraphs and even opening chapters almost in an eyeblink sometimes. It's the finishing that doesn't happen.
Ok, this is why I'm on break today. The high activity level was nonstop for 6+ hours and I've got the group text timestamps to prove it.
Her mama had asked me stuff about if the fever was down.
The puppy show is the original 101 Dalmations, which everyone knows will soon break me.
And this next one doesn't pop out for you guys, but you can see the toe prints in my last post.
Felt like I nearly lost an eyelid here...
My dad used to have me sit and 'do coins' with him between 8-14 years old, and then later again in my 20s. It was my job to sort the dates and mintmarks, and then to sort them into conditions. Several years ago I tried to talk him out of selling some dimes and pennies to someone passing through, and sure enough, he got scalped, but in the past, he actually saved a 200 acre farm one year with an enviable silver dollar collection. Too bad that didn't ultimately save it when the cattle market abruptly plunged another year, and my dad had already prearranged to ship cattle to market the day after that happened. Lost everything. Like Owen's coin collection in Throw Momma from the Train, I have loads of memories of coins and my dad.
The blisters on her pinky toes from the hand-foot-mouth were hurting.
It didn't last, but I was getting too worn out to keep taking pictures. Bunny wasn't the only one glad to see Papa pull in the driveway, lol.
Now it is Wednesday the 17th.
I laid down a lot through the day Tuesday, but my head gradually came back on and I wound up on Mo' Creatures, of course. Accidentally ran into someone's lost pet during a mining/tunneling expedition, and I couldn't believe how deep in the dark it had gotten. I run into lost and abandoned pets all the time and just ignore them, because they are AI blocks that 'never die' unless an aggressive mob or another player kills them, and killing someone else's pet is instant banishment forever, even if the owner stopped playing and never came back. An owner can usually simply tp a pet to them using its pet ID, but if there is no one to teleport it out, then that's just bad luck. As far as I know this only applies to named MoC pets and not just regular tamed minecraft pets that can't be named.
This video is long and very dull, but as I was watching it again today before deleting, it hit me what a good search and rescue training method minecraft could be, complete with problem solving tasks. It took forever to coax that AI into a direction by repeatedly blocking it off, but once I got it to my ladder and saw it trying to climb, I realized I could step it up gradually block by block, and it worked. I'm saying that because that part isn't on the video. If you watch the vid and wonder why I'm so slow, I had someone on speaker on my phone while I played, so I look like a noob. But seriously, level 15, up at least 50 levels, took about 45 minutes, and then I just flopped back off the laptop for awhile.
This morning was very different. I had been making tunnels and getting distracted running into previously mined tunnels until I was quite lost and had to use the F3 coordinates to find my way back, and I had finally just popped back out into the open. I like this vid because so many accidental things happened, including getting to see a giant golem build itself and then pop back apart. The golem was close enough to my marker that I had to check and see if it got messed up, and then thought Hey, I can show you guys what I did. And from there it's running around dying and stuff. 4 min is another much smaller abandoned castle that looks like the same guy's handiwork from the castle I'm currently occupying until we can claim one of the houses in the courtyard. I like lighting up abandoned buildings. 6:04- No idea how he made those flags and I'd love to see how he did that. 6:34- That picturesque small castle is actually claimed, so I have to be careful not to mess anything up there. 6:47- I'd only flown over this place previously, so I'm trying to get my bearings, not sure which direction 'my' castle is. 10:30- A creeper blew me up, but on Mo Creatures, the damage repairs itself, keep watching. 10:50- I knew I had to get my stuff out of that hole FAST because I got glitch-trapped in a hole once while it was repairing. (I just noticed during playback that "Microsoft Game DVR" keeps flashing at the top, I think it's because I have an XBox account. I'm not sure if people get to see my videos live as I'm playing or not, I haven't checked, but if I wanted to, I'm all set up for it because Windows 10 is letting me do beta XBox minecraft, except I always use the launcher. I'm still trying to figure out how this all works.) 12:58- Using glitchy loading to locate mineshafts and ores and stuff is illegal, and I don't use video for that. X-ray of any kind is banned from Mo Creatures. You can tell when I see a glitch I kind of turn or stop or slow down till the game loads more. This is why I don't get more flying vids on slow load days. 13:29- I finally spy my humongous unclaimed castle in the distance. 13:40- Switching to silver sword to kill a werewolf. Forgetting I did that will be my doom in a minute. 15:40- I've been lighting this place up for days and I'm still running into whole sections without any lights. I have so much respect for the dedicated obsession that went into this project.
Now this is Thursday the 18th.
I assessed back into physical therapy yesterday, and pretty much started off with a hardcore definition of where I'm at legally on the 'chronic' scale now. Most chronics are labeled after 3 months of unremitting pain, and there is another level of chronic with remission that flares up and remits throughout life (so a person can regain and feel better and live normally and then suddenly slide). And then there are people like me, intractable chronic without relief just doing everything we can to stay functional. (Studies are coming out about intractable pain alone taking 8-10 years off simply because quality of life is so disrupted, so surviving pain is a big deal, regardless of cause.) We discussed psychoneuroimmunology and positive imaging, which my psychologist introduced me to years ago, whether any of my doctors have ever talked about me recovering health or living a better life (big ~no~ on that one, although this last doctor has pushed pretty hard for lifestyle changes that are working but only in the sense of regaining self care and some functionality), and the fact that my disability panel established that this is a permanent situation. It's not easy to get disability for vague pain issues, so I periodically go through written documentation during assessment spelling out where I'm at now and what the goals are. Decades of tests and monitoring have never produced a conclusive cause for how severe this has been, but I think we're all finally (insert accidental mouse bump and part of this disappearing and me escaping the page super fast and blogger still having that saved before I could stop it... really ready for blogger to catch up with the rest of the blogging world retaining previous draft copies that a person can go back to).
The short version- *OW*
K, we're all finally agreeing this is a lifelong nervous system disorder, and medicare requires 'proof' that what we're doing in physical therapy isn't just me frittering away govt dollars, because I've never gotten a hard label beyond 'fibromyalgia' even though doctors have looked extensively for MS, AS, RA, and confirmed positive for Lyme and antibodies to several other viruses and bacteria that affect nervous system long term.
SO. Got started yesterday with about 10 minutes of deep tissue, and I could tell the gabapentin has really changed the way I feel all this pain now. Went straight to the area where the pain shocks had been going off every 30 seconds before I started the med (6th week into it now, I think), and whereas I had been able to take some pretty rough stuff in the past, I actually couldn't help cringing like a big wimp. It took everything I had not to wince during certain spots around left shoulder, but it was quick and I thought no big deal, right? 4 years of stuff, I can do this. (Very few people last 4 years in physical therapy.)
Apparently the game is changing on gabapentin. I used to wobble out high as a kite because pain bursts dump mega brain chemicals and I get buzzed on pain. Not yesterday. I was almost incapable of driving and had to pull into a Walgreens (and get back into the car to repark because I straddled the yellow line) and walk around trying not to think about throwing up (that's a big ol' pain level 10, people), and my head finally cleared enough to get back on a plan and drive again. Got some food shopping done at Sam's, then came straight home. Got the car unloaded and pretty much spent the rest of the day incoherent. When Scott got home from work I was barely able to speak, stumbling words around like crazy, and then just burst into tears. When pain is so bad that I go full aspienado shutdown even in my own home, it's bad.
Pain. Is. Exhausting. This is going to be a long month. But I can do this, because I want to be able to keep using my arms and driving my car and taking care of Bunny and writing stories. I haven't come this far to quit. The pain is going to be there anyway, and it's never not going to be in my way, so if I want to do stuff, I gotta want to do stuff bad enough to do it.
While I'm at this point, I want to sincerely thank Lexx fans for the nearly 29,000 hits on my migrated fan blog over the last 2 years, which isn't bad for a 20 year old cult show that rarely shows up any more. I know I super suck for not getting more done, but I really do have several posts in queue that need finishing, and I intend to do it.
I'd also like to say THANK YOU to Pinky blog followers for spiking views here up roughly 70% over the year before. This whole aspienado going public experiment has been uber challenging in so many ways, but I think the coolest part was this becoming so much more than I expected, especially from myself. My own emotional growth has been surprising to a lot of people, not least my psychologist. Pinky blog on blogger will be 2 years old in 5 days. I wish I could do something fun to celebrate, but you guys know that anything interactive would backfire horribly with screams and flames, so let's just not go there. I really don't want that to be a thing again this year.
Back to real life. Batman starts pre-pre-K next week. The #autie is strong in our family, and I'm loving the social intro and integration programs in place that neither I nor his mama had as children. I think technology is a fantastic part of integration, and I'm so glad it's available now.
Mirkwood. I was driving by a neighbor's place and caught this on the way out to town. I zoomed so size context is difficult, but the top of the round part of the web is about 5 feet off the ground, and there were several of these along the street showing up really well in the fog over short lawns. Imagine walking through the woods. Most of them are nearly invisible till you're practically plunging through them, and smart people look like idiots holding long sticks up in front of their faces. You don't even see the spiders till the webs ping and suddenly they're either scuttling out of the way or ON YOU, some of them nearly as big as my hand. I feel like I live over a mineshaft with a spider spawner, and there's no way to torch it off.
The politixical rants are ramping up, if that's even possible after the venom and vitriol we've already seen over the last 6 months.
My thoughts on Hilary- Gosh darn it, what about spent lifetime focused on becoming world leader at any price do you guys not understand? Think #bucketlist.
My thoughts on Trump- I cannot believe y'all fell for any of that bazillionaire reality show puppetry, the whole point was ratings and keeping you guys distracted. Think #suckers.
My thoughts about 'Murica- It's almost over, but we're all going to be fine, just keep up the bipolar booze ranting and that bandaid will be all ripped off before you even know it.
My thoughts about how this affects me personally- You saw what happened to Vulcan. Raise your hand if you really believe an actual Romulan did that with the actual help of an actual interplanetary diplomat who was stupid enough to create an actual vat of 'red matter' big enough to turn the entire galaxy into a super duper black hole. Thank goodness the droplets were so dispersed first before it all blew. Bad writing will save us. I firmly believe this.
My thoughts on people who keep dragging the rest of us down with bitterness, anger, fretting, mocking, judging, belaboring, obsessing, belittling, blaming, and general lameness (whether or not it is politically related, because this could partly be subtext for someone's whining about relationships this week really pissing me off)- Sorry, can't see you any more through this thick fuzz of mute.
All righty, I'm all over the place again, so let's see what's going on. @bonenado made fun of me this morning.
Facebook says I'm going to hell. This clicks back to facebook, and from there you can click to the test to see where you're going.
I really want this blue shirt like Daniel Tosh is wearing. Pic clicks to Tosh on Comedy Central.
I am apparently one of the rarest and most difficult to deal with personality types there are, so it's not surprising that Facebook says I'm going to hell. The pic clicks to the test if you want to find out your own personality, but you can also learn more here.
It's amazing how fast the rest of your face dries out when you have to spit a lot. Spitting sounds easy, how hard is it to produce a little bit of spit? Harder than you think. Our little human spit pouches feel like a big deal until we get graded on how fast we can produce the stuff. (You people thinking bad things, shame on you.)
That's right, I've been flagged 3 different ways for hereditary cancer, and medicare does NOT pay for this, so I'm hoping my supplement plan picks some of it up. The rest will go on a payment plan. I'd rather know than not know, right? My sisters and daughter will all be curious to know the results when I get them about a month from now. No idea if I'm the first family member to be tested, so if I turn out positive for carrier, the results will get passed around privately among a national network of genetically related individuals. This pic clicks to more info.
In the meantime, @bonenado is out picking up more stuff for salssssssa. We've got a tomato hill growing on the counter that needs immediate attention. Oh, and a scope for a deer rifle. We've decided his Native American name is Man With Bad Eyes And Crooked Bow. He also got scent bombs, fox urine, buck urine, a cool vest with a slick back pocket big enough to hold a machete, leg zip water proof camo pants that'll go with his new boots, and a tripod stool for when he's bow hunting. He's demonstrating it to me now. Woops, folded up on him. He's practicing the stand up maneuver. My knees would be too locked in place to stand up from something that low. Every year is pretty hilarious. I should look through my old private blogs sometime and do a special @bonenado post.
Sometimes I just have to pause on minecraft and appreciate that I'm actually part of real time 'living' art.
Real life. I keep telling you guys I live in Mirkwood. My house is on the other side of that huge wall of jungle in front of us there. (insert- that unmown grass on the left is 5-6 feet tall, and I'm not kidding, use the mailbox on the right for context) (and so you now have a mental picture when I start whining about pollen again...)
The forest looms.
We've got several kinds of wild grapes (raccoon grapes are a real thing) and whatever berries, I think this might be bittersweet, but that's just a guess. Between the gallons of acorns, hickory nuts, and walnuts and all the crazy wild berries and fruits around here (persimmon, pawpaw, osage orange), we have no lack of wildlife. Sometimes the squirrel population explodes, sometimes it's chipmunks, other years we might see foxes regularly, it's just up and down, mostly depending on weather and diseases spreading around. Big rabies and distemper area. (Scott just let me know the number of bats in the bat house has tripled since he looked last.)
Yeah, you can tell, right? I'm evening out on my meds this week. This is now my 5th week on gabapentin, first week back on beta blocker, first week of doubled zyrtec, and I seem to be busy and juggling all the things pretty well for a change. I'm able to do things without constantly maneuvering and planning around pain. There's still a bit there, but it's a little more manageable now. I've been able to start my workouts again, and I assess back into physical therapy in a few days, so just being more capable has shifted me into a terrific mood. I know that could be transitory, but while it lasts I have been enjoying getting my new syllabus on track, where I spend an hour every day reading and/or watching TV during the day to keep me time oriented and off minecraft. Minecraft is still hard and fast but less often, and so far my money and calendar syncs are still matching, even though I feel ditzy half the time.
That was quite a confession the other day, wasn't it? I remember in my 20s it was so taboo to even say out loud "I'm depressed." Over the years it was still taboo to admit it even to a doctor, much less a friend or someone from church, because the stigma of mental illness was so prominent that it meant immediate judgement and hushing up to hold down the tittering that would go on behind people's backs. My mother never got the real help she needed because of that. She begged people for help in the only way she knew how, ways that were controlled and sanctioned by a rigid belief system, and she died way too soon because of it, even though she fought hard the only way she knew to be herself, with all her glorious mood swings and the ways she could never quite fit into what people expected of her.
My mom was one of the kindest people anyone around us knew, spending money we didn't have to make sure other people's bills were paid, actually taking food to the destitute falling through cracks, making sure lonely people got cards in the mail during their last days of long illness. I'm not capable of that, but I am capable of standing up and saying I'm mentally ill and the world hasn't ended and my life is good, and I share this because it's important, and I hope other people can learn and realize that standing up for our own truths and honesty is how we survive.
I am not an easy person. I've learned how to be kind, but I'm not naturally born sweet. Hi, I'm Pinky, and I'm ok with myself.
We've had a weird situation where @bonenado and I have practically been accusing each other of having Alzheimer's all week. Not our first, some might remember the lost video camera and stuff, but this was zucchini. Normally zucchini mystery comes from wondering who left it on your porch, but everyone knows we know it's our next door neighbor because he has a guilt thing about throwing monster woody squash out, so he gifts it instead. When we ask him not to, he says it's for our chickens. When we remind him (we're next door) we haven't had chickens in well over a year now, he just walks off and leaves us wondering what to do with it, so we fling it off the back deck and watch it smash delightfully on the trees, and then we get deer and groundhogs coming up out of Mirkwood to eat it. He doesn't like to feed the wildlife so he gives it to us.
Ok, that wasn't where I was going with this. The neighbor finally stopped sharing his produce with us because after ten years of inedible mystery monster veggies showing up in piles on our deck, we finally just put both our feet down and said We don't want anything from your garden and then had a ridiculous convo about just trying to be neighborly and here I go again. THIS zucchini was from a grocery store. Just know that, and we still don't know how it got here. I know, I keep talking like this. It's very mysterious.
I was unloading the groceries from the cart in Walmart while I was out with @bonenado last week, and I was irked to see he'd secretly smuggled in a couple of zucchini. I rolled my eyes and didn't say anything. He's a weirdo and I just roll. Got home, was putting the groceries away and rolled my eyes again when I noticed the one yellow squash hadn't been bagged in its own little veggie bag after I handed it to him, but the zucchini obviously had, so I just rolled the yellow squash up in the walmart bag and stuck it in the fridge and never said anything.
Days later, after one of the zucchini had been consumed and I need to get the rest of that squash cooked up, I finally asked why he didn't bag up the yellow squash but he did the zucchini. Skip a couple of really weird hours where we both thought the other really had cracked this time. Turns out we never bought that zucchini. Neither one of us put it into the cart, AND we were never charged for it. We dug out the receipts, it's true. But I remember getting them out of the cart...
Explain that one. It's almost like a double homicide without the death. A healthycide? I can understand someone else possibly getting the wrong cart or playing a weird joke (or @bonenado still having Alzheimer's), but not to be charged on top of it really creeped us out.
My Batman has been sick with some kind of weird germ going around the Gulf Coast. I don't think it's Zika, but it sucketh, and now the Batmom and Batdad have it, many feels for them on the Fourth. Meanwhile, Bunny rules the world from her vaca at a water park hotel. I zoomed in on the wave. She's way up there and it kinda freaks me out. Hang on, Edge has got Jawn in a headlock. This clicks to the ridiculous help advice in case you have the same problemo. #appwars
Wound up having to reboot over complete lock up,
and then got this trying to resize. I had to go around it by saving with a new title.
THAT is Microsoft wrestling control away from Chrome. Windows 10 insists on converting to their own photo app thingy, but it just doesn't work when I'm actually working in a Chrome browser. Big fail there, Microsoft. We must learn to share our toys.
Ok, back to Bunny. I cropped it and then zoomed, she is really high up there.
This kid was made for owning the world. She's not quite 3 and she's already at home with #allthethings. It's cracking us up comparing vaca pix to our own kids (their parents) at the exact same ages- noncompliance, crying, terrified of Bugs Bunny...
Maybe our kids are just doing it better than we did.
Our neighbors have already made sure it sounds like we're in a war zone every night for the last week solid, and I'm sure will continue through the rest of this week and possibly even month, so we're naturally not even interested in anything fireworky. We just want to sleep. I can't even imagine the pets and wildlife within our 2 mile radius. The mountain lion was real, here's proof we have them, the studies predicting their return (includes maps), and a list of confirmed sightings (I'm right next to Taney County), so yeah. Let's pull out our favorite Pumaman song! First, the original scene as seen on MST3K.
We always wondered why the most indigenous looking person didn't don the Puma Man belt, since he's a better fighter... @LisaMarieBowman briefly mentioned Pumaman in one of her reviews a couple of years ago. I think she'd have enjoyed it more with the song in it.
I've had the privilege over the last month of getting to see further into myself than ever before, more aspienado waking up kind of thing, and I just wanna say thanx again to everyone who has ever put up with me. I know I'm difficult. I can't say more because I don't have the words yet. They need time to percolate through me until they spill out. It's a kind of timeline thing, the before and after, and the paradox of the unaware traveling alongside the unaware in a new awareness of being unaware.
:edit:
Btw, wanna mention that this archive post that I linked on twitter this weekend got me into a "Great Writers" list. I know lists are a dime a dozen, but the account that did it is a very serious book marketing firm in Germany. I looked them up. I'm used to being put on writer lists and being followed by authors and marketing accounts trying to network, but this was different. I was simply very quietly put into a list.
The root of all this very deep thought about being public comes from this convo, the heft of which I was the silent heart of the debate over technicalities. No one knew back then that Oct 6 and 8 are extremely important dates to me for personal reasons, and that my absence had nothing to do with sitting out the debate.
I'm so bubbly full of wordy words this morning that I'm feeling impatient. Too bad I can't just press my head to the screen and think it out to here. #waitingforthebrainchip
First of all, yes, really had a mountain lion ON MY STREET IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE this week. You twitter people ignoring that are just jealous as hell, that's all. @bonenado set up the wildlife cam in the front yard hoping we'll get a repeat sometime this summer. I think all the fireworks going off night after night flushed it out. I live among the slightly better off and extremely patriotic. It's their right and duty as 'Muricans to try to burn these woods down.
@bonenado's brexbist today. Remember that speed vine I retweeted a couple times? That. It works. I need to refresh my muffin tins, though. Using paper cups wasn't ideal.
My internet is slooooow. Wild storms galore, tree down next door, got lots of hail in the pour, now I stay in my door. Ok, let's skip along before I spring into limericks and haikus.
Quickie touch base assessment on howzit going. Cut another 2 inches off my hair this morning. I had cut 3 inches last week or so, couldn't tell because my hair has gotten so long, so I figured another 2 inches would be ok. I can't believe I've taken 5 inches off now and it's still down to my lower shoulder blades. Remember when I got so excited 3 years ago that it was growing back? And then I talked about dealing with all that, and then brought it up again in 2015. Despite the length, I've been losing hair steadily again all spring, but as far as I can tell, it's root regrowth. Hair grows in cycles and people generally don't notice randomly shedding hair and regrowing it year round because it's usually thick enough not to create empty patches. My hair didn't start growing back in until I pretty much doubled my protein intake (sometimes triple, my pre-lifestyle change diet was pretty abysmal), and now I can tell it ebbs and flows when my body is under stress. April was the hardest on my hair this year, and it's starting up again, so allergy seasons and spiking histamine levels definitely affect my hair endurance, which for me means inflammation levels.
I have been tolerating increasing sinus and ear pressure discomfort for a couple of weeks again, decided last night it's time to go back to the twice a day zyrtec, and all it took was that one boost to drain my sinus and clear my skin again just overnight. I come from very white yet red skinned people, and I've lived with an autoimmune flush most of my adult life. When I take prednisone I turn white like magic, and that one zyrtec last night did the same thing. I got whiter through the spring again while I was so miserable with tree pollen but on all that extra zyrtec, and as I tapered down again the last 6 weeks, I flushed up again.
I looked back through my medical history this week, noting dates on certain tests. I used to regularly score 1:16 on ANA titers (positive speckle) (I hit 1:32 years ago and even 1:64 once) and lived with continual moderate SEDs for years (mostly 40-80ish), but we've watched that go away the last couple of years, so I've been negative ANA and normal SEDs for 2 full years now, yay!!! Interestingly, this coincides with getting very stringent with my antihistamines. I started noticing over the last 3-4 years that histamine spikes set off fibro and autoimmune flush flares, but it's getting so obvious now that I'm able to control severity somewhat with diet and antihistamines (and I've had definite input on this from a real allergist, who called it an autoimmune reaction disorder).
I have no idea if this will help other people. I'm NOT saying antihistamines cure lupus, just like changing your diet does NOT cure diabetes. I'm just saying I'm noticing that I seem to have some control over the overall tissue response. I've had other tests scary-spike, like C reactive protein the year I had to be crashed off 2 different hormone therapies, or AST and ALT liver enzymes during steady medication years, and antihistamines don't fix any of that, so don't be dumb, ok? Just saying I'm noticing a correlation between a more rigorous antihistamine regime and autoimmune flush lightening up. You still have to take care of yourself.
Pain, on the other hand, has been off the wall again this month, pretty sure it's mostly weather related. The morphine helped knock it down last weekend but it's a fair bet it made the 'never do again' list after the difficulty I had with it, and then I ground down on daily mobic this week to keep the pain level down a little bit more, but it's just not enough to stop it. I felt great going into the chiropractor a couple mornings ago, but a very sudden wild pop up rained like a lake dumped all over us while I was in there, and I almost limped out of there feeling so rotten all over. I can't take air pressure changes, especially hard and fast, it just destroys me and there's no pain medication or treatment in the world that can stop it from happening. And I noticed last night that I'm seeing phantom light flashes in the dark again, which means I hafta back off on the mobic again before I start seeing auras. Mobic raises blood pressure in the brain and puts pressure on optic nerves, so I normally take it every other day, but this last week has been daily. Doesn't take much of that stuff to do me dirty.
Ok, I'm done with that part. Aren't you glad I don't go on about this every day? I'm just thrilled that I'm not popping into ER every other month nowadays. I've been very lucky that I've never yet been hospitalized, but it's because I obsessively pay attention to patterns over time, like I do with everything in my life.
Enough of that. Back to minecraft! This is an undisclosed location on Kai's realm. I'd never used brick before. It's a special coordinate combo using my fave number, so I planted roots there.
And it happens to be fairly near an uber giant mushroom! That realm is still survival (although I play creative more and more there lately so creepers won't activate), so I'm in process of establishing self proclaimed boundaries and I'm going to light that forest up like crazy and fence it off. Maybe I can make it look elvish or Hobbity or something. Incidentally, I've never run across so many naturally occurring giant mushroom roofed forests as in Kai's realm.
I got 4 hours of sleep last night, so I'm not sure how the rest of the day will pan out. I've actually been up doing random stuff for 7 hours already. I've got cool stuff going in my own new realm, but no pix yet and I'll put them on their own blog later. Getting Bunny pix in from a water park, maybe I'll share them later.
I'm on the verge of taking my mouse apart because that button is sticking so bad now that I lost whole sections of this just hovering over. Little sticky hands, my bad. I'm lucky Jawn's keyboard is still fairly free of problems, although he stopped going full shut down because someone changed a setting somehow. As long as the internet isn't erased, we're cool, but maybe the sticky police need to pay more attention to the tech.
I impulsively bought this body pillow and matching blanket yesterday. A very tall guy couldn't take his eyes off it in my cart and had to stop and ask where I found it, then had to share with me his struggle with watching TV in bed. I nearly asked him if he'd thought of just raising his TV up a bit, like mounting it on a wall or something, but the rest of my brain nearly smothered that part gagging me, so I escaped fairly quickly. Two aspies meeting in Walmart is worse than a time travel paradox. I've wound up in 1-2 hour convos like that.
I have 5 gallons of blueberries in my freezer. My sister had an awesome blueberry year, so we bought up to the leftovers to sell to Scott's coworker who makes yummy blueberry wine. We also have another gallon in the fridge for us. I'm really wanting to try making something like this, except ours would be regular juice. It clicks to a whole page of wine popsicle recipes.
Our electricity was off half the night because of storms. I got video of the very mild beginning. Right after I got that, it dumped so hard that we couldn't hear the TV, and after that it turned into wind lashing and hail hitting all sides of the house, and finally losing electricity through the night after it blinking and surging for half an hour. I think I'm the 5th Snarkalec to lose electric just in the last week, so these storms have been fairly nationwide.
I finally started my own realm on minecraft that allows me to invite other players, which I'll talk about at StarrStrukk on pinkybluejacky. (I haven't written that yet.) It's private so people can only get on with invitations, so only people I've known for awhile (like Snarkalecs), and that way if we feel like actually touring each other's creations we can. I turned bad mobs off and set to peaceful, no fear of structural damage. I created it to play survival and all my stuff wound up looking like military compounds, and I was so busy just surviving that I never made it past the first 1000 blocks, so it's wide open beyond that and totally unexplored. For now I'm just leaving all the original stuff I started at world spawn like it is and moving on. Maybe it'll eventually turn into a city. I (we) should make a welcome center or something.
I've been getting a visitor behind Bunny's back again. He's been eating her chalk and slyly taking a few older baby toys home. He looooooves anything utilitarian, and my house is pretty awesome for snooping out useful gadgets. I hear he has his own little vacuum cleaner that really works...
Batman has a broom thing, too. He does all kinds of big work at his house. Imagine the two of them together, my house would be spotless in no time.
I'm this close to doubling up my zyrtec again. This close.
Let's see, what else. Seems like there's so much going on. My mouse button is sticky. I nearly lost all my work multiple times all week long because somebody played with it with watermelon hands. I need to run a tighter office, I really let my people get away with far too much.
I should let this go and get busy on something. Everyone I know in the U.S. traveling for the weekend- be safe. And don't do stupid stuff with fireworks. You need both your eyes and the full use of your hands and stuff.
